Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...imperial phase of America's involvement in Iraq is ending. Probably by the end of the year, the U.S. will return the palace to the Iraqi government, and embassy staff will move into a new complex just down the river. The U.S. will still have a heavy footprint in Iraq--the embassy is the largest in the world and cost about $750 million to build. But the departure from the Republican Palace is part of a larger transfer of authority. So far, the U.S.-led coalition has turned over security responsibilities to Iraqi forces in 13 out of 18 provinces...
...John McCain supported the war in Iraq and was a leading advocate of the surge there; Barack Obama opposed the intervention and calls for pulling out roughly half of all U.S. troops by the middle of 2010. But whether that happens will depend largely on the performance of the Iraqi government. And the possibilities for a reduction in U.S. troops in Iraq must be balanced against the likely need to send more to Afghanistan, where the situation now looks somewhere between difficult and dire. Here are two on-the-ground assessments of the wars that await the next President...
This transfer of responsibility would be unimaginable had it not been for the success of the surge of U.S. troops in Iraq, the deployment of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces and the uprising of armed Iraqi civilian groups--the so-called Awakening--against jihadist insurgents and sectarian militias. Violence in Baghdad is down 90% from its height in 2006 and down 80% in the country as a whole, according to Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. "In 2006, Iraq was a failed state, and in 2008 Iraq is a fragile state," he says. But the surge...
...building in Sukkariyeh Farm, 5 miles from the Syrian frontier town of Abu Qamal. Eight people were reported to have been killed in the raid. Damascus "condemns this aggression and holds the American forces responsible," said the Syrian government in a statement that went on to demand that the Iraqi government launch an investigation into "this serious violation...
...Syrian side is, I guess, uncontrolled by their side," Kelly said. "We still have a certain level of foreign-fighter movement." He told Pentagon reporters via teleconference last week, "We're doing much more work along the Syrian border than we've done in the past," adding that Iraqi security and intelligence forces "feel that al-Qaeda operatives and others operate, live pretty openly on the Syrian side...