Free Republic

As our involvement in Iraq has wound down, a few loose ends remained. The most important was the status of Ali Mussa Daqduq. Daqduq is a Hezbollah operative, apparently directed by Iran, who was responsible for the capture, torture and murder of five American servicemen. Under the status of forces agreement, he was to be turned over to Iraqi authorities, and could only be removed from that country with the permission of its government. A number of conservative activists and politicians campaigned to retain custody of Daqduq and bring him to Guantanamo Bay or another suitable venue for trial. A...

U.S. troops are set to completely withdraw from Iraq on the 31st of December. That is also the date for another more ominous deadline: al-Maliki's government has ordered what looks to be a bloody attack on innocent political refugees on that very same day, despite strong condemnations from human rights groups, parliamentarians, and journalists from around the world. Maliki's order to empty Camp Ashraf, which will no doubt lead to a massacre, came after his meeting with the Iranian leader Khamenei. Dispersion of the camp residents no doubt will resemble what happened to the Jewish community during the Second World...

A few years back, Iran formulated a scenario for "the day after" Hezbollah leaves the scene in Lebanon, either if a new civil war breaks out or if the Syrians signed a peace treaty with Israel. Iran wanted to make sure that a Plan B was ready, automatically switching to a military group that would do the job Hezbollah had been doing, in terms of promoting and defending Iranian influence in the Arab world while "protecting" Arab Shiites... The conditions in Iraq, after all, were similar to those in Lebanon when Hezbollah was founded in the early 1980s. There was...

Mr Maliki has become steadily more authoritarian, with critics accusing him of inflaming sectarian tensions Only four days after the US departure, Baghdad has duly suffered 14 near-simultaneous bomb attacks. President Barack Obama put Iraq's extremists on notice when he announced two months ago that America's military withdrawal would conclude in December. It was a fair assumption that he would want the troops home before Christmas, identifying this week as the most dangerous period. The bloodshed was almost certainly designed to exploit a security vacuum after the end of the US presence. But it also coincided with one of the...

Well now we see the results of our President leaving Iraq. The mission wasn't complete but when one only cares about his re-election, about himself to be more accurate, then completing the mission doesn't enter into the equation. And the Iraqi's are paying for our President's selfish behavior: A wave of bombings ripped across Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing at least 63 people and injuring almost 200 in the worst violence Iraq has seen for months. The bloodbath comes just days after American forces left the country. The blasts also came on the heels of a political crisis between...

Iran is ready to expand its military and security ties with Iraq, its armed forces chief of staff has said, a week after the exit of US forces from their neighbour. General Hassan Firouzabadi hailed the "forced departure" of the US and allied forces that he said "was due to the resistance and determination of the Iraqi people and government," the state Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The statements were made in messages Gen Firouzabadi sent to his Iraqi counterpart, Lieutenant General Babaker Zebari, and to Iraq's acting defence minister, Saadun al-Dulaimi, IRNA said. The departure of the US troops...

Followers of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr also want new elections amid political crisis and fresh violence in Baghdad. A suicide attack killed five people at the interior ministry in Baghdad as a key political bloc called for early elections in a worsening standoff that has stoked sectarian tensions. The blast, which left dozens wounded on Monday, came just days after the capital was struck by its deadliest violence in more than four months. The parliamentary coailtion loyal to anti-US Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said it backed the dissolution of parliament and early elections in a dispute that has seen Iraq's...

Iraq’s former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Sunday that President Obama was wrong when he claimed the United States left Iraq as a stable and democratic country. Appearing on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Allawi said, "It’s neither stable nor democratic, frankly speaking. The terrorists are hitting again very severely. Al Qaeda is fully operational now in Iraq" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

The Obama debacle continues on... Iran has threatened to halt traffic through the strait if the West moves to toughen sanctions including an oil embargo to pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear program. The strait is the passageway for about a third of the world’s seaborne-traded oil last year, according to US Energy Department data. “Iran has total control over the strategic waterway,” Iranian Naval Commander Admiral Habibollah Sayari told Iran’s Press TV yesterday as the Iranian navy conducted a 10-day exercise in international waters. “Closing the Strait of Hormuz is very easy for Iranian naval forces.” “The free flow...

Global politics is mostly about resource sharing, like oil. The free flow of oil is the main strategic reason that the US is involved in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. That’s not a bad thing; it’s just a reality. And until the mean Greenies can make an economy that runs on water, that’s not going to change, no matter how many withdrawals and retreats Obama orders from around the world.Think the “end” of the Iraq War as announced by Obama is the beginning of peace? Not so fast. In fact, it could be the beginning of bigger...

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki BAGHDAD—Iraq's political crisis entered its second week one step closer to the potential dissolution of the government, with a call for elections by a vital coalition partner and a suicide attack that extended the spate of violence that has followed the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki—already battling to sustain his Shiite Muslim-dominated government in a standoff with Sunni coalition partners—faced a new threat on Monday as the party loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for the dissolution of Parliament and new polls. At the center of the crisis are efforts...