President Bush on Thursday refused to criticize a U.S. security company in Iraq accused in a shooting that left 11 civilians dead, saying investigators need to determine if the guards violated rules governing their operations.
Senate Democrats defiantly charged ahead Thursday with legislation ordering troops home from Iraq, still lacking the votes to win but armed with the mantra that Republicans, along with President Bush, now own the war.
The day Robert Raggio quit his government job as a financial manager for the Iraq reconstruction effort in September 2005, his newly formed company received a U.S. contract to audit $7.3 billion in Iraqi reconstruction spending, according to Army documents obtained by USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act.
Democrats vowed yesterday to continue their uphill struggle to force President Bush to change course in Iraq, allowing legislative action on the war to spill into next week as negotiations continued on measures they hoped could attract bipartisan support.
Democrats and Republicans in the Senate continued their circular debate over the Iraq war on Thursday, with the same arguments and the same voting results.
Iraq?s Ministry of Interior is proposing a radical reshaping of the way American diplomats in Iraq are protected.
Violence in Iraq has fallen to its lowest level since before a 2006 mosque attack which unleashed the deadliest phase of the Iraq war, the deputy commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said on Thursday.
A decades-long US presence in Iraq would cost around 25 billion dollars a year in combat conditions, and up to 10 billion even in more peaceful times, a new congressional report said.
The Kuwaiti company building the U.S. embassy in Baghdad has been accused of agreeing to pay $200,000 in kickbacks in return for two unrelated Army contracts in Iraq.
Democrats are disappointed they have been unable to force President Bush to change course in Iraq, but they will keep pushing -- with or without Republican help, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday.