Word: primed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...ahead of a complete pullout by 2011. "I don't know if I'm a mediator," says Colonel Gary Volesky, brigade commander of the 3rd Heavy Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, stationed in Mosul, adding that his mission was to rout out insurgents. Still, Kurdish leaders, including Nechirvan Barzani, Prime Minister of Kurdistan, have said they want the U.S. to stay not only in the cities, but also in other areas until it helps resolve outstanding Arab-Kurd issues, including territorial disputes. That's unlikely, unless the land rivalry can be resolved in the next two years...
...moment there, it was all going so well. A mix of skillful politicking and outright begging had netted Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero a place at the G-20 table next month. George Bush, who had initiated something of a cold war between his country and Zapatero's when Spain withdrew from Iraq in 2004, had been replaced by the more like-minded Obama. There was even talk that Spain would be a stop on the new American President's first European tour. And then Defense Minister Carme Chacón went to Kosovo...
...bungle. Although the minister originally announced that Spanish troops would be home by August, Zapatero's office has since adjusted that estimate, emphasizing that the withdrawal will be gradual, and may take as long as 18 months. Bernardino León, secretary general of the office of the Prime Minister, who was sent to Washington on Friday in an attempt to smooth things over, recognized that the State Department's reaction "could have been avoided" if Spain had handled the announcement differently...
...biggest issue is the fight for the oil beneath Kirkuk, to the southwest, but even in Mosul, a Kurdish Commander in the Iraqi army expressed deep concerns. "Tomorrow," Col. Hazar, a Kurdish member of the Iraqi Army 5th Battalion told me, "if [Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki transferred an Arab battalion up here, then we could not trust these people because they would use violence against us." (See a video on Iraq, six years after the U.S. invasion...
...That mounting pressure pushed Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany to announce Saturday that he would step down. At first, friends and enemies alike wondered if it was a trick by the wily politician to bolster the besieged government. But on Monday Gyurcsany said his resignation was permanent. "I hear that I am the obstacle to the cooperation required for changes," he reportedly stated at a congress of his Socialist party (MSzP) over the weekend. "If so, then I am eliminating this obstacle...