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12/29/2008 - BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFNS) -- Iraqi firefighters are were more than half-way through the firefighter apprentice course being trained in Baghdad's International Zone before being moved. The class was previously taught at Taji Military Base just north of Baghdad, but the location lacked advanced live fire trainers and had limited capacity for students. "The maximum class size at Taji was 10. In the IZ, we have five extra instructors from civil defense who enable us to teach an additional 24 students for just one class," said Tech. Sgt. Brian Partido, a fire rescue advisor deployed from Little Rock Air...

US activists call for release, pardon of Iraq shoe-thrower Dec 29 03:52 PM US/Eastern US activists on Monday urged Baghdad to release the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W. Bush, insisting that his gesture was meant to insult, not harm the US leader. "This was a form of insult... If he had wanted to hurt George Bush, he would have chosen a different weapon," Medea Benjamin of the Codepink peace activism group told AFP at a rally of about a dozen people outside the Iraqi consulate in Washington. Zaidi, 29, threw his shoes at Bush...

BAGHDAD – The jailed journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush has asked for a pardon for what he described as "an ugly act," a spokesman for Iraq's prime minister said Thursday. Muntadhar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for an Iraqi-owned television station based in Cairo, Egypt, could face two years imprisonment for insulting a foreign leader. He remained in custody Thursday night. "It is too late to now to regret the big and ugly act that I perpetrated," al-Zeidi wrote in a letter delivered to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to the prime minister's spokesman.

The good doctor on the day of his grand jihad Cambridge alum guilty of plotting the jihad deaths of untold numbers. Poverty Causes Terrorism Update: "Iraqi doctor found guilty of Glasgow airport bomb plot," by Steve Bird in the Times, December 16 (thanks to all who sent this in): An NHS doctor who waged a terrorist car-bomb campaign intended to kill and maim hundreds of people in London and Glasgow has been found guilty of conspiracy to murder. Dr Bilal Abdulla was part of a cell that set up a bomb-making factory and bought five cars to convert into firebombs...

“I first began to fathom the extent of Nadhmi Auchi's reach and corrupting influence when I was given responsibility for monitoring illegal transfers of technology and munitions to Iraq as well as overseeing all coalition transportation and communications reconstruction in Iraq." ### Barack Obama has been appropriately strident in his condemnation of the mortgage-based financial corruption which nearly led to the collapse of the investment banking system in the United States. But there are some strong smelling financial skeletons in his own closet. Obama has his own personal housing crisis that is tied not into Fanny Mae, but into a...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi security forces supported by U.S. firepower killed a senior al Qaeda leader who made car bombs and ran Islamist militant cells throughout northern Iraq, the U.S. military said on Friday. A statement said the Iraqi army and members of a U.S.- backed Sunni Arab neighborhood patrol shot Abu Ghazwan as he hid in the grass near a house they were searching on Thursday in Tarmiya, north of Baghdad. The patrol had been attacked with guns and a bomb in the house. "While further searching the area, a (neighborhood patrol) member discovered a trail booby-trapped with grenades...

HAWIJAH, Iraq, Oct. 16, 2008 – The first graduation of a pilot literacy program was held yesterday at the soccer stadium here in Iraq’s Kirkuk province. The program, which began June 15 as a pilot program for the National Literary Campaign, graduated nearly 500 students. The four-month course covered basic reading, writing and math skills for employment marketability, officials said. Students attended classes four hours a day, five days a week, for completion of the National Literary Campaign's requirements. "I have worked closely with the local government leaders and watched them develop this program, through the execution of the program,...

BAGHDAD – American troops could face trial before Iraqi courts for major crimes committed off base and when not on missions, under a draft security pact hammered out in months of tortuous negotiations, Iraqi officials familiar with the accord said Wednesday. The draft also calls for U.S. troops to leave Iraqi cities by the end of June and withdraw from the country entirely by Dec. 31, 2011, unless the Baghdad government asks some of them to stay for training or security support, the officials said. It would also give the Iraqis a greater role in U.S. military operations and full...

I can’t let this one go by. Welcome to the future if we let Islamic fundamentalists/extremists win the War on Terror. ... Mosul (AsiaNews) - A new attack against the Christians in Mosul: yesterday afternoon, an armed group assassinated Hazim Thomaso Youssif, age 40.The ambush took place in front of his clothing store in Bab Sarray; it is not yet known who ordered the killing, but it is suspected that it is the work of Islamic fundamentalists, in a city that has long been the theater of deadly attacks on the Christian community.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4, 2008 – The enemy’s use of improvised explosive devices continues to decline in northern Iraq’s Salahuddin province, a senior U.S. officer posted there said today. Consequently, “the situation here continues to improve from a security standpoint,” Army Col. Scott McBride, commander of the 101st Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, told Pentagon reporters during a satellite-carried news conference. McBride’s unit is based in Tikrit, northwest of Baghdad in Salahuddin province. The 4,000-member brigade is a component of Multinational Division North, and it has been in Iraq for about a year. The enemy is still active in Salahuddin...

BALAD, Iraq , Aug. 8, 2008 – Air Force Airman 1st Class Murad Mohiadeen's story crosses two continents and spans more than 7,500 miles. It begins with his birth in Iraq 20 years ago and continues today as the story of an American airman who is part of the coalition's efforts to win the peace in Iraq. Air Force Airman 1st Class Murad Mohiadeen defends an entry control point near the Air Force Theater Hospital at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, Aug. 2, 2008. Mohiadeen, a native of Baghdad, was raised in the United States when his family emigrated from...

Short video of the good in Iraq

Yesterday I had an interesting conference call with Royal Navy Captain Paul Abraham. He is the Director of Maritime Strategic Transition Team in Iraq. The call focused on the development of the Iraqi Navy (no, it's not a joke. They DO have a Navy); specifically: " his experiences working with Iraqi partners in building and developing the Iraqi Navy, which led to their recent operational success in seizing control of their own territorial port of Umm Qasr, protecting 90 percent of all of Iraq's imports and exports." Currently, the Iraqi Navy consists of about a dozen hard-used small patrol boats...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's main Sunni Arab bloc rejoined the Shi'ite-led government on Saturday in a breakthrough for national reconciliation after parliament approved its candidates for several vacant ministerial posts. Getting the Accordance Front to return after it quit a year ago in a row over power sharing has been seen as key to healing divisions between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs. Sunni Arabs have little voice in the current cabinet, which is dominated by Shi'ites and ethnic Kurds. "Today, parliament voted to accept our candidates ... This means the Accordance Front has officially returned to the government," a...

Several members of the Iraqi parliament called on President Jalal Talabani on Friday to apologize for shaking hands with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak at Socialist International Conference in Greece on Tuesday. Al Sadr Front MP Ahmad Al Massoudi accused President Talabani of violating the Iraqi law saying the handshake was a slap in the face for the Iraqi people. Ali A Adeeb, Al Dawa party, said the handshake was unacceptable calling on President Talabani to apologize.

Some 300 rare and valuable books confiscated from Iraq's Jewish community by Saddam Hussein's regime have been secretly spirited into Israel, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday. The books include a 1487 commentary on the biblical Book of Job and another volume of biblical prophets printed in Venice in 1617, the Haaretz daily said. The volumes are part of a massive collection of books confiscated by the secret police of the executed Iraqi dictator and stored in security installations in the Iraqi capital until the US-led invasion of 2003. Many volumes were damaged during the bombing of government buildings in...

BAGHDAD - Signs are emerging that Iraq has reached a turning point. Violence is down, armed extremists are in disarray, government confidence is rising and sectarian communities are gearing up for a battle at the polls rather than slaughter in the streets. Those positive signs are attracting little attention in the United States, where the war-weary public is focused on the American presidential contest and skeptical of talk of success after so many years of unfounded optimism by the war's supporters. Unquestionably, the security and political situation in Iraq is fragile. U.S. commanders warn repeatedly that security gains are reversible....

BAGHDAD - Lawmakers loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr accused the Iraqi government of trying to crush the movement and warned Saturday of "black clouds" on the horizon for truces that have eased fighting between al-Sadr's militia and security forces. The Sadrist Movement has heightened its rhetoric against the government in recent days, raising concerns over the cease-fires in the southern city of Basra and Baghdad's Sadr City district, the stronghold of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. Still, the lawmakers and other al-Sadr officials said they are adhering to the truces. The cease-fires are crucial to Iraqi security forces' sweeps in...

BAGHDAD - Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki took personal charge Wednesday of a military operation to rout al-Qaida in Iraq in what the U.S. has described as the terror group's last major stronghold, even as a tenuous cease-fire took hold over Baghdad's Sadr City slum. The campaign in the northern city of Mosul was the third by al-Maliki in two months as he attempts to stamp out Shiite militants and Sunni extremists across the country. Also Wednesday, a suicide bomber killed 22 people and wounded 40 in an attack on a funeral tent in a village west of Baghdad, Iraqi police...

BAGHDAD - A parliamentary committee is working on a pair of oil-related draft bills, one to re-establish the state-run oil company and another to fight oil smuggling, a senior lawmaker said Saturday. Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani, deputy chairman of the committee on oil, gas and natural resources, said legislation to re-establish the Iraqi National Oil Co., was likely to be presented to parliament on Tuesday. The measure is part of a package which also includes legislation to regulate the country's oil sector, reorganize the Oil Ministry and distribute revenues among Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regions. Al-Hassani said he was uncertain when the...