Iraq Security Meeting

Iran agreed to attend a major regional conference on Iraq set for this week in Egypt. This will be a major break as Iraq seeks support from its neighbors in quelling its violence. The meeting will include both Iran’s foreign ministry and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, raised the possibility of a rare direct encounter between high-level U.S. and Iranian officials.

The U.S. accuses Iran funding and arming Shiite militias who are responsible for the Iraq’s sectarian violence, and the Shiite-led Iraqi government has struggled to maintain good relations with Iran while not angering the Americans. But the alleged militia links have also prompted the U.S. politicians and analysts to urge the Bush administration to seek Iran’s help to stop the violence in Iraq.

Iraq’s other neighbors, Egypt, Bahrain and representatives of the big five U.N. Security Council members have also agreed to attend to the meeting in Egypt.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/29/ap/world/main2739148.shtml?source=search_story

Criticism on Iraq strategy

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling said the U.S. generals had failed to prepare their troops properly and misled the Congress about the resources needed for the war. He said the U.S. had repeated the mistakes of the Vietnam War.

Lieutenant Colonel Yingling’s remarks come a day after the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus described the Iraq situation as “exceedingly complex and very tough.” and asked the Congress to led more troops into Baghdad. Lt Col Yingling has served two tours in Iraq, said that the military leadership had entirely failed to grasp what would be needed for success in Iraq. “For reasons that are not yet clear, America’s general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy,” he wrote in the Armed Forces Journal, “overestimated the capabilities of Iraq’s government and security forces, and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of the security conditions in Iraq.” He urged Congress to take a greater role in monitoring officer’s performance and hold them accountable. He also wrote that “Given the lack of troop strength, not even the most brilliant general could have devised the ways necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq”

Meanwhile, Congress passed a war funding bill setting a timetable for U.S. combat troops withdrawal from Iraq, despite the threat of a veto by President George W. Bush.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6600893.stm

April-The deadliest month

The death toll in Iraq for April has past 100, making it the deadliest month for American forces this year.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber blew himself up during a Shiite funeral in an area north of Baghdad, killed at least 20 people and left 30 wounded. This occurred four days after a suicide car bomber killed 10 Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint 50 miles north of Baghdad.

The U.S. troops have been increasingly deployed on the streets of Baghdad and housed with Iraqi troops in joint security operations, which are away from their heavily fortified bases. And because of this, the vulnerability of the U.S. troops to attacks is raising.

Three American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were killed by a roadside bomb; a U.S. soldier was slain by small arms fire in the city; a Marine also was killed in Anbar province.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070430/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_070429173982

Clash

American forces clashed with the militiamen loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr in northern Baghdad on Sunday, April 29.

The militia has remained largely underground since the intensified security plan in Baghdad in mid-February. But the steady increase numbers of corpses recovered from streets in recent weeks and clashes between Mahdi fighters and government forces suggested a possible resurgence of the militia

The return of the militia could complicate the American-led effort to reduce violence in the capital because the militia would split the attention of American and Iraqi forces which already struggling to subdue Sunni Arab insurgency.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/world/middleeast/30iraq.html?ref=worldspecial

Spring Break in Iraq?

An exhibition organized this past week by the Iraq’s Tourism Ministry sought to lay the groundwork for one fine day in the future that some intrepid tourists might just consider going to Iraq for vacation.

At exhibition “Spring Fair” which held at a hotel within the concrete blast walls of Baghdad’s Green Zone, visitors were able to see displays of silk rugs, antique pistols, daggers decorated with gems, and some other locally made arts and crafts. And the hallways were lined with photos of Iraqi holy sites.

A tourism ministry spokesman, Abdul Zahra al-Talkami said “If you visit these places, you’ll feel how powerful and important they are. It’s spiritual, like visiting the Vatican” The western countries’ tourism fell to virtually zero after the U.S. invasion in 2003, al-Talkami said, Iraq still receives roughly 350,000 religious tourists and pilgrims a year who come to visits some Islam’s holiest sites, and they are not deterred by the prospect of car bombs and shootings. Maybe years after peace lands on Iraq for there will be spring breaks.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-03-29-spring-fair_N.htm

Crumbling Rebuild Project in Iraq

Inspectors for a federal oversight agency have found that seven out of the eight samples of American-financed rebuilding projects in Iraq that the U.S. declared successes were no longer operating as designed. The U.S. has previously admitted that sometimes under the pressure from federal inspectors, some of the reconstruction projects have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed. But this is the first time that inspectors have found projects that officially declared a success, were no longer working properly.

11.8 million dollars has spent on new electrical generators at an airport, but 8.5 million dollars worth were no longer functioning. And a newly built water purification system was not functioning either.

The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said that they tried to sample different regions and types of projects, but because many projects were in areas too unsafe to visit, the initial set of eight projects cannot be seen as a true statistical measure of the thousands American rebuilding program.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/world/middleeast/29reconstruct.html?_r=1&oref=slogin