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IGC sees Foreign Fighters supported by Baathists Sources in the Interim Governing Council told al-Zaman that there is evidence that between 200 and 400 foreign fighters, from Sudan, Yemen, Palestine and even Chechnya, are responsible for suicide bombings in Iraq, and that they receive logistical support and help from a network of Baath loyalists. What […]

One US Soldier Killed, 7 wounded; Deputy Mayor of Baghdad Assassinated Tuesday: Guerrillas fired from a rooftop into the main US military base in Tikrit, wounding at least one US soldier from the Fourth Infantry Division. Guerrillas detonated a car bomb near a police station and a school in Fallujah on Tuesday, killing four Iraqis. […]

Iraq’s Christians Meet, ask for own Province A conference of Chaldean and Assyrian Christians met in Baghdad Monday, and came to two principal decisions (al-Zaman). They decided to seek a province of their own in Ninevah, near Mosul (a district that also has many Kurdish villages alongside Christian ones). And they decided that Iraqi Christians […]

Iraq War Death Toll: 8,700 Iraqi Troops, 3,400 Iraqi Civilians A new study by The Project on Defence Alternatives, based on field hospital data and US government reports, finds that approximately 13,000 Iraqis were killed in the US attack of March-April. A little less than a third of the dead, 3,400 or so, were noncombatants […]

US Intelligence Failures on Iraq WMD Rooted in Trusting Chalabi, Likud, Neocons Carl W. Ford Jr., the just-retired assistant secretary of State for intelligence and research, has given an extended interview to the Los Angeles Times in which he forthrightly acknowledges that something went wrong with US intelligence estimations of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction […]

Greenstock Charges Foreign Terrorists in Monday’s Wave of Attacks Special representative of the British government in Iraq, Jeremy Greenstock, told the BBC that the modus operandi of the suicide carbombings of the Red Cross HQ in Baghdad and several police stations was the mark of foreign terrorists coming in via Syria, Iran and Afghanistan. (via […]

Bangladesh, Portugal, will not send Troops The US military’s desperate search for an international division of peace enforcers in Iraq has pretty much completely failed. Bangladesh and Portugal, whom the US had pressed to provide troops, announced Monday that they would not. They said that their publics were overwhelmingly opposed, and that the recent UN […]

Optimistic, Pessimistic Views of Kurdistan A friend of mine in northern Iraq sent me the following recently, which I reprint with permission. It is more upbeat than the news from the Sunni Arab triangle. “I have now seen more of northern Iraq than I ever dreamed possible — from Dohuk and Zahko through Irbil to […]

Khamenei Warns of Secret Plans to Dismember Iraq In an interview with al-Zaman, Iran’s Supreme Jurisprudent, Ali Khamenei, said that he was extremely worried by the complex and confusing issue of Iraq, and that he prayed daily for the unity of the Iraqi people. He expressed concerns that there were forces that wanted to see […]