Intelligence analysts predicted, in secret papers circulated within the government before the Iraq invasion, that al-Qaida would see U.S. military action as an opportunity to increase its operations and that Iran would try to shape a post-Saddam Iraq.
President Bush signed a bill Friday to pay for military operations in Iraq after a bitter struggle with Democrats in Congress who sought unsuccessfully to tie the money to U.S. troop withdrawals.
Moktada al-Sadr, appearing in public for the first time in months, demanded a timetable for American forces to withdraw from Iraq.
The American ground commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, has urged patience to those seeking quick progress in Iraq.
The Bush administration is developing "concepts" for cutting U.S. combat forces in Iraq by up to half next year, The New York Times reported in Saturday editions.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro lashed out at President Bush Friday, hours after the American leader approved legislation paying for military operations in Iraq without setting a timetable for troop withdrawal.
Before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, U.S. intelligence predicted many of the current challenges there, according to a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation report released Friday.
The White House is working on what officials describe as several "concepts" for reducing the number of US combat troops in Iraq by as much as 50 percent next year, The New York Times reported on its website late Friday.
Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr resurfaced after nearly four months in hiding and demanded U.S. troops leave Iraq, a development likely to complicate U.S. efforts to crack down on violence and broker political compromise in the country.
Iraq is the first war of the Internet age, and many fallen soldiers have left ghosts of themselves online unsentimental self-memorials, frozen and uncensored snapshots of the person each wanted to show to the world.