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BAGHDAD - Former Sunni insurgents are signing up to fight al-Qaida, Shiite militias have toned down attacks, commerce is reviving and monthly casualty counts are falling. But the failure of Iraq's leaders to strike power-sharing deals raises questions whether the progress can survive after America begins sending its troops home next year. Nearly a year after the U.S. gambled by pouring troops into Iraq's capital, there is finally cause for hope that the worst of the Iraq war may have passed, even if the endgame takes longer than Americans and Iraqis want. The political rivalries between Sunnis and Shiites that...

Written by CJTF-82 Operations    Wednesday, 26 December 2007 The United States Air Force unveiled their F117 Nighthawk over the skies of Iraq in 1991; it has since been joined by the B2 Spirit. Both aircraft use stealth technology intended to aid its penetration role in order to survive extremely dense anti-aircraft defenses otherwise considered impenetrable by combat aircraft. The Taliban unveiled their own “Stealth Bomber” yesterday in Jalalabad, Nangarhar as a 50 year old woman was apprehended at a security checkpoint wearing a suicide vest. Evading radar isn’t an issue for the technology eschewing Taliban, Police and security...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19, 2007 – The number of internationally supplied trainers for Afghanistan’s soldiers and police is slated to quadruple, as the number and capabilities of those security forces continues to grow, a senior U.S. military officer told Pentagon reporters here yesterday. Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak speaks during a Pentagon news conference on the ongoing security and training operations in Afghanistan, Oct. 18, 2007. Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Molly A. Burgess, USN  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Plans are to augment the 22 training teams already operating across Afghanistan with another 80 teams,...

A new audio message purportedly belonging to Osama bin Laden praises Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and claims the recently slain leader of al Qaeda in Iraq was under orders to target attacks against Iraqis who support the U.S. forces. Bin Laden also vowed further attacks against the U.S. and demanded al-Zarqawi's body be returned to his family.

June 28, 2006 - The capture of Ibn Al-Shaykhal-Libi was said to be one of the first big breakthroughs in the war against Al Qaeda. It was also the start of the post-9/11 mythologizing of the terror group. According to the official history of the Bush administration, al-Libi (a nom de guerre meaning "the Libyan")

The lawyer for one of the marines accused of the massacre has told the BBC that criminal charges will probably be brought soon. And we have found that the marines were operating under some very disturbing conditions. The accusation is that after a US marine lance corporal died in a roadside bombing in Haditha last November, his fellow marines went on a killing spree. Twenty-four people died in the attack, including seven women and three children. A 12-year-old girl who survived says the Americans killed them indiscriminately. The marines said they had came under fire from the houses where the...

June 26, 2006 issue - No one would have mentioned his name at all if President George W. Bush hadn't singled him out in public. Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, West Point '76, is not someone the Army likes to talk about. He isn't even listed in the directory at Fort Bragg, N.C., his home base. That's not because McChrystal has done anything wrong—quite the contrary, he's one of the Army's rising stars—but because he runs the most secretive force in the U.S. military. That is the Joint Special Operations Command, the snake-eating, slit-their-throats "black ops" guys who captured Saddam Hussein...

Followers of the Haditha news will recognize the name Abdul-Rahman Al-Mashhadani as the "Chairman" of the newly formed Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring.("Budding journalist" Thaer al-Hadithi, 43, is Hammurabi's founder and only other member. He serves as its "Secretary-General.")Online references to this humanitarian Al-Mashhadani are few and far between. Though he was mentioned as a poll watcher in October and then again in December of 2005.Photos of al-Mashhadani seem to be non-existent, except for this one of his worthy hands. Abdul-Rahman al-Mashhadani, head of the Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring, points out locations of...

WASHINGTON — Murky procedures, lack of oversight and inadequate resources led to mistakes in the way U.S. troops treated Iraq and Afghanistan detainees. But two Pentagon reports, released publicly for the first time, found no widespread mistreatment or illegal actions by the military. A human rights group called the reports released Friday a whitewash that ignored countless documented accounts of detainee abuse. One report detailed several incidents involving U.S. special operations forces in 2003-04. It said interrogators fed some Iraqi detainees only bread and water for up to 17 days, used unapproved interrogation practices such as sleep deprivation and loud...

The Republicans in the House know what is happening, and know how bad things are. By framing this important debate in such simplistic, venal terms, they are absolutely guaranteeing more of the same. And that, friends, is a war crime, and you can watch it happen today on television......... There is going to be a debate today on the floor of the House of Representatives regarding Iraq. Is it within the realm of possibility to categorize a debate on the floor of the House as a war crime? Is that too much of a stretch? Leveling a war crime accusation...

Text of a document discovered in terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's hideout. The document was provided in English by Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie: --- The situation and conditions of the resistance in Iraq have reached a point that requires a review of the events and of the work being done inside Iraq. Such a study is needed in order to show the best means to accomplish the required goals, especially that the forces of the National Guard have succeeded in forming an enormous shield protecting the American forces and have reduced substantially the losses that were solely suffered...

ABU DHABI — The US troops in Iraq do not carry out target killing of civilians in the war-torn country, Hoshyar Zebari, Iraqi Foreign Minister, has asserted. ‘The US forces do not kill civilians. Yes, civilians got killed in Haditha and other places but it is the terrorists who target civilians in Iraq,” said Zebari, to a question posed by Khaleej Times on measures adopted by his government to protect civilians. Zebari was taking part in the first pan-Arab Broadcast Forum held in Abu Dhabi recently. “More than 40 to 50 Iraqis are killed daily at markets, places of worship...

NEW YORK — The scandal engulfing the United Nations Procurement Department (search) now appears to be bottomless. It also shows signs of growing more sinister, especially where it involves a mysterious private company called IHC Services (search), which did big business with the procurement department until it was removed from U.N. rosters in June. New details of how dark the scandal could prove to be have emerged from the private sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, just as the procurement scandal was about to break. It now appears that while doing business with the U.N., IHC had links both...

PERCY FERNANDEZ INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, MARCH 05, 2005 05:15:51 PM ] NEW DELHI: In the wake of the reports that 1000 Chinese separatists have been trained by Al-Qaeda, the Chinese government has launched a war on terror by establishing the world's largest centre for counter-terrorism. With this, China has joined the roll-of-honour alongside the US in its fight against the war on global terror. The counter-terrorism headquarters will be located in Beijing. The campaign comes in the wake of counter-terrorism drive initiated by China for the last two years in fighting the Uighur separatism in the Xinjiang province of...

United Press International September 3, 2004 Friday 13:23 PM Eastern Time LENGTH: 136 words HEADLINE: Arabs predominate in Beslan attack DATELINE: BESLAN, Russia, Sept. 3 (UPI) BODY: The terrorists who killed more than 150 people and injured at least 456 in a southern Russian school include 10 Arabs, Itar-Tass reported Friday. Aslambek Aslakhanov, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin, said the gunmen were of different nationalities, but 10 of them were from Arab countries and one was from an African nation. They are suspected of gaining entrance into Beslan with a truck hijacked in the Mozdok region of North Ossetia...

When our political talk seems to be about every war except the one we are in, it is important to be reminded that we really are now at war, against a brutal enemy, and millions of lives are at stake. One salutary reminder comes in Alan Cullison's illuminating article, "Inside Al-Qaeda's Hard Drive," in the current issue of The Atlantic. Cullison details the contents of an al Qaeda computer left behind when its owners fled Kabul in the face of advancing American and Northern Alliance forces.... [S]ome of the information on the computer is deeply chilling — for example, the...

MILAN, Italy (Reuters) - Italy arrested an Egyptian man considered to be a mastermind of the Madrid train bombings in the first Europe-wide swoop on Islamic militants linked to the March attack, judicial sources said Tuesday. "Mohamed the Egyptian" was seized after a three-month probe by Italy's anti-terrorist unit and Italian intelligence and he was thought to be the head of a Moroccan radical Islamist cell, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera said Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said militants had been planning more attacks as police swooped as part of an operation across Europe. He said the swoop was aimed...

Jordan has foiled a chemical attack, linked to al Qaeda, involving trucks loaded with 20 tons of explosives that could have killed 80,000 people, according to security officials. More to follow...

Madrid, Spain – The body of a Spanish police officer who was killed in a raid on suspected Islamic terrorists was removed from its tomb Sunday night, dragged across a cemetery, doused with gasoline and burned, a Spanish police official told CNN. Police do not know who committed the crime, and an investigation is under way. Francisco Javier Torronteras, a special operations police officer, died April 3 during a police raid in a Madrid suburb where police believed suspects behind the March 11 Madrid train bombings were hiding. The suspected terrorists set off a bomb during the raid and seven...

March 15, 2004 Blame Spain for the Next Terror Attack Barbara J. Stock When the next bomb goes off--perhaps this time in Poland--the families of the dead should blame the people in Spain who voted to run from terrorists and cower before them instead of standing strong against them. Sound cruel? Perhaps, but it is the sad truth. The majority of Spaniards decided to follow the illogical path of blaming their President for the attack in Madrid instead of the people who actually carried out mass murder. In doing so, they handed the butchers a victory. Terrorism and murder have...