The 10 U.S.-sponsored regional reconstruction teams in Iraq are making "incremental progress" in improving the country's government and infrastructure, but they are struggling against widespread violence and sectarian divisions, according to a government watchdog's report to be released today.
Parliament authorized the government Wednesday to send troops into northern Iraq to root out Kurdish rebels who've been conducting raids into Turkey. The vote removed the last legal obstacle to an offensive, but there was no sign of imminent action as the United States urged restraint.
A State Department review of private security guards for diplomats in Iraq is unlikely to recommend firing Blackwater USA over the deaths of 17 Iraqis last month, but the company probably is on the way out of that job, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
Iraq has agreed to award contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of enormous power plants, prompting concerns among American military officials.
BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 -- The U.S. military intends to reduce the number of combat brigades in Iraq from 20 to 19 by the end of this year, the first part of a plan to withdraw thousands of American troops from the war zone by next summer, military officials said Wednesday.
The action moves Turkey closer to a confrontation with Iraq over Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.
As of Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2007, at least 3,830 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 3,120 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates is mulling a move to bring all armed security contractors in Iraq under a single authority to exert greater control over them, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
President George W. Bush on Wednesday urged Turkey not to carry out cross-border strikes on Kurdish rebels in Iraq, advice shrugged off by lawmakers in Ankara who greenlighted such attacks.
The helicopter trip was brief. But the journey also crossed something huge and ugly: Iraq's bloody sectarian divisions.