Digital Journal – US Army officials expect an increase of unmanned aircraft flights in Iraq despite the government’s decision to withdraw some of its American combat troops. The US Army is predicting flight hours for drones will increase as the mission in Iraq changes due to a much-publicized troop withdrawal, even as President Barack Obama announced on Saturday that “the war is ending.” Read Article
Bloomberg – The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ crude-oil output fell in August to a seven- month low, led by Iraq, where production was hobbled by a pipeline bombing, a Bloomberg News survey showed. Production slipped 75,000 barrels, or 0.3 percent, to an average 29.15 million barrels a day, the lowest level since January, according to the survey. Output by members with quotas, all except Iraq, dropped 5,000 barrels to 26.805 million, 1.96 million above their target. Iraqi output dropped 70,000 barrels, or 2.9 percent, to 2.345 million this month, the biggest decrease in OPEC. It was the lowest level since April. The Persian Gulf nation was the group’s third-largest producer in August. Read Article
The Guardian – The British government has ordered an urgent inquiry into the disappearance of an injured Iraqi child who has not been seen since being placed in the care of UK military medics in 2003. In one of the most bewildering episodes of the Iraq occupation, Memmon Salam al-Maliki, an 11-year-old boy, disappeared within days of being taken to a British base after he was wounded while playing with unexploded munitions. Although his injuries appeared not to be life-threatening, his family have not seen him since. Read Article
Wall Street Journal – An agreement signed by the administration of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq with German utility RWE AG (RWE.XE) to source gas from the area to feed the planned Nabucco pipeline is illegal, the federal Iraqi oil ministry said. Read Article
Reuters – The U.S. military formally ends combat operations in Iraq on Tuesday as President Barack Obama seeks to fulfill a promise to end the war despite persistent instability and attacks that kill dozens at a time. U.S. troop numbers were cut to 50,000 in advance of the August 31 milestone in the 7-1/2-year-old war launched by Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, whose stated aim was to destroy Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons was found. Read Article
New York Times – In a pastel-colored room at the Baghdad morgue known simply as the Missing, where faces of the thousands of unidentified dead of this war are projected onto four screens, Hamid Jassem came on a Sunday searching for answers. In a blue plastic chair, he sat under harsh fluorescent lights and a clock that read 8:58 and 44 seconds, no longer keeping time. With deference and patience, he stared at the screen, each corpse bearing four digits and the word “majhoul,” or unknown: No. 5060 passed, with a bullet to the right temple; 5061, with a bruised and bloated face; 5062 bore a tattoo that read, “Mother, where is happiness?” The eyes of 5071 were open, as if remembering what had happened to him. Read Article
Reuters – As U.S. combat operations come to a close on Tuesday 7-1/2 years after the invasion, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis like Abboud, who fled mixed-sect neighborhoods at a time when bodies were piling up in the streets overnight, are living in squalor. Many Iraqis fear the reduction in U.S. troops and their full withdrawal next year will re-ignite sectarian bloodshed. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, says the Iraq war produced the worst humanitarian crisis in the Middle East since 1948, when half the Arab population of Palestine fled their homes after the creation of Israel. According to the UNHCR, 1.5 million people are displaced inside Iraq, of which 500,000 are squatting in camps or public buildings. In Baghdad, 200,000 people live in 120 camps. There are also hundreds of thousands of Iraqis abroad, mainly in neighboring Jordan and Syria. Read Article
LA Times – The $53-billion reconstruction effort is not without its successes. But poor planning, violence and a failure to consult Iraqis derailed many projects, which may offer lessons in Afghanistan. The shell of a prison that will never be used rises from the desert on the edge of this dusty town north of Baghdad, a hulking monument to the wasted promise of America’s massive, $53-billion reconstruction effort in Iraq. Construction began in May 2004 at a time when U.S. money was pouring into the country. It quickly ran into huge cost overruns. Violence erupted in the area, and a manager was shot dead in his office. The Iraqi government said it didn’t want or need the prison. In 2007 the project was abandoned, but only after $40 million of U.S. taxpayer money had been spent. Read Article
AP — Iraq’s prime minister put his nation on its highest level of alert for terror attacks, warning of plots to sow fear and chaos as the U.S. combat mission in the country formally ends on Tuesday. The Iraqi security forces who will be left in charge of guarding the nation have been hammered by near-daily bomb attacks, prompting criticism of the government’s readiness for the American troop drawdown. Read Article
BBC – The Independent research organisation Iraq Body Count has called for a full judicial enquiry in Britain into the number of people killed and wounded in the Iraq War. The organisation says the Iraq War Inquiry in London chaired by Sir John Chilcot failed to address the issue. The BBC’s Owen Bennett-Jones has been looking at the research that has been carried out into how many civilians died as a result of the Iraq war. Read Article
Wall Street Journal – Seven years after the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq’s petroleum industry shows signs of living up to the potential that American planners hoped for at the start of the military operation, a potential boost to the war-ravaged country’s economic recovery. After fits and starts, Iraq’s oil production has rebounded to pre-war levels. The government thinks the field-development deals it has handed out to international companies are on the way to boosting output significantly. With Iraq depending on oil exports for some 90% of its government revenue, that is expected to provide a broader boost to an economy that is already benefiting from renewed growth and tame inflation. Read Article
UN Dispatch – The sluggish international response to the Pakistan floods emergency is actually not all that sluggish, at least compared to these humanitarian crises. Introducing the five most under-funded and ignored humanitarian crises:
Voice of America – Police in Iraq say insurgents have killed six members of a Sunni militia allied with U.S. forces against al-Qaida. The Sahwa (Awakening) fighters were killed in a village in Diyala province Thursday, a day after a string of apparently coordinated attacks killed at least 55 people across Iraq. Read Article
Al Bawaba – There are growing fears in the Gulf region of an imminent clash with Iran following the launch of Bushehr nuclear facility. Although Western circles downplay the importance of the facility to Iran’s efforts to develop atomic bombs, the Arab states in the Gulf region believe the potential of military action against Iran exists. The ongoing threats towards Iran by Tel Aviv and Washington come with practical preparations for a possible war such as the deployment of Patriot missiles in Kuwait. Read Article
CNN – Gunmen attacked two checkpoints manned by members of Iraq’s Awakening movement in towns north of Baghdad on Thursday, killing a local leader of the movement and seven other people, Iraqi police said. Another attack killed a police officer in Falluja, west of the capital late Thursday, police there told CNN. But most of the dead were in Dali Abbas, a village about 100 km (63 miles) north of Baghdad. Read Article
Discovery News – As American troops begin their partial withdrawal from Iraq this week, the war begins a new process of wiggling its way into the history books. But exactly how future generations will view America’s time in Iraq — now seven years, three months and counting — is under debate. To make sense of it all, experts usually turn first to numbers. Lives lost, money spent, measures of success: For any war, these statistics, or metrics, can begin to paint a picture of an era. VIEW SLIDE SHOW
New York Times – Insurgents unleashed a wave of coordinated attacks across Iraq on Wednesday in a demonstration of their ability to strike at will, offering their counterpoint to American aspirations of bringing the war in Iraq “to a responsible end.” In attacks in 13 towns and cities, from southernmost Basra to restive Mosul in northern Iraq, insurgents deployed their full arsenal: hit-and-run shootings, roadside mines and more than a dozen car bombs. The toll was in the dozens, but the symbolism underscored a theme of America’s experience here: Its deadlines, including the Aug. 31 date to end combat operations, have rarely reflected the tumultuous reality on the ground and have often been accompanied by a wave of insurgent attacks. Read Article
AFP – Iraq’s privately-owned banks have called for the country’s state-owned lenders to be privatised to break up a near monopoly in lending by politicians whose actions remain stuck in the Saddam-era. Although foreign cash has flowed in since the US-led invasion of 2003, ministers still opt to use government banks to do business and are failing to use private rivals, which is hampering economic growth, bankers argue. Read Article
Reuters – Jaleel Jabr al-Fartusi has worked his acreage near the oil hub of Basra since 1970 but could lose it in Iraq’s post-war rush for the black gold that lies below the plot he harvests for tomatoes and cucumbers. Contracts awarded to global oil firms that could boost Iraq’s production capacity to 12 million barrels per day from 2.5 million now are a possible lifeline for a country left in ruins by decades of war, sanctions and economic decline. Read Article
Army Times – As the final convoy of the Army’s 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., entered Kuwait early Thursday, a different Stryker brigade remained in Iraq. Soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division are deployed in Iraq as members of an Advise and Assist Brigade, the Army’s designation for brigades selected to conduct security force assistance. So while the “last full U.S. combat brigade” have left Iraq, just under 50,000 soldiers from specially trained heavy, infantry and Stryker brigades will stay, as well as two combat aviation brigades. Read Article
ABC – A suicide truck bomber has killed at least 11 people and wounded 34 others in an attack on a police station in the Iraqi capital. The blast took place in Baghdad’s northern Qahira district, security sources said Read Article
AP – As of Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010, at least 4,416 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes nine military civilians killed in action. At least 3,491 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers. Read Article
AFP — US troop numbers in Iraq fell below 50,000 on Tuesday, a week ahead of an official end to America’s combat mission, as a poll cast doubt on the timing of the pullout and warned of negative consequences. The news comes as a spike in unrest over the past two months has triggered concern that Iraqi forces are not yet ready to handle security on their own, and with no new government formed in Baghdad since a March 7 general election. The top US commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, told reporters that around 49,700 soldiers are now stationed in the country. Read Article
Daily Mail – Seven years after they arrived, the last U.S. combat troops leave Iraq. But 50 ,000 American soldiers remain to ‘advise and assist’ until New Year’s Eve, 2011. And then? ‘We kick off their training wheels,’ said a US officer. What’s been achieved? Saddam was caught and hanged, but the purported reason for the invasion – his weapons of mass destruction – never existed. The cost to America so far: $736 billion and 4,416 lives (along with 176 British lives) The cost to Iraq, so far: 100,000-plus civilian deaths and a broken nation that may never be put back together. Read Article
Washington Post – As of this month, the United States no longer has combat troops in Iraq. 1.Not even close. Of the roughly 50,000 American military personnel who remain in Iraq, the majority are still combat troops — they’re just named something else. Read article
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck requires Flash Player 9 or better.