The excitement
over the nomination of Barack Obama as the presidential nominee of the
Democratic Party has been tempered by some key foreign policy planks in
the 2008 platform,
particularly those relating to the greater Middle East region. These
positions appear to run counter to Obama's pledge early in the primary
race to end the mindset that led to the Iraq War.
The Bush administration has spied on the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and other senior figures in his government, the Washington Post reported today.
The
claim is one of many in a new book by the paper's associate editor Bob
Woodward, who with Carl Bernstein uncovered the Watergate scandal that
led to Richard Nixon's resignation.
BAGHDAD - Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga forces are bracing for conflict
in the disputed city of Khanaqin in the most serious threat of clashes
between Arabs and Kurds since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
A
delegation flew from Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish regional
government, to Baghdad at the weekend to try to resolve the crisis. The
two main Kurdish parties are allied and form part of Iraq's coalition
government.
WASHINGTON - Iraqi Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki signaled last week that that all U.S. troops --
including those with non-combat functions -- must be out of the country
by the end of 2011 under the agreement he is negotiating with the
George W. Bush administration.
The US military handed over security control of the province of
Anbar to Iraqi government forces yesterday, claiming victory over
al-Qa'ida in Iraq. President George Bush hailed the deal as a
breakthrough. "Today, Anbar is no longer lost to al-Qa'ida, it is
al-Qa'ida that lost Anbar," he said
Political events in Iraq are seldom what they seem. The hand- over by the US military of control of Anbar province, once the heartland of the Sunni rebellion, to Iraqi forces is a case in point. The US will keep 25,000 American soldiers in Anbar, so the extent to which the Iraqi government will really take over is debatable. But the future of Anbar is a crucial pointer to the fate of Iraq. It is a vast area and one of the few parts of Iraq that is overwhelmingly Sunni.
BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has been on a roll, and American officials are getting worried.
Once perceived as a sectarian Shiite Muslim leader, the U.S.-backed
Maliki has won over Sunni constituents in recent months with offensives
to curb Shiite militias in southern cities such as Basra and Amara and
in the Baghdad Shiite slum of Sadr City.
How on earth do they get away with it? Let's start with war between Hizbollah and Israel - past and future war, that is.
BAGHDAD - Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki said
Monday there would be no security agreement between the United States
and Iraq without an unconditional timetable for withdrawal - a direct
challenge to the Bush administration, which insists that the timing for
troop departure would be based on conditions on the ground.
On November 4, San Franciscans will vote on the strongest anti-Iraq War measure yet to appear before the voters of a major American city. Proposition U, placed on the ballot by five of the city's Board of Supervisors, declares it city policy that "its elected representatives in the United States Senate and House of Representatives should vote against any further funding for the deployment of United States Armed Forces in Iraq, with the exception of funds specifically earmarked to provide for their safe and orderly withdrawal."
