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WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 — Republicans late this afternoon blocked a potentially momentous Senate debate, at least for now, on a bipartisan resolution opposing President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq. Forty-nine senators, almost all Democrats, voted to proceed with the debate, 11 short of the number needed under Senate rules on the issue. Forty-seven senators, nearly all Republicans, voted not to proceed. This afternoon’s result cast doubt on whether the Senate would move toward a vote on what lawmakers of both parties described as the paramount issue of the day. Now it appears certain that more negotiations will take place on...

WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals in a last-ditch effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war. They include a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general, and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders. Army officers tend to refer to the group as "Petraeus guys" — smart colonels who have been noticed by Petraeus, and who make up one of the most selective clubs in the world: Military officers...

BAGHDAD : Iraqi and US forces are preparing to launch a massive crackdown in Baghdad to end the sectarian carnage pushing Iraq toward civil war as at least another 30 people died in a surge of violence. The sustained bloodshed came after nearly 200 people were killed over the weekend, mostly in the war-torn capital. Iraqi forces on Monday stepped up security in some volatile districts on the eastern side of the Tigris river which runs through Baghdad, an AFP photographer reported. Iraqi soldiers and National Guard police were deployed on Baghdad's main eastern highway leading to the Shiite bastion...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Violence raked Baghdad Monday as an Iraqi general took charge of the security operation in the capital and Iraqi police and soldiers manned new roadblocks — initial steps indicating the start of the long-anticipated joint operation with American forces to curb sectarian bloodshed. At least 29 people died in bomb and mortar attacks across the city Monday, 15 of them as they waited to refill propane cooking tanks when two car bombs blew up in quick succession in south Baghdad. The violence showed the difficulty that as many as 90,000 American and Iraqi troops and police will...

Russia's latest version of fighter aircraft, the MiG-35, will be unveiled at next week's air show in Bangalore amid Moscow's keen interest to sell these planes to India. The MiG-35 fighters, top-of-the-line multi-role aircraft, will be on display along with the most sophisticated jets from the US, including the F-18 and F-16, and those from other countries at the five-day Aero-India International Defence show beginning next week in Bangalore, capital of Karnataka state. "It will be for the first time that the final version of MiG-35 fighter will be displayed," PTI reported here quoting an official of the Russian embassy....

London (KurdishMedia.com) 03 February 2007: Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq and the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, recently stated, “The Establishment of Kurdish state is an impossible dream.” Talabani was interviewed in Arabic by the Arabic paper Dar al-Khaleej, on 22 January 2007. “The establishment of a Kurdish state is a dream of some Kurdish patriotic and of some Kurdish poets and perhaps of some Kurdish youths who see 190 flags on top of the United Nations building. But I think that the realistic Kurdish politicians know that this is a dream and they regarded this way....

KARBALA, Iraq (AFP) - Four members of a Shiite messianic cult which fought a fierce battle with security forces earlier this week were arrested in the central Iraqi shrine city of Karbala. Karbala police chief Major General Mohammed Abu al-Walid said 25 militants were arrested across the city in a series of raids. Four of those detained were from the "Soldiers of Heaven" group, the militant Shiite cult. At least 263 of the cult's fighters were killed and 502 arrested during fierce clashes with Iraqi forces near Najaf on Sunday. The leader of the militia, who claimed to be a...

On the eve of America's invasion of Iraq, he was heartsick at the prospect that he might not be military material. He even shelled out $800 for medical tests to convince the recruiters that he was fit for duty despite childhood asthma that would ordinarily render him ineligible for service. On Monday, that same eager recruit, now Lieutenant Ehren Watada, faces a court martial for refusing to deploy to Iraq and for making public statements against the war. He is the first officer to be prosecuted for publicly criticising the war - indeed the first since the Vietnam era when...

PRAGUE: The Czech opposition Social Democrats turned against a plan to build part of the US missile defence shield in the country on Friday, laying a stumbling block to the plan’s approval in parliament. Washington asked its central European Nato ally to host a radar station, while a larger base with rockets meant to shoot down missiles that could be fired from hostile countries would be based in Poland. The centre-right Czech government has agreed to start talks on the US request, saying it would raise security in the central European Nato member country. But the Social Democrats, whose previous...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. military helicopter went down in Iraq Friday, the third in a month, an officer confirmed. Maj. David Small, a spokesman at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., said he had no details on possible casualties, what mission the helicopter was supporting, nor how many were in the crew. Two other military helicopters and one civilian helicopter crashed in Iraq in January. All were believed shot down, although the military says it has not confirmed that. U.S. forces said meanwhile they killed 18 insurgents after coming under attack in a volatile city west of the capital....

More details have emerged about the shadowy cult whose followers fought Iraqi and US forces in a day-long battle in southern Iraq on Sunday. Iraqi officials say 200 members of the group - which calls itself the Soldiers of Heaven - were killed in fierce fighting near the Shia holy city of Najaf. A well-armed group, a charismatic leader and an audacious plot to attack a holy city and kill its religious leaders. If a novelist had invented the story of the Soldiers of Heaven, it might have been dismissed as a dark fantasy. But an account of the bizarre...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's prime minister told parliament Thursday that the coming security sweep in the capital would not be the last battle against militants, who he said would not be safe anywhere in the country. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not reveal the details of the plan or say when it would begin, although he promised to ensure the human rights of innocent Iraqis. "Operation Imposing Law," as he named the security operation that is bringing 21,500 more American troops to Iraq, would target Sunni and Shiite lawbreakers equally. "We are full of hope. We have no other choice...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A helicopter owned by the private security firm Blackwater USA crashed Tuesday in central Baghdad, killing five civilians on board, U.S. military officials said. A senior Iraqi defense official said the aircraft was shot down over a predominantly Sunni neighborhood, but an American military official said there was no indication the helicopter was shot down. The Iraqi official, who would not allow use of his name because the information had not been made public, said a gunman with a PKC machine gun downed the small helicopter of a private security firm Tuesday afternoon over the heavily Sunni...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - A second U.S. aircraft carrier strike group now steaming toward the Middle East is Washington's way of warning Iran to back down in its attempts to dominate the region, a top U.S. diplomat said here Tuesday. Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, ruled out direct negotiations with Iran and said a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran was "not possible" until Iran halts uranium enrichment. "The Middle East isn't a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn't a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That's why we've seen the...

<p>KARBALA, Iraq (CNN) -- Attackers who killed five U.S. troops at a government building in Karbala posed as U.S. military officials to get past Iraqi guards, a Karbala police spokesman said.</p> <p>The attack happened Saturday as the U.S. military convened a meeting to discuss security for Ashura, the upcoming Shiite pilgrimage to Karbala.</p>

It was the worst insult a Sunni Iraqi could give to a Shiite countryman. "You Persian shoe!" politician Mishan al-Jabouri shouted at journalist Sadeq al-Musawi during a panel discussion earlier this month on al-Jazeera television. "I will do things to you that you cannot even imagine." Musawi gave it back in kind. "You are a thief. . . . Your father killed Kurds. We will settle accounts with all of you," he warned before stomping off the set past the pleading al-Jazeera moderator. The exchange between two middle-aged men in suits was an up close and personal look at the...

KARBALA, Iraq - Chilling details emerged Sunday of gunmen posing as American and Iraqi soldiers in an ambush on U.S. troops in Karbala a day earlier that killed five Americans and wounded three. On Saturday, a civil affairs team of American soldiers sat with local leaders in Karbala's provincial headquarters to discuss security for Ashoura, a Shiite commemoration of the massacre of the revered Imam Hussein that began Sunday. Outside, danger was approaching. A convoy of seven white GMC Suburbans sped toward the building, breezing through checkpoints, with the men wearing American and Iraqi military uniforms and flashing American ID...

ARBIL, Iraq, Jan 22 (Reuters) - A Christian shopkeeper who walks with a limp, Adison Brikha fled Baghdad after he was beaten in his shop. He made it to Arbil, in relatively peaceful Iraqi Kurdistan -- but now he's begging for work. "The gunmen broke into my shop in New Baghdad district and beat me brutally. It was obvious that Christians are no longer wanted in Baghdad," said Brikha, who can barely pay the rent for a tiny house in Arbil for his family of five. "I used to own a shop and now I'm begging people to let me...

Recent discussions between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Baghdad are part of a larger process of negotiating and non-negotiating Kurdish autonomy in Iraq. They reflect the erratic trajectory of Kurdish-state relations that has fluctuated between compromise and hostility, and the gap between political promises and reality. That is, during regime-threatening periods successive Iraqi leaders made special efforts to co-opt and control Kurdish communities. They promised Kurdish autonomy, offered privileges to Kurdish tribes, and created dependency through generous state handouts and social welfare programs. However, negotiating Kurdish autonomy was nothing more than a time-gaining tactic used by weak central governments...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The gunmen who killed five U.S. troops in the Shiite holy city of Karbala wore military uniforms and used vehicles commonly driven by foreign dignitaries — an apparent attempt to impersonate Americans, Iraqi officials said Sunday. The local governor said the gunmen stormed into the provincial headquarters building during a U.S.-Iraqi meeting to discuss security measures ahead of the Shiite Ashoura festival. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's parliamentary bloc, meanwhile, ended its nearly two-month political boycott after reaching a compromise over its demands for a timetable for Iraqi forces to take over security and the withdrawal of...