Four days before a deadline for Foreign Service officers to volunteer to go to Iraq or face the prospect of being ordered there, the State Department notified employees yesterday that "about half" of 48 open assignments there for next year have been filled.
As of Saturday, Nov. 10, 2007, at least 3,861 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 eight military civilians. At least 3,146 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
With remarkable consistency, global financial markets have concluded that the long-term prospects for a stable Iraq are very bleak.
Former Sunni insurgents asked the U.S. to stay away, then ambushed members of al-Qaida in Iraq, killing 18 in a battle that raged for hours north of Baghdad, an ex-insurgent leader and Iraqi police said Saturday.
Turmoil, bent rules and signs of theft at a Baghdad armory help explain how the U.S. lost track of some 190,000 small arms meant for Iraq?s security forces.
Syria showed off new security measures on its long and porous border with Iraq during an organized tour for foreign diplomats and journalists on Saturday.
Arbil, the capital of Iraq's northern Kurdish region, has been spared the kinds of attacks that have bloodied the rest of the country thanks to a deep ditch, vigilant police and nosy citizens.
The U.S. State Department has notified Foreign Service officers that some employees may still be ordered to Iraq.
RANJ PRAKH, Iraq -- In the jagged mountains of northern Iraq, hard-bitten Kurdish fighters are increasingly besieged. To the west and north, Turkish troops are massed along Iraq's border. From the east, Iranian artillery is shelling the guerrillas' bases. And now from the south, Iraq's government...
The BBC's Jim Muir assesses the progress made in Iraq, and says that despite the magnitude of the task ahead many Iraqis are optimistic.