The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to eventually total $20 billion at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.
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The Pentagon is making contingency plans for a gradual U.S. withdrawal of troops from Iraq, according to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who called the planning a “priority.”
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Fifty people were killed in Baghdad when a mass celebration of a national soccer victory after car bombers targeted celebrating crowds, the House overwhelmingly approved a measure that would ban permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq and prevent federal spending on controlling Iraq’s oil, thousands of people marched in Baghdad Tuesday to protest the U.S. assault on Husseiniya which has reportedly destroyed three homes and killed at least eighteen people including women and children, at least four civilians were killed and ten wounded in a U.S. attack on the Baghdad section of Sadr City, and President Bush appealed for more public support for the Iraq war at home. “Some say that Iraq is not part of the broader war on terror…That would be news to Osama Bin Laden,” he said.
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New Pentagon statistics show that the number of attacks in Iraq last month reached their highest daily average since May 2003, five pro-US. Sunni leaders were assassinated, and a US airstrike killed 18 civilians. “This is what the occupation does,” a resident said.
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has said that if three more Congress Members get behind impeachment he will start the impeachment proceedings.
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Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced he would introduce a measure to censure President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other administration officials for “misconduct relating to the war in Iraq and for their repeated assaults on the rule of law.”
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70.6% of active duty troop donations to 2008 Presidential candidates has been to anti-war candidates.
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A large group of mostly House Democrats sent a letter to the White House saying that they will not support any military funding for Iraq unless it includes a complete withdrawal of combat troops. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) was the only Republican to sign the letter.
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Top military and administration officials have announced a new date for when they want Congress to assess the war in Iraq — November.
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President Bush issued an executive order which allows his to confiscate assets of anyone who interferes with his plans in Iraq.
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Senate Republicans thwarted a Democratic measure that would have begun a partial withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, the U.S. command said Wednesday the highest-ranking Iraqi in the leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq has been arrested, the Iraqi government accused Turkey of bombing northern areas of Iraq, two US soldiers were charged with murdering an Iraqi civilian in Kirkuk last month, and a US Marine was convicted for the kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi civilian in the town of Hamdania last year.
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The Senate is continuing a marathon debate on a Democratic measure that would begin a withdrawal from Iraq but still leave thousands of troops behind. Democrats forced the chamber into a rare all-night session that began Tuesday morning.
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Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki took back the statement he made over the weekend that Iraqi forces could handle the country’s security any time the US military chooses to leave, Reuters called for a thorough and objective investigation into the U.S. military action last week that left two of its Iraqi staff members dead, and hundreds of oil industry workers demonstrated on Monday to protest a draft oil law that would open up Iraq’s oil reserves to foreign companies, issuing a statement that read: “If this is endorsed by the parliament it would abolish sovereignty and hand over the wealth of this generation and the generations to come as a gift to the occupier.”
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The Los Angeles Times reported that nearly half of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops in Iraq have come from Saudi Arabia.
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Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) revealed on Friday afternoon that the White House and Pentagon were holding up a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into the friendly fire death of former professional football player and Army Corporal Patrick Tillman.
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At least 80 people died in a pair of suicide bombings in the northern city of Kirkuk.
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The U.S. should shift troops from Iraq to pursue al-Qaida along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Saturday.
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A series of in-depth interviews with 50 combat veterans unearths a pattern of human rights abuses–brutal acts that often go unreported and almost always go unpunished. “It’s not individual atrocity,” Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, a sniper from the 263rd Armour Battalion, said. “It’s the fact that the entire war is an atrocity.”
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Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki shrugged off U.S. doubts of his government’s military and political progress Saturday, saying Iraqi forces are capable and American troops can leave “anytime they want.”
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Five Iraqi policemen were killed and 12 wounded in an early morning attack on the Baghdad quarters of Iraq’s Interior Ministry, the independent news agency Voices of Iraq reported Friday, the commander of U.S. forces for the region reported that the United States could begin withdrawing troops from northern Iraq in January, New York Times reporter Khalid W. Hassanwas was killed while driving to work, two prominent Senate Republicans drafted legislation that would require President Bush by mid-October to come up with a plan to dramatically narrow the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq, and US soldiers killed at least 13 people including six Iraqi policemen after coming under fire from a police checkpoint in Baghdad on Friday.
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