American soldiers shot and wounded a woman — identified by an Iraqi television station as one of its producers — after she failed to heed warnings to stop near a Baghdad checkpoint recently targeted by suicide and car bombs, Iraqi and U.S. military officials said Saturday.

Just as they did during Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah, Iraq’s leaders are now showing where their true sympathies lie. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Da’wa Party “issued a statement condemning the attacks and calling on Islamic countries to cut relations with Israel and end all ’secret and public talks’ with it.”

Khalid Hussain of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) told Gulf News “We have obligations towards Palestine and all Iraqi people are in solidarity with the people in Palestine, and we will support the people in Gaza.” […]

“Iraqi resistance groups have to retaliate against the Israeli aggression on Gaza by escalating their operations against the US military in Iraq since the US position is in favour of this aggression, firstly, and secondly because the United States and Israel are both enemies of the Arabs,” Omar Al Kubaisi, an activist of the Sunni Muslim Clerics Association.

President-elect Barack Obama's administration needs to monitor war spending much more closely than the current White House has, according to a new study that criticizes President Bush's approach to funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- a bill that is projected to approach nearly $1 trillion next year.

Failure in either nation "would be a disastrous blow to our credibility, both among our friends and allies and among potential adversaries," Gates said.

The issue of missing US weapons in Iraq is getting, as Alice said in Wonderland, curiouser and curiouser. What started out as a mere report documenting improper bookkeeping procedures for assault rifles and pistols given by the Pentagon to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005 is turning into an international scandal.

U.S. forces in Iraq have detained 10,000 prisoners without evidence of their wrongdoing, a U.S. detention centers in Iraq commander said on Monday.

A new congressional report is belatedly confirming what many have long known: that the White House and in particular then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, lied to Congress in 2004 when he told them the Bush administration was not repeatedly warned by the CIA not to make the claim that Saddam had tried to buy uranium ore from Niger.

Hans Blik talks about the moment Dick Cheney threatened to discredit him and Mohamed El-Baradei over Weapons Inspections in Iraq.

Zaidi, 29, became a hero to many when he threw his shoes at Bush during the US president's surprise visit to Iraq on December 14, an action considered a grave insult in the Arab world.

In an interview with Aljazeera today, former Chief of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq told the TV that he and the Head of the IAEA "Mohamed Al-Baradei" were subjected to direct threats from Dick Cheney before the war.

A high-ranking CIA official warned Condoleezza Rice in September 2002 that allegations about Iraq seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger were untrue and that she, as national security adviser, should stop President George W. Bush from citing the claim in making his case against Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to new evidence released by a House committee.

Nevertheless, the false Niger story showed up in Bush’s State of the Union Address on Jan 28, 2003, and Rice later joined other White House officials in blaming the CIA for failing to alert them about the dubious intelligence.

Anglo-American declarations of progress and stability need to be treated with caution. Even today, Iraq is far from peaceful; an average of 500 people are murdered each month, making it one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Baghdad at the end of 2008 is a deeply divided city. Neighbourhoods that were religiously and ethnically cleansed by the wave of violence that engulfed the city before 2007 are now fortified by row upon row of concrete blast walls.

MUNTAZER AL-ZAIDI could hardly have anticipated the extraordinary reaction when he hurled his shoes at George Bush last Sunday to protest against the invasion of Iraq. His "farewell kiss" to the US President has kept the previously unknown TV journalist in the centre of global attention — a hero across the Arab world and beyond.

American troops will move into southern Iraq early next year to replace departing British forces, the top U.S. general in Iraq said.

United States military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the US-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete pullout of all US combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops.

Bush has tried to spit and polish the entire Iraq affair by emphasizing that violence has been reduced to 2004 levels (which we thought were horrendous back then), but after more than five long years of war, greater than four thousand American casualties, tens or even hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties, and the wasting of hundreds of billions of dollars, this is like trying to shine up an old, worn out sole that the dog has dragged in.

I can’t lie. I’ve watched Iraqi journalist Montather Al-Zaidi whip those two shoes past George Bush’s head more times than I can count. I loved it; I even got into the corny jokes about the Red Sox drafting Al-Zaidi in the spring (cementing my belief that Iraqis have the second strongest arms in the Middle East—behind Palestinians of course). I also read endless blog coverage and joined the Facebook group, “Release Montather Al-Zaidi and Give Him New Shoes.”

US military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the US-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete withdrawal of all US combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops.

I met a woman in Texas who sat down in a fire-ant-infested mud puddle because her son died in Iraq. Everything was "Mission Accomplished" and high approval ratings, but she didn't get it and wanted an explanation from the man who'd sent her son to die for a banner on a ship and a bump in the polls. So, she sat in a mud puddle outside his house and waited for an explanation, and by doing so, began the final and inexorable turning of popular opinion against the war. The mothers of dead soldiers all had a face after this one mother sat in that mud and waited for an explanation that never came.

Now they want to bolt the stable door. With British troops at last due to leave Iraq next spring, everyone is for a public inquiry. That is fine. But what about an inquiry into where they are going, straight from the frying pan into the fire, from Iraq to Afghanistan? In Basra the British army had at least a tattered remnant of a war plan. In Helmand the only plan is to be target practice for the Taliban.

Gordon Brown has rejected calls for an early inquiry into the Iraq war, saying it would not be considered until UK troops are out of the country.

Conservative leader David Cameron and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg both want an inquiry now that the exit date for British troops of 31 July has been set.

As part of an investigation into pre-war intelligence claims, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked the White House to provide examples of times that the CIA had cleared such uranium references for use in speeches. On January 6, 2004, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales sent a letter to Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV) on behalf of Condoleezza Rice that claimed the CIA had “orally cleared” the uranium claim for two of Bush’s speeches.

But in a new memo, House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) says that he has found evidence contradicting Gonzales’ assertions:

A high-ranking CIA official warned Condoleezza Rice in September 2002 that allegations about Iraq seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger were untrue and that she, as national security adviser, should stop President George W. Bush from citing the claim in making his case against Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to new evidence released by a House committee.

Iraqi journalist, Muntadar al-Zaidi, is being held in custody and has been subject to maltreatment, after throwing his shoes at George W Bush. This was a symbolic protest against the man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. His chosen missiles were a lot less deadly than the bombs, shells, bullets and instruments of torture that the US President has launched against the people of Iraq.

35 high ranking members of Iraq’s Interior Ministry have been arrested over the past three days, including Director of Internal Affairs General Ahmed Abu Raqeef and three others generals. The arrests were coordinated through Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s counterterrorism force.

President Bush finally found the long-missing Weapons of Mass Humiliation in Iraq. Iraqis, millions of them, are wearing them on their feet. Not exactly WMDs, but WMHs will have to do.

Unfortunately, Bush discovered the WMHs when a pair of them sailed past his head at a press conference in Baghdad. The hurler, Muntader al-Zaidi, is already a hero in Iraq, and beyond.

The city of Fallujah was one of the hardest hit in all of Iraq, nearly destroyed earlier in the war. When students at the city’s university held an impromptu rally in support of the jailed Zeidi, US soldiers were quick on the scene. The students raised shoes and some of them threw rocks, prompting the troops to open fire in an attempt to disperse the crowd.

An Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, an Arab, a Muslim, may have just launched the Muslim “Shoe Revolution” on behalf of the millions of Iraqis, dead, injured, ill and disabled, due to the illegal, immoral, and murderous invasion of his country by an aloof, disconnected, and disoriented from reality cowboy president selected by Cheney, Israel’s supporters, the Ashke-Nazi Neo-cons, and Corporate America to fulfill their dream of cheap oil and eliminating one of Israel’s enemies.

"QUESTION: But he wasn’t a guest. We’re occupiers."

"PERINO: No, we’re not. We are absolutely a guest."

In the United States, a growing number of leftists are voicing their opposition to the Israeli occupation. They condemn the demolition of homes, the jailing of Palestinians without charge, and the confiscation of Palestinian land for settlements. They don’t support the Israeli troops or their mission, nor do they give a free pass to those who are just “doing what they are told.”

Nonetheless, many of these same individuals support the US troops in Iraq.

Thousands of Iraqis have demanded the release of a local TV reporter who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference.

Crowds gathered in Baghdad's Sadr City district, calling for "hero" Muntadar al-Zaidi to be freed from custody.

A few days ago, writing about the Status of Force Agreement (SOFA) between the US and the Iraqi "government", Jonathan Steele wrote in the Guardian:

"The deal gives Iraq's national resistance almost everything it fought for (...) From the American point of view, the main thing the pact does is to allow the US to withdraw with dignity. No hasty Vietnam-style humiliation, but an orderly retreat from an adventure which was illegal, unnecessary, and a disaster from the moment of conception. Like most Iraqis, I am content with that."

When Muntazer al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist, shouted, "It is the farewell kiss, you dog" to Bush and threw him his shoes during a news conference in Baghdad, the curtain of hypocrisy fell and the ugly emperor stood naked in front of the world.

Among its conclusions, the draft text says that the US defence department issued false reports to cover up the poor progress of the reconstruction effort in Iraq.

President George W. Bush says the work in Iraq has been hard, but is necessary for U.S. security and world peace.

Bush arrived in Baghdad Sunday for an unannounced farewell trip. The visit comes just 37 days before President-elect Barack Obama takes office.

An unpublished US government report says US-led efforts to rebuild Iraq were crippled by bureaucratic turf wars, violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society, resulting in a 100-billion-dollar failure, The New York Times reported on its website.

The newspaper said it had gotten hold of a copy of the 513-page federal history titled 'Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,' that is circulating in Washington in draft form among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials.

THERE WILL be no victory parades, I think. Next March, fully six years after they arrived, the last of Britain's troops will begin to leave Basra. By June, reportedly, only a token few hundred of the 4100 remnant of a 46,000-strong force will remain to train Iraqis and assist the new American tenants at the city's airport. The British are packing up their tents, their tanks, and their pretensions.

Just before harvest time the fields around the city of Kut used to be thick with barley, sunflowers and maize. This year large areas were left bare as farmers fell victim to a water shortage that has pushed agriculture in Iraq to the brink.

"We are suffering, all of us," said Falah Mohammed al Dirian, a local farmer. "It has been one crisis followed by another. There is no rain, there is no water in the rivers, the land is ruined by salt, we cannot afford fuel for our generators and there is no help from the government."

For as long as troops stay in Iraq after 2009, America will take the blame for anything that goes wrong.

KBR is the largest contractor for the United States Army and a top-ten contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense.

In one class-action suit Joshua Eller, a civilian who worked for the U.S. Air Force in 2006 at the Balad air force base northeast of Baghdad, alleges KBR 'knowingly and intentionally supplied to U.S. forces and other individuals food that was expired, spoiled, rotten, or that may have been contaminated with shrapnel, or other materials'.

KBR 'supplied water which was contaminated, untreated, and unsafe', Eller charged, detailing a number of examples.

Planet P. Cockburn is particularly interesting to the curious observer, because of its elliptical orbit around both state-corporate media and the alternative ones and because of its influence on people and events.

Appeared in the Counterpunch Galaxy, Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq - It's All Spelled Out in Unpublicized Agreement, dazzles as a star: "America's bid to act as the world's only super-power and to establish quasi-colonial control of Iraq, an attempt which began with the invasion of 2003, has ended in failure."

There is growing concern in the Iraqi political community that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is consolidating power and positioning himself as a future dictator, a leading Iraq analyst has told the Council on Foreign Relations.