Word: iraq
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...invitation. "If the Iraqi government wants us to stay, we will stay," said Volesky, commander of the U.S. combat brigade currently in Mosul. Volesky spoke with reporters via a teleconference from the main U.S. base in Mosul, which remains the last urban stronghold of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. U.S. and Iraqi commanders, Volesky said, are assessing whether U.S. troops should stay in Mosul past June, which would conflict with a standing U.S.-Iraq agreement calling for all U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities by July...
...Iraqi government has not asked for U.S. troops to remain in Mosul past June, despite high levels of violence there over the past year. Insurgents have kept up an aggressive presence in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, despite repeated campaigns by U.S. and Iraqi security forces to rout them. Iraqi security forces most likely cannot successfully stamp out the insurgent networks in Mosul by themselves. But the Iraqi government may not be so keen to ask U.S. forces to stay. "It depends on the situation at the time," said Tahseen al-Shekhli, a spokesman for the Iraqi government...
Mosul emerged as the last major redoubt of the insurgency more than a year ago, when violence began dropping significantly in most of the rest of Iraq. The fear then among U.S. and Iraqi officials chiefly revolved around whether the lingering violence in Mosul would spread southward toward Baghdad and erode the security gains made during the U.S. surge. But that has not happened. In the past year, while Mosul has remained the most violent city in Iraq, the rest of the country, with the exception of Diyala province, has indeed seen the lower levels of violence that...
...Maliki has not seemed overly troubled by the fact that Mosul is effectively not under his control. It's been governance as usual for the Prime Minister, whose tangible political power essentially extends across a rump state that includes Baghdad and the oil-rich southern provinces of Iraq. On most days, al-Maliki appears content with that reality, and may remain so as long as the violence in Mosul continues to be contained to that city...
...Right now, anything past around 800 meters is an extremely tough shot," he added during a satellite telephone interview from Mosul, Iraq. "But this EXACTO will take the effects of wind, elevation and humidity all out of play." Bell spends his days training Iraqis as snipers and for other elements of the martial arts. Did he hear about what the Navy snipers did on Sunday? "Sure did," he said. "I'm jealous as hell...