Author and Rolling Stone contributing editor Michael Hastings’ new book, The Operators , could cause waves for President Obama’s reelection bid — not to mention his already tenuous relationship with U.S. troops — as book excerpts reveal the president was less than enthused to be photographed with troops during a visit to Baghdad. The following excerpt describes Obama’s visit to Baghdad and subsequent irritation at a request to take additional photos with soldiers and embassy staffers: After the talk, out of earshot from the soldiers and diplomats, he starts to complain. He [Obama] starts to act very un-Obamalike, according to a U.S. embassy official who helped organize the trip in Baghdad. He’s asked to go out to take a few more pictures with soldiers and embassy staffers. He’s asked to sign copies of his book. “He didn’t want to take pictures with any more soldiers; he was complaining about it,” a State Department official tells me. “Look, I was excited to meet him. I wanted to like him. Let’s just say the scales fell from my eyes after I did. These are people over here who’ve been fighting the war, or working every day for the war effort, and he didn’t want to take f*cking pictures with them?” (h/t: BuzzFeed )
More here:
New Book Claims Obama Complained About Taking Pictures With Troops During Trip to Baghdad
AP – The Obama administration favors keeping a smaller military force in Iraq beyond this year than U.S. commanders believe is necessary, officials said Wednesday, although even a relatively tiny U.S. contingent may be too big for White House advisers who are worried about the slumping U.S. economy and the president’s re-election chances.
See more here:
US says no decision on keeping troops in Iraq
(AP)
AP – The Obama administration is reviewing a number of options that could leave several thousand U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of the year, but only if Iraqi officials make a decision about what they want American forces to do.
Continued here:
Pentagon narrowing options for Iraq troops
(AP)
AP – The Obama administration is still willing to keep thousands of American troops in Iraq next year if requested, despite a series of deadly attacks on soldiers by Shiite militiamen, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad said Saturday.
Go here to see the original:
US envoy: Iraq killings won’t sway troop decision
(AP)
The Resurrection, El Greco Happy Easter to all of my readers of the Christian faith — and Happy Passover to all of my readers of the Jewish faith. “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” performed by the Notre Dame Liturgical Choir: And “Rejoice,” from Le choeur gospel de Paris: *** Worshipers practice their faith in fear in Iraq : Iraqi Christians marked a restrained Easter weekend as fear of attacks kept many from openly celebrating their most sacred day of the year and church officials urged them not to give up on the country. At Our Lady of Salvation, where gunmen and suicide bombers killed 52 worshipers and guards in October, the church was tightly locked, guarded by Iraqi police who said the doors would be opened only moments before the Saturday evening Mass. Only the arch and cross on the church roof were visible behind 10-foot-high concrete walls like others that have turned most churches in Baghdad into miniature fortresses. “Our churches have become like prisons,” said Monsignor Pious Casha, who arrived at Our Lady of Salvation during the siege moments after Iraqi special forces stormed the church. “The barbed wire and concrete are new. Yes they protect the churches, but they make the worshipers spiritually constrained.” A roadside bombing outside Baghdad’s Sacred Heart church today: An Iraqi police official says seven people have been wounded by a roadside bomb outside the entrance of a Baghdad church. The official says the blast took place Sunday just yards (meters) from the Sacred Heart Church in Baghdad’s Karradah neighborhood. Shrapnel from the bomb struck the outside of the building. The officer said no parishioners were inside and services had not been held in the building. Four policemen and three civilian bystanders were wounded. Troops in Afghanistan celebrate: A large crowd gathered around a bonfire out in front of Bagram’s Enduring Faith Chapel on Saturday night. Many in the group were in uniform and carrying weapons, but so unobtrusively that the sight barely registered here in a place where weapons are a fact of everyday life. For the Catholic service known as Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday, the American priest and his Polish assistants dedicated a candle and lit it from the bonfire, after which the large crowd lit individual smaller candles and began to file solemnly into the church.
The rest is here:
Christ the Lord is risen today
Although politically tricky, our further presence in Baghdad is needed to complete training, stave off Iran’s hegemony, and reassure our Arab allies.
In its noble quest to conserve water, environmentalists went into the toilet, and regulations spiraled downward. Now Baghdad by the Bay’s ballpark actually smells like a sweaty market in the desert.
Read the original:
San Francisco’s Crapper Control Goes Foul
BAGHDAD (AP) — An Iraqi man killed his 19-year-old daughter after he discovered al-Qaida had recruited her as a suicide bomber in an area north of Baghdad, a police spokesman said on Friday. Al-Qaida has been recruiting women for suicide attacks because they can pass police checkpoints easier than men by concealing explosives under an abaya, a loose, black cloak that conservative Muslim women wear. Suicide bombers have been al-Qaida’s most lethal weapon in Iraq, killing hundreds of civilians and members of Iraq’s security forces. The killing of the young woman was discovered when security forces, searching for her on suspicion she had ties to al-Qaida, raided her father’s home Thursday outside the former Sunni-insurgent stronghold of Baqouba, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad, said Maj. Ghalib al-Karkhi, a police spokesman in Diyala province. The father, Najim al-Anbaky, was detained in the raid. During questioning he told police he had killed his daughter, Shahlaa, a month earlier because he found out she intended to blow herself up in a suicide attack for al-Qaida, al-Karkhi told The Associated Press. Al-Anbaky showed police what he said was the woman’s grave, al-Karkhi said. The father remains in custody and is under investgiation, but no charges have been made yet. A police official at the interior ministry in Baghdad confirmed the killing. He spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. A female suicide bomber was behind one of the deadliest attack this year in Iraq, after she blew herself up among Shiite pilgrims Baghdad in February, killing 54 people. In a separate incident Friday, a Shiite militia leader, his wife and three children were killed in a bomb attack on their home south of Baghdad. The early morning blast leveled the militia leader’s home in Haswa, some 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of the capital, Babil province police spokesman Maj. Muthana Khalid said. Four people were also wounded in the blast. A local policeman, Abdul-Salam al-Maamouri, identified the dead man as a commander in the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The militia terrorized Sunni neighborhoods during the height of Iraq’s sectarian fighting in 2006 and 2007, and its fighters have been targets of retribution.
See original here:
Iraqi Kills Daughter Recruited as al-Qaida Bomber
We’ve covered a lot of ground today regarding Wikileaks. I’ve brought you more from X and introduced you to Y, and in the end we asked some important questions, mainly, how is it possible for PFC Bradley Manning to have downloaded and leaked State Department cables? According to two sources who have written to me (X and Y), it isn’t. And I’ve been open with you about how those sources and their first-hand information have led to some major questions in my mind. Many of you have e-mailed me and said you too are questioning. And to those who have offered other explanations, know that I am “checking” them out. In that spirit, I want to bring you two stories I’ve read today as I continue my research that I think are important to consider. First, an article from the Federal Times. Today, the FT reveals that in addition to SIPRNet PFC Manning also had access to “the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, used by both departments [Defense and State] for top secret and SCI — sensitive compartmented information — communications.” That seems to me to be important, and I’m checking with my sources to see if that changes things. I’m not sure, but it might. Second, there’s a piece of information in the LA Times that also seems relevant. The Times reports that intelligence rules were “different” in Baghdad where Manning was stationed: Normally, Pentagon officials say, workstations attached to SIPRNet do not allow for the physical removal of data. But the rules were different in war zones, officials said. Since the leak, the Pentagon has imposed a series of rules to close that gap. Now that’s interesting. Could both pieces of information explain how the “impossible” was possible? Maybe. The access to another joint database might explain how Manning, an Army analyst, got access to State Department cables. And the “different rules” in Baghdad might explain the lapse in security that allowed Manning to smuggle out that data. I’ve presented the information to X and Y and am eagerly awaiting their thoughts. As I do, let me be clear that we are all taking a journey together. I have not drawn any definitive conclusions, and I encourage you to withhold judgment as we continue uncovering information. And if in the end all we end up with are questions, we’ll continue questioning with boldness. With that said, I did find something else interesting in the LA Times article. Despite the supposed “different” rules in Baghdad for Manning and intelligence officials, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, is still wondering why a lowly private had access to reports of conversations between top U.S. officials and heads of state. “How can it be that between 500,000 and potentially over a million government employees have access to a database of sensitive State Department cables?” the Times quotes him as asking. Now that’s a great (and familiar) question. Et tu, Hoekstra? Et tu?
See original here:
Re: Wikileaks mystery continued (additional reading)
Reuters – President Barack Obama’s message this weekend that Iraq would “chart its own course” may have been welcome news for war-weary Americans, but it has fueled anxieties about the future among Iraqis.
See original here:
Iraqis say war "not ending" despite U.S. drawdown
(Reuters)
