A woman walks past a shop in a market after a curfew was lifted in Baghdad June 17, 2007. Iraqis slowly began returning to the streets of Baghdad when a curfew was lifted on Sunday, four days after the bombing of a revered Shi'ite Muslim mosque to the north sparked fears of reprisal sectarian attacks. REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen (IRAQ) It's important to remember that life does go on. -- C
Baghdad
The curfew imposed after the destruction of the minarets of the Golden Mosque in Samarra was lifted Sunday morning. We will now find out whether violence returns to a higher level.
The body of Filaih Wadai Mijthab, Managing Editor of the Iraqi government newspaper al-Sabah, is found in the Baghdad morgue. Mijthab had been kidnapped June 12. The body was riddled with bullets.
U.S. military says its forces killed 10 suspected militants, captured 20 others during raids Saturday and Sunday. I certainly hope those suspicions were correct. -- C
Three Iraqi soldiers injured in an explosion in western Baghdad. No other details available.
MNF reports the death of a MND-Baghdad soldier in a roadside bombing June 15. Three soldiers injured in the incident.
U.S. forces deliver 9 bodies to the al-Aamil police station in western Baghdad. The bodies, showing signs of torture and shot in the head, appeared to be those of civilians.
Baiji
Iraqi Colonel Hassan Ahmed tells Xinhua that a suicide bomber attacked a joint U.S.-Iraqi convoy transporting Iraqi army recruits to a U.S. base, killing at least three Iraqi police and wounding several others.
Fallujah
Suicide bomber attacks police recruitment center, kills 6, injured 15. This center opened last week, after attacks on several others.
Nasiriyah
Roadside bomb attack on police patrol injures two.
Gunmen injure a police commander and three of his guards.
Kirkuk
Car bomb kills two Kurdish security agents.
Near Tikrit
U.S. helicopter attacks workers digging an artesian well, killing one and wounding 5.
Haditha
Roadside bomb attack on a U.S. Marine patrol destroys a humvee, causes an unknown number of casualties. Not yet confirmed by U.S., but Aswat al-Iraq consistently gets these right.
Other security news
U.S. says its helicopters and Iraqi ground forces killed four suspected insurgents and wounded three south of Baghdad on Friday.
Reuters also reports that the Iraqi army claims to have killed 10 suspected insurgents and arrested 79 others in various undisclosed locations.
Skeletal remains of 13 members of the Iraqi Tae Kwan Do team, abducted in May 2006, are found west of Ramadi.
National Guard pilot killed in F-16 crash on Friday is identified as Maj. Kevin Sonnenberg from Ohio.
OTHER NEWS OF THE DAY
U.S military announces "major offensive" against al-Qaeda militants south of Baghdad. That's it -- no more info.
Amb. Ryan Crocker talks to the press at length, says nothing of consequence. Excerpt:
The U.S. ambassador in Baghdad said Sunday the situation in
Iraq is "a mixed picture, but certainly not a hopeless one." He said there are frustrations, but also signs of progress, and cautioned about the ramifications of a precipitous withdrawal of forces.
"In terms of the political agenda, clearly we are frustrated with the slow progress that is being made on the legislative benchmarks," said Ambassador Ryan Crocker. "The Iraqis are frustrated, too. They are working hard on these things. The fact is they are difficult to do, difficult in and of themselves ... and difficult in the current security climate."
snip
Crocker said he and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, will report to Washington in September, but declined to speculate what they will say. "It will be a snapshot, obviously, but that film can't be developed until we're there in September," he said.
And blah blah blah to you too. -- C
Tony Blair joined the invasion of Iraq while knowing that the U.S. had no plans for the aftermath, according to confidants. Excerpt:
Nicholas Watt, political editor, The Observer -- Tony Blair agreed to commit British troops to battle in Iraq in the full knowledge that Washington had failed to make adequate preparations for the postwar reconstruction of the country.
In a devastating account of the chaotic preparations for the war, which comes as Blair enters his final full week in Downing Street, key No 10 aides and friends of Blair have revealed the Prime Minister repeatedly and unsuccessfully raised his concerns with the White House.
He also agreed to commit troops to the conflict even though President George Bush had personally said Britain could help 'some other way'.
The disclosures, in a two-part Channel 4 documentary about Blair's decade in Downing Street, will raise questions about Blair's public assurances at the time of the war in 2003 that he was satisfied with the post-war planning. In one of the most significant interviews in the programme, Peter Mandelson says that the Prime Minister knew the preparations were inadequate but said he was powerless to do more.
Uhh, no, he was not "powerless to do more." He could have, you know, not participated. -- C
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman suggests Iran is preparing for a second round of talks with the U.S. on Iraq, is not conditioning further talks on release of Iranian diplomats still held by the U.S.
IN-DEPTH REPORTING AND ANALYSIS
WaPo's Dana Priest and Anne Hull describe psychiatric casualties of the Iraq war in a ward at the District of Columbia VA Medical Center.
McClatchy's Hannah Allen describes the swelling stream of refugees from Iraq into Syria. Excerpt:
Nobody used the word "crisis" when the first wave of Iraqis fled the war and settled here. Most came with deep savings accounts and connections to well-placed Damascus businessmen.
The word didn't crop up when a second wave ushered in the Christians, whose clergy organized them into a vocal, cohesive bloc. Nor did it come into play with the villagers who were simply absorbed into remote desert communities because their tribes straddle the Syrian-Iraqi border.
But the word definitely applies now, as shell-shocked Iraqis of all backgrounds pour into Syria at the rate of nearly 1,000 a day. In fact, "crisis" may not be strong enough, as the flow of Iraqis becomes a torrent. At least 1.4 million are already here, according to the United Nations, each with a story of terror and trauma and a need for services that is stretching Syrians' patience. Many believe the number may be higher.
snip
Bush administration officials have long accused Syria of not doing enough to stop al-Qaida sympathizers from slipping into Iraq, but they barely mention the far larger number of Iraqis who cross the border in the other direction. The United States remains at the bottom of the list of countries that have accepted Iraqi refugees, though the State Department has promised to admit as many as 7,000 this year.
Syrian schools and hospitals are overrun with Iraqis. Housing prices have soared, sowing resentment and anger in Syrians who can no longer afford to live in their neighborhoods. Iraqi refugees have turned the districts of Qudsiya, Jaramana and Sayeda Zeinab into "Little Baghdads," right down to replica restaurants, cafes and clothing stores.
U.N. aid workers who provide services to trauma victims and families with medical emergencies are overwhelmed - nearly every Iraqi qualifies. Syrian relief groups that once catered to needy Syrians now deal almost exclusively with Iraqi victims of violence.
And speaking of various worrying sources of regional tension, Juan Cole discusses the Turkish-Kurdish border war. He is indeed concerned.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
History will render this judgment of [General Peter] Pace, who succeeded General Richard B Myers as chairman in September 2005: As U. S. forces became mired ever more deeply in an unwinnable war, Pace remained a passive bystander, a witness to a catastrophe that he was slow to comprehend and did little to forestall. If the position of JCS chair had simply remained vacant for the past two years, it is difficult to see how the American military would be in worse shape today.
Andrew Bacevich
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