State Department officials did little to rein in private security guards who frequently shot at and sometimes killed innocent civilians in Iraq, according to a congressional report released Monday.
Iraq's foreign minister said Monday a premature pullout of U.S. troops could send the country and region spiraling into chaos and called a U.S. Senate proposal to divide Iraq into three regions well-intentioned but a bad idea.
The number of violent civilian deaths in Iraq dropped precipitously in September compared with the previous month.
U.S. security contractor Blackwater was involved in at least 195 shooting incidents in Iraq since 2005, said a congressional report on Monday that also panned the State Department's oversight of the company.
The U.S. Senate's proposal for a federal system in Iraq would fail because of the difficulty in creating regions dominated by sect and ethnicity, Iraq's foreign minister said on Monday.
WASHINGTON— U.S. military deaths in Iraq fell to their lowest point in more than a year in September, figures show, a continuation of a four-month decline in combat casualties that has analysts debating why.
As of Monday, Oct. 1, 2007, at least 3,807 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 3,100 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
Media And War: Ever since the Sept. 10 testimony of Gen. David Petraeus, we've heard less and less from the mainstream media about the war in Iraq. The old adage "no news is good news" has never been truer.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown is considering cutting the number of British troops in Iraq by up to 2,000, British media outlets reported on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown is considering cutting the number of British troops in Iraq by up to 2,000, the BBC reported on Monday.