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Very very sad: WHERE are the Americans?" Talk to Iraqis in Baghdad these days, and you'll likely hear the question. Of course, everyone knows where the Americans are physically. The 130,000 US troops cantoned in a diminishing number of barracks outside the cities make their presence felt on occasion. The thousands of civilian Americans who are helping build a new Iraq are also easy to spot. The question refers to the United States' fast-fading political profile. Those who deem Iraq as the biggest US foreign-policy success in decades are baffled by Washington's determined efforts to deny that reality -- indeed,...

A multi-billion dollar mystery is unfolding in Iraq, and it may reach to the highest levels of the Iraqi government. It involves what the New York Times calls an "extremist Shiite group" that has now reconciled with Prime Minister Maliki and his regime. The group is responsible for the kidnapping and murder of five British contractors who, according to the Guardian, were installing a sophisticated financial tracking system in Iraq's ministry of finance in 2007. The story so far: Today, the Times reports: "An extremist Shiite group that has boasted of killing five American soldiers and of kidnapping five British...

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said for the first time Thursday that Iraq may ask U.S. troops to stay in his country beyond a previously agreed 2011 deadline for withdrawal. While Iraqi and American military figures have spoken privately about a longer-term presence in part to maintain U.S. military equipment ordered by Iraq, the Iraqi prime minister has not previously acknowledged this publicly. When U.S. combat troops exited Iraqi cities last month under the terms of a Status of Forces Agreement, Mr. al-Maliki declared a national holiday to celebrate the milestone toward full Iraqi sovereignty. On Thursday, however, in response...

WASHINGTON, July 23, 2009 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki discussed Iraq security issues when the two met at the Pentagon late this afternoon. Gates and Maliki addressed the U.S.-Iraqi security relationship and equipment needs for Iraqi soldiers and police, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. Their conversation, Morrell said, focused “largely on our security partnership, on ways that we can continue to help the Iraqi security forces grow in size and capability, so that they are able to fully exert their sovereignty and protect the people from external and internal threats.” Gates acknowledged during...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hailed the seeds of a growing cooperation between their nations, pledging that out of the fires of war would come a new friendship. But they warned the path ahead could yet prove tough, with many obstacles to overcome and sectarian violence still threatening Iraq's stability. "Both of us agree that the bonds forged between Americans and Iraqis in war can pave the way for progress that can be forged in peace," Obama pledged after White House talks with Maliki. "America stands ready to help the Iraqi government build their...

Not that it’s important enough for mainstream media to highlight, but that elusive thing known as Iraqi political reconciliation (remember when its absence was a sign of the apocalypse?) may be upon us:

How worried should we be about reports such as this and this in the Washington Post about how restricted U.S. troops have become in Iraq? One article reports on how U.S. troops, worried about an insurgent plot to mortar their bases, were not allowed to operate in the neighborhood where the attack was supposed to happen — the Iraqis insisted on handling the issue themselves. This is part of a broader Iraqi initiative to take U.S. forces off the streets that is raising concerns among some Americans over being denied the authority to protect their own forces. The other Post...

BAGHDAD -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki struck a conciliatory tone ahead of his trip to Washington, talking about his gratitude for U.S. sacrifices in Iraq, and offering to negotiate a settlement between Iraq's federal government and the country's Kurdish enclave as tensions heighten between the two. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal as he prepared for a visit to the U.S. on July 21, Mr. Maliki said he planned to thank America for its shared sacrifice with the Iraqi people in the tumultuous post-Saddam Hussein years since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. "We have [achieved] a combined victory...

THE war in Iraq is officially moving to an end. Six years after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled, several coalition members have ended their missions in Iraq - including Australia, which pulled out its troops 12 months ago - and the US is preparing to wrap up its military involvement in the country. If we examine the question from an American, British or Australian perspective, then it would be difficult to present an answer that could convince all critics. For the coalition members this was a war of opportunity, not a war of necessity. Going to war or not was...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama reversed his decision to release detainee abuse photos from Iraq and Afghanistan after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki warned that Iraq would erupt into violence and that Iraqis would demand that U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq a year earlier than planned, two U.S. military officers, a senior defense official and a State Department official have told McClatchy. In the days leading up to a May 28 deadline to release the photos in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, U.S. officials, led by Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told Maliki that...

Updated: Monday, April 27, 2009 11:30GMT—7:30AM/EST Washington, 27 April (WashingtonTV)—The US military on Sunday insisted that a raid it had conducted in the southern Iraqi city of Kut, was approved by the Iraqi government, despite Baghdad’s insistence that the action violated a US-Iraqi security pact. In a pre-dawn raid targeting Shiite militants, US forces shot dead an Iraqi woman and policeman, and detained six others. In a statement, the US military said that the woman was killed after she “moved into the line of fire.” “In an operation fully coordinated and approved by the Iraqi government, coalition forces targeted a...

BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, yesterday denounced a predawn U.S. raid in southern Iraq during which two Iraqis were killed, and he sought to prosecute the U.S. soldiers who carried out the operation. -snip- U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, suggested that Maliki's move could be politically motivated. National elections are due next winter. In a statement issued by the Iraqi government's Baghdad security command, which reports to the prime minister, Maliki called the raid "a violation of the security agreement." He said he would ask the top U.S. commander to "send those who carried out this action to the...

BAGHDAD — On April 18, American and British officials from a secretive unit called the Force Strategic Engagement Cell flew to Jordan to try to persuade one of Saddam Hussein’s top generals — the commander of the final defense of Baghdad in 2003 — to return home to resume efforts to make peace with the new Iraq. But the Iraqi commander, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani, rebuffed them. After a year of halting talks mediated by the Americans, he said, he concluded that Iraq’s leader, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, simply was not interested in reconciliation. The American appeal —...

Ayad al-Samarrai was elected speaker of the Iraqi parliament on Sunday after garnering 153 votes. There are 275 members in the Iraqi parliament, and 138 votes were all Samarrai would have needed to pass the threshold. The ‘yea’ votes in Samarrai’s favor spell trouble for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, since the same number could be arrayed to yield a vote of ‘no confidence’ in his cabinet. The ‘153’ bloc is an anti-Maliki coalition, rather than a pro-Samarrai faction. Those who backed Samarrai did so with the tacit understanding that his election would be the opening act in the drama to...

Nouri al-Maliki coailition scores landslide victory in Iraq elections Deborah Haynes and Wail al-Obaidi in Baghdad Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s Prime Minister, savoured a stunning election victory last night, as improved security drew voters to his coalition and away from the sectarian division offered by hardline religious parties. The victory in provincial elections will encourage him to run for a second term in office in the approaching general election, less than a year after he was derided in the West for his ambitious military crackdown on militants. A coalition headed by Mr al-Maliki had landslide wins in Baghdad and Basra, the...

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Mark “Black Hawk Down” Bowden says yes. I think it’s a no-brainer, but for different reasons: The stunt was rude and no doubt embarrassing to the Iraqi authorities, but it is hardly a high crime. For Americans, the only serious issue raised by the shoe-throwing episode is how Mr. Zaidi was able to throw the second one. With its national pride at stake, the Iraqi government is unlikely to cut the journalist a break. If a gesture is to be made, it has to come from Mr. Bush… It would also be a small way of acknowledging that Iraqis have...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15, 2008 – With fewer than 40 days left in office, President George W. Bush signed a security pact in Baghdad yesterday, putting an end in sight for the Iraq war after nearly six years of fighting. “The war is not over yet,” Bush said, “[but] it is decisively on its way to being won.” During a surprise farewell visit to Baghdad yesterday, Bush met with Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for a signing ceremony, affirming the two landmark agreements to withdraw U.S. troops and formalizing a long-term relationship between the two countries. “[The agreements] cement a...

BAGHDAD: Through the televised parliamentary brawling, shouting and points of order, the battle lines are becoming clear in the Iraqi political debate over a security agreement that would govern the last three years of the American military presence in Iraq. But the pact that is nominally at the center of the wrangling appears not to be the main problem. The quarreling is really about what the country will look like when the American troops eventually depart, and whether the security agreement will give too much control to the Shiite-led Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.When cornered on the stairways and...

The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is systematically dismissing Iraqi oversight officials, who were installed to fight corruption in Iraqi ministries by order of the American occupation administration, which had hoped to bring Western standards of accountability to the notoriously opaque and graft-ridden bureaucracy here. The dismissals, which were confirmed by senior Iraqi and American government officials on Sunday and Monday, have come as estimates of official Iraqi corruption have soared. One Iraqi former chief investigator recently testified before Congress that $13 billion in reconstruction funds from the United States had been lost to fraud, embezzlement, theft and...