The term "global war on terror" has
long since been dropped from the United States's official vocabulary.
The
phrase that came to be proposed as a replacement even when George W
Bush was
still in office, the "long war", has similarly fallen by the wayside,
to be succeeded in March 2009 by a less overtly combative Pentagon formulation:
"overseas contingency operation".
WASHINGTON - The Army's primary support contractor in Iraq is being warned by Pentagon auditors to cut its work force there or face nearly $200 million in penalties for keeping thousands too many on the payroll.
The Houston-based KBR Inc., responsible for everything from mail and laundry to housing and meals, has increased employee levels while U.S. troops steadily leave the country after more than six years of war, the audit says. As a result, the U.S. government is paying far more in labor costs in Iraq than it should as military resources are shifted to Afghanistan.
“Deadliest bombs since ‘07 shatter Iraqi Complexes. Key Government Sites. Synchronized car blasts kill more than 130 — Security issue.” So reads the headline in my
newspaper.
According to the Associated Press, Iraq’s deadliest bombing in more than two years killed at least 155 and wounded more than 500 Sunday.
As we demonstrated at the White House last Monday calling for an end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, we could hardly have imagined President Barack Obama would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize four days later.
While the award came as a surprise, it is somewhat understandable. We have met and conversed with peace activists from around the world over the last year, and we've observed a palpable, nearly desperate, universal hunger (obviously shared by the Nobel Committee) for a more peaceful, less militaristic U.S. foreign policy.
BAGHDAD - Violence may have fallen sharply in Iraq from the worst days of sectarian killing, but an average monthly death toll of 500 people must not be considered "normal," the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
"There is a lack of respect for human life. Even if security has improved a lot ... you still have dozens of people killed on a daily basis," Juan-Pedro Schaerer, the head of the Red Cross' Iraq delegation, told Reuters in an interview Tuesday.
The US military commander in Iraq is
set to announce that the US will withdraw 4,000 of its soldiers from
the country by the end of October.
General Ray Odierno is due to tell the House of Representatives
Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that the US is speeding up its
military withdrawal to complete it by September 2010.
In an advance copy of his address, Odierno said: "We have
approximately 124,000 troops and 11 Combat Teams operating in Iraq
today. By the end of October, I believe we will be down to 120,000
troops.
Last spring, the U.S. diplomatic mission in Iraq got a makeover,replacing the scandal-plagued Blackwater private security company with a firm named Triple Canopy.
The new $1 billion contract cemented Triple Canopy's status as the pre-eminent provider of private security services in Iraq, with its heavily armed employees appearing side by side with senior State Department diplomats.
An upsurge in violence in Iraq in the month of August 2009 has led to the highest number of deaths from violence in the country for more than a year.
Figures compiled by the Iraqi government show that 393 civilians were killed during August.
Sixty police officers and soldiers also died in attacks.
But the violence is well below the worst levels of 2006 and 2007 when more than 2,000 Iraqi civilians were being killed on average every month.
The Bush administration invaded Iraq in March 2003 with a force of approximately 130,000 troops. Top White House and Pentagon officials like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz were convinced that, by August, those troops, welcomed with open arms by the oppressed Iraqis, would be drawn down to
30,000-40,000 and housed in newly built,
permanent military bases largely away from the country's urban areas.
WASHINGTON - The agreement announced Monday between Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
and a Shi’a resistance group called the "League of the Righteous" (Asa'ib al-Haq)
formally ended the group’s armed opposition to the regime in return for the
release of its leader and eight other Shi’a detainees. This deals a final blow to
the U.S. military’s narrative of an Iranian "proxy war" in Iraq.
