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Many people across the Arab world are excited and amused that a black man with the middle name 'Hussein', who is pledging to end the war in Iraq, has become the Democrats' nominee for president of the US. But in Iraq, which is preparing to receive Senator Barak Obama this weekend, a sense of realism prevails. He said that he would have all US combat troops out of the Arab country within 16 months of becoming president. All this, however, sparks fear rather than joy among many Iraqis across the political and sectarian spectrum. Withdrawal of US troops is not...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Iraqi scientist killed in the U.S. invasion and now linked by arms hunter David Kay to possible nuclear weapons research was working on an advanced gun, not atomic bombs, fellow physicists say. They and eyewitnesses also say Khalid Ibrahim Sa'id was killed not when he tried to "run a roadblock," as asserted by Kay, but when a U.S. tank crew blasted his civilian car without warning on an open street. These accounts of the physicist's research and death, provided by 10 Iraqis and supported on key points by U.N. arms inspectors, challenge a core element of...

Another university professor murdered Baghdad, Iraq Press, May 11, 2004 – The body of a missing university professor has been found in the outskirts of Baghdad. Dr. Abdulsamia al-Janabi was abducted following a row at Mustansiriya University over the distribution of leaflets and placards in the campus. Janabi was dean of the Science College at the University and one of the country’s top scientists. He wanted to distance his college from the current political wrangling in the country. University campuses in Iraq have turned into arenas for the various political factions to propagate their ideas. Janabi ordered all political placards...

GRADUATION DAY: Despite the US invasion of Iraq and the delay of the school year, these Baghdad University graduates are trying to move forward with their lives. SCOTT PETERSON/GETTY IMAGES from the December 09, 2003 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1209/p01s03-legn.html Iraq's students say, 'Welcome back, professor' By Christina Asquith | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor BAGHDAD - After a decade of sanctions had left his physics lab a crumbling shell, Raad Mohammed decided it was time to go. In 1999, following a route trodden by thousands of the best and brightest of Iraq's academics, Dr. Mohammed escaped to Jordan without a...

BY LATE October, there seemed widespread agreement in the Western press that the United States was failing in Iraq, where I had been living for the past month and a half. Saddam Hussein, I was reminded by television reports and pieces on the Internet, was still at large; the weapons of mass destruction that had been the ostensible reason for American intervention were looking like figments of "sexed-up" intelligence reports, if not a plot by the Bush administration to deceive the American people; and, by precipitously overturning the rock of the Baathist regime, the U.S. had succeeded only in releasing...