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I have a friend who fought in Fallujah. He is boisterous and confident and full of life. He has the can-do spirit that defines himself and all who have worn the blue cord of the Army Infantry. But yesterday he was broken. As he talked about the Iraq war, and specifically the fight for Fallujah, there was a sadness that doesn’t come out in the speeches and books. There wasn’t the never-say-die confidence of a veteran non-commissioned officer, there was instead the dazed uncertainty of a man who looks back and wonders what the hell it was all about. Why...

BEIRUT — An eruption of violence in Iraq is threatening to undo much of what U.S. troops appeared to have accomplished before they withdrew, putting the country’s stability on the line and raising the specter of a new civil war in a region already buckling under the strain of the conflict in Syria. In the western Iraqi province of Anbar, Sunnis are in open revolt against the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Militants affiliated with al-Qaeda have taken advantage of the turmoil to raise their flag over areas from which they had been driven out by American troops,...

Americans want to forget about Iraq and Syria, especially since President Obama walked back from his bombing threat in September, but Syria and Iraq haven't forgotten America. The contagion from Syria's civil war is spilling across borders in ways that are already requiring U.S. involvement and may eventually cost American lives. The casualties include the stability of Lebanon, which like Syria is riven by Shiite-Sunni divisions. Thousands of Shiite Hezbollah militia have joined the war on behalf of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, and the opposition is retaliating with a terror campaign inside Lebanon.

BEIRUT—Spiraling violence and advances by al Qaeda-linked fighters in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are underscoring the cost of Syria's civil war as it increasingly spills over the country's borders. The rise of the Islamist forces in Iraq is particularly worrisome to the Obama administration. In response, U.S. officials said Sunday they were seeking to boost military support—though they emphasized no troops—for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to help in his campaign to push back al Qaeda. U.S. officials are also considering new military aid for Lebanon, which is plagued by rising sectarian violence. Resurgent al Qaeda-allied forces battled Sunday in...

A senior Iranian military official says Iran is ready to help Iraq battle al-Qaida “terrorists” in the neighboring country’s Sunni-dominated western Anbar province. Iraqi troops have been trying to dislodge fighters from the al-Qaida group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant from two key cities the militants overran last week. […] Tehran is an ally of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. …

BRUSSELS - Iran could improve its chances of playing a role on the sidelines of Syria peace talks this month by working with Damascus to stop the bombardment of civilians and improve humanitarian access, US officials said on Monday. "There are ... steps that Iran could take to show the international community that they are serious about playing a positive role," one of the officials said in Brussels. "Those include calling for an end to the bombardment by the Syrian regime of their own people. It includes calling for and encouraging humanitarian access." Another official made clear that the comment...

The US fought for years to free Anbar province from the grip of al-Qaeda during the Iraq War. Fallujah and Ramadi turned into pitched battlefronts, and later “the surge” convinced local Sunni tribes to join the US effort to dispel AQ from the region. More than two years after the US pulled all of its forces out of Iraq, AQ is back — and Ramadi and Fallujah appear to have fallen once again: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO The city center of Iraq’s Fallujah has fallen completely into the hands of fighters from the al-Qaida-linked Islamic State in Iraq...

Republican senators on Saturday blamed the Obama administration for Al Qaeda affiliates over-running parts of Iraq, including the city of Fallujah, which the United States secured before President Obama removed all U.S. forces from that country in 2011. Sen. John McCain, Arizona, and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina, called the recent turn of events “as tragic as they were predictable” and suggested Obama misled Americans into believing that Iraqi leaders wanted U.S. forces out of their country. “While many Iraqis are responsible for this strategic disaster, the administration cannot escape its share of the blame,” the senators said in a joint...

One hundred and fifty Americans died fighting for this city, and hundreds more were wounded. And now it has been retaken by the enemy. Commander-in-chief Obama's response: another round of golf.

Two Iraqi cities that were strongholds of Sunni insurgents during the U.S. war in the country are battlegrounds once more after al-Qaida militants largely took them over, fending off government forces that have been besieging them for days. The overrunning of the cities this week by al-Qaida’s Iraqi branch in the Sunni heartland of western Anbar provinces is a blow to the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Malik. His government has been struggling to contain discontent among the Sunni minority over Shiite political domination that has flared into increased violence for the past year. […] Government troops, backed by...

Another Obama success story… When George Bush left office the War in Iraq was won. Today the flag of Al-Qaeda flies over Fallujah. It only took five years for Obama to lose all US gains in Iraq.(video at link)The Washington Post reported: A rejuvenated al-Qaeda-affiliated force asserted control over the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on Friday, raising its flag over government buildings and declaring an Islamic state in one of the most crucial areas that U.S. troops fought to pacify before withdrawing from Iraq two years ago.The capture of Fallujah came amid an explosion of violence across the western...

Qaeda-linked fighters control parts of two Iraq cities  Published — Thursday 2 January 2014 Last update 3 January 2014 2:17 am RAMADI, Iraq: Militants linked to Al-Qaeda on Thursday controlled half of the Iraqi city of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi, after days of violence that erupted as a protest camp was removed. Clashes first broke out in the Ramadi area on Monday as security forces tore down the country’s main Sunni Arab anti-government protest camp near the city west of Baghdad, and continued for two days. The violence also spread to nearby Fallujah, and security forces have since...

Over the past several days, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham, al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq, has taken control of large sections of two western Iraqi cities that were once bastions for the terror group. ISIS fighters entered the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar, after the Iraqi military withdrew from them following clashes with tribes over a political standoff that resulted in the arrest of a Sunni member of parliament. The ISIS has posted videos of its fighters entering the cities in force after clashing with Iraqi police and overrunning several checkpoints. In...

Al-Qaeda-Linked Force Captures Fallujah Amid Rise In Violence In Iraq By Liz Sly, January 3 BEIRUT — A rejuvenated al-Qaeda-affiliated force asserted control over the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on Friday, raising its flag over government buildings and declaring an Islamic state in one of the most crucial areas that U.S. troops fought to pacify before withdrawing from Iraq two years ago. The capture of Fallujah came amid an explosion of violence across the western desert province of Anbar in which local tribes, Iraqi security forces and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have been fighting one another for days in a confusingly...

Just over two years since American troops entirely withdrew from Iraq, the black flag of Al Qaeda flies over the city of Fallujah’s government buildings in Iraq’s western Anbar Province. It was there that several American contractors were killed and strung up over a bridge in 2004 and American Marines fought the biggest battle of the Iraq War. “The capture of Fallujah came amid an explosion of violence across the western desert province of Anbar in which local tribes, the Iraqi security forces and al-Qaeda militants have been fighting one another for days in a confusingly chaotic three-way war,” reads...

One Day of Fighting. Ten Different Perspectives Fallujah 2004 Garrett Anderson and Antonio de la Torre have been creating digital films together since they met at a high school digital media production class in the year 2000. Several of the students from that class are working in similar professional fields today. Garrett served as a U.S. Marine infantryman from 2003-2007; during which he deployed to Iraq as well as Afghanistan and continued to collaborate with Antonio when visiting home on vacation. The two filmmakers decided in late 2011 to interview members of Anderson’s former platoon who fought alongside each other...

Rats or Humans? Inside Saddam's Extermination Plant(August 29, 2002)This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/ He was introduced as director of research and development at Falluja, one of the remote factories where the United States claims Saddam Hussein could be making chemical and biological weapons. Asked if he had worked on any of Saddam's chemical weapons programs, Dr Mohammed Frah played a straight bat: "In the early 1980s I worked for five years on the chemical and biological programs at Al-Muthanna." This is the name of a critical centre in Saddam's weapons program - a huge pesticide complex that produced...

In his final report, released this month, on how $63 billion of American taxpayers’ money was spent in reconstructing Iraq after the end of the Iraq war, Special Inspector General Stuart Bowen asked two questions: “What happened to the money?” and “What effect did it have?” The next 185 pages of his report reviews where it went, how much was wasted, and what effect it had in restoring Iraq’s infrastructure so that life there could return to some sort of normal. The answer to the first question, “what happened to the money?” is that much of it was wasted. He...

'They killed with apparent impunity, effortlessly dodging capture by the world’s deadliest special forces. Nothing, it seemed, could stop Al Qaeda’s two top Iraqi terrorists as they orchestrated a campaign of high-profile kidnappings, car bombings and executions in Baghdad and beyond. At the height of their reign, one of them, Maher Ahmed Mahmoud az-Zubeidi, better known by his alias Abu Rami, was believed to have been responsible for the murders of 200 people each month. Yet perhaps even more ferocious was his charismatic co-leader, Abu Uthman, whose exploits in two battles in Fallujah earned him the nickname Abu Nimr –...