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BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 6 - When an Italian journalist was driven up Baghdad's airport road toward an American military checkpoint on Friday night, she was driving into a situation fraught with hazards thousands of Iraqis face every day. The journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, 56, ran into fierce American gunfire that left her with a shrapnel wound to her shoulder and killed the Italian intelligence agent sitting beside her in the rear seat. She had been released only 35 minutes earlier by Iraqi kidnappers who had held her hostage for a month, and the car carrying them to the airport was driving...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 27 - Iraqi officials said Sunday that Syria had captured and handed over a half-brother of Saddam Hussein who has been accused of playing a leading role in organizing and financing the insurgency that has tormented Iraq since Mr. Hussein's overthrow nearly two years ago. Syrian officials in Damascus confirmed the transfer, and said the half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, once the widely feared head of Iraq's two most powerful security agencies, was one of a group of officials from the former Iraqi government who were arrested in Syria and delivered into Iraqi custody. An Associated Press...

I don't know how many of you had the opportunity to read the front-page, above the fold article published in today's edition of the New York Times, which dealt specifically with the concerns surrounding the first (democratic) elections held in Iraq since 1954. It was an telling article, mainly-at least, from my perspective-because it was an indication that John Burns-a British journalist whose previous reportage from that country stood out for its clarity of purpose and sharp divergence from the standard "America is bogged down in an irretrievable quagmire" line-had finally subscribed to the press corp's generalized hostility for Operation...

January 30, 2005 On Baghdad's Closed Streets, a Party Atmosphere By DEXTER FILKINS AGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 - After a slow start, voters turned out in very large numbers in Baghdad today, packing polling places and creating a party atmosphere in the streets, which were closed to traffic but full of children playing soccer, and men and women, some carrying babies. American officials were showing confidence that today was going to be a big success, although they were still wary of the possibility of major attacks by insurgents. In the Karada district of central Baghdad, everyone, it seemed, was walking...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 - After a slow start, voters turned out in very large numbers in Baghdad today, packing polling places and creating a party atmosphere in the streets as Iraqis here and nationwide turned out to cast ballots in the country's first free elections in 50 years. American officials were showing confidence that today was going to be a big success, despite attacks in Baghdad and other parts of the country that took at least two dozen lives. Agence-France Presse reported that the Interior Ministry said 36 people had been killed in attacks. Preliminary estimates of a 72...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 18 - Nine months after American troops pulled him disheveled and disoriented from an underground bunker near his hometown, Tikrit, Saddam Hussein is living in an air-conditioned 10-by-13 foot cell on the grounds of one of his former palaces outside Baghdad, tending plants, proclaiming himself Iraq's lawful ruler, and reading the Koran and books about past Arab glory. American and Iraqi officials who have visited the former Iraqi leader say he wears plastic sandals and an Arab dishdasha robe, eats American soldiers' ready-to-eat meals for breakfast, and is permitted three hours' daily exercise in a courtyard outside...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 28 - While American troops have been battling Islamic militants to an uncertain outcome in Najaf, the Shiite holy city, events in two Sunni Muslim cities that stand astride the crucial western approaches to Baghdad have moved significantly against American plans to build a secular democracy in Iraq. Both of the cities, Falluja and Ramadi, and much of Anbar Province, are now controlled by fundamentalist militias, with American troops confined mainly to heavily protected forts on the desert's edge. What little influence the Americans have is asserted through wary forays in armored vehicles, and by laser-guided bombs...

--snip-- For two weeks, Mr. Sadr has led his militia force, known as the Mahdi Army, in some of the deadliest fighting with American troops since the invasion 16 months ago. But faced with a deadline of hours from Iraq's interim government to back down or face attack by Iraqi troops, he abruptly signaled a change of course, and suggested he would accept demands to vacate Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, disband his militia and transform it into a political party. --snip-- Even as American and Iraqi officials were weighing Mr. Sadr's intentions, a menacing new dimension was added to...

INSURGENCY U.S. Is Tightening Grasp on Rebels Encircled in Iraq By ALEX BERENSON and JOHN F. BURNS AJAF, Iraq, Aug. 9 - American forces besieging militiamen of a rebel cleric in a shrine and cemetery sacred to Shiite Muslims tightened their cordon on Monday, warning that the rebels had been left no way in or out. But the warnings drew an immediate riposte from the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, who emerged from days of silence to reject demands for the militiamen to surrender. "I will defend Najaf until the last drop of my blood," Mr. Sadr said at a news conference...

August 10, 2004INSURGENCYU.S. Is Tightening Grasp on Rebels Encircled in IraqBy ALEX BERENSON and JOHN F. BURNS AJAF, Iraq, Aug. 9 - American forces besieging militiamen of a rebel cleric in a shrine and cemetery sacred to Shiite Muslims tightened their cordon on Monday, warning that the rebels had been left no way in or out. But the warnings drew an immediate riposte from the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, who emerged from days of silence to reject demands for the militiamen to surrender."I will defend Najaf until the last drop of my blood," Mr. Sadr said at a news conference in...

Saddam Hussein being led in shackles from an Iraqi courtroom on Thursday, after hearing a list of preliminary charges against him and 11 other former Iraqi leaders. Shrunk to Size, Hussein Faces His Reckoning By JOHN F. BURNS Published: July 4, 2004 BAGHDAD, Iraq — It was only in the courtroom, at the American military base, that their physical insignificance, their sheer unremitting ordinariness, became so plain. On television last Thursday, the images of the 12 former Iraqi leaders conveyed an altogether bigger impression, perhaps because the lens tightened until their faces filled the screen. But to a reporter sitting...

In the topsy-turvy world of the liberal media, good news is bad news, because good news threatens to bring about the worst news of all from their perspective - the re-election of George W. Bush. So when the good news of Saddam being put on trial broke yesterday, The Today Show resorted to the ultimate ostrich maneuever and flatly failed to cover the event. Taken to task over its omission, there was no way that Today could ignore the 'unfortunate' goings-on in Baghdad this morning. Still, Katie Couric did her earnest best to cast events in the worst possible light...

Hussein's Trial Offers Both Peril and Promise to Iraq and U.S. By SOMINI SENGUPTAand JOHN F. BURNS ewsAnalysis BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 30 — When Saddam Hussein is charged with crimes against humanity in an Iraqi court on Thursday, much more will be at stake than his own fate. For the people of this country, the Iraqi Special Tribunal could open the door for a thorough accounting of the crimes committed by his notoriously repressive government. For the fledgling Iraqi government, it could offer an opportunity to shore up confidence among a weary citizenry. For the Bush administration, known for its...

ALLUJA, Iraq, April 26 — A protracted firefight between Marines and insurgents in a residential suburb of this besieged city culminated today with American helicopter gunships and tanks firing at a mosque and toppling the minaret, further dimming hopes for a peaceful end to the three-week siege. Despite a nominal cease-fire extended by the American authorities on Sunday, the pitched battle lasted several hours, leaving one marine and at least eight insurgents dead by the Americans' count. The fighting threatened both the truce and a plan to have marines and Iraqi security forces patrol the city together in the coming...

ABU SAIDA, Iraq, Jan. 9 — Aboard a Black Hawk helicopter skimming nose down at 50 feet across a landscape of palm groves and semidesert north of Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez gazed out at lone shepherds and donkey carts and villagers staring back passively at the airborne flotilla hastening northward across Iraq's horizons. Then the headset crackled, and General Sanchez, 52, from Rio Grande City, Tex., who commands the 38-nation coalition of allied forces in Iraq, summarized his thoughts in a way that encapsulated America's challenge here nine months after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. "They don't want...

AGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 30 — A month after American troops occupied Baghdad, the family of Dr. Taki al-Moosawi was gathered at his Baghdad home, watching one of the Arab satellite channels that have become popular since the toppling of Saddam Hussein made it possible for any Iraqi, not just the ruling clique, to have satellite receivers. And suddenly there it was: Old film clips of executions looted from the archives of the General Security Directorate, the most powerful of Mr. Hussein's secret police agencies. There, too, in the last terrifying moments before he was blown apart by a grenade his...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 23 — When Maj. Gen. Graeme Lamb, a 50-year-old Briton, arrived in June to lead the mainly European force controlling southeastern Iraq, he was skeptical, he said. He felt that "this is going to be a lot more difficult than we realized." But as General Lamb prepared to hand his command to another British general, he said at a news conference here on Tuesday that Saddam Hussein's capture and other changes, including progress in restoring oil installations, power stations and running water, as well as the Iraqis' fast-rising prosperity, had fostered a new confidence that the American-led...

Saddam Hussein moved often before capture John F. Burns and Eric Schmitt, New York Times   Published December 21, 2003 SADD21     ADWAR, IRAQ -- Before his capture in a coffinlike bunker near the the desolate town of Adwar, Saddam Hussein spent months moving furtively among 20 or 30 nondescript safe houses in the Sunni Muslim heartland, where a tightknit network of family and clan members sheltered him and brought him news from across U.S.-dominated Iraq, U.S. military officials say.With that, he used a word-of-mouth system of couriers to carry his instructions back to Baathist cells that helped him guide...

AD DWAR, Iraq, Dec. 20 — Before his capture in a coffinlike underground bunker outside this bleak town, Saddam Hussein spent months moving furtively among 20 or 30 nondescript safe houses in the Sunni Muslim heartland, where a tightknit network of family and clan sheltered him and brought him news from across American-dominated Iraq, American military officials say. With that, he used a word-of-mouth system of couriers to carry his instructions back to a cluster of Baathist cells that helped him guide the anticoalition insurgency, the Americans say. The 66-year-old Mr. Hussein traveled on foot, by small boat along the...

DECEMBER 17, 2003 John Burns on Covering Iraq: Then and Now Wolper's Exclusive Interview With 'NY Times' Scribe By Allan Wolper NEW YORK -- John F. Burns sat back in a chair in a corner of the Algonquin Hotel dining room in midtown Manhattan, thousands of miles from his New York Times outpost in Baghdad -- his hand curled around a morning cup of coffee -- and spoke publicly for the first time about the ethical remonstrations he created via a taped interview published in the recent book, Embedded: The Media At War in Iraq (The Lyons Press). That oral...