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 [Main and Central] What a Wicked Web...: The United States says that Iran has backed thousands of attacks on American troops in Iraq, bitterly opposes its nuclear program and has not ruled out bombing Iran if Iranian policies do not change. Meanwhile, at the level of senior officials at least, Iran takes quite seriously its depiction of the United States as the planet’s Great Satan.

 [mothanskin.blog-city.com] "Where Is Iraqi Patriotism?": Steve Stover, a military spokesman in Baghdad, called it "a snapshot of one area where U.S. soldiers are in close support of their Iraqi counterparts" and stressed that it is a new army and Iraqi soldiers and national police are taking casualties daily in fighting in other areas.

 [Informed Comment] McCain and the Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq: McCain can't come out and say we need to crush the Armed Iraqi Revolution, because that would be an admission that the US has been fighting Iraqis for 5 years and still hasn't defeated them. So he and the Republican strategists and the retired generals and their Pentagon handlers make up this "al-Qaeda" business, as though people in Baquba would be gunning for Americans if Americans hadn't invaded their country and turned it upside down.

 [Investor's Iraq Forum] Iraqi-American Convention prelude to a "long-term" in Iraq: Raise the issue of the northern city of Kirkuk with the oil wealth and other areas in the provinces of Nineveh and Diyala, wide differences between the Kurds and Arabs, which is what the legislation calls Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution to resolve differences in the disputed areas, and soon became Article 140 itself controversial and widely on the date of application and machinery , what necessitated the intervention of the United Nations, which proposed the postponement of its application to begin six months, ending on the first of July 2008, the same month in which the decision to sign the Convention when Iraqi-American.

 [threatswatch] ThreatsWatch.Org - PrincipalAnalysis: CTA Symposium: Iraq v. Mahdi ...: As one would expect, the media obsessed on two things: the fact that a few Iraqi units did, indeed, fail badly, and the mortar rounds lobbed into the Green Zone up in Baghdad (fired by Iranian-backed Special Groups). But there was no mention of the numerous Iraqi units that fought fiercely, nor any explanation that mortars, while difficult to use with precision, are so easy to fire as irritants in a general area that even a journalist could do it (and journalists—headlines—were the real target of those mortar rounds).

 [mothanskin.blog-city.com] "Iraq PM 'Spins' Success In Basra Stalemate": The confrontation enabled al-Sadr to show that he remains a powerful force capable of challenging the Iraqi government, the Americans and mainstream Shiite parties that have sought for years to marginalize him. And the outcome cast doubt on President Bush's assessment that the Basra battle was "a defining moment"

 [Future Movement - Almustaqbal - Political Forum] Al-Hakim's Iraq and Sadr's Iraq!: Moreover, even if al-Sadr himself supported federalism, his Movement would suffer divisions as it is constituted of diverse groups, some with Arabist and others with Islamist orientations. Consequently, this explains the repeated official and American announcements that al-Sadr is not personally targeted and that all he needs to do is to lift the political cover off al-Mahdi Army and become involved in the political process.

[Good People Better Rise Up!] Meanwhile, In Iraq...: [8,000 Iranian pilgrims caught in Iraq because of the fighting have just been recalled home, and a temporary halt on the pilgrimages has been called.) But that Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei of Iran deliberately sent Iranian troops or agents into Basra to undermine ISCI, Badr, and al-Maliki's Da'wa (Islamic Missionary) Party on behalf of the Sadr Movement just strikes me as daft. It flies in the face of everything else we know about the relationship of these groups with Iran.

 [Dans Blog] Iraq's Benchmarks: Enacting and implementing legislation establishing a strong militia disarmament program to ensure that such security forces are accountable only to the central government and loyal to the constitution of Iraq. Not done Laws have been passed and decrees have been issued declaring that only the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are legitimate armed forces. The movement of former insurgents into Concerned Local Citizens groups is a major part of accomplishing this task.

 [Liviafleming's Weblog] More Surge Analysis: Pollack, O'Hanlon & the Other Guy, plus Iraqi ...: The error being made- on your part as well as by others - is assuming that progress can only be made at the level of the national government.  In fact, under the Iraqi constitution, the national government is rather weak, while traditionally real political power has been wielded on the local and regional level.  And it is precisely at the local and regional level that we see real progress being made with regard both to power sharing and national reconciliation.  Because of the social and constitutional structure of Iraq, political progress cannot be imposed from the top-down, but must percolate from the bottom up.  To some extent, the members of the national assembly and the unity government are merely play-acting, posturing for the cameras until such time as a consensus emerges on the local level that will prompt them to act.  The success of our counter-insurgency effort on the political front is not measured in the assembly chamber, but in the tribal councils.  And there, we are definitely winning.

 [mothanskin.blog-city.com] "The American President Today Has Too Much Power": Political strategist James Carville, writing in Time magazine in 2005, acknowledged Karl Rove's skill in helping Bush defeat John Kerry in 2004. Rove, Carville asserted, "made the last election one not about policies or positions or even about values or national security —

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