Word: iraq
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Bombings and casualties are way down; arrests of militants and the number and confidence of the Iraqi security forces are way up. Most of the additional U.S. troops sent to Iraq as part of the surge have gone back home. But how does post-surge Baghdad feel? Over the past four-some years, I've relied on some personal litmus tests to gauge the mood of this city. And by these admittedly unscientific measures, Baghdad feels like it's starting to believe again. Never mind the usual caveats about all that could still go horribly wrong; here's the good...
...Indulging in the same sort of speculation as the terrorism experts, I would say it's likely the attackers picked up their combat experience in Afghanistan. They could have come out of Iraq as well, but Mumbai seems a little far afield for Iraqis. Again, at this point none of this is certain. We may find out the killers were Hindu extremists, or Tamil separatists...
...second reminder we should take from Mumbai is that the longer the wars go on in Iraq and Afghanistan, the more combat-experienced men there will be available to planners of terror attacks. And we should count on the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan going global - there is no reason they could not blend into the waves of immigrants crossing the Mediterranean from Northern Africa to Europe every...
...largest Sunni parliamentary bloc, have branded the Shi'ite prime minister as "another dictator". And Maliki remains at odds with Shi'ite opponents such as Moqtada al-Sadr, whose bloc of 28 lawmakers vociferously rejected the SOFA vote on Thursday, chanting "no, no to the agreement, yes, yes to Iraq...
...Maliki's hard bargaining on the SOFA deal, in which he forced Washington to make a number of key concessions on issues ranging from a firm deadline for withdrawing from Iraq to restrictions on the operations of U.S. troops currently in Iraq, might have been taken as a point of pride among Iraqi nationalists. Instead, at least among the political class, it merely reinforced a perception that Maliki is a new strongman who does things his own way, without consultation. "He could have been more diplomatic with handling this treaty," said Abdel-Bari al-Zebari, the Kurdish lawmaker. "He didn...