Free Republic

Islamic State militants are boasting that they have developed a dirty bomb — a crude nuclear weapon using materials seized from Mosul University, Iraq. [A] letter written by the Iraqi Ambassador to the U.N. to the body’s Secretary-General confirm[ed] that some 88 pounds of uranium that could be adapted for a dirty bomb was seized by militants.

This year's holy Ramadan has indeed turned out to be 'holier' than that of last year. Last year, the Mujahideen received Ramadan by bombing infidels and crusaders at the Red Cross and several police stations. This holy month, however, has a peculiar flavour. Another series of unsuccessful attacks were carried out against several churches. Iraqi Christian women have been offered a choice between 'observing the holy month' by covering their sinful heads or to face death. I kid you not. This threat was not carried out by foreign terrorists, Zarqawi or Al-Qaida, but by Muslim Iraqi student unions at Mosul...

June 29, 2004 -- EACH unhappy oil-produc ing nation is unhappy in its own way. The gravest chal lenge facing Iraq — after security — is to dodge the economic traps that have ensnared its oil-rich peers across the map: Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Russia. Saudi Arabia's economy is a fetid oil swamp. The royal family owns the nation's oil assets — so the monarchs don't depend on the people's industry for tax revenue. The princes have no stake in building a diverse economy. The overeducated masses are the products of a welfare state, with nothing useful to do. Venezuela...

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Suspected assassins killed a university lecturer and her husband in the latest attacks on prominent Iraqis in the northern city of Mosul, police said on Tuesday. Relatives said Layla Abdullah Saad, the dean of the college of law at Mosul University, had received threats but had refused to hire security guards to protect her house where she was shot and stabbed to death on her doorstep. Residents said the murders -- which followed the killing of a lecturer from the same university in January -- appeared to fit a pattern of attacks designed to intimidate voices...

<p>MOSUL, Iraq -- "Don't expect me to go on television to express gratitude," declared Iraqi historian Jazeel Abd al-Jabbar al-Jomard.</p> <p>U.S.-led forces ousted Saddam Hussein, a man Mr. Jomard despised, and helped rebuild the scholar's looted Mosul University, Iraq's second-largest. None of that has changed the short, thickset, 51-year-old professor's vehement opposition to Washington's policy and actions in the Middle East.</p>