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Reports are starting to show up on Twitter of explosions in the International Zone in Baghdad, aka the Green Zone. It is about 2:15 a.m. in Baghdad, IIRC.#BREAKING assaults beginning in Green Zone, #Baghdad. #ISIS sleeper cells activated! #Iraq #Iran#BreakingNews Huge explosions are now reported inside the Green Zone in #Baghdad. #ISIS #Iraq.@AllMilitaryNews Not me; it is the Iraqi state TV who reported that..

BAGHDAD (AP) - Available soon: nine palaces in lakeside complex frequented by visiting kings and dictators, beautiful molded ceilings and light fixtures, many bidets, Saddam Hussein mural and former prison cell. As is, with Tomahawk missile damage. Contact: U.S. Army. Thus might read a real estate ad for the Victory Base Complex, one of the many properties the U.S. military is vacating as the Dec. 31 deadline for its withdrawal from Iraq approaches. It will leave behind probably some of the most elaborate, some would say tacky, office spaces ever used by American soldiers, sailors or Marines.

It seems that Hollywood never learns its lesson. The anti-military "Green Zone" has now become but the latest of such movies to bomb bigtime at the box office. This report from a Los Angeles Times blog chronicles how "Green Zones" has joined a list of similar financial disasters such as "In the Valley of Elah," "Rendition," and "Redacted": "Green Zone" is the last drama set to be released by a major studio related to the Iraq war, and Hollywood is undoubtedly grateful for it after the picture, directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Matt Damon, opened to just $14.5 million...

"Green Zone" looks at an American war in a way almost no Hollywood movie ever has: We're not the heroes, but the dupes. Its message is that Iraq's fabled "weapons of mass destruction" did not exist, and that neocons within the administration fabricated them, lied about them and were ready to kill to cover up their deception. Is this true? I'm not here to say. It's certainly one more element in the new narrative that has gradually emerged about Iraq, the dawning realization that we went to war under false premises. "Green Zone," directed by Paul Greengrass, is a thriller...

The whole WMD thing in Iraq? Faked, in this leftist fantasia's telling. Despite being guilty of gross insubordination, lying to his superiors and concealing important evidence from them (a notebook containing the addresses of Saddam's top officers), [Matt Damon's character] is the hero of the film. Others we're supposed to cheer for include Sunni officers who shoot down helicopters carrying American soldiers sent to assassinate them. Those death squads are acting at the behest of a duplicitous Pentagon intelligence mandarin (Greg Kinnear) who has single-handedly drummed up a fake casus belli. Before the war, he interviewed a general of Saddam's...

After all of Hollywood's Iraq movies have flopped (even the Oscar-garlanded "The Hurt Locker" earned only $15 million at the box office), one studio thinks it has the following secret to success: The previous films didn't insult the United States enough. "Green Zone," opening Friday, is a $100 million slime job that conjures up a fantastically distorted leftist version of the war and wraps it around a frantic but preposterous action picture. (Spoilers about the plot follow.) Matt Damon plays Miller, an Army "chief" (chief warrant officer) assigned to searching for weapons of mass destruction in Baghdad in the opening...

"Is the new Matt Damon film Green Zone the most rabidly anti-American film yet made about Iraq"?

NO one doubts that “Green Zone” comes with what Adam Fogelson, the chairman of Universal Pictures, calls an action movie “pedigree.” The film, which opens across the country on March 12, stars Matt Damon and reunites him with Paul Greengrass, the director who brought a propulsive visual style to “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum.” And television ads and trailers promise plenty of suspense, firepower and, of course, fighting in close quarters. But while “Green Zone” looks and moves much like a Bourne sequel, it also comes with a significant strike against it as a commercial proposition: It’s a...

Justice: Once again, Americans asked to put their lives on the line go on trial. Their crime was doing the very job we asked them to do in Iraq. Will they now be sacrificed for an ungrateful Iraq?On Tuesday, five members of a tactical support team of Blackwater Worldwide security guards in Iraq made their first appearance in U.S. District Court on charges ranging from voluntary manslaughter to the use of automatic weapons. The "crime" was protecting State Department personnel under fire in a war zone and firing back. On Sept. 16, 2007, 18 members of the "Raven 23" team...

An all-out attack on the Iraqi government came in the form of a series of powerful assaults that hit central Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. The attacks raise a number of questions, among them who had the capacity to carry out the co-ordinated attacks and was the US right to pull out of Iraq's cities when it did? As Baghdad reels from its bloodiest day this year, experts and journalists consider who might have been behind the attacks and what their motives might have been. Mosab Jasim, Al Jazeera English producer in Baghdad Jasim: It would be really difficult to enter...

BAGHDAD — A series of explosions targeting government and commercial buildings struck Baghdad Wednesday, killing at least 75 people and wounding more than 312, Iraqi police said. The blasts in the capital followed a string of attacks in Iraq this month that have claimed hundreds of lives and raised concerns about the ability of Iraqi security forces to keep the lid on violence in advance of an American withdrawal.

Shells hit Baghdad’s protected Green Zone Back-to-back strikes are the first in more than three months BAGHDAD - Suspected militants shelled Baghdad's protected Green Zone on Saturday in the first such bombardment in more than three months. The back-to-back strikes reverberated across the Tigris River to a popular promenade, sending families packing up from fish restaurants and abruptly halting a party at a club. Violence across Iraq remains sharply down compared with past years, but attacks and bloodshed have edged up in recent weeks and brought worries that it could slow the return of nightlife and commerce to parts of...

Dare we dream of a world in which al Qaeda no longer exists? The terrorist network responsible for September 11 may be headed for the dustbin of history, according to "Global Trends 2025," the latest report by the National Intelligence Council. But the report isn't all good news. The NIC, a center of strategic thinking within the American government, says the ultimate demise of al Qaeda will coincide with a different set of terrorist challenges. The Obama administration would be wise to take stock of these findings and heed the warnings. First, the good news: The report confirms one of...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 1, 2009 – The United States formally transferred the Republican Palace back to the Iraqi government today, a concrete symbol of the continuing improvement in the country. The transfer came about as the status of forces agreement between the United States and Iraq took effect. The agreement replaces the United Nations mandate under which the coalition went into Iraq and has conducted operations there since. Under the agreement, Iraqi forces are now in the lead with U.S. forces in a supporting role or in overwatch. Officials said that American troops are still on duty at some of the...

Reporting from Baghdad -- As Iraqi schoolchildren sang their country's praises and a band played, the United States formally handed over military control of the heavily fortified Green Zone to Iraqi troops today, a first major step in the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. For Iraqis, the Green Zone, a walled-off 4-square mile community in Baghdad's core, has come to symbolize the U.S. occupation of their country. Home to about 30,000 residents -- including 14,000 U.S. and coalition forces -- it also encompasses Saddam Hussein's opulent Republican Palace, which was captured by American troops in April 2003 and was,...

I think quite a number of Iraqis were embarassed by how their guest got treated today. Personally, I got angry. Very angry. I will make a public promise: should I ever run into a certain reporter called Muntather al-Zaidi, presently of Al-Baghdadia TV, I will seriously consider beating the crap out of him. If I am successful in bringing him down, then my coup de grace shall be to take one of his shoes, preferably the one on the right, and stuff it in his mouth. I know that will be illegal. I am willing to face all the legal...

Two powerful bombs exploded outside the Iraqi capital's tightly-guarded Green Zone on Tuesday as US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was ending a visit focused on a controversial military pact. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said an agreement was "very close" and that there were "new ideas and new language" to clinch a mutually-acceptable security deal. "This needs some bold political decisions now," he said. An Iraqi military officer said at least one soldier was wounded in the blasts which went off in quick succession at a time of heavy traffic.

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

BIDEN: Number one, there is not a single military man in this audience who will tell this senator he can get those troops out in six months if the order goes today. Let's start telling the truth. Number one, you take all the troops out. You better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone where I have been seven times and shot at.

The green zone of Baghdad, a highly fortified slice of American suburbia on the banks of the Tigris river, may soon be handed over to Iraqi control if the increasingly assertive government of Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, gets its way. A senior Iraqi government official said this weekend the enclave should revert to Iraqi control by the end of the year. “We think that by the end of 2008 all the zones in Baghdad should be integrated into the city,” said Ali Dabbagh, the government’s spokesman.