Daily Iraq War News - End the War in Iraq

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Thursday he believes the Iraq war will last at least four more years but that eventually "victory" will be achieved. "By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom," McCain said in Columbus, Ohio. McCain also says any decades-long presence of U.S. troops would be aimed at maintaining stability in the region and has likened it to the U.S. military presence in Japan, South Korea and Germany.

A roadside bomb targeted Baghdad's mayor on Thursday, killing one escort and wounding seven others. The bomb attack occurred as the motorcade passed through central Baghdad, but the mayor, Hussein al-Tahan, was not in the vehicle at the time.

Also on Thursday, seven people were killed and 19 others wounded overnight Thursday from continuing fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City district. Spokesman of the Sadr movement in the central shrine city of Najaf, Salah Al-Obeidi, said continuing US air strikes against Sadr City were impeding implementation of the truce.

The Iraqi army said it arrested the manager of the Nineveh governor's office in a raid in southern Mosul. The U.S. military said it killed four militants in clashes on Wednesday afternoon in the Kadhimiya district of northwestern Baghdad.

Iraqi security forces carried out mass arrests in the main northern city of Mosul as a new crackdown against Al-Qaeda entered its second day on Thursday, officials said. About 275 people were detained overnight on top of 560 people seized since Tuesday, defence and interior ministry officials said. The US military said it was providing logistics and intelligence support for the Iraqi-led offensive.

On Wednesday's Countdown, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann's latest "Special Comment" attack on President Bush accused the President of "panoramic and murderous deceit," and of "creating" an America that "includes 'cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives,'" contending that "they are those in, or formerly in, your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes." He further accused Bush, whom he referred to as having an "addled brain," of "laying waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives" in an "insurance-scam, profiteering, morally bankrupting war." He also accused the President of forming in Iraq "an American viceroyalty, enforced by merciless mercenaries who shoot unarmed Iraqis and then evade prosecution in any country by hiding behind your skirts, sir," and charged: "Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation, Mr. Bush!" posted 15 May, 2007

Maliki in Mosul; Peace group sues on war powers

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki flew to Mosul on Wednesday to take charge of a big offensive in what the U.S. military says is insurgent's last major urban stronghold in Iraq along with National Security Advisor Mowafaq al-Rabeiy. It was unclear how long Maliki would stay, but his visit is similar to when he flew to the southern city of Basra in late March to oversee a crackdown on militias there. More than 500 men have been rounded up and placed in prison during the first week of Operation Lion's Roar. U.S. and Iraqi troops are conducting house by house searches throughout Mosul.

Fighting continued in Baghdad and elsewhere throughout Iraq. There were more than 100 casualties on Tuesday - including an American soldier - and at least 100 more on Wednesday.

Four mortar rounds into the Iraqi interior and justice ministries in central Baghdad on Thursday. The Ministry of Justice suffered heavy fire damage. A Baghdad market was also destroyed by fire overnight. There was also an explosion in the Green Zone that resulted in casualties.

Five people were killed and 22 wounded in clashes overnight in Sadr City, the two main hospitals there said. Two people were killed and six wounded in the western Shula district. Three people were killed and seven wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near the convoy of Abdul-Kareem al- Samarrai, a prominent figure in the Iraqi Islamic Party. A car bomb exploded in western Baghdad near the headquarters of the Iraqi Islamic Party, killing two people and wounding 15. A civilian and four Iraqi soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi army patrol close to the al-Shaab national stadium.

Twenty-five people were killed and dozens more wounded in a bomb attack in Fallujah. Police said they killed four insurgents who were trying to plant a bomb on the road near the city of Samarra.

An peace activist group sued President Bush in U.S. District Court in Newark on Tuesday, seeking a declaratory judgment that the war in Iraq is illegal and unconstitutional. The suit, New Jersey Peace Action et al. v. Bush, represented by the Constitutional Law Clinic at Rutgers University Law School-Newark, alleges that the war violates article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which assigns to Congress the authority to declare war.

The plaintiffs seek a declaration that the president's unilateral decision to launch a full-scale invasion without congressional approval is "capable of repetition." Askin pointed to suggestions that the Bush administration is considering some type of military action against Iran because of allegations that country is attempting to build nuclear weapons. "The Framers deliberately chose to locate the war-initiating power in the most representative branch of government," he said. "They recognized that there is always much at stake in war ... and they wanted to make the process through which the nation could become immersed in war difficult and cumbersome." posted 14 May, 2007

Clashes continue despite cease-fire; Dept. of State accused of aiding corruption

An agreement aimed at ending fighting in the Baghdad district of Sadr City is on the verge of collapse on Tuesday as U.S. troops and freedom fighters continue to launch attacks on one another. Clashes flared overnight, raising questions over how much control Moqtada al-Sadr has over some of the Mehdi Army militiamen who profess allegiance to him. There were also been intense gun battles between Iraqi security forces and militiamen on Tuesday in Shula, a Sadr stronghold in northwestern Baghdad.

Clashes in Sadr City on Tuesday killed 11 peopile and wounded 20 others, mainly in U.S. air strikes. Homes and shops were also destroyed. Gunmen killed an army officer, Brigadier-General Nibras Fadhil Abbas, in a drive-by shooting on Monday in Nisoor square in central Baghdad. A roadside bomb wounded five civilians in the Karrada district.

Elsewhere in Iraq, a bomb blast wounded two children in south-eastern Mosul. Also in Mosul, five Iraqi soldiers were killed and four more injured in a bomb blast. Gunmen abducted six university students from a minibus near Baqouba on Monday. A roadside bomb attack on a police patrol killed one policeman and wounded three others near Mahmudiya. A mortar attack killed a woman and wounded three people including a child in Nassiriya.

Two former U.S. State Department officials say the Bush administration has done little to fight corruption in Iraq. In testimony to a congressional panel Monday. Arthur Brennan briefly served as director of the State Department's Office of Accountability and Transparency in Baghdad last year. In testimony before a Democratic Policy Committee hearing, which no Republicans attended, Brennan accused the Bush administration of thwarting the efforts of his office to probe and fight corruption in Iraq. He said the administration did not aggressively pursue corruption out of concern that that could undermine its relationship with the Iraqi government.

"The Department of State's actual policy not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission, but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government," he said. Brennan also said U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has avoided addressing the problem. "If he does not know than he is negligent. If he does know, then he is intentionally misleading Congress and the American public." posted 13 May, 2007