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BAGHDAD, Iraq - As a car enters the Shiite district of Sadr City, a group of men step from the curb and flag down the vehicle. "Who are you and where are you going?" one of them demands. All is well after passengers produce papers, not from the government but from the office of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "We are sorry," one man says. "May God be with you." Al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, keeps a sharp eye out for strangers in the teeming Baghdad district, home to 2.5 million people, as well as other Shiite areas across the...

Radical Sunni leader Saleh Mutloq is apparently being frozen out by more moderate Sunni political and religious leaders. Although not overtly committed to the armed attacks on the government, Mutloq's rhetoric is often very inflammatory, which more moderate Sunnis see as merely making things worse as they try to develop a role in the new government. Most Sunni Arabs want to make peace with, and avoid angering, the majority Kurds and Shia Arabs. More Saddam era army officers, for example, are offering to join the new army. When these officers go through a background check, more and more, it comes...

Hand it to Secretary of State Rice. She knows how to make lemonade out of lemons. When asked on CNN this week her reaction to a communique signed by Iraqi leaders on Monday that recognized a "legitimate right to resistance," she said, "I think what they were trying to do was to get a sense of political inclusion while recognizing that violence and terrorism should not be a part of resistance." 'snip' The State Department, according to Iraqi officials I've spoken with, put tremendous pressure on elected leaders to attend this parley in Cairo. And the see-no-evil reaction to the...

"Sunni Arab opposition to Iraq's draft constitution has increased the potential for instability and called into question U.S. hopes for substantial troop cuts next spring, the top U.S. Commander in Iraq said Friday (General George Casey)." _______ In my opinion, we should expect to be in Iraq a long time. I believe that we need to establish permanent bases there as we did in Japan and Germany after World War II. There would be many benefits to this strategy. Also, I advise President Bush to stay the course until the job is completed. Respectfully submitted, J. Scott Davis Veteran: U.S....

WASHINGTON, May 14 - The Bush administration, struggling to cope with a recent intensification of insurgent violence in Iraq, has received signals from some radical Sunni Arab leaders that they would abandon fighting if the new Shiite majority government gave Sunnis a significant voice in the country's political evolution, administration officials said this week. The officials said American contacts with what they called "rejectionist" elements among Sunni Arabs - the governing minority under Saddam Hussein, which has generated much of the insurgency, and largely boycotted January's elections - showed that many wanted to join in the political system, including the...

MOSUL is the good girl who went bad. Quiet in the early days of the occupation, the violence-ravaged Iraqi city has become a must-win battlefield for our enemies. The terrorists and insurgents will throw all they have left into the fight. There's no mystery involved: Mosul's the decisive point in northern Iraq. Over the long term, the city's vastly more valuable than Fallujah. Insurgent attacks, terrorist bombings and assassinations erupted last autumn and continue on a regular basis. They're not going to stop soon. After Baghdad, Mosul will remain the most bitterly contested Iraqi city in the months ahead. Every...