| January 27, 2010 | -
President Barack Obama skipped jury duty to deliver his first State of the Union address. In the 70-minute speech, Obama blamed Republicans for “saying no to everything,” Democratic leaders in Congress for “horse-trading,” and the Supreme Court for a recent decision that will allow elections to be “bankrolled by special interests.” Justice Samuel Alito shook his head and mouthed the words “not true.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dozed. Obama also criticized banks, lobbyists, his own political strategy, and, indirectly, root canals; an objection from the American Society of Endodontists was duly noted. The president announced that leftover stimulus money would generate 1.5 million new jobs for the 15 million out-of-work Americans and called for a new bill to create jobs by giving tax credits to small businesses that hire new workers. He planned to cut the federal deficit with a freeze on domestic spending that, if successful, would reduce the United States' expected shortfall by less than 3 percent over the next ten years. Thirty-two minutes into the address, Obama reiterated his commitment to health-care reform. He also said he wanted to end the Iraq war. “Make no mistake,” he said. “All of our troops are coming home.” He also committed 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan for December. MSNBC host Chris Matthews was impressed: “I forgot he was black tonight,” he said.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
Washington Post
Source 4:
UPI
Source 5:
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Source 6:
New York Times
Source 7:
New York Times
Source 8:
New York Times
Source 9:
New York Times
Source 10:
MSNBC
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| January 14, 2010 | - Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, was charged with masturbating in front of a webcam for a police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl.
| Source:
LAT
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| January 1, 2010 | -
Suicide bombers killed seven people at a CIA base in Afghanistan, 88 people at a volleyball tournament in Pakistan, and 25 people in Iraq's Anbar province.
| Source:
Washington Post
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| 0, 2009 | - Twin car bomb attacks just outside the Green Zone in Baghdad destroyed three government buildings, killed 155 people, and injured 520. The attack was the country's worst since 2007 and killed an unspecified number of children at the Justice Ministry day-care center. “There were children killed in the swings,” said a rescuer, “others who died right where they sat on the see-saws.” More violence is expected as elections near; three beheaded bodies were found in the province of Babel.
| Source 1:
BBC
Source 2:
The New York Times
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| 0, 2009 | - Detainees in Iraq were taunting their guards about Brett Favre. “The Packers have got to really feel bad about that one,” they said. “He's so good for the Vikings.”
| Source:
620 WTMJ
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| 0, 2009 | - President Obama appeared likely to surge 40,000 troops into Afghanistan, thus adopting the key military tactic that the Bush Administration defined as successful in Iraq.
| Source:
NY Times
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| December 25, 2009 | - The general who oversees American forces in northern Iraq backed off his earlier claim that soldiers who become pregnant can be court-martialed for abandoning their posts; the rule, he said, was designed to make soldiers “think before they act.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
CNN
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| December 7, 2009 | - In Iraq, the announcement by the Presidency Council that parliamentary elections would take place on March 6 was immediately followed by five bomb blasts in Baghdad--at least three of them by suicide attackers--killing more than 120 people. At a mosque in northeast Baghdad, a woman, her arms and legs burned by an explosion, shouted, “Are we cursed? When will we be finished with this election issue?”
| Source:
NY Times
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| November 5, 2009 | - An army psychiatrist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, upset that he was about to be deployed to Iraq, killed 12 people and wounded 31 at the Fort Hood, Texas, military base before he was shot and subdued by police.
| Source:
ABC news
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| August 11, 2009 | - Bombings in Baghdad and northern Iraq killed 47 people, wounded hundreds, and obliterated the entire village of Khazna, near Mosul.
| Source:
NYT
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| August 2, 2009 | - The remains of Captain Michael “Scott” Speicher, whose plane crashed in Iraq in 1991 and whose status had been changed from “killed in action” back to “missing in action” and then, under pressure from Congress, to “missing-captured,” were found in the Anbar province of Iraq, where he was buried by the Bedouin.
| Source:
The Christian Science Monitor
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| July 31, 2009 | - Twenty-eight people died in mosque bombings in Iraq,.
| Source:
The Times of India
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| June 29, 2009 | -
Iraq held its first National Sovereignty Day in honor of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraqi cities. A celebration was held with poets and singers in Baghdad's al-Zawraa park and former Vice President Dick Cheney said that he was worried that the withdrawal would “waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point.” Two hundred Iraqis were killed or wounded in the last ten days of June.
| Source 1:
CNN
Source 2:
The Washington Times
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| June 20, 2009 | - A suicide bombing at a mosque in northern Iraq killed 67 people and wounded about 200.
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VOA News
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| April 16, 2009 | - U.S. Army Master Sergeant John Hatley was sentenced to life in prison for killing four bound and blindfolded Iraqis in 2007. “He loved his soldiers too much,” defense lawyer David Court said, “that was his crime.”
| Source 1:
TPM
Source 2:
AP via Yahoo
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| April 9, 2009 | - On the sixth anniversary of Saddam Hussein's fall from power, tens of thousands of Iraqis loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr protested the continued U.S. occupation. “When America came, they didn't do anything for Iraq,” said one protester. “This is not democracy.”
| Source:
Christian Science Monitor
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| March 20, 2009 | - The Iraq war turned six.
| Source:
Gawker
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| March 10, 2009 | - In Iraq at least 33 people were killed in a suicide attack at a national reconciliation conference; at a soccer game near Baghdad a player was shot dead attempting to score what would have been the tying goal in the final minute of an amateur game.
| Source:
BBC News
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| February 26, 2009 | -
President Barack Obama announced that he would pull all combat troops out of Iraq by 2010, and asked Congress for an extra $200 billion for the next eighteen months of war.
| Source 1:
CNN
Source 2:
CNN
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| February 20, 2009 | - The recently repainted Abu Ghraib prison, decorated with flowers and renamed “Baghdad Central Prison,” was opened to the press. “It was damp,” said Saad Sultan of the Human Rights Ministry as he toured the facility. “You really felt the horror. Now there is more light.” “I hate this place,” said a jailer who requested anonymity. “It is depressing.”
| Source:
IHT
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| January 30, 2009 | - The State Department decided not to renew Blackwater's contract in Iraq after the Iraqi government refused the security firm, whose employees shot 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007, a license to operate. “It would not be a mortal blow,” said company founder Erik Prince of his firm's imminent dismissal. “But it would hurt us.”
| Source:
Associated Press
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| January 29, 2009 | - Two days after three candidates and two campaign workers were kidnapped and murdered, Iraqis voted in the first national elections since 2005, choosing between 14,000 candidates running for 440 provincial offices. Two men were shot and wounded at a polling place in Sadr City, and some voters were turned away when their names could not be found on voting rolls dating from food ration lists held over from Saddam Hussein's reign.
| Source:
CNN
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| January 28, 2009 | - “This day is a victory for all Iraqis,” said an Iraqi general in Kirkuk. “I don't know whom to vote for,” said an inmate at Basra's Ma'qal prison, “but a sheikh wrote this number on my hand, and I will vote for this number.”
| Source 1:
NYTimes
Source 2:
Reuters
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| January 12, 2009 | - Joe Biden visited Baghdad, where eight people died in bombings.
| Source:
New York Times
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| January 4, 2009 | - A female suicide bomber in Baghdad blew herself up in front of a Shia shrine, killing 37 pilgrims.
| Source:
NYT
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| December 22, 2008 | - A suicide car bomb at a school in Shalbandi, Pakistan, killed more than 30 people, suicide bombs in Afghanistan killed at least 20 people, including 13 schoolchildren, a car bomb in Baghdad killed at least 24 people, and cancer rates were on the rise worldwide.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
New York Times
Source 4:
New York Times
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| December 22, 2008 | - The abuse by Iraqi soldiers and police of such prescription drugs as Artane and Valium—known on the Iraqi street as “the capsule,” “the cross,” or “the eyebrow”—was on the rise. “We don't commit suicide,” explained an officer, “and that's why we resort to Artane and other drugs.”
| Source:
New York Times
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| December 15, 2008 | - At a press conference in Baghdad, President George W. Bush dodged two shoes thrown at him by Iraqi television reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi. “This is a gift from the Iraqis,” shouted al-Zaidi, “This is the farewell kiss, you dog!”
| Source 1:
NYT
Source 2:
NYT
Source 3:
NYT
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| December 8, 2008 | - On the last day of Eid al-Adha, or the Festival of Sacrifice, a suicide bomber killed at least 50 people at a restaurant near Kirkuk, Iraq, where local Kurdish and Arab leaders were holding a “meeting of understanding.” Elsewhere, Eid was ruined by the financial crisis. “What does it say about me,” asked Zeinab Mansour, a 32-year-old woman in Cairo buying meat for her Eid meal, “when I have to ask the butcher to give me bones that he used to throw to the dogs?”
| Source 1:
LAT
Source 2:
AP via Google
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| November 29, 2008 | - After ten days of deliberations, the Iraqi parliament ratified a security agreement that requires American troops to leave the country by the end of 2011. “What I saw today,” said journalist Alaa Mohammad of the ratification vote, “made me feel I want the forces to stay longer, because without these forces we will eat each other.”
| Source:
New York Times
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| November 10, 2008 | - A series of blasts in northern Baghdad killed 28 people.
| Source:
New York Times
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| November 6, 2008 | - The Iraqi government continued to press for a firm withdrawal date for U.S. troops before signing a status-of-forces agreement.
| Source:
Washington Post
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| October 30, 2008 | - Author Erica Jong told an Italian interviewer, “If Obama loses, it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it's not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets.”
| Source:
New York Observer
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| October 26, 2008 | - U.S. helicopters attacked a Syrian village near the border with Iraq, killing eight civilians, among them four children. The Syrian government condemned the attack as “serious aggression.”
| Source:
Breitbart
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| October 16, 2008 | - A House investigative committee presented evidence that military contractor Harry Sargeant III, a top McCain fund-raiser, overcharged by tens of millions of dollars for fuel deliveries to American bases in Iraq.
| Source:
NYT
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| October 3, 2008 | - A Baghdad
suicide bomber killed 14 people who had been celebrating the end of Ramadan. “Nobody expects anything like this,” said Jamal Tawfiq, a 28-year-old Iraqi who gathered body parts in a plastic bag.
| Source:
New York Times
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| September 23, 2008 | - Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for vice president, visited New York City and met with world leaders from Afghanistan,
Iraq, and Colombia, as well as Henry Kissinger and Bono, and agreed to speak to the press. “It was great,” she said.
| Source 1:
CNN
Source 2:
MSNBC
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| September 1, 2008 | - American commanders returned control of Anbar Province to the Iraqi army and police, celebrating with a large parade during which soldiers marched along a newly paved street without their body armor, helmets, or guns.
| Source:
New York Times
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| August 25, 2008 | -
Barack Obama announced Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, as his running mate, even though Biden voted for the war in Iraq and for NAFTA and once said that Obama was “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
| Source 1:
Information Week
Source 2:
The Washington Post
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| August 21, 2008 | - The United States agreed to an “aspirational timetable” that calls for troops to be removed from Iraq by December 31, 2011; west of Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed 25 people at a neighborhood celebration.
| Source:
The New York Times
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| July 29, 2008 | -
Iraqi officials said that a suicide attack that killed eight people in Baquba, Iraq, had been carried out by a woman, as indicated by the pair of feminine legs found nearby, and four female suicide bombers killed 57 people in Baghdad and Kirkuk.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
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| July 25, 2008 | -
Iraq was banned from competing in the Olympics.
| Source:
ABC
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| July 20, 2008 | - Senator Joe Lieberman argued that the success of the “surge” policy made the Iraq visit possible. “If Barack Obama's policy on Iraq had been implemented,” he said, “Barack Obama couldn't go to Iraq today.”
| Source:
Talking Points Memo
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| July 19, 2008 | - Barack Obama began his week-long foreign tour in Afghanistan, where he met with President Hamid Karzai, and continued on to Iraq. There, he flew in a helicopter to the Green Zone with General David Petraeus. Before he left the United States, he was asked what he would say to foreign leaders. “I'm more interested in listening,” Obama replied, “than doing a lot of talking.”
| Source 1:
CNN
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
Politico
Source 4:
BBC
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| July 19, 2008 | - A White House employee accidentally emailed hundreds of reporters a news item headlined “Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan”; the story detailed how Prime Minister Nouri Maliki had said in an interview that the Obama proposal to withdraw troops from Iraq in sixteen months was “the right timeframe.”
| Source:
ABC News
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| July 2, 2008 | - Former inmates of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison were suing contractors in four American states for subjecting them to electrical shocks, mock executions, and forced nudity, and the Iraqi government announced that the United States had agreed to strip private security contractors of their legal immunity, though the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad refused to confirm the statement.
| Source 1:
Breitbart
Source 2:
BBCnews.com
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| June 22, 2008 | -
Oil reached a record $139.89 a barrel. Four Western companies met with Iraq's Oil Ministry to finalize no-bid contracts to tap Iraqi oil fields, and the Nigerian government distributed billions of dollars of windfall to corrupt state officials. Thirty-five countries and 25 oil companies met in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to try to fix global oil prices, which have caused strikes, riots, and inflation around the world. Many OPEC countries blamed speculators for the price increase, as did some representatives of oil companies and oil-dependent industries. United States Energy Secretary Sam Bodman blamed supply and demand, as did lobbyists for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association.
| Source 1:
ABC
Source 2:
AFP via Google
Source 3:
BBC
Source 4:
NYT
Source 5:
Jakarta Post
Source 6:
NYT
Source 7:
LAT
Source 8:
WP
Source 9:
AP via Mercury News
Source 10:
WYTV Ohio
Source 11:
Bloomberg
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| June 18, 2008 | - A bomb in a Kia truck exploded in a market in Baghdad, killing at least 65 people. “I feel very tired and sad,” said clothing merchant Salam Hashim, who lost three friends in the attack. “I just want to smoke.”
| Source 1:
WP
Source 2:
WP
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| June 2, 2008 | - Australia pulled its 550 combat troops out of Iraq, declaring their mission a success.
| Source:
AP
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| June 1, 2008 | - In Baghdad, a car bomb in a parking lot near the Iranian Embassy killed two civilians and wounded five others, and west of the city, in the town of Hit, a suicide bomber killed ten people and wounded twelve at a police checkpoint.
| Source:
AP
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| May 28, 2008 | - Scott McClellan published a memoir about his stint as President George W. Bush's press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006. In the book, McClellan says that he does not believe that the Bush Administration “deliberately or consciously sought to deceive the American people” when it dispensed with “honesty and candor” in favor of launching a “political propaganda campaign” to justify the Iraq War. He also asserts that the media became the administration's “complicit enablers” and that the president said that he did not remember whether he had ever tried cocaine at “some pretty wild parties back in the day.” Senator Bob Dole responded in a note to McClellan: “There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don't have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues.” Ari Fleischer, Bush's previous press secretary, suggested McClellan had been manipulated by his liberal editors.
| Source 1:
Wall Street Journal
Source 2:
Politico
Source 3:
National Journal
Source 4:
New York Daily News
Source 5:
Wall Street Journal
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| May 24, 2008 | - President George W. Bush gave a radio address for Memorial Day weekend, invoking the sacrifice of 4,071 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and 432 in Afghanistan. Later, for the last time in his capacity as President, he placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.
| Source 1:
AP
Source 2:
Bloomberg.com
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| May 23, 2008 | - Ten thousand Iraqi troops met little resistance as they took control of Mahdi Army-controlled Sadr City under the terms of a cease-fire agreement.
| Source:
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| May 22, 2008 | - In Afghanistan, at Chaghcharan Airfield in Ghor, two civilians and a Lithuanian soldier were killed in protests over the shooting of a Koran in Iraq,.
| Source:
CNN.com
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| May 20, 2008 | - U.S. colleges were unsure of what to do with students who write dark or disturbing fiction, fearing that such fiction could be a sign of impending mass murder. Steven Barber, a Navy veteran of the Iraq war and student at the University of Virginia at Wise, was scrutinized after writing a story about the murder of a man resembling his English instructor, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's son Christopher. A subsequent search of Barber's car found three guns, two of them loaded; Barber was expelled, then reinstated, offering that he would now write about “butterflies and rainbows.” “How long would Edgar Allan Poe,” wondered a vice chancellor, “who attended the University of Virginia, have lasted?”
| Source:
The Wall Street Journal
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| May 12, 2008 | - Cherie Blair revealed that her husband, ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, had announced her miscarriage to the press in order to deter speculation about an early invasion of Iraq,.
| Source:
Telegraph.co.uk
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| May 5, 2008 | - U.S. military reports on the interrogation of four captured Shia militia members concluded that Hezbollah was training small groups of Iraqi insurgents in Iran. John Bolton, ex-ambassador to the United Nations, said that attacking Iran was “really the most prudent thing to do”; the Iraqi government said that it would conduct its own inquiry. “We do not want to start a conflict with Iran,” said Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. “We need our own government documentation of this interference, not from the Americans, not from the media.”
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
Reuters
Source 3:
The Christian Science Monitor
Source 4:
Fox via Thinkprogress
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| April 28, 2008 | - All three candidates taped messages for World Wrestling Entertainment's “W.W.E. Raw”: Clinton declared herself “ready to rumble” for the American people; Obama, echoing former wrestler Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, asked, “Do you smell what Barack is cooking?”; McCain, speaking with a surly tone, equated the Iraq war with a wrestling match and said that Americans “do not watch wrestling because we're 'bitter,'” but rather because “wrestling is about celebrating our freedom.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 27, 2008 | - In Basra, Iraq, a 17-year-old girl, Rand Abdel-Qader, was stomped, suffocated, and stabbed to death by her father, who accused her of having an affair with a British soldier. Local police arrested the father but released him without charge after two hours. “Not much can be done when we have an honor-killing case,” said police sergeant Ali Jabbar. “You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws.” Rand's mother divorced the killer and went into hiding.
| Source:
Guardian
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| April 24, 2008 | - C3, the firm that developed Disneyland, announced plans to build a $500 million amusement park in Baghdad.
| Source:
Times
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| April 18, 2008 | -
Suicide bombers struck in Gaza, Afghanistan, and Iraq. “We are seeing the globalization of suicide bombs,” said Mohammed Hafez, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School; U.S. officials revealed that suicide bombing was on the rise, with more than 658 attacks worldwide last year, double the number in any of the past 25 years.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Calcutta News
Source 3:
Canada East Online
Source 4:
Washington Post
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| April 17, 2008 | -
Iraqi police were cracking down on drivers who neglect to wear their seatbelts. “It is a symbol of civilization,” said Ahmed Wahayid, a taxi driver. “Western people in Europe and America have it.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 11, 2008 | - Twenty U.S. soldiers were killed last week fighting across Iraq, and 1,300 Iraqi officers and soldiers were fired for poor performance. The Bush Administration said it was optimistic that many more refugees from the estimated 4.4 million people who had fled Iraq or had been “internally displaced” would be allowed into the United States. Since the war began the United States has accepted only 5,000 Iraqi refugees. Sweden has taken 34,000.
| Source 1:
Reuters
Source 2:
IHT
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| April 5, 2008 | -
Doctors in Al-Anbar province connected a deadly malarial infection to Blackwater, whose contract the U.S. State Department recently renewed and who are currently under investigation by the FBI for the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians.
| Source 1:
IPS.org
Source 2:
BBCnews.com
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| April 4, 2008 | - And it was reported that more than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen had abandoned their posts during the Basra siege last week.
| Source:
NY Times
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| April 1, 2008 | - Deaths of Iraqis were up 50 percent across the country compared to the previous month.
| Source:
BBCnew.com
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| March 31, 2008 | -
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an offensive against the Mahdi Army, a large Shia militia allied with cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in the oil-rich southern port city of Basra. Senator John McCain called the offensive “a sign of the strength of [Maliki's] government,” President George W. Bush said it was “a positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation,” and a Pentagon spokesman called it “a by-product of the success of the surge.” The offensive, dubbed the Charge of the Knights, erupted into six days of heavy fighting that spread across southern Iraq and to Sadr City, a Baghdad slum where three million Shia live. After a stern ultimatum failed to bring peace, Maliki offered cash rewards to militiamen who turned in their weapons. Forty Iraqi policemen were reported to have given their weapons for free to Mahdi Army officers.
| Source 1:
New York Daily News
Source 2:
Times UK
Source 3:
NYT
Source 4:
CSM
Source 5:
NYT
Source 6:
LAT
Source 7:
LAT
Source 8:
WP
Source 9:
NYT
Source 10:
NYT
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| March 27, 2008 | -
Iraqi officials went to Iran to negotiate directly with al-Sadr, who told his followers to stop fighting if the Iraqi government grants them amnesty. “Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr,” said Parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashadani, “proved that he is a good politician.”
| Source:
McClatchy
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| March 26, 2008 | - It was revealed that a 2002 Iraq trip by three antiwar congressmen was paid for by Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency.
| Source 1:
NYT
Source 2:
WP
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| March 19, 2008 | - As the war in Iraq stretched beyond its fifth year the U.S. death toll rose to 4,000, and a national conference intended to reconcile sectarian groups was boycotted by Sunnis.
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
Associated Press
Source 3:
MSNBC
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| March 19, 2008 | - Senator John McCain visited Jordan and told reporters that it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran.” Senator Joe Lieberman was seen whispering into McCain's ear, after which McCain apologized. “The Iranians are training extremists,” he explained. “Not Al Qaeda.” Later, in Jerusalem, a fistfight among photographers, soldiers, police officers, and tourists erupted at McCain's Western Wall photo shoot, resulting in damage to several pairs of sunglasses.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| March 16, 2008 | - The United States marked the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq, with the total cost of the war, currently estimated to be in excess of $650 billion, expected to rise to $2 trillion over the next five years.
| Source:
NYT
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| March 14, 2008 | - Vice President Dick Cheney visited Baghdad, as did a U.S. congressional delegation that included presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who, earlier in the week, admitted to fears that Al Qaeda or another extremist group might increase their attacks in Iraq in an attempt to hurt his chances in the U.S. election.
| Source 1:
CNN
Source 2:
TPM
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| March 2, 2008 | - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his first state visit to Iraq and assailed the Bush Administration. “They will have to accept the facts in the area,” he said. “The Iraqi people do not like the Americans.”
| Source 1:
The Hindu
Source 2:
New York Times
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| February 22, 2008 | -
Turkey began a ground invasion into Iraq targeting the PKK, despite protests that the invasion was “a violation of Iraq's sovereignty,” and Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered a six-month extension of his Mahdi militia's unilateral cease-fire, which has led to a 60 percent decrease in violence across Iraq.
| Source 1:
BBCnews.com
Source 2:
LA Times
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| February 11, 2008 | - A suppressed RAND report from late 2005, critical of every aspect of the Iraq war planning, was leaked.
| Source:
New York Times
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| February 4, 2008 | - The Pentagon said that nine Iraqi civilians had been killed in a strike intended for militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
| Source:
U.S. Says It Accidentally Killed 9 Iraqi Civilians
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| January 27, 2008 | - Seif al-Islam Qaddafi, the 36-year-old son of Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was linked to attacks that killed 38 Iraqis, wounded 225, and destroyed 50 buildings in a Mosul slum. The London School of Economics graduate, known in Libya as “the Engineer” for his reputation as a reformer and an advocate of human rights, allegedly funds the Seifaddin Regiment, which is allied with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
| Source:
AP
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| January 27, 2008 | - George Piro, the FBI field agent who interrogated Saddam Hussein, recalled his last meeting with the Iraqi dictator, when the two smoked cigars and Saddam kissed Piro on the cheek three times. “It made me feel,” he said, “somewhat awkward.”
| Source:
CBS News
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| January 10, 2008 | - It was revealed that Blackwater dropped riot-control gas on U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2005. “This,” said Army Captain Kincy Clark, “was decidedly uncool.”
| Source:
NYTimes.com
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| December 14, 2007 | - A surprising number of very young actors were among those nominated for the Golden Globe Awards. “If you are old enough to pick up a gun and go to Iraq and kill someone,” explained the chief executive of Focus Features, “you should have the resources to express yourself in the grandest possible way.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 13, 2007 | - A triple car bombing in southern Iraq killed at least 46 people. “I don't think,” one resident said, “there will be any safe place in Iraq after what happened today.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| November 24, 2007 | -
Pentagon officials announced that 5,000 U.S. troops would withdraw from Iraq next month.
| Source:
U.S. to reduce Iraq troop levels by 5,000
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| November 19, 2007 | - An American nuclear scientist projected that the number of deaths caused by depleted uranium in ammunition fired on Iraq would exceed those caused by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “The environment is now completely radioactive,” said Leuren Moret. “The genetic future of the Iraqi people, for the most part, is destroyed.”
| Source:
uruknet
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| November 6, 2007 | - It was reported that more American troops were killed in 2007 than in any year since the start of the Iraq war.
| Source:
CNN.com
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| November 2, 2007 | - In a speech publicizing October's record low of civilian deaths, President George W. Bush, commenting on sectarian violence, made his “disappointments clear to the Iraqi leadership.”
| Source:
Yahoo! News
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| October 24, 2007 | - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked the United States for military help with the Kurdish rebel group PKK. “We have a disturbance,” said Erdogan. “What kind of disturbance did the United States have with Iraq?” President George W. Bush phoned Turkish President Abdullah Gul to tell him that the United States was willing to bomb PKK strongholds. “It's not 'Kumbaya' time any more,” said an official familiar with the conversation.
| Source 1:
USA Today
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
Herald Sun
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| October 18, 2007 | - Iranian and Chinese companies won contracts worth $1.1 billion to build power plants in Sadr City, Iraq,.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 18, 2007 | - A New Jersey woman sent 80,000 cans of Silly String, which can locate trip wires, to U.S. troops in Iraq; a military spokesperson thanked her but admitted that soldiers don't use as much Silly String today as they did at the beginning of the war.
| Source:
CNN
|
| October 18, 2007 | - Iranian and Chinese companies won contracts worth $1.1 billion to build power plants in Sadr City, Iraq,.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 18, 2007 | - A New Jersey woman sent 80,000 cans of Silly String, which can locate trip wires, to U.S. troops in Iraq; a military spokesperson thanked her but admitted that soldiers don't use as much Silly String today as they did at the beginning of the war.
| Source:
CNN
|
| October 17, 2007 | - The Turkish parliament authorized attacks on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq by a vote of 507 to 19.
| Source:
New York Times
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| October 17, 2007 | - The Turkish parliament authorized attacks on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq by a vote of 507 to 19.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 15, 2007 | -
Turkey shelled the village of Dashta Takh in Iraqi Kurdistan and declared plans to send its ground troops to attack outposts of the Kurdish separatist PKK in the north of Iraq; criticized for the announcement, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointed out that the United States invaded Iraq without anyone’s permission.
| Source 1:
Al Jazeera
Source 2:
Hürriyet
|
| October 11, 2007 | - The Marine Corps was seeking to withdraw its 25,000 troops in Iraq and redeploy them to Afghanistan,.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 8, 2007 | - The Iraqi government launched an official investigation into the role of U.S. military contractor Blackwater in last month's civilian shootings in Baghdad, calling the incident a deliberate crime and raising the number of people killed in the shootings from 11 to 17.
| Source:
RadioFreeEurope
|
| October 5, 2007 | - Bo Ward, the proprietor of a barbershop near the Army’s Fort Campbell, committed suicide at a town meeting in Clarksville, Tennessee. Ward had requested that his home be rezoned as a commercial property to increase its value and to offset the losses he suffered when most of his regular patrons, among them General David Petraeus, were deployed to Iraq; the City Council refused. “Y’all have put me under,” said the barber before inserting a pistol into his mouth. “I’m out of here.”
| Source:
San Jose Mercury News
|
| October 3, 2007 | - The Middlebury Institute, a liberal advocacy group opposing the Iraq War, and the League of the South, which displays a Confederate Battle Flag on its banner, met in Tennessee to discuss their shared goal of secession from the Union.
| Source:
AP
|
| October 1, 2007 | - In Iowa,
Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson continued to attest to the existence of WMDs in Iraq. “We can't forget the fact that although at a particular point in time we never found any WMD down there, [Saddam Hussein] clearly had had WMD,” he said; Thompson ended his speech by asking for applause.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| September 23, 2007 | -
Iran shut its border with northern Iraq after an Iranian national was detained by U.S. troops and accused of being a member of the Revolutionary Guard.
| Source:
AFP
|
| September 23, 2007 | - Both Iran and mercenary firm Blackwater USA were accused of smuggling weapons into Iraq, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, speaking from a Manhattan hotel, criticized the United States for the recent deaths of civilians at the hands of Blackwater. “Success is shared,” he said. “God forbid, failure is also shared.”
| Source:
AP
|
| September 17, 2007 | -
Raytheon unveiled Silent Guardian, a device that radiates unbearable pain. “You don't have time to think about it,” said an executive. “You just run.” The ray gun, Raytheon promised, will not be sold to countries with questionable human rights records, although it will be used by the United States in Iraq.
| Source:
Daily Mail
|
| September 16, 2007 | - A new British poll estimated that 1.2 million people had died so far in the war, and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan wished that politicians would admit that the war was “largely about
oil.”
| Source 1:
Times
Source 2:
Guardian
|
| September 16, 2007 | - Thousands of people joined veterans in an antiwar march in Washington, D.C., at which 189 people were arrested, and Geoff Millard, president of the D.C. chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, urged the peace movement to “take the next step past protest and to resistance.”
| Source:
WaPo
|
| September 13, 2007 | - General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker testified to Congress about progress in the war in Iraq; Crocker summarized 2006 as “a bad year,” but blamed ongoing sectarian violence on Saddam Hussein's “social deconstruction” of the country. Petraeus cited progress in the Anbar region as evidence that his surge strategy is working. He suggested that one Army brigade might be home for Christmas, and that the surge might be over by next July. Barack Obama proposed removing at least one brigade per month, starting now, until all troops are out by the end of next year. President Bush supported the Petraeus plan, also citing progress in the Anbar Province and his recent meetings with leaders there.
| Source 1:
WaPo
Source 2:
NYT
Source 3:
Boston Globe
Source 4:
NYT
Source 5:
WaPo
Source 6:
USA Today
|
| September 13, 2007 | - Sunni sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the leader of the “Anbar Awakening,” who had recently been photographed shaking Bush's hand, was assassinated. “His death has squeezed our heart,” said Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, head of a rival tribal organization. “Now, I swear to God, if we will hear anyone is with Al Qaeda, even if he is still inside his mother's womb, we will kill him.”
| Source 1:
BBC
Source 2:
WaPo
|
| September 7, 2007 | - President George W. Bush attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Sydney, where he gave a speech referring to APEC as OPEC and thanking Australian Prime Minister John Howard for sending Austrian troops to Iraq.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo News
|
| August 30, 2007 | - President George W. Bush predicted a “nuclear holocaust” if Iran develops weapons of mass destruction and accused the country of undertaking “murderous activities in Iraq”; Iran's foreign minister described Bush's comments as a sign of “political despair” caused by “a serious problem in creating propaganda for the next election.”
| Source 1:
BBC
Source 2:
Breitbart.com via Drudgereport.com
|
| August 30, 2007 | - U.S. Representative Jon Porter (R., Nev.) warned that premature evacuation from Iraq would cause American gas prices to rise.
| Source:
ReviewJournal.com via Drudgereport.com
|
| August 24, 2007 | - Two humanitarian groups in Iraq announced that the “surge” in the number of American troops has led to a large increase in the number of Iraqis fleeing their homes, furthering the country's division into sectarian enclaves, and a new National Intelligence Estimate predicted that Iraqi politicians would be unable to fix sectarian rifts any time soon.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| August 23, 2007 | - Returning from a three-day trip to Iraq and Jordan, Senate Chairman of the Armed Services Carl Levin (D., Mich.) declared the Iraqi government “non-functional” and recommended that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his cabinet be replaced. “We care for our people and our constitution,” said Maliki, who was visiting Syria, “and can find friends elsewhere.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| August 17, 2007 | - Interpol sought the arrest of Saddam Hussein's eldest daughter and his first wife for allegedly providing support to Iraqi insurgents.
| Source:
NYT
|
| August 17, 2007 | - In northern Iraq, a series of bombings targeting the Yazidi Kurds killed 344 people.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 12, 2007 | - The United States denied approving the Iraqi Interior Ministry's $39.7 million purchase of 105,000 Russian-made assault rifles from the Italian Mafia. A senior official of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which has backed Shiite death squads in the Shiite-Sunni civil war, said “most” of the Russian guns were meant for its police in the Sunni-majority Anbar province; Iraqi officials also complained that U.S. gun deliveries are slow.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 12, 2007 | - Nominally antiwar Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards admitted that if elected to the White House they would worry about terrorism launched from a failed Iraqi state, threats to the Kurds, and the prospect of Shiite-on-Sunni genocide, and because of these fears they would continue the occupation of Iraq for a long time.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 11, 2007 | - A 1994 interview with Dick Cheney regarding the first Gulf war was released to the web. Asked whether U.S. forces should have invaded Baghdad in an attempt to oust Saddam Hussein, Cheney said, “No . . . we would have been all alone . . . It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place?” Cheney described Iraq as a “quagmire,” predicting sectarian conflict and the pointless loss of American lives. “How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, uh, not very many, and I think we got it right.”
| Source:
YouTube
|
| August 6, 2007 | - South of Baghdad, a handsome Sunni insurgent nicknamed George Clooney was shot by members of his own tribe and turned over to U.S. forces.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| August 5, 2007 | - It was estimated that 90 percent of Iraq's artists had fled the country or been killed.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 5, 2007 | -
Iraq's
gays were being targeted for murder, though one observer noted that the scale of sectarian violence made it difficult to say whether gays had been killed for any specific reason. “I'm just looking for salvation,” said a gay pharmacist. “Maybe next month you will call and my family will say, 'Oh, he is killed.'”
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| August 1, 2007 | - Seventy-six U.S. senators had visited Iraq, and 3 percent of Americans approved of how Congress was handling the war, which was costing the United States and Great Britain more than $4,000 each second.
| Source 1:
The Hill
Source 2:
Zogby
Source 3:
Daily Mail
|
| July 31, 2007 | - The U.S. military announced that July was the least deadly of the past eight months for American troops in Iraq, with only 75 soldiers killed.
| Source:
AP via Breitbart
|
| July 30, 2007 | -
Iraqis took to the streets after the national soccer team beat Saudi Arabia 1‒0 in the Asian Cup championship. At least four people were killed by “happy fire” in the midst of what were reported to be the largest spontaneous celebrations in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. “Sport brings us together while the heads of everything in Baghdad can't bring us together for five years,” said one reveler. “If the Iraqi football team ruled us, peace would spread in our home.” Each member of the Lions of the Two Rivers will receive $10,000 from the government, but a decision about whether to allot players their own 400-square-meter plots of land has been put off until September.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
|
| July 21, 2007 | - In Baghdad two people died and 15 were wounded in the celebration following the Iraqi soccer team's 2‒0 victory over Vietnam;.
| Source:
ESPN
|
| July 20, 2007 | - The Pentagon accused Senator Hillary Clinton of reinforcing “enemy propaganda” when she asked whether the Bush Administration had an exit plan for the Iraq war.
| Source:
The Financial Times via MSNBC.com
|
| July 18, 2007 | - Despite an all-night debate, Democratic
senators failed to invoke cloture and bring to vote a measure requiring the majority of U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraq.
| Source:
Time
|
| July 16, 2007 | - Two car bombs killed at least 75 people in Kirkuk.
| Source:
NYT
|
| July 14, 2007 | -
Turkey was amassing more than 200,000 soldiers along its border with Iraq.
| Source:
Reuters via Globe and Mail
|
| July 13, 2007 | -
White House spokesman Tony Snow confirmed that the Iraqi government may take the month of August off, because August is very hot in Iraq. “But, you know,” he added, “they may change their minds.”
| Source:
Businesswire
|
| July 12, 2007 | - A White House report showed that only eight of eighteen benchmarks for progress were being met in Iraq, but President Bush asked Congress to wait for another report in September before passing judgment.
| Source 1:
NYT
Source 2:
NYT
|
| July 12, 2007 | -
Kurdish guerrillas were fighting Iranian troops.
| Source:
IHT
|
| July 12, 2007 | - The British military insisted that it had not released man-eating badgers in Basra.
| Source:
BBC
|
| July 12, 2007 | - An amount at first thought to be $282 million, but revised to $225 thousand, was stolen from a bank in Baghdad;.
| Source:
NYT
|
| July 9, 2007 | - Ryan C. Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, pleaded against withdrawal. “In the States,” said Crocker, “it's like we're in the last half of the third reel of a three-reel movie, and all we have to do is decide we’re done here, and the credits come up, and the lights come on, and we leave the theater and go on to something else. Whereas out here, you’re just getting into the first reel of five reels, and as ugly as the first reel has been, the other four and a half are going to be way, way worse.” Unpersuaded, the House voted to begin withdrawing from Iraq in four months.
| Source 1:
BBC
Source 2:
NYT
|
| July 5, 2007 | - At least 150 Iraqis were killed by a truck bomb in northern Iraq in possibly the deadliest bombing since the United States invaded in 2003, and it was reported that, despite a police security drive, the number of unidentified bodies found in Baghdad had increased sharply in June.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
BBCnews.com
|
| July 5, 2007 | -
Australia's defense minister, Brendan Nelson, admitted that securing oil is one of the reasons Australian troops stay in Iraq. “This government,” said Labor leader Kevin Rudd, “simply makes it up as it goes along.”
| Source:
BBCnews.com
|
| June 25, 2007 | - At least 11 successful suicide bombings were reported in Iraq,.
| Source 1:
Guardian
Source 2:
Guardian
Source 3:
McClatchy
|
| June 25, 2007 | - It was reported that despite the U.S. “surge,” the black-market prices in Iraq for weapons and ammunition have remained stable, indicating the failure of supposedly strengthened checkpoints.
- It was reported that despite the U.S. “surge,” the black-market prices in Iraq for weapons and ammunition have remained stable, indicating the failure of supposedly strengthened checkpoints.
| Source:
Time
|
| June 24, 2007 | -
Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed, also known as “Chemical Ali,” was sentenced to death for his role in Iraq's Kurdish genocide.
-
Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed, also known as “Chemical Ali,” was sentenced to death for his role in Iraq's Kurdish genocide.
| Source:
Reuters Canada
|
| June 24, 2007 | - A Marine Corps memo, circulated after the 2005 Haditha massacre, was made public. “'Fighting terrorists associated with Al Qaida' is stronger language than 'serving',” read the memo. “The American people will side more with someone actively fighting a terrorist organization that is tied to 9/11 than with someone who is idly 'serving,' like in a way one 'serves' a casserole.”
- A Marine Corps memo, circulated after the 2005 Haditha massacre, was made public. “'Fighting terrorists associated with Al Qaida' is stronger language than 'serving',” read the memo. “The American people will side more with someone actively fighting a terrorist organization that is tied to 9/11 than with someone who is idly 'serving,' like in a way one 'serves' a casserole.”
| Source:
NYT
|
| June 24, 2007 | - The military was concerned about a marked drop in the number of African-American recruits since the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars; “We just want to make sure,” said Marine Commandant General James Conway, “that we continue to look like America.”
- The military was concerned about a marked drop in the number of African-American recruits since the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars; “We just want to make sure,” said Marine Commandant General James Conway, “that we continue to look like America.”
| Source:
ABC News
|
| June 17, 2007 | - The sacred Shiite mosque in Samarra was bombed again, raising concerns of a massive wave of sectarian violence like the one that occurred when it was bombed a year ago. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called on Iraqis to “exercise self-restraint,” whereupon two Sunni mosques were razed.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
News Feed Researcher
|
| June 15, 2007 | - President Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Palestinian unity government and declared a state of emergency after masked Hamas gunmen seized control of the Gaza Strip. Hamas looters broke into former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat's home and stole military outfits, photographs of his daughter, and his Nobel Peace Prize. “I see Iraq here,” a bystander in Gaza said. “There is no mercy. We are afraid. See how ferocious this fight was? There is no future for us.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
The Jerusalem Post
Source 3:
New York Times
|
| June 14, 2007 | - Two reports--one by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the other by the Pentagon--concluded that despite the increased U.S. military presence in Iraq, and despite a drop in violence in Baghdad and Anbar province, the overall level of violence has not decreased but instead has become more evenly distributed throughout the country.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| June 7, 2007 | - In Iraq, the Sunni-dominated Islamic
Army announced that it would no longer threaten the “project of Jihad” by continuing to fight Al Qaeda.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 7, 2007 | - A security assessment found that just one third of Baghdad's neighborhoods were under U.S. control, police recruits shot a “suspicious woman,” a Catholic priest was kidnapped along with five boys, and 27 corpses, each shot in the head and showing signs of torture, were recovered.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
BBC News
Source 3:
Washington Post
|
| May 30, 2007 | -
Iraq was found to be the world's 121st least peaceful country out of 121 countries; the United States ranked 96, below Yemen but above Iran.
| Source:
BBC
|
| May 28, 2007 | - In Britain, anonymous sources close to Queen Elizabeth II reported that the monarch was “exasperated and frustrated” with the legacy of the outgoing prime minister; in particular, she was said to be deeply concerned about Blair's actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the outlawing of fox hunting.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| May 27, 2007 | - Thirty-seven American soldiers were killed in Iraq, ending the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the past two-and-a-half years. U.S. military commanders were negotiating cease-fires with Iraqi militants, Turkish troops shelled northern Iraq, and in Baghdad the country's preeminent calligrapher was shot to death.
| Source 1:
icasualties.org
Source 2:
AP via breitbart.com
Source 3:
AP via International Herald Tribune
Source 4:
BBC
|
| May 26, 2007 | - Nearly a thousand soldiers had been killed in Iraq since last Memorial Day.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| May 24, 2007 | - The body of one of three missing U.S. soldiers was found floating in the Euphrates River.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| May 24, 2007 | - The Defense Department released a how-to guide recovered from an “Al Qaeda
torture chamber” near Baghdad. The manual illustrates interrogation techniques such as “eye removal,” “drilling hands,” and “blowtorch to the skin,” and was found along with whips, wire cutters, pliers, handcuffs, hammers, electric drills, screwdrivers, meat cleavers, and a person suspended from the safe-house ceiling.
| Source 1:
FOX News
Source 2:
The Smoking Gun
|
| May 21, 2007 | - An Irish soldier who won the Military Cross for single-handedly defeating a Baghdad
suicide bomber was facing a court-martial for auctioning his medal on eBay.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| May 20, 2007 | - At least 15 U.S. troops died in Iraq.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| May 20, 2007 | -
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani flew to the United States, where he hopes to lose weight.
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
|
| May 10, 2007 | -
British prime minister Tony Blair announced that he will resign next month after ten years in power. Much speculation ensued about what the 54-year-old Blair would do next, and it was thought that he might establish a foundation to fight poverty in Africa. “[Blair] was the worst thing that ever happened to Africa,” said Bright Matonga, the deputy information minister of Zimbabwe. “We hope that the children of Iraq and Afghanistan he is killing everyday will haunt him for the rest of his life.”
| Source 1:
Daily Mail
Source 2:
The Australian
Source 3:
Guardian
|
| May 10, 2007 | - A majority in Iraq's parliament backed a bill drafted by allies of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, which would require a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
| Source:
WP
|
| May 10, 2007 | - Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz testified in a pre-trial hearing related to the November 2005 killing of 24 civilians in Haditha,
Iraq. “I know it was a bad thing what I've done,” he said about his role in the killings, which were in retribution for the death of another Marine, “but I done it because I was angry T.J. was dead, and I pissed on one Iraqi's head.”
| Source:
Reuters via Alertnet
|
| May 9, 2007 | - Vice President Dick Cheney made a surprise visit to Baghdad, where he met with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and other leaders. “I do believe that there is a greater sense of urgency now than I'd seen previously,” the Vice President told reporters. Protesters in Karbala burned him in effigy.
| Source 1:
NYT
Source 2:
Reuters via Alertnet
|
| May 3, 2007 | - The Republican candidates for the presidency debated at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas said that the day Roe v. Wade was repealed would be “a glorious day of human liberty and freedom” and that the current tax system “ought to be taken behind a barn and killed with a dull ax”; Senator John McCain of Arizona claimed that he would “follow [Osama bin Laden] to the gates of hell”; Texas
Congressman Ron Paul said that not going to war in Iraq would have been “conservative,“ because ”it’s a Republican, it’s a pro-American, it follows the Founding Fathers. And besides, it follows the Constitution.” California
Congressman Duncan Hunter took responsibility for the border fence in San Diego. “It’s a double fence,” he said. “It’s not that little straggly fence you see on CNN with everybody getting over it.” “No one on this stage,” said former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, ”probably knows Hillary Clinton better than I do,” to which former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani replied: ”Oh my!” Collectively, the candidates invoked Reagan's name nearly 20 times.
| Source:
NY Times
|
| May 3, 2007 | -
President Bush vetoed an Iraq spending bill that included a timetable for troop withdrawal and threatened to use his third veto on a bill that would expand the legal definition of hate crime to include violence based on gender or sexuality.
| Source 1:
BBCnews.com
Source 2:
AP via MSNBC.com
|
| May 3, 2007 | - Officials from more than 50 countries gathered in Egypt and issued a five-year “International Compact” aimed at stabilizing Iraq.
| Source:
The Daily Star Egypt
|
| May 2, 2007 | -
Congressman John Shimkus (R., Ill.) said that pulling out of Iraq would be like the Cardinals leaving the field in the 15th inning to let the Cubs win.
| Source:
Chicago Tribune
|
| May 1, 2007 | - The Iraqi interior ministry claimed that the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq had been killed.
| Source:
BBCnews.com
|
| April 30, 2007 | - Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr called on Iraqis to paint “magnificent tableaux” on barrier walls that “depict the ugliness and terrorist nature of the occupier, and the sedition, car bombings, blood and the like he has brought upon Iraqis.”
| Source:
NYTimes.com
|
| April 30, 2007 | - National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was trying to hire someone new to run the Iraq war.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 28, 2007 | - Former CIA Director George Tenet published a book accusing the Bush Administration of taking his phrase “slam dunk”—referring to intelligence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction—out of context in order to justify a war that the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense had resolved to wage before September 11, 2001. Tenet complained that the White House and the Pentagon made him their scapegoat when the Iraqi arsenal turned out to be imaginary. A group of former intelligence officers sent Tenet a letter calling him “the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community,” reminding him that he had often lied to the public at the administration's behest, and encouraging him to return his Medal of Freedom and donate half his royalties to wounded veterans and the families of dead soldiers.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
TPM
|
| April 27, 2007 | - The nine Democrats running for president held a debate in South Carolina. Hillary Clinton faulted the people of Iraq for not making good on “the chance to have freedom, to have their own country” provided by the U.S. invasion, and John Edwards suggested that hedge funds could help alleviate poverty. Asked why he was at the debate, Mike Gravel, a 76-year-old who represented Alaska in the Senate from 1969 to 1981, pointed to the rest of the candidates and said, “Some of these people frighten me,” especially “the top-tier ones.” He singled out Joseph Biden for his “arrogance” and asked Barack Obama, “Barack, who do you want to nuke?” Obama replied, “I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike. I promise.” “Good,” said Gravel, “then we're safe, for a while.”
| Source:
WCNC
|
| April 25, 2007 | - Campaigning in New Hampshire, Rudolph Giuliani said, “I listen a little to the Democrats, and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense. We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation, and we will be back to our pre-September 11 attitude of defense.”
| Source:
Politico
|
| April 20, 2007 | -
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared that the United States has lost the war in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 19, 2007 | - A series of attacks in Shiite districts of Baghdad killed at least 158 people, the largest number of people killed in a single day since President Bush increased the number of troops in Iraq three months ago.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| April 19, 2007 | - “I wish the war was over,” said Karl Rove. “I wish the war never existed.”
| Source:
Akron Beacon Journal
|
| April 18, 2007 | - Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, upset that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will not support a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops, convinced six cabinet members to quit. “We are free because we are not in the government,” said Bahar al-Araji, a Sadr legislator. “If the prime minister doesn't do what we want, we can do something to the prime minister. We can make him leave the government.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that if the vacancies were filled with members who could broaden representation in the cabinet, it “probably would be a positive thing.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
Source 3:
Washington Post
|
| April 16, 2007 | - An explosion near a Shiite shrine in Karbala killed 16 children.
| Source:
AP via Tehran Times
|
| April 15, 2007 | - Senator John McCain assessed the situation in Iraq, saying “I have no Plan B . . . If I saw that doomsday scenario evolving, then I would try to come up with one.”
| Source:
NYT
|
| April 12, 2007 | - In Iraq,
suicide bombs exploded in the parliament cafeteria and on a bridge over the Tigris, toppling cars into the river and killing 10 people.
| Source 1:
AP via IHT
Source 2:
AP via NYT
|
| April 10, 2007 | - It was reported that a forthcoming book by the editor of the Washington Post suggests that a Google search might have prevented the Iraq war.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| April 8, 2007 | - The resurgent Mahdi army clashed with U.S. soldiers in Sadr City.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| April 8, 2007 | - American fighter jets bombed Shiite militiamen in Diwaniya.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 6, 2007 | - In Iraq, the sixth suicide chlorine attack in two months killed 20 people in the Anbar province.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 3, 2007 | - Vice President Dick Cheney attacked the “self-appointed strategists” in Congress who were hampering the Bush Administration's efforts to prolong the war in Iraq,.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| April 2, 2007 | - In Baghdad, a U.S. congressional delegation outfitted with bulletproof vests, flanked by 100 soldiers in armored Humvees, and watched over by attack helicopters, visited a local bazaar to demonstrate the success of the current security plan. It was, said Representative Mike Pence (R., Ind.), just like an “outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 1, 2007 | - In Tal Afar, Iraq, a truck bomb killed 152 people, making it the deadliest attack of the war. Two hundred and fifty more people died in other bombings carried out against Shiite targets.
| Source:
Reuters via China Post
|
| April 1, 2007 | - The newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Iraq spoke of “encouraging signals of progress.”
| Source:
Reuters via China Post
|
| March 28, 2007 | - President George W. Bush asserted that withdrawing from Iraq would be disastrous and supported his claims by citing two Baghdad bloggers.
| Source:
AP via Breitbart
|
| March 26, 2007 | - The British Ministry of Defence found that a study which had placed Iraq's civilian death toll at 655,000 was “robust.”
| Source:
BBC
|
| March 24, 2007 | - The U.S. House of Representatives passed a timetable for ending the Iraq war by a six-vote margin. The bill mandates American withdrawal in September 2008 if the Bush Administration meets certain benchmarks, earlier if it does not. Several Democrats voted against the timetable because it was not sufficiently antiwar, and Republicans derided the inclusion of domestic provisions benefiting spinach growers, citrus farmers, salmon fishermen, and peanut storers. “What does throwing money at Bubba Gump, Popeye the sailor man, and Mr. Peanut have to do with winning a war?” asked Representative Sam Johnson of Texas. “I will veto it,” said President George W. Bush, "if it comes to my desk.”
| Source 1:
New Tork Times
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| March 23, 2007 | -
British troops pulled out of Basra; two days later, rival Shiite factions began battling over a government building that had been been evacuated by the military.
| Source:
CS Monitor
|
| March 23, 2007 | - In the Iraqi territory of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, Iranian forces captured and detained 15 members of the British Royal Navy.
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
|
| March 22, 2007 | - In the Green Zone, a press conference held by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was interrupted by a nearby rocket attack. Ban, frightened, ducked behind a podium.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| March 19, 2007 | - Eighty percent of Iraqis were reporting “attacks nearby,”
| Source:
ABC
|
| March 19, 2007 | - and Kadhim al-Jubouri, an Iraqi weightlifter who toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein in 2003, said that Saddam “was like Stalin. But the occupation is proving to be worse.”
| Source:
Guardian
|
| March 17, 2007 | - Between 10,000 and 30,000 people marched in Washington to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anti-antiwar protesters, organized by a group called Gathering of Eagles, were angry that someone had put a pink tiara on a Navy memorial statue. “That was the real catalyst, right there,” said one Navy veteran. “They showed they were willing to desecrate something that's sacred to the American soul.”
| Source 1:
WP
Source 2:
WP
|
| March 10, 2007 | - The United Nations reported that 2 million Iraqis, including the judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death, have fled their country since the war began; according to the State Department, the United States has accepted 500 of those refugees.
| Source 1:
CNN.com
Source 2:
Al Jazeera
Source 3:
CNN.com
|
| March 8, 2007 | - House Democrats proposed legislation that would mandate an Iraq withdrawal no later than August 2008.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 8, 2007 | -
China accused the United States of trampling on Iraq’s sovereignty and violating the rights of its own citizens.
| Source:
Boston Herald
|
| March 3, 2007 | - An Indian
numerologist forecast that Hillary Clinton would win the 2008 election because her birth number is eight; he claimed he had also correctly predicted Princess Diana's death, Bush's election, and that America would lose the Iraq war.
| Source:
Asian Tribune
|
| March 1, 2007 | -
Senator Joe Biden (D., Del.) boasted that as president he would pull U.S. troops out of Iraq and send them to “take out the janjaweed” in Darfur, which he mistakenly placed in Somalia, not Sudan, where visiting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signed a cooperative agreement on the environment and said, “Zionists are the true manifestation of Satan.”
| Source 1:
PrezVid
Source 2:
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
|
| March 1, 2007 | - On
The Late Show with David Letterman
, Senator John McCain confirmed that he is running for president. Candidly discussing the war in Iraq, he said, “We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives.” In response to Democrats who scolded him for using the word ”wasted,” McCain replied, ”I should have used the word 'sacrificed'.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| February 26, 2007 | - The Bush Administration announced it would reverse its policy of the last several years and discuss stabilizing Iraq with high-level diplomats from Syria and Iran, which it was blaming for manufacturing a cache of roadside bombs found in Hilla, Iraq, inside a fake boulder made of polyurethane. The later discovery of a makeshift weapons factory indicated that insurgents were making their own weapons.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| February 25, 2007 | - Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah told an interviewer he believed the United States had embarked on a secret plan to break up Iraq,
Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, before doing the same to the Arab nations of northern Africa. “Israel will be the most important and the strongest state in a region that has been partitioned into ethnic and confessional states that are in agreement with each other,” he said. ”This is the new Middle East.”
| Source:
New Yorker
|
| February 25, 2007 | - The day after a Sunni imam in Fallujah issued a condemnation against Sunni militants, a truck bomb exploded beside his mosque, killing 36 worshippers and wounding at least 62 more. A suicide bomber at a Baghdad university blew herself up, killing more than 40 people and scattering purses, pens, textbooks, and fingers.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| February 23, 2007 | - For its temporary embassy in Washington, D.C., the Iraqi government purchased a $5.8-million Tudor-style mansion across the street from the home of Dick Cheney on Massachusetts Avenue. The mansion features a built-in espresso machine, heated floors, soft pistachio carpeting, and a Jacuzzi.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| February 23, 2007 | - It was revealed that the British Ministry of Defense once hired psychics to find Osama bin Laden, and Defense Minister Des Browne announced that Prince Harry, the 22-year-old son of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, who is third in line to the throne, would be deployed to Iraq.
| Source 1:
Daily Mail
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| February 20, 2007 | -
British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that he would bring home more than 1,600 of the 7,100 British troops in Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney said that the withdrawal was “an affirmation that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well”; he also said that breaking “the will of the American people” was Al Qaeda's strategy. “They win because we quit.” “Dick was always very realistic,” said Kenneth Adelman, an arms-control official in the Reagan Administration and friend to Cheney. “I don't really understand how month after month he gets briefings showing Iraq's getting worse and worse, and he engages in all this happy talk.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Fox News
Source 3:
Washington Post
|
| February 16, 2007 | - President George W. Bush expressed “certainty” that the Iranian government has been supplying Iraqi insurgents with weapons and extended the deployment of 3,200 soldiers so close to the end of their tour that their uniforms and supplies had already been packed for shipment.
| Source 1:
CBS4Denver
Source 2:
NYT
|
| February 13, 2007 | -
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki called initial stages of the new security crackdown in Baghdad a “dazzling success.” Later, six explosions in three markets killed 127 people, and suspected insurgents shot six people in the head in a public garden.
| Source 1:
NYT
Source 2:
NYT
|
| February 9, 2007 | - In Iraq, armed men believed to be working for the Ministry of Defense kidnapped an Iranian diplomat, a car bomb killed at least 33 policemen, a political officer affiliated with the Mahdi Army was assassinated, and in Sadr City, Baghdad's largest Shiite slum, conditions were much improved following the input of $41 million in reconstruction funds.
| Source 1:
NY Times
Source 2:
CNN
Source 3:
NY Times
Source 4:
NY Times
|
| February 9, 2007 | -
Congressman Gary Ackerman insisted that it would take little more than a “platoon of lesbians” to chase the U.S. military out of Baghdad,.
| Source:
Thinkprogress via Nerve.com
|
| February 6, 2007 | - A mistrial was declared in the court-martial of Lieutenant Ehren K. Watada, the first American military officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq,.
| Source:
NY Times and Vivelacanada
|
| February 5, 2007 | - A massive bombing in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad killed 130 people, making the attack the second deadliest in the country since the March 2003 invasion.
| Source:
The News (Pakistan)
|
| February 4, 2007 | - The U.S. military announced that insurgents had shot down four helicopters in the past two weeks in Iraq,.
| Source:
Al Jazeera
|
| February 3, 2007 | -
Iraqi refugees were flooding Syria and Jordan, where they now account for 5 and 12 percent of those countries' total populations.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo!NEWS
|
| February 2, 2007 | - The U.S. director of national intelligence released a declassified version of a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq; the report found that “the term 'civil war' accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict” and that “widespread fighting could produce de facto partition.”
| Source:
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
|
| February 2, 2007 | - In Hillah, where a further 45 people were killed, a police officer attempted to smother the blast from a suicide bomber. “He hugged him” said a witness, “and the explosives tore apart both bodies.”
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| January 29, 2007 | - U.S. and Iraqi forces in the Shiite holy city of Najaf killed at least 200 members of an apocalyptic cult.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 26, 2007 | -
Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, an expert on counterinsurgency, replaced Army Gen. George Casey as U.S. commander of troops in Iraq, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a non-binding resolution opposing President Bush's plan to increase the number of troops. Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia expressed hope that “wherever possible, the Iraqis should bear the brunt of the sectarian violence.”
| Source:
USA Today
|
| January 26, 2007 | - An egg crate full of pigeons exploded at a pet market in Baghdad, killing 15 people and injuring 35. “My friends and I rushed to the scene,” said a witness, “where we saw burned dead bodies, pieces of flesh, and several dead expensive puppies and birds.”
| Source:
BBC
|
| January 26, 2007 | - At the Gulf Cup tournament in Abu Dhabi, Iraqis painted their faces and cheered their national soccer team. “By God, football unites us,” said one woman in the crowd. “I wish we could be like that back home.” The team failed to make the final round.
| Source:
Reuters via The Australian
|
| January 25, 2007 | - At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Adel Abdul Mahdi, the Vice President of Iraq, called the occupation of Iraq an “idiot decision.”
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 23, 2007 | - President George W. Bush gave the State of the Union address, in which he discussed plans to balance the budget, double the size of the Border Patrol, reduce gasoline consumption in the United States by 20 percent, and institute a tax deduction to help American workers afford private health insurance. He announced that he was sending more than 20,000 additional soldiers to Iraq, asked Congress to authorize an increase of 92,000 active soldiers over the next five years, and proposed forming a “Civilian Reserve Corps.” He complimented several guests on their heroic kindness, courage, and self-sacrifice, including NBA star Dikembe Mutombo and Julie Aigner-Clark, the founder of an independent video-production business now owned by the Walt Disney Company. The state of the union, Bush said, is strong.
| Source:
NYT
|
| January 17, 2007 | - Seventy Iraqis died and 170 were injured when two bombs exploded at a university in Baghdad.
| Source:
CNN
|
| January 16, 2007 | - The United Nations announced that 34,452 civilians were killed in Iraq last year, a number nearly three times higher than previous estimates by the Iraqi interior ministry.
| Source:
BBC
|
| January 15, 2007 | - “I think,” said President George W. Bush, “the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude.”
| Source:
ITV.com
|
| January 12, 2007 | - The Bush Administration announced plans to increase U.S. forces in Iraq by 20,000 troops.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 12, 2007 | - Americans in Erbil arrested six Iranians working at a diplomatic office.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 12, 2007 | -
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D., Del.) asserted that the authority Congress granted the Bush Administration to invade Iraq did not extend to invading Iran or Syria. “I just want to set that marker,” he said.
| Source:
Slate
|
| January 7, 2007 | - Mercenaries in Iraq lost their immunity from war crimes prosecution.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| January 4, 2007 | -
Iraqi security guards were arrested for taking illegal cell phone footage of Shiite officials taunting Saddam Hussein before he was hanged. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt called images of the execution “revolting and barbaric,” and Libya announced its intention to erect a statue of Hussein on the gallows. Master Sgt. Robert Ellis, a senior medical adviser responsible for Hussein's care in Baghdad, praised the stoicism displayed by Hussein. “Saddam,” he said, “was gangsta.” A Texas 10-year-old who had seen video footage of the execution died after hanging himself from his bunk bed.
| Source 1:
ABC News
Source 2:
Der Spiegel
Source 3:
STL Today
Source 4:
Reuters via MSNBC
|
| January 3, 2007 | -
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced that he would not be seeking a second term. “I didn't want to take this position,” said al-Maliki. “I wish it could be done with even before the end of this term.”
| Source:
InTheNews
|
| January 2, 2007 | - Grandmothers gathered in Times Square to hold a vigil for the 3,000 U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq,.
| Source:
AP via International Herald Tribune
|
| December 13, 2006 | - In Baghdad, at a gathering place for poor Shiite laborers, the owner of a truck filled with wheat announced that he was looking for workers. A crowd gathered around the truck and it exploded, killing 70 people and wounding 236.
| Source:
NYT
|
| December 13, 2006 | -
President Bush said that any new strategy for Iraq would have to wait until early next year.
| Source:
NYT
|
| December 11, 2006 | - It was revealed that billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenues had not been spent, and the head of Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity was accused of graft.
| Source:
NYT
|
| December 9, 2006 | - Hundreds of Iraqis vied to become Saddam Hussein's
hangman.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 8, 2006 | - Outgoing Representative Cynthia McKinney (D., Ga.) introduced a bill to impeach President George W. Bush for misleading Congress on the war in Iraq and implementing an illegal domestic spying program.
| Source:
Newsvine.com
|
| December 8, 2006 | - Eleven American troops were killed on a single day in Iraq.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| December 7, 2006 | - A bomb exploded in Karma, killing three Iraqi soldiers, including Staff Sergeant Saddam Hussein. “He loved his country, man. He loved it,” said an American soldier who knew Hussein. “According to his religion, he's probably with a million virgins right now. And he's probably making them virgins do dismounted patrols.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 5, 2006 | - The Iraq Study Group report was released. “Truth of the matter is a lot of reports in Washington are never read by anybody,” said President Bush. “To show you how important this one is, I read it.” When asked how Bush responded to the report's suggestions that the United States drastically alter its strategy in Iraq, panelist Lawrence Eagleburger said, “His reaction was, 'Where's my drink?'” Former Republican senator and Iraq Study Group member Alan Simpson said about Bush, “A 100-percenter is a person you don't want to be around. They have gas, ulcers, heartburn, and B.O.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
White House
Source 3:
Washington Post
Source 4:
Washington Post
|
| December 5, 2006 | - “What Americans are trying to figure out,” said President Bush, “is why Iraqis are killing Iraqis when you have a better future ahead.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| November 29, 2006 | - The Iraqi parliament voted unanimously to extend the country's state of emergency, and President George W. Bush, who declared himself a “realist,” disavowed a leaked White House memo that suggested that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was either dumb, weak, or a liar. Maliki responded by canceling a dinner date with the president.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Cybercast News Service and New York Times
Source 3:
International Herald Tribune
|
| November 28, 2006 | -
Iran's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that “the continuation of Iraq's occupation is not a mouthful that Americans can swallow.”
| Source:
Breitbart.com
|
| November 28, 2006 | -
Marine Corps intelligence in the Sunni Triangle determined that U.S. forces were “no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| November 28, 2006 | - Matt Lauer, host of the Today Show, declared the onset of civil war in Iraq. Lauer's former co-host and current CBS anchor Katie Couric refused to agree with Lauer, insisting instead that Iraq had only slipped “ever closer” to civil war; ABC's Charles Gibson, another former morning television host, said, “You can call it anarchy, you can call it chaos, you can call it civil war . . . "
| Source:
Boston Globe and Newsbuster.org
|
| November 26, 2006 | - Two hundred fifteen people were killed in a massive bombing and mortar attack on a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, marking Iraq's largest single-day death toll since the U.S. invasion. The killings prompted Shiite militiamen to seize and burn alive as many as twenty-four Sunnis; other Shiite residents of the capital stoned Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “It's all your fault!” one man shouted.
| Source 1:
AP via MSNBC
Source 2:
Reuters
|
| November 26, 2006 | - In Baghdad, insurgents set fire to a U.S. base.
| Source:
AP
|
| November 20, 2006 | - The host of a popular satirical Iraqi
television show was found murdered. “He was a star in the galaxy of Iraqi
arts,” said the show's director. “Now, he's another sacrifice on the altar of this slaughtered country.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| November 20, 2006 | -
Army Specialist James Barker admitted that he had raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and helped murder her family in March 2006.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| November 20, 2006 | -
Syria's foreign minister visited Iraq to discuss renewing diplomatic relations between the two nations.
| Source:
Al Jazeera
|
| November 19, 2006 | - In Hillah, Iraq, a man promising work lured day-laborers into a minivan, then blew it up, killing 22 people. “The ground was covered with the remains of people and blood,” said a laborer, “and survivors ran in all directions.” Thirty people were killed in attacks in Mosul, Baquba, and Baghdad, four American security contractors and an Austrian were kidnapped in Basra, and a deputy health minister was kidnapped in Baghdad. “Where is the government?” yelled a woman in Mashtal, after multiple bombs killed 11 civilians. “Women and children were killed. God is great, God is great.”
| Source:
ABC News
|
| November 19, 2006 | - Senator John McCain said that American troops in Iraq were “fighting and dying for a failed policy”; Henry Kissinger said that he didn't believe a military victory in Iraq is possible.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| November 17, 2006 | -
Tony Blair told Al Jazeera that western intervention in Iraq had been “pretty much of a disaster.”
| Source:
Times Online
|
| November 13, 2006 | -
Baghdad's morgues were clogged. “Every day, there are crowds of women outside weeping, yelling, and flailing in grief,” said a morgue director. “They're all looking for their dead sons and I don't know how the computer or we will bear up.”
| Source:
AP via Seattle Post-Intelligencer
|
| November 12, 2006 | - Three U.S. soldiers, four British soldiers, and 159 Iraqis were killed on a Sunday.
| Source 1:
Aljazeerah.info
Source 2:
The Toronto Star
|
| November 9, 2006 | - To protest the Iraq war, a man named Malachi Ritscher committed suicide in Chicago by setting himself on fire next to a 25-foot-tall sculpture called “Flame of the Millennium.” Along with a self-penned obituary, the 52-year-old Ritscher posted a farewell message on his website in which he described the “deep shame” of a day in 2002 when he stood, knife in hand, next to Donald Rumsfeld, but was unable to bring himself to slash the defense secretary's throat. “I too love God and country,” wrote Ritscher, “and feel called upon to serve.”
| Source 1:
Malachi Ritscher
Source 2:
Chicago Reader
Source 3:
Chicago Sun-Times
|
| November 9, 2006 | - “Who's Rumsfeld?” asked Marine Lance Corporal James L. Davis Jr., who is serving in Zagarit, Iraq.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| November 8, 2006 | - In Iraq the parliament extended the nationwide state of emergency by 30 days, and eight soccer players and fans were killed by mortar rounds. “We are the Shiite nation,” yelled a man from his hospital bed.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| November 8, 2006 | - The civil war in Iraq was breaking up marriages. “I love my husband, but my family has forced me to divorce him,” said Hiba Sami, a Shiite woman who was married to a Sunni man for 18 years. “We have four children and every day they cry because they miss their father.”
| Source:
Reuters Alertnet
|
| November 8, 2006 | - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned, and to replace him President Bush nominated Robert Gates, a member of the Iraq Study Group and former head of the CIA, who was investigated in 1991 by the office of the independent counsel for his role in the Iran-contra scandal, and was suspected to have passed military intelligence to Saddam Hussein's
Iraq.
| Source 1:
GlobalSecurity.org
Source 2:
Mercury News
Source 3:
The New York Times
Source 4:
BBC News
Source 5:
Newsday
|
| November 3, 2006 | - The U.S. government shut down its “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal” website after the New York Times pointed out that it contained instructions for building an atomic bomb. “It's a cookbook,” explained a senior diplomat in Europe.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 3, 2006 | - U.S. Army personnel were accused of telling potential recruits that the war was over.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| November 1, 2006 | -
John Kerry apologized for implying that American soldiers in Iraq are stupid.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 30, 2006 | - A leaked “Index of Civil Conflict” from Central Command in Iraq indicated that the country is sliding from the green zone of “Peace” towards a red zone marked “Chaos.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 28, 2006 | - President George W. Bush officially replaced the phrase “stay the course” in Iraq with “We will stay in Iraq,” and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisted he never agreed to a U.S. timetable for reducing sectarian violence. “I'm not America's man,” he said.
| Source 1:
Chicago Tribune
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
News.com.au
|
| October 27, 2006 | - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told critics of the war to “back off.”
| Source:
Yahoo News
|
| October 23, 2006 | - In Basra, Prince Philip of Britain assured the troops “at the sharp end” that “a great many locals do very much appreciate what you are trying to do for them.”
| Source:
New Zealand Herald
|
| October 23, 2006 | - Senator Rick Santorum said, “As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It's being drawn to Iraq.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 22, 2006 | - The mid-month tally for U.S. troops killed in Iraq was 79, making October the deadliest month this year for American soldiers.
| Source:
AP via WBOC
|
| October 19, 2006 | - Nearly four months after the arraignment of PFC Steven D. Green, eight other soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division faced courts-martial in Kentucky for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her family in March.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 18, 2006 | - During a debate with his Democratic rival, Senator Conrad Burns of Montana said that President Bush (who this week compared Iraq to Vietnam) has a secret plan for winning the war, but that Bush is not going to share his plan with the world.
| Source 1:
Billings Gazette
Source 2:
FT
|
| October 16, 2006 | - The first Eskimo was killed in the Iraq war; it took 20 men a full day to dig his grave through the permafrost in a town 350 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 12, 2006 | - The United States
Army was planning to maintain current troop levels in Iraq through 2010, and to replace its advertising slogan, “An Army of One,” with a new slogan, “Army Strong.”
| Source:
AP
|
| October 12, 2006 | - Insurgents in Baghdad fired a mortar round at an ammunition dump on a U.S. military base, setting off large explosions that were felt miles away.
| Source 1:
Army Times
Source 2:
China Daily
|
| October 11, 2006 | - Research by U.S. epidemiologists and Iraqi physicians found that 654,965 Iraqis have died as a result of the Iraq war, though half of households surveyed were unsure of who to blame for the deaths of their family members. President George W. Bush said that he did not consider the study “a credible report.”
| Source 1:
Johns Hopkins University
Source 2:
Reuters
|
| October 10, 2006 | - In Iraq, four U.S. soldiers were killed in one day.
| Source:
Stuff.co.nz
|
| October 9, 2006 | - In Kut, Iraq, as many as 450 policemen were hospitalized with what was suspected to be food poisoning after sharing a Ramadan meal (although other reports gave the number as 1,350 hospitalized and seven dead).
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| September 28, 2006 | - The new leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed that 4,000 foreign insurgents have died since the 2003 invasion.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| September 28, 2006 | -
Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi told reporters that it's hard for Americans to understand “what's wrong” with Iraqis. “Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?”
| Source:
CNN
|
| September 26, 2006 | - The Bush Administration declassified an intelligence report that called the war a “cause celebre” for Muslim extremists.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| September 25, 2006 | - The United States Army extended combat tours for 4,000 soldiers in Iraq,.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| September 25, 2006 | -
Congress was about to go into recess; bills passed in the final days included a provision to allocate $70 billion to the Pentagon for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a clause that will allow the president to define enemy combatants at his discretion; the bill also legalized torture and suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 20, 2006 | -
Ted Turner called the Iraq war one of the “dumbest moves of all time.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| September 20, 2006 | - A spokesman for the Iraq Study Group, a think tank created to analyze events in Iraq, announced that it had “made no judgment of any kind at this point about any aspect of policy with regard to Iraq.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| September 20, 2006 | - The judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein was removed because “he hurt the feelings of the Iraqi people.”
| Source:
New York times
|
| September 17, 2006 | - Twenty-three people were killed in bombings in Kirkuk, Iraq, and 180 bodies, some showing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad,.
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 15, 2006 | - “We have to embrace,” said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, “the culture of dialogue and reconciliation.”
| Source:
CBS News
|
| September 14, 2006 | - The United States was running out of troops to send to Iraq,.
| Source:
Won't Deploy? Can't Deploy.
|
| September 12, 2006 | - Interfaith dating had become increasingly difficult in Baghdad. “There is no hope in this country anymore for Sunnis and Shiites to fall in love,” said Husham al-Gizzy, holding his face in his hands.
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The Washington Post
|
| September 10, 2006 | - The Abu Ghraib prison was placed under Iraqi control. “I heard shouting,” said a recent visitor, “like someone had a hot iron on their body.”
| Source:
Telegraph.co.uk
|
| September 8, 2006 | - A declassified CIA intelligence report concluded that prior to the Iraq war, Saddam Hussein “did not have a relationship, harbor, or even turn a blind eye toward,” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or Al Qaeda.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 7, 2006 | - The Iraqi government took control of its own army.
| Source:
Times of London
|
| September 7, 2006 | - The United States increased the number of troops in Iraq by 15,000.
| Source:
Houston Chronicle
|
| September 7, 2006 | - An official at the Baghdad morgue said that last month's death toll was actually triple the number first reported.
| Source:
Christian Science Monitor
|
| September 5, 2006 | - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice compared critics of the Iraq war to Northerners who sought peace with the South during the Civil War. “There were people who thought the Declaration of Independence was a mistake,” she said.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 1, 2006 | - The Pentagon announced that civilian casualties in Iraq had increased recently by more than fifty percent, and death squads were said to be torturing and killing as many as 1,800 people per month.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 29, 2006 | - U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales visited Iraq to encourage “the rule of law.”
| Source 1:
NPR
Source 2:
icasualties.org
Source 3:
Reuters
Source 4:
Reuters
Source 5:
Reuters
Source 6:
Sapa-AP via Independent Online
Source 7:
Reuters
Source 8:
Reuters
Source 9:
AP via Houston Chronicle
|
| August 28, 2006 | - At least 200 Iraqis were killed in bombings, rocket attacks, and shootings, as were 19 American and British soldiers.
| Source 1:
CNN
Source 2:
NPR
|
| August 23, 2006 | - A senior U.S. general said it was a “policy of the central government in Iran” to destabilize Iraq.
| Source:
San Jose Mercury News
|
| August 23, 2006 | - A poll found that Americans were becoming increasingly effective at distinguishing between the war in Iraq and the war on terror.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 23, 2006 | - Senator Joseph Lieberman compared the Iraq and the Spanish civil wars, saying both were a “harbinger” of worse conflict.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 22, 2006 | - Thousands of U.S. Marine reserves were involuntarily recalled to active duty to offset a lack of volunteers for the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
| Source:
CNN
|
| August 22, 2006 | - President George W. Bush admitted that the Iraq war was “straining the psyche of our country.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 22, 2006 | - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused to categorize the fighting in Iraq as a civil war, citing instead “sectarian differences.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 20, 2006 | - Snipers killed 20 pilgrims at a Shiite festival in Baghdad; a government employee noted that it was an improvement over last year, when nearly a thousand died in stampedes.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| August 15, 2006 | -
Senator
Barack Obama called the Iraq war “dumb.”
| Source:
Harrisburg Daily Register
|
| August 14, 2006 | - It was pointed out that the United States has been fighting in Iraq for as long as it fought Germany during World War II.
| Source:
The Chicago Tribune
|
| August 8, 2006 | -
Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman lost the Democratic
Senate primary election to anti-Iraq-war candidate Ned Lamont. Lieberman then announced that he would run as an independent candidate, and that “Team Connecticut” would “surge forward to victory.” Vice President Dick Cheney said that Lamont's victory was encouraging to “Al Qaeda types.”
| Source:
Chicago Sun-Times
|
| August 4, 2006 | - In Baghdad, 100,000 Shiites attended a “million-man” march in support of Hezbollah.
| Source:
The Australian
|
| August 3, 2006 | -
Lance Corporal Mark Beyers, an Iraq war veteran and double amputee, was attacked and robbed outside a restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| August 2, 2006 | - In Iraq, President Jalal Talabani vowed to “terminate terrorism” by 2007.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 2, 2006 | - U.S. General John Abizaid told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “Iraq could move toward civil war.”
| Source:
NY Times
|
| August 2, 2006 | - A lawyer who represents one of four American paratroopers accused of murdering three Iraqi detainees told a military court in Tikrit that the dead men “got exactly what they deserved.”
| Source:
BBC and BBC
|
| August 1, 2006 | - Corporal Phillip E. Baucus, 28, nephew of U.S. Senator
Max Baucus, was killed in action in Iraq.
| Source:
Bloomberg via Google News
|
| July 30, 2006 | - Thirteen U.S. soldiers died in Iraq, where the U.S. military was planning to deploy 5,000 more troops.
| Source:
icasualties.org
|
| July 30, 2006 | - At least 34 gunshot bodies were found in Baghdad, all showing signs of torture.
| Source 1:
local6.com
Source 2:
Reuters
|
| July 30, 2006 | - Shiite militia groups in Baghdad were setting up checkpoints, demanding that passersby provide identification, and shooting Sunnis on the spot. “The gangs also raided houses and shouted at the people there, 'You pimps, Sunnis, we will kill you,'” explained an eyewitness. “And they did.”
| Source 1:
Reuters
Source 2:
Newsweek
|
| July 30, 2006 | - It was reported that Private Steven D. Green, who is charged with raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then killing her and members of her family, had said that, in Iraq, “killing people is like squashing an ant, I mean, you kill somebody and it's like, 'All right, let's go get some pizza.'”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 30, 2006 | - The coach of the Iraqi national soccer team resigned and fled to Kurdistan.
| Source:
ABC (Australia)
|
| July 29, 2006 | - A marine sniper who has killed as many as 60 insurgents in Iraq said of his work, “It's like hearing classical music playing in my head.”
| Source:
USA Today
|
| July 27, 2006 | -
Saddam Hussein demanded that he be shot—not hanged—if he is found guilty of murdering Shiites in Dujail in 1982. “This case,” said Hussein, “is not worth the urine of an Iraqi child.”
| Source:
Scotsman.com
|
| July 26, 2006 | -
Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, condemned Israel's military actions; Howard Dean called al-Maliki an “anti-Semite.”
| Source:
AP
|
| July 25, 2006 | - Gunmen in Mosul set fire to government-run food-ration shops.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 21, 2006 | - Violence was forcing Shiite-owned
bakeries in Baghdad's Sunni neighborhoods to close their doors.
| Source:
NY Times
|
| July 18, 2006 | - Fifty-three Iraqis died when a car bomb exploded in the Shiite city of Kufa, and 48 lost their lives to Sunni Arab gunmen in Mahmudiya.
| Source:
NY Times
|
| July 11, 2006 | - Twenty dead bus drivers were found in Muqdadiya, Iraq, and two dead carpenters were found in Tikrit. Gunmen entered a market in Mahmudiya and killed at least 42 people; an explosion killed 25 at a cafe in Tuz Khurmatu.
| Source:
Reuters AlertNet
|
| July 10, 2006 | - The Iraqi civil war continued to escalate as Shiite militiamen invaded a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad and executed at least 36 young men, apparently in response to the bombing of a Shiite mosque; later that day, two car bombs exploded next to another Shiite mosque, killing 19 and wounding 59.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| July 9, 2006 | - Five more American soldiers were charged in the Iraqi
rape-and-murder case.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| July 8, 2006 | - An Army reserve colonel offered to plead guilty to charges that he engaged in bribery, conspiracy, and money laundering while he was stationed in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 6, 2006 | -
Iraqi prime minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki denounced the immunity of American soldiers in Iraq in connection with the rape and murder of a teenage girl and three of her relatives, including another child. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said that there was no apparent connection between the rape-and-murder case and the killings of two soldiers from the unit under investigation.
| Source:
Detroit Free Press
|
| July 5, 2006 | - “I'm going to make you this promise,” President George W. Bush
told a crowd of soldiers in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, “I'm not going to allow the sacrifice of 2,527 troops who have died in Iraq to be in vain by pulling out before the job is done.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 2, 2006 | -
Iraq's national security adviser announced that the body of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been buried in “a marked but secret place.”
| Source:
ABC News (Australia)
|
| July 2, 2006 | -
Saddam Hussein's eldest daughter and first wife were added to the Iraqi government's list of “most wanted” terrorist figures.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 1, 2006 | -
Iraqi and U.S. authorities freed 495 prisoners.
| Source:
AP via KTAR
|
| June 30, 2006 | - Four U.S. soldiers in Iraq were being investigated for raping a woman, then killing her and three other members of her family; it was suggested that the accused may have spent up to a week planning the attack.
| Source:
Times Online (U.K)
|
| June 29, 2006 | - The bodies of seven men were discovered in the Tigris River south of Baghdad, and the bodies of two men were found in the Euphrates river south of Baghdad. All the bodies showed signs of torture.
| Source 1:
Reuters
Source 2:
Reuters
Source 3:
icasualties.org
Source 4:
Reuters
|
| June 27, 2006 | -
The President went jogging with a soldier who lost both his legs in Iraq,.
| Source:
local6.com
|
| June 25, 2006 | - It was reported that Iraqi insurgents have started using sophisticated armor-penetrating mines that propel jets of molten metal at military vehicles.
| Source:
Telegraph.co.uk
|
| June 25, 2006 | - In Britain the wives of soldiers serving in Iraq were receiving strange phone calls from Iraqi militants.
| Source:
Telegraph.co.uk
|
| June 25, 2006 | - Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq unveiled a 24-point national reconciliation plan designed to end his nation's civil war, and in Baghdad nearly 100 people were abducted by gunmen dressed as police officers.
| Source:
Islam Online via Google News
|
| June 24, 2006 | - Saddam Hussein skipped a meal.
| Source 1:
Reuters via Google News
Source 2:
Mirror UK via Google News
|
| June 22, 2006 | -
Senator Rick Santorum insisted the United States had in fact discovered weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and Senator John McCain said the U.S. had two options there: “Withdraw and fail, or commit and succeed.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 21, 2006 | - In Baghdad a car bomb detonated next to an ice cream shop, killing at least three people of indeterminate age, and insurgents beheaded two Russian diplomats and shot another.
| Source:
Houston Chronicle via Google News
|
| June 20, 2006 | - The Iraqi military recovered the bodies of two kidnapped U.S. soldiers; a spokesman said they had been “tortured in a barbaric fashion.”
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The New York Times
|
| June 19, 2006 | - In Iraq an Islamic militant group claimed that it had kidnapped two U.S. soldiers, 23-year-old Kristian Menchaca and 25-year-old Thomas L. Tucker. The Army sent 8,000 Iraqi and U.S. troops, supported by fighter jets and drones, to search for the missing soldiers.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 19, 2006 | -
Iraqi prosecutors called for Saddam Hussein to be sentenced to death.
| Source:
Daily Mail
|
| June 18, 2006 | -
Pennsylvania
Representative John P. Murtha criticized Karl Rove for “sitting in his air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside saying, 'Stay the course.'”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 17, 2006 | - It was reported that a man named Abu Hamza Al Muhajer would take over for Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi, the assassinated leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. “He has left behind lions,” said Al Muhajer of Al Zarqawi, “that have been trained in his den.”
| Source:
Middle East Times
|
| June 16, 2006 | - The House passed a resolution that rejected “cutting and running” from Iraq.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| June 15, 2006 | - The Pentagon announced the 2,500th American death in Iraq. “It's a number,” said White House press secretary Tony Snow.
| Source:
Toronto Star
|
| June 14, 2006 | -
Marine Corporal Joshua Belile apologized for appearing in “Hadji Girl,” an Internet-distributed
video in which he plays guitar and jokes about killing an Iraqi family. “They should have known,” he sang, “they were fuckin' with a Marine.”
| Source:
The Mercury News
|
| June 13, 2006 | - President George W. Bush visited Iraq because he wanted to “look at Prime Minister Maliki in the eyes.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 11, 2006 | - The attorney for Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, one of the marines charged with the Haditha massacre, asserted that the massacre, though “tragic,” was nonetheless “lawful” and was the result of following “the rules of engagement and standard protocol.”
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 9, 2006 | -
United States forces succeeded in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, with two five-hundred-pound bombs that were dropped on a safe house north of Baghdad. Zarqawi reportedly survived the bombing at first and even tried to get away but was strapped to a stretcher, where he died. The U.S. military denied reports that American soldiers had beaten the dying terrorist. "He died while American soldiers were attempting to save his life," said General George Casey. Al Qaeda promised to respond with “major attacks.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Bloomberg
Source 3:
New York Times
|
| June 6, 2006 | - Armed gunmen abducted more than 50 bystanders at a Baghdad bus stop, and it was announced that May was the deadliest month for Baghdad residents since the beginning of the American occupation. A total of 1,398 bodies were found throughout the city, alongside roads, in garbage dumps, and in abandoned cars, though many others have been abducted, never to be seen again.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| June 6, 2006 | - Eight U.S. soldiers diedin Iraq.
| Source:
icasualties.org
|
| June 4, 2006 | - Northwest of Baghdad, at an improvised checkpoint, 19 civilians were dragged from their cars and shot.
| Source:
Kuwait News Agency
|
| June 4, 2006 | - Twenty-one Kurds and Shiites, many of them high school students, were ordered off a bus and executed in Ain Laila.
| Source:
Belleville News Democrat
|
| June 4, 2006 | - Six policemen were killed in Mosul.
| Source:
Kuwait News Agency
|
| June 3, 2006 | - In Iraq, a car bomb in Basra killed at least 33 people.
| Source:
CNN
|
| June 3, 2006 | - Police found 22 bodies with bullet wounds and signs of torture in Baghdad.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 3, 2006 | - In Baquba 7 policemen were killed.
| Source:
BBC
|
| June 3, 2006 | - In Baquba the heads of 8 Sunni men were found in Dole banana boxes.
| Source 1:
Indian Express
Source 2:
Reuters
|
| June 2, 2006 | - A Baghdad pet market was bombed, killing 5 people and several doves.
| Source 1:
Guardian Unlimited
Source 2:
Canada.com
|
| June 1, 2006 | - In Iraq, where 14 U.S. soldiers died, bombings killed 62 people in a poor Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, 17 people at a market in Hilla, and 18 people in Khairnabat.
| Source 1:
Reuters
Source 2:
Guardian
Source 3:
San Francisco Chronicle
Source 4:
Reuters
Source 5:
Reuters
|
| June 1, 2006 | - A mortar attack in southern Baghdad killed 9 people.
| Source:
Yahoo! News
|
| May 30, 2006 | -
Senator John Warner called for hearings into the killings of more than 20 civilians in Haditha by U.S. Marines in 2005.
| Source:
The Australian
|
| May 29, 2006 | - It was reported that a U.S. Marine had been traumatized by his experiences cleaning up and documenting the alleged massacre of civilians by other marines in Haditha. “He called me many times,” said the marine's mother, “about carrying this little girl in his hands and her brains splattering on his boots.”
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| May 29, 2006 | - It was reported that, since 2003, 8,600 British troops had gone AWOL in Iraq; 929 were still missing.
| Source:
Daily Mail
|
| May 27, 2006 | - In Iraq over 66 people were killed in attacks, including two CBS News employees when their convoy was struck by a car bomb; a CBS correspondent was seriously injured in the same attack. In Baghdad two tennis players and their coach were killed for wearing shorts, and a Marine helicopter was shot down over the Anbar province.
| Source 1:
ABC News
Source 2:
AP via Forbes.com
Source 3:
ABC News
|
| May 20, 2006 | - The Iraqi Defense Ministry announced that on average one person per hour was being killed in Basra.
| Source:
The Register-Guard
|
| May 18, 2006 | - In Baghdad, 19 people were killed in attacks, including four U.S. soldiers, and a tae kwon do team was kidnapped.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 18, 2006 | - American troops were using lasers to "dazzle" Iraqi drivers who do not stop at checkpoints; if used properly, said a Pentagon spokesman, the laser light will not blind its target.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| May 17, 2006 | -
Gay
Iraqis were fleeing the country to avoid being killed by militias.
| Source:
Times Online
|
| May 14, 2006 | - More than 30 people died in a series of bombings in Basra and around Baghdad.
| Source:
AFP
|
| May 13, 2006 | - In Lynchburg, Virginia, at Liberty University (which fines its students $500 if they engage in witchcraft), Senator John McCain (R., Ariz.) stood next to Jerry Falwell and spoke in support of the Iraq war.
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
Liberty University
|
| May 10, 2006 | - A fight broke out in the lobby of Iraq's parliament building after a cell phone played a Shiite ringtone.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| May 10, 2006 | - It was announced that five journalists had been killed so far this month in Iraq.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 9, 2006 | - A car bomb killed 17 people in Talafar.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 8, 2006 | - A British helicopter was shot down over Basra, killing all five crew members.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| May 7, 2006 | - In Iraq car bombs killed 24 people.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 5, 2006 | -
Iraqi
police
shot a 14-year-old boy named Ahmed Khalil in the head for being a gay
prostitute.
| Source:
Gay.com
|
| May 2, 2006 | - In Anbar, at a ceremony for new Iraqi soldiers, the graduates were told that they would be sent outside of their home province to serve, leading several soldiers to tear off their clothes in protest.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| April 30, 2006 | - In New York City tens of thousands of people marched against the war in Iraq.
| Source:
Boston.com
|
| April 28, 2006 | - In Baquba, Iraq, about 30 people died in fighting.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 26, 2006 | - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, released a video in which he showed his face and claimed that the Bush Administration had lied about its military victories. "America," said Zarqawi, "will go out of Iraq, humiliated, defeated."
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| April 26, 2006 | - President George W. Bush pointed out that not drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was depriving the United States of one million barrels of oil per day, and it was reported that Iraq's
oil production had dropped by one million barrels per day since the U.S. invasion.
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
Beat the Press
|
| April 23, 2006 | - In Iraq, three U.S. soldiers were killed by a bomb and at least 27 Iraqis were killed in other violence. President Bush phoned the newly elected Iraqi prime minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki, parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, and president Jalal Talabani to urge them to form a coalition government. “They have awesome responsibilities,” said the President, “to their people.”
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
News.com.au
|
| April 23, 2006 | - It was reported that firms performing contract work for KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary that provides basic services to the U.S. military in Iraq, were violating human trafficking laws and confiscating the passports of their employees.
| Source:
San Jose Mercury News
|
| April 13, 2006 | - Some Iraqis were changing their names to avoid being identified as either Sunni or Shiite. “[I] don't want my children to die,” said the Shiite father of Ali, Hassan, and Fatima, “just because of their names.”
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
|
| April 13, 2006 | - Close to 65,000 Iraqis had fled their homes to avoid sectarian violence.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 12, 2006 | - At least five U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq, and a car bombing in Baquba killed 27 people.
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
Xinhua.net
|
| April 10, 2006 | - It was revealed that the U.S. military had mounted a propaganda campaign, targeting Iraq and the United States, intended to make Abu Muab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader (or possibly former leader) of Al Qaeda in Iraq, appear more powerful than he is. One document describing the campaign was called “Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response.”
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| April 9, 2006 | - The U.S. military announced that 1,313 Iraqi civilians had been killed in the sectarian violence of March. "Civil war," said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, "has almost started among Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, and those who are coming from Asia."
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
Chron.com
|
| April 8, 2006 | - It emerged that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told a grand jury that when he leaked classified information favorable to the case for war in Iraq to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, he was acting under the specific authorization of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Bush authorized the leak even though the intelligence in question (regarding Saddam Hussein's
nuclear ambitions) was considered unreliable by key administration members such as then Secretary of State Colin Powell.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| April 7, 2006 | - A car bomb killed 10 people at a Shiite shrine in Najaf, Iraq, and a suicide bombing killed 85 people at a Shiite mosque in Baghdad.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 5, 2006 | - The case against Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, an Iraqi cameraman for CBS who was arrested in April 2005 after filming the wreckage of a car bomb, was finally dismissed for lack of evidence.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| April 3, 2006 | - In Iraq
a suicide bomber killed 50 people and a car bomb killed 10 people. At least 15 U.S. troops were also killed. Hostage Jill Carroll was freed.
| Source 1:
CNN.com
Source 2:
CNN.com
|
| April 3, 2006 | - It was reported that Al Qaeda member Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was forced to step down as the leader of a coalition of Iraqi militant groups; he was replaced by a native Iraqi.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 30, 2006 | - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited England but cancelled a visit to a mosque there in order to avoid protesters. Rice and British foreign minister Jack Straw then visited Iraq, where they told the Iraqi leadership that it must form a unified government immediately.
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
The New York Times
|
| March 28, 2006 | -
Iraq's ruling parties accused the United States of killing 37 unarmed civilians at a mosque. "There's been huge misinformation," said U.S. Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli.
| Source:
News.com.au
|
| March 27, 2006 | - A doctor in Baghdad admitted to killing 35 policemen and soldiers who were being treated at his hospital.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| March 27, 2006 | -
American and Iraqi forces said they had killed 17 Shiite militiamen at a mosque in Baghdad; Iraqi television showed corpses in a prayer room.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 26, 2006 | - Thirty beheaded corpses were found in Baquba, Iraq, and 10 more bodies were found in Baghdad, where the homicide rate had reached 33 per day. Shiites were abducting Sunnis in bright daylight on crowded streets. "If the Americans leave," said one Sunni man (whose brother had recently been executed after being tortured with power tools), "we are finished. We may be finished already."
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The New York Times
|
| March 21, 2006 | - In Miqdadiya, near Baquba, militants attacked a prison, killed 20 people, and freed 30 prisoners.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 21, 2006 | - President George W. Bush denied that Iraq was in the midst of a civil war, although when asked about the possibility of a full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq he said: "That will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq."
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 21, 2006 | - It was revealed that prior to the U.S. invasion, Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri had, for a fee, provided the United States with detailed assessments of Iraq's military capabilities. Sabri's assessments of Iraq's nuclear and biological weapons capabilities proved, in hindsight, to be far more reliable than the CIA estimates used to justify the invasion; the CIA had no comment on why the data was ignored.
| Source:
MSNBC via Commondreams
|
| March 21, 2006 | -
U.S. Sergeant Michael J. Smith was found guilty of using a dog to terrorize prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. He was also found guilty of indecency for directing his dog to lick peanut butter from the genitals of a fellow male soldier and from the breasts of a fellow female soldier.
| Source:
The Kansas City Star
|
| March 19, 2006 | - "We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," said Iyad Allawi, the former interim prime minister of Iraq. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 19, 2006 | - A videotape emerged purporting to show that in November of 2005 Marines in Haditha, seeking revenge for the deaths of their comrades, killed 15 unarmed Iraqis, including seven women and three children. "I watched them shoot my grandfather," said an eyewitness, "first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny." The Marines promised to investigate.
| Source:
Time
|
| March 19, 2006 | - It was revealed that in 2004 a U.S. Special Operations unit imprisoned Iraqis in Hussein-era torture chambers, then used them as targets in paintball games. "The reality is," said a Pentagon official, "there were no rules there." Posters around the detention area read NO BLOOD, NO FOUL.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 19, 2006 | - Several thousand people around the world protested on the third anniversary of the Iraq war.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| March 17, 2006 | - The United States launched Operation Swarmer against the Iraqi insurgency. While the operation was described as the largest air assault since the beginning of the Iraq war, there were no airstrikes and no leading insurgents were captured.
| Source:
Time
|
| March 14, 2006 | - Eighty-six corpses--most shot, some strangled--were found around Baghdad over a 30-hour period.
| Source:
CNN
|
| March 14, 2006 | -
Donald Rumsfeld denied that Iraq was in a civil war.
| Source:
CNN
|
| March 13, 2006 | - A bombing at a Shiite market in Sadr City, Iraq, killed at least 50 people; Shiite vigilantes responded by abducting four men, beating and executing them, and hanging them from lampposts.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 9, 2006 | - The Iraqi government hanged 13 insurgents.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| March 9, 2006 | - It was reported that Iraq's
Shiite party had ordered the Health Ministry to stop recording deaths that resulted from execution-style shootings.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| March 8, 2006 | - In Baghdad 37 corpses were found, including 18 bodies stacked in a minibus. The corpse of American peace activist Tom Fox was found in a trash heap in western Baghdad; Fox and three other members of Christian Peacemaker Teams had been kidnapped in November 2005 by the Swords of Righteousness Brigade.
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The New York Times
|
| March 6, 2006 | - Only 75 psychiatrists remained in Iraq.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| March 2, 2006 | - The U.S. State Department asked for $100 million for the reconstruction of Iraqi
prisons.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| March 1, 2006 | - More than 100 people were killed in fighting in Iraq. "I think," said the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, "the country came to the brink of civil war. But Iraqis decided that they didn't want to go down that path."
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The New York Times
|
| March 1, 2006 | - In the Baghdad area, Sunni militants were evicting Shiites from their homes. "We want you out of here by 8 p.m. tomorrow," one man was told. "If we find you here, we will kill you."
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| March 1, 2006 | - It was reported that the White House had ignored repeated warnings about the growing capabilities of the Iraqi insurgency. "This was stuff," said a former high-ranking intelligence official, "the White House and the Pentagon did not want to hear."
| Source:
|
| February 28, 2006 | - President George W. Bush said that Iraq's choice was between "chaos or unity."
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| February 24, 2006 | - At least 140 people were killed in Iraq during fighting that broke out after the Al Askari mosque, a Shiite
shrine in Samarra, was bombed. Sunni leaders said that 184 mosques had been attacked in the fighting, and a daytime curfew was in effect in Baghdad. "If there is a civil war in this country," said Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, "it will never end."
| Source 1:
Democracy Now!
Source 2:
Reuters
|
| February 20, 2006 | - At least 19 people died in bombings across Iraq.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 19, 2006 | - The U.S. Army was using a computer game called “Tactical Iraqi” to teach Marines how to interpret Iraqis' gestures; “Tactical Pashto” and “Tactical Levantine” are in development.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 18, 2006 | - Another person died from bird
flu in Iraq. The flu was also found in poultry in Germany, France, and Egypt, and 50,000 chickens died from the disease in India.
| Source 1:
Bloomberg News
Source 2:
People's Daily Online
Source 3:
BBC News
Source 4:
China View
|
| February 17, 2006 | - U.S. President George W. Bush said that Americans should not be discouraged by slow progress in Iraq. "We've seen democracy change the world in the past," he said.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 16, 2006 | - New photos of the torture at Abu Ghraib
prison were released.
| Source:
ABC News Online
|
| February 15, 2006 | - The U.S. Army was worried that Abu Ghraib was becoming, according to one commander, “a graduate-level training ground for the insurgency.”
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| February 13, 2006 | - In Iraq 11 people died in attacks, 8 people were killed by a suicide bomber, and Saddam Hussein was forced to return to court. "This is not a court," he said, "this is a game."
| Source 1:
AP via Yahoo! News
Source 2:
AFP via Yahoo! News
|
| February 10, 2006 | - Paul Pillar, the CIA's former national intelligence officer for the Middle East, published an article claiming that the Bush Administration had "cherry-picked" intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. "Intelligence was misused publicly," he wrote, "to justify decisions already made."
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| February 6, 2006 | - The Bush Administration submitted a $2.77 trillion budget to Congress calling for a 7 percent increase in Pentagon spending and a $36 billion cut to the growth of Medicare spending. The Administration is expected to ask for an additional $120 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| February 6, 2006 | - In Iraq, the United States was negotiating with Sunni
insurgents.
| Source:
Newsweek via MSNBC
|
| February 5, 2006 | - At least 7,600 U.S. soldiers had been severely wounded serving in Iraq. "I can drink beer out of my leg," said Matthew Braddock, a 25-year-old National Guardsman who lost his left foot and nine inches of his left leg to a mine in northern Iraq. "How many people can do that?"
| Source:
Time
|
| February 3, 2006 | - In Iraq a car bomb killed 16 people and wounded 90, 14 bodies were found stacked in a hole, 5 U.S. troops were killed, and Saddam Hussein was boycotting his own trial.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| February 3, 2006 | - Professor Philippe Sands of University College, London, said he had seen a secret memo that details a January 2003 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush. According to Sands' account of the memo, Blair offered Bush full British support for an invasion of Iraq regardless of whether U.N. inspectors found evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Bush also told Blair that he was thinking of having U-2 reconnaissance planes painted with U.N. colors and then flown over Iraq in order to provoke Saddam Hussein into firing upon the planes.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| February 3, 2006 | - The war in Iraq was costing the United States $100,000 a minute.
| Source:
The Hartford Courant
|
| January 31, 2006 | - Former Marine Platoon Sergeant Jim Massey said that the United States was funneling depleted uranium to Iraq through Ireland.
| Source:
UTV
|
| January 30, 2006 | - A new judge took over the Saddam Hussein trial and had Hussein and co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim removed from the courtroom after Hussein began shouting and Ibrahim called the court "a bastard."
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| January 30, 2006 | - U.S. auditors found that of $120 million in Iraqi
oil revenue allocated to fund reconstruction $97 million had gone missing.
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| January 30, 2006 | - A teenage girl in northern Iraq was reported to have died of bird flu.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 30, 2006 | - In Gary, Indiana, an Iraq war veteran killed a 79-year-old man when the man refused to give him money for crack.
| Source:
IndyStar.com
|
| January 29, 2006 | - Eleven people died in a bombing at an Iraqi sweets shop, and at least 17 people died in other attacks. Four Christian churches were bombed.
| Source 1:
Reuters AlertNet
Source 2:
AP via Forbes
|
| January 29, 2006 | -
ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were severely injured in an explosion in Taji, Iraq.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| January 29, 2006 | -
Marine James Blake Miller, whose face became emblematic of the Iraq war after he was photographed smoking a cigarette during the November 2004 attack on Fallujah, was at home in Kentucky, where he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and had cut back to a pack and a half a day.
| Source:
SFGate.com
|
| January 18, 2006 | - In Iraq 30 people were killed at makeshift checkpoints, 22 people died in suicide bombings, 9 people were killed in an ambush, 5 bodies were found in the Qaid River, 4 children were killed by rocket-propelled grenades, and 2 American civilians were killed in a roadside bombing. Suicide bombings killed at least 22 people in Afghanistan and injured 30 people in Tel Aviv.
| Source 1:
Democracy Now!
Source 2:
The Boston Globe
Source 3:
CRI Online
Source 4:
Sign On San Diego.com
|
| January 18, 2006 | - It was reported that Iraqi militants had developed an "Aerial Improvised Explosive Device" that could blow up helicopters.
| Source:
Al Jazeera
|
| January 16, 2006 | -
Walter Cronkite called for the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq.
| Source:
CBC.com
|
| January 9, 2006 | - In Baghdad at least 28 people were killed when two suicide bombers attacked the Interior Ministry.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| January 9, 2006 | - Twelve U.S. soldiers were believed to have been killed when an Army helicopter crashed in northern Iraq.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 4, 2006 | - More than 170 people died in attacks in Iraq. They were: blown up at a Shiite shrine in Karbala; killed at a police recruiting center in Ramadi; and attacked with mortar, automatic weapons, and finally by a suicide bomber at a funeral near Baquba.
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
BBC News
|
| January 4, 2006 | - A U.S. airstrike north of Baghdad, intended to destroy a shelter for insurgents, killed a civilian family of 12.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| January 2, 2006 | - Seven people died in a suicide car bombing in Iraq.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| January 2, 2006 | - It was revealed that Pentagon contractors had hired Iraqi
Sunni clerics to help them develop propaganda campaigns.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 29, 2005 | - In Florida a 16-year-old named Farris Hassan decided to complete a school project on the Iraq war by going to Iraq; he made it to Baghdad, and was sent back to Florida by United States authorities. “This place,” explained an official, “is incredibly dangerous to individual private American citizens.”
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| December 23, 2005 | - British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Iraq.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| December 21, 2005 | - A U.S. National Guardsman who served in Iraq was sentenced to 25 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to shooting an Iraqi soldier with whom he had had consensual gay sex.
| Source:
Gay.com/AP
|
| December 19, 2005 | -
Iraq held parliamentary elections.
| Source:
AP
|
| December 16, 2005 | -
Iraq's
electoral commission ruled that 99 percent of ballots cast on December 15, 2005, were valid.
| Source:
Forbes.com
|
| December 16, 2005 | - The Iraqi military announced that they had captured Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, but accidentally released him.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| December 12, 2005 | - Six hundred and twenty-five prisoners were found packed in a small space in Baghdad.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 12, 2005 | -
Iraq's Victorious Army Group was holding a contest to see who could design the best website to promote their message of jihad. The contest winner will receive Allah's blessings and be allowed to fire three rockets at an American military base.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 9, 2005 | - At least 66 people were killed in suicide bombings in Iraq.
| Source:
PakTribune
|
| December 9, 2005 | - The probe into the U.S. policy of paying Iraqi newspapers for positive coverage widened to include the Baghdad Press Club, a military-created P.R. organization; the military admitted that the club compensated reporters, but made clear that it did not insist on positive coverage. An Iraqi journalist said that the club paid $25 for each story that ran ($45 for stories with photos), and $50 for television reports.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| December 3, 2005 | - Nineteen Iraqi soldiers were killed in an attack north of Baghdad.
| Source:
Turkish Press/AFP
|
| December 2, 2005 | - Ten U.S. Marines were killed by a roadside bomb in Fallujah.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| December 1, 2005 | - It was reported that Iraqi militants, before they carried out raids or suicide bombings, were taking a methamphetamine-based drug called “pinky” that made them feel superhuman.
| Source:
The Daily Mirror
|
| November 30, 2005 | - At the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, President George W. Bush gave a speech on the Iraq war. “As Iraqi forces grow more capable,” he said, “they're increasingly taking the lead in the fight against the terrorists.”
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| November 30, 2005 | - Operation Steel Hammer, intended to end Al Qaeda operations in Hit, west of Baghdad, was launched with a force of 1,500 U.S. Marines, 500 U.S. Army soldiers, and 500 Iraqi soldiers.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| November 30, 2005 | - It was revealed that the U.S. Army was writing positive news stories about the Iraq war, and was then paying to have the articles translated into Arabic and published in Iraqi newspapers. Abdul Zahra Zaki, editor of the newspaper Al Mada, said that if he had known the stories—with titles like “Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism” and “More Money Goes to Iraq's Development”—were written by the Army he would have “charged much, much more.”
| Source:
LA Times
|
| November 27, 2005 | -
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said that human-rights abuses in Iraq are “the same . . . and worse” than they were under Saddam Hussein.
| Source:
Guardian Unlimited
|
| November 25, 2005 | -
George McGovern said that “all kinds of mutual friends” had told him that George Bush Sr. had been against the Iraq war from its beginning.
| Source:
The Alan Colmes Show (via Crooks and Liars)
|
| November 24, 2005 | - Gunmen in Baghdad killed a Sunni Arab chief, his three sons, and his son-in-law.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| November 23, 2005 | - South of Baghdad thirty people were killed when a bomb exploded outside a hospital.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| November 20, 2005 | - At least 162 people were killed in violence in Iraq.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| November 20, 2005 | - In Basra two British-trained policemen had tortured at least two civilians to death with electric drills.
| Source:
The Statesman
|
| November 20, 2005 | - The German intelligence officials who interrogated “Curveball,” an Iraqi who provided intelligence that the Bush Administration used to justify the war in Iraq, said that they repeatedly warned the United States that Curveball (who may have been lying in order to obtain a German visa) could not be trusted. “Mein Gott!” said an intelligence official. “We had always told them it was not proven.”
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| November 19, 2005 | - Representative John Murtha (D., Pa.), called for the halt of U.S. troop deployments to Iraq. Duncan Hunter (R., Calif.), seeking to cut off debate over Murtha's statements, countered by proposing a measure that required that U.S. troops be brought home immediately. Jean Schmidt (R., Ohio) addressed Murtha, a decorated veteran and former Marine colonel who previously supported the invasion of Iraq, by quoting a Marine Corps reserve officer who told her that “cowards cut and run.” She was booed by Democrats. “You guys,” yelled Marty Meehan (D., Mass.), “are pathetic!” Harold Ford (D., Tenn.) ran across the House chamber's center aisle to the Republican side. “Say Murtha's name!” he shouted. Schmidt asked that her comments be struck from the record, and Hunter's resolution was rejected 403 to 3, with Murtha among those voting against it.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| November 19, 2005 | - The Justice Department was considering an investigation into how the Halliburton Company was secretly awarded noncompetitive multibillion-dollar contracts for oil-field repairs in Iraq.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| November 18, 2005 | -
Dick Cheney visited Iraq and informed American soldiers that he was not Jessica Simpson. He also watched as Iraqi soldiers holding imaginary guns practiced a vehicle sweep.
| Source:
SFGate.com
|
| November 18, 2005 | -
General George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, presented a plan for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| November 16, 2005 | - 173 malnourished Sunni Arab prisoners, many of whom had been severely tortured, were found in the basement of an Iraqi Interior Ministry compound. “You know what happens in prison,” explained the Interior Ministry's undersecretary for security. “Their skins,” said one witness, “got stuck to the floor.”
| Source 1:
Democracy Now!
Source 2:
Common Dreams
|
| November 16, 2005 | - After repeated denials, the Pentagon finally admitted to using white phosphorus during the 2004 attack on Fallujah. “It is an incendiary weapon,” explained a spokesman.
| Source:
Common Dreams
|
| November 16, 2005 | -
Bill Clinton referred to the Iraq war as a “big mistake.” “We never sent enough troops,” he said.
| Source:
Common Dreams
|
| November 15, 2005 | - Two Iraqi businessmen accused U.S. troops of caging them with lions in 2003. The men were also severely beaten after they were not able to tell Army interrogators where to find Saddam Hussein or weapons of mass destruction. “I thought he was joking, so I laughed,” said one of the businessmen. “He just hit me.”
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| November 12, 2005 | - A New Zealand school apologized to an Iraqi student who was named “most likely to join the army as a bomb” in the school yearbook. “If I lived somewhere like America,” said 18-year-old Rami Al-Rdini, “I would expect a comment like that. I always thought New Zealand was quite a nice country.”
| Source:
New Zealand Herald
|
| November 10, 2005 | - In Amman, Jordan, 57 people were killed in explosions at three different hotels. “We thought it was fireworks for the wedding,” said Ahmed at the Radisson. An Iraqi woman named Sajida Rishawi later described how she, her husband, and two other Iraqis had entered Jordan on forged passports intending to blow up the hotels; while the other three suicide bombers succeeded, she explained, her exploding belt malfunctioned, so she ran.
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| November 9, 2005 | - A former U.S. soldier named Jeff Englehart said that he witnessed “burned bodies, burned children, and burned women” after a white phosphorus attack on Fallujah in 2004. The U.S. Army denied that it had used white phosphorus in the attack.
| Source:
The New Zealand Herald
|
| November 5, 2005 | - Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to the United States, said that the Iraq war was inspiring acts of terrorism: “God,” he said, “it does not look good.”
| Source:
BBC News
|
| November 5, 2005 | -
U.S. and Iraqi forces launched Operation Al Hajip Elfulathi (Steel Curtain) in Husaybah, a town on Iraq's Syrian border that serves as a transit point and staging area for militants. The offensive began on the third day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of Ramadan. “Instead of having my family for a picnic in an amusement park,” said a refugee named Omar Obaidi, “I am taking them out of the town, walking and expecting death every moment.” A statement promising retaliation for the offensive, purported to be from Al Qaeda, was posted on a local mosque. In Baquba the spokesman for the Iraqi National Dialogue Council was shot five times.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| November 5, 2005 | - Vice President Dick Cheney was pressuring Republican senators to grant the CIA an exemption from a proposed ban on torturing terrorism suspects. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, suggested that Cheney was ultimately responsible for the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere. “There was a visible audit trail,” he said, “from the vice president's office through the secretary of defense down to the commanders in the field.”
| Source:
The Seattle Times
|
| October 31, 2005 | -
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi claimed that in 2003 he repeatedly attempted to talk President Bush out of invading Iraq. "He told Bush?" asked the leader of an opposing political party. "Well, it means he doesn't count for anything at all."
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| October 31, 2005 | -
U.S. aircraft dropped explosives on a house in Iraq near the Syrian border, hoping to kill an Al Qaeda leader. An Iraqi doctor estimated 40 civilians were killed and 20 wounded in the precision bombing. "There are no insurgents in this area," said a tribal leader.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 30, 2005 | - The United States military published its first public estimate of the number of Iraqi civilians and soldiers killed by Iraqi militants. The estimate appears as a single bar graph on page 23 of a report to Congress and does not provide actual numbers, but by extrapolating from the graph it appears that insurgents are wounding and killing 63 Iraqis a day, and have wounded or killed 25,902 Iraqis since the war began. Some analysts said the numbers seemed low. The number of Iraqi civilians wounded or killed by U.S. forces was not mentioned in the report.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| October 25, 2005 | - The number of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq rose to 2,023. "The best way to honor the sacrifice of our fallen troops," said President George W. Bush, "is to complete the mission."
| Source:
AP
|
| October 24, 2005 | - At least seventeen people died in bombings and shootings in Iraq.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| October 24, 2005 | - A poll found that 82 percent of Iraqis oppose the continued presence of foreign troops.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| October 20, 2005 | - A Pentagon study found that 28 percent of U.S. troops returning from Iraq require medical or mental health treatment; nearly 20,000 returning soldiers reported nightmares.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| October 16, 2005 | - Sixty percent of Iraq's 15.5 million voters turned out to vote in a referendum on the proposed Iraqi constitution. Three Iraqi soldiers were killed carrying ballot boxes, and five U.S. soldiers were killed by a bomb in Ramadi; the United States retaliated by bombing two villages and claimed that 70 militants had been killed; eyewitnesses said 39 of those killed were civilians.
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
The Guardian
|
| October 15, 2005 | -
Danish soldiers in Iraq and Kosovo were being issued soothing pillows that chirp like birds.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 13, 2005 | - George W. Bush held, via satellite, a public meeting with soldiers in Tikrit, Iraq. The White House denied the event was scripted, though video footage was released showing a Defense Department official coaching the soldiers before the interview, and one of the soldiers was later revealed to be a public-affairs officer.
| Source 1:
The Village Voice
Source 2:
AP
Source 3:
The White House
|
| October 11, 2005 | - A suicide car bomber killed 30 people in Talafar, Iraq; another suicide bomber killed seven people in western Baghdad.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| October 10, 2005 | - It was claimed that President Bush had told a group of Palestinian ministers in 2003 that he acted on divine orders. “God would tell me,” Bush said, “‘George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.’ And I did, and then God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq . . .’ And I did.” The White House described these claims as “absurd.”
| Source 1:
BBC Press Office
Source 2:
New Zealand Herald
|
| October 6, 2005 | - A suicide bomber in Iraq blew himself up on a bus, killing ten people.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| October 5, 2005 | -
Britain accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guard of providing Iraqi Shiite groups with the technology to carry out bombing attacks.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 30, 2005 | - A New York judge ruled that several suppressed photographs of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq must be released.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 29, 2005 | - Sixty-two people died near Baghdad in a concerted triple-bombing attack.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 28, 2005 | - The U.S. Army was looking into claims that its soldiers had traded digital pictures of burned and dismembered Iraqi and Afghani bodies in exchange for online access to amateur porn.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 26, 2005 | -
Cindy Sheehan was arrested.
| Source:
AP
|
| September 25, 2005 | - The Bush Administration raised $600 from U.S. citizens to help rebuild Iraq, where at least 42 people died in the fighting this week.
| Source 1:
The Guardian
Source 2:
The Washington Post
|
| September 25, 2005 | - One hundred thousand people marched in Washington, D.C., to protest the warin Iraq.
| Source:
AP
|
| September 23, 2005 | - Members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division admitted that while in Iraq their battalion regularly tortured prisoners. "Some days," said a sergeant, "we would just get bored, so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib, but just like it. We did it for amusement." Another sergeant said that he had seen a soldier beat detainees with an open chemical light. "That made them glow in the dark, which was real funny," he said, "but it burned their eyes, and their skin was irritated real bad."
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| September 19, 2005 | - At least 167 Baghdad residents were killed in 14 separate bombings, with 570 wounded. The next day 40 people were killed with car bombs and guns. Twenty-one more were killed the next day, 52 more the day after that, and 7 the day after that. At least 30 more people were killed the following day.
| Source:
The Independent
|
| September 19, 2005 | - It was reported that $1 billion had been stolen from Iraq's defense ministry, and $500 to $600 million had been stolen from the electricity, transport, interior, and other ministries.
| Source:
The Independent
|
| September 14, 2005 | -
Senator Robert Byrd called on the Bush Administration to withdraw from Iraq. "We cannot continue to commit billions in Iraq," he said, "when our own people are so much in need."
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| September 8, 2005 | - A car bomb in Iraq killed 16 people.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 1, 2005 | - In Iraq nearly 1,000 Shiite pilgrims were killed during a march across the Al-Aaimmah bridge when rumors of a suicide bomber in the crowd caused a stampede. Most of the victims were women and children who died from trampling or, after they fell or jumped into the Tigris River, from drowning.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| August 31, 2005 | -
President Bush declared that U.S. troops needed to stay in Iraq to keep the country’s oil out of the hands of terrorists.
| Source:
The White House
|
| August 30, 2005 | - Federal prosecutors accused eight officials from KPMG and a lawyer of conspiracy for helping wealthy people evade at least $2.5 billion in taxes, and a man named Glenn Allen Powell pleaded guilty to taking as much as $1.25 million in kickbacks in Iraq while working for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root.
| Source 1:
The Washington Post
Source 2:
The Washington Post
|
| August 29, 2005 | - A draft of the Iraqi constitution was completed, with a referendum scheduled for October. Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa called the charter "a recipe for chaos."
| Source:
BBC News
|
| August 25, 2005 | - Police in the Iraqi town of Kut found 36 handcuffed bodies in a shallow river.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| August 24, 2005 | - Gunfighting in Baghdad killed at least 17 people.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| August 23, 2005 | - President George W. Bush defended his policy in Iraq against the criticism of anti-war protesters like Cindy Sheehan. "Democracy is unfolding," he said. "We cannot tolerate the status quo." Bush, whose 36 percent approval rating is lower than Richard Nixon's during Watergate, spoke in praise of the war while visiting Donnelly, Idaho, which has a population of 130, as 200 anti-war protesters rallied outside. Bush also promoted his plan for a prescription drug benefit for Medicare while visiting a golf resort in El Mirage, Arizona.
| Source 1:
Democracy Now!
Source 2:
CNN
Source 3:
The Guardian
|
| August 22, 2005 | - In Iraq ten people were shot dead north of Baghdad, a family of five was killed by gunmen in Samarra, and the U.S. military denied bombing a wedding party in Hit.
| Source 1:
MSNBC
Source 2:
Reuters
Source 3:
Reuters
|
| August 20, 2005 | - Peter Schoomaker, the Army's top general, revealed that the United States was developing a plan to keep at least 100,000 soldiers in Iraq through 2009. Senator Chuck Hagel (R., Nebr.) called the plan "complete folly." "It would further destabilize the Middle East," he said. "It would give Iran more influence, it would hurt Israel, it would put our allies over there in Saudi Arabia and Jordan in a terrible position."
| Source 1:
AP
Source 2:
AP
|
| August 14, 2005 | - President George W. Bush had yet to meet Iraq war protester Cindy Sheehan, even though Bush is on vacation and presumably has the time. "I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say," said Bush, "but I think it's also important for me to get on with my life."
| Source:
The Birmingham News
|
| August 9, 2005 | - A suicide car bombing in Baghdad killed 4 people.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| August 9, 2005 | - The mayor of Baghdad was ousted by Shiite militants.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| August 8, 2005 | - At least sixty-one people were killed in Iraq, including fourteen Marines killed in a roadside bombing, many members of the Iraqi army, and journalist Steven Vincent. Condoleezza Rice said that the Iraqi insurgency was "losing steam."
| Source 1:
Iraq Coalition Casualty Count
Source 2:
BBC News
Source 3:
In the Red Zone
|
| August 5, 2005 | - In Baghdad, U.S. troops were being killed or maimed by a sniper they had nicknamed “Juba.”
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| July 31, 2005 | - American forces killed eleven Iraqi militants near Iraq's border with Syria.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 30, 2005 | - A bomb killed two Britons in Basra.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 29, 2005 | - A suicide bomber killed twenty-five Iraqi army recruits northwest of Mosul.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 28, 2005 | -
Iraq's Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari called for the prompt withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country; General George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said that troop withdrawal could begin by spring 2006 “if the political process continues to go positively.”
| Source:
Democracy Now
|
| July 27, 2005 | - Many Iraqis were hoping to be selected for a new reality television show, called "Labor and Materials," in which a construction crew shows up unannounced and rebuilds a family's bombed-out home. Three thousand people have applied in Baghdad alone.
| Source:
Christian Science Monitor
|
| July 27, 2005 | - A suicide bombing at a Baghdad hospital killed at least five people.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 24, 2005 | - In Baghdad, a suicide truck bomb killed twenty-five more people.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 23, 2005 | - The Pentagon was stalling to avoid the release of more photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib prison. The videos are said to show young boys shrieking as they are anally
raped.
| Source:
Editor & Publisher
|
| July 19, 2005 | - Members of the British government said that the bombings on the London tube were not related to the war in Iraq, but only 28 percent of British people agreed.
| Source:
Common Dreams
|
| July 19, 2005 | - A study found that 24,865 civilians have been killed in Iraq during the last two years.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 18, 2005 | -
Suicide bombers killed at least 170 Iraqis, including twenty-six children who were waiting for American soldiers to give them candy.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 16, 2005 | - Eleven U.S. soldiers were charged with beating Iraqis.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 11, 2005 | -
Terrorists set off bombs on three trains and a bus in London, killing fifty-two people, despite the fact that in 2003 Dick Cheney said that “our military is confronting the terrorists, along with our allies, in Iraq and Afghanistan so that innocent civilians will not have to confront terrorist violence in Washington or London or anywhere else in the world.”
| Source 1:
The Scotsman
Source 2:
The White House
|
| July 11, 2005 | - In Iraq, a suicide bombing killed twenty-one people, eight members of the same Shiite family were shot and killed, and suicide car bombs killed seven people near the Syrian border.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 11, 2005 | - Iraqi police detained twelve suspected militants inside a metal box under the Iraqi sun; nine died from the heat, and one of the survivors complained that he had been given electric shocks by the police.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 9, 2005 | -
Silvio Berlusconi announced that Italy would start pulling its troops out of Iraq in September.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| July 8, 2005 | -
British MP George Galloway said that “London has reaped the involvement of Mr. Blair's involvement in Iraq.”
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| June 29, 2005 | -
President George W. Bush gave a nationally televised speech about the war in Iraq to an audience of soldiers. Bush, who served in the Air National Guard, said there was “no higher calling” than military service and mentioned the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks five times. After the speech, there was some question as to whether the soldiers had clapped enough.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 28, 2005 | - A fourth American soldier in Iraq converted to Islam.
| Source:
Watching America
|
| June 27, 2005 | - A suicide melon truck exploded in Mosul, killing six people and damaging many melons.
| Source:
The Australian
|
| June 27, 2005 | - Bombs went off in Baghdad and Kirkuk, gunmen killed three people in a Baghdad barbershop, then blew it up,
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 27, 2005 | - The United States was negotiating with Iraqi militants, including members of the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, which is responsible for the attack on a U.S. dining hall last Christmas that killed twenty-two people.
| Source:
Times of India
|
| June 27, 2005 | - “The reality,” said Senator Chuck Hagel (R., Nebraska), “is that we are losing in Iraq.”
| Source:
U.S. News and World Report
|
| June 25, 2005 | - The United States admitted to the United Nations that U.S. prisoners have been tortured in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at Guantánamo Bay.
| Source:
The Independent
|
| June 23, 2005 | -
Canada appointed an ambassador to Iraq.
| Source:
The Ottawa Sun
|
| June 20, 2005 | - “I think about Iraq,” said President George W. Bush.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 20, 2005 | - Nearly one hundred people died in suicide bombings in Iraq.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| June 15, 2005 | -
Donald Rumsfeld admitted that, statistically, things were just as bad in Iraq as they were at the time Saddam Hussein was deposed. However, he said, “a lot of bad things that could have happened have not happened.”
| Source:
BBC News
|
| June 12, 2005 | - Twenty-eight bodies were found dumped on the street or in shallow graves in Baghdad. Four U.S. soldiers died in Iraq, bringing the total U.S. casualties since the war began past 1,700.
| Source:
AP
|
| June 2, 2005 | -
Donald Rumsfeld said that he did not know how foreign suicide bombers were getting into Iraq.
| Source:
New York Daily News
|
| May 31, 2005 | -
Ralph Nader called for the impeachment of George W. Bush based on reports of the Bush Administration “fixing” the intelligence over Iraq. John Kerry wondered why the intelligence-fixing, which came to light in a leaked British memo, has received so little attention in the United States. “Is there a way for this to break through,” he asked, “ever?”
| Source 1:
Boston.com
Source 2:
Al Jazeera
|
| May 29, 2005 | - Forty thousand Iraqi troops and ten thousand United States soldiers launched Operation Lightning, which is intended to seal roads in and out of Baghdad.
| Source:
Radio Free Europe
|
| May 27, 2005 | - Two soldiers died when an Army helicopter was shot down northeast of Baghdad.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 24, 2005 | - In Iraq, bombs killed dozens of civilians and soldiers.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 24, 2005 | -
Iraqi militants bragged of eating wild raw cats with their bare hands.
| Source:
News.telegraph
|
| May 23, 2005 | - In Iraq sixteen people were killed when a car bomb exploded outside of a restaurant; at least twelve people were killed in other attacks.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 23, 2005 | -
Iraq's unemployed were selling their organs at cut rates.
| Source:
News.telegraph
|
| May 18, 2005 | -
British MP George Galloway went to Washington, D.C., to respond to allegations that he profited from the U.N.-managed Iraq oil-for-food program. “I met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him,” said Galloway. “The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns, and to give him maps the better to target those guns.”
| Source:
Guardian
|
| May 15, 2005 | -
Condoleezza Rice visited Iraq, where things are not getting better. “Iraq is emerging from a long national nightmare of tyranny,” she said.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 8, 2005 | - Ave Maria University, a Catholic college founded by the retired CEO of Domino's Pizza, graduated its first class and gave an honorary degree to L. Paul Bremer, who told the assembled graduates that Muslim extremists were against the separation of church and state.
| Source:
Netscape News
|
| May 3, 2005 | - In Iraq, two F/A-18 Hornet jets collided in mid-air.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| May 2, 2005 | - In Iraq at least one hundred Iraqis and eleven U.S. troops were killed in a span of four days. More than twenty car bombs were detonated, and in one case, a suicide bomber drove a car bomb into a Kurdish funeral tent, killing at least twenty-five people.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| May 1, 2005 | - A secret British memo from July 2002, summarizing a meeting between Tony Blair and his security advisors, was made public. The memo implied that President Bush had already made up his mind to go to war in Iraq, despite his claims to the contrary, and that intelligence and facts about Iraq would be “fixed around the policy.”
| Source:
Common Dreams
|
| May 1, 2005 | - Arab newspapers reported that Donald Rumsfeld had a secret visit with Saddam Hussein and offered to free him if Hussein called for a ceasefire in Iraq. Hussein apparently refused.
| Source:
Al Jazeera
|
| May 1, 2005 | - The National Assembly of Iraq approved its first democratically elected, Shiite-dominated government.
| Source:
CBC.ca
|
| May 1, 2005 | -
Syria announced that it would renew diplomatic relations with Iraq.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 30, 2005 | - The bodies of around 1,500 Kurds, identified by their distinctive clothing, were found in a mass grave near the Iraqi town of Samawa.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 30, 2005 | -
Lynndie England's lawyer said that England would plead guilty to charges against her in the Abu Ghraib case.
| Source:
ABC News Online
|
| April 29, 2005 | - Doctors in Belgium treated a fifteen-year-old Iraqi girl for leg wounds caused by a cluster bomb, then sent the bill to the U.S. embassy.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| April 23, 2005 | - Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez and his top three aides were cleared of all wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib case.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 21, 2005 | - In Iraq, the bodies of fifty Shiite hostages, some mutilated or headless, were pulled from the Tigris river, and the bodies of nineteen Iraqi soldiers were found in a soccer stadium in the city of Haditha. A suicide bomber tried to assassinate Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| April 21, 2005 | -
Iraqi militants shot down a commercial helicopter, killing ten passengers; they then shot the sole survivor, the helicopter's Bulgarian pilot, and distributed a video of the shooting on the Internet.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| April 18, 2005 | - Marla Ruzicka, an activist from California who made it her mission to count the number of civilian casualties in Iraq, was killed in Baghdad by a suicide bomber.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| April 18, 2005 | - The Iraqi army intervened to end a widely publicized hostage crisis in al-Madain, south of Baghdad, but found no hostages.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| April 14, 2005 | - Two suicide car bombs blew up in central Baghdad, killing fifteen and injuring thirty.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 13, 2005 | - A bomb in Kirkuk killed twelve Iraqi guards.
| Source:
Al Jazeera
|
| April 13, 2005 | - An American contractor was kidnapped north of Baghdad.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 11, 2005 | - Senior American defense officials noted several positive developments in Iraq: only thirty-six American soldiers, they said, died there this March; attacks on allied forces were down to thirty or forty a day; and by early 2006, only 105,000 American soldiers may be needed in the country.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 9, 2005 | - Tens of thousands of Iraqis held a nonviolent march in Baghdad to protest the American occupation.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| April 6, 2005 | -
Iraq's parliament elected Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, as president; his Presidency Council then named Ibrahim Jaffari, a Shiite, as prime minister.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 4, 2005 | -
Britain announced that it will pull 5,500 troops from Iraq and increase its presence in Afghanistan, to help with the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| April 3, 2005 | - Militants in Iraq attacked the Abu Ghraib prison, wounding forty-four American soldiers and twelve prisoners.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 1, 2005 | - A new report on American intelligence failures concluded that the Bush Administration's evidence of biological weapons in Iraq was almost entirely derived from reports made by an Iraqi defector code-named “Curveball,” who was described by those who knew him as “crazy” and “a congenital liar.”
| Source:
LA Times
|
| March 30, 2005 | - An investigation determined that the rate of malnutrition in Iraqi children under five has nearly doubled since the U.S. invaded.
| Source:
Aljazeera.com
|
| March 28, 2005 | - As many as five thousand Iraqis have been kidnapped in the last eighteen months.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 25, 2005 | - It was reported that when American soldiers in Iraq shot at the car of Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian hostage who had just been released, they shot from behind, without warning, far from any checkpoint, and within the Green Zone.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| March 24, 2005 | - The Pentagon refused to let a soldier's mother photograph her dead son's casket as it returned from Iraq.
| Source:
The Barre Montpelier Times Argus
|
| March 24, 2005 | - Other Iraqi officials placed the toll at forty.
| Source:
News.telegraph
|
| March 24, 2005 | - There are two thousand attacks by insurgents every month in Iraq.
| Source:
News.telegraph
|
| March 23, 2005 | - The Iraqi military announced that a seventeen-hour operation against an Iraqi insurgent training camp had resulted in eighty-five deaths.
| Source:
EITB
|
| March 21, 2005 | - Southeast of Baghdad, U.S. troops killed twenty-six Iraqi militants.
| Source:
Christian Science Monitor
|
| March 20, 2005 | - Americans celebrated the second birthday of the war in Iraq.
| |
| March 17, 2005 | -
Iraqi
barbers were being killed because they gave Western-style haircuts and cut off beards.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 16, 2005 | - As soldiers in Apache helicopters and Humvees kept watch, the National Assembly of Iraq held its first meeting. Two hundred and seventy-five members met at a convention center on the Tigris River while explosions rattled the convention center's windows. North of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed three members of the Iraqi National Guard and wounded eleven.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 16, 2005 | - The Pentagon admitted that many of the prisoners who have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 were victims of criminal homicide.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 15, 2005 | - Italy announced that it would start withdrawing its troops from Iraq in September.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 11, 2005 | - It was revealed that the United States had held children as young as eleven years old at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 11, 2005 | - A study showed that the Pentagon was not to blame for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 10, 2005 | - Thirty-nine dead bodies were found west and south of Baghdad; some had been beheaded, and others had been handcuffed before they were shot. Many were members of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's specially trained rapid-response team.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| March 10, 2005 | - A suicide bomber killed forty-seven at a Shiite funeral in Mosul.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| March 10, 2005 | - “We are all waiting for death,” said an Iraqi soldier, “like the moon waiting for sunset.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| March 9, 2005 | - In Iraq, the director of the al-Furat hospital in Baghdad was shot dead. A roadside bomb went off in Basra, killing a policeman, and two Sudanese drivers who work with U.S. forces were taken hostage.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 9, 2005 | - In Iraq, a gunman opened fire on a minibus filled with people working for a Kuwaiti company, killing one and wounding three, and a garbage-truck suicide bomb killed three people and injured more than twenty.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 7, 2005 | -
Iraqi insurgents killed seventeen people.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 6, 2005 | - Two community colleges in California halted their student-exchange program with Spain after Spain pulled out of the Iraq war.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| March 4, 2005 | -
Italy paid the ransom for a journalist kidnapped in Iraq; U.S. forces then fired on the journalist's escape car, killing an Italian military intelligence agent and wounding the journalist.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 3, 2005 | -
Representative Jim Gibbons of Nevada called for liberals to be used as human shields in Iraq; he later apologized for plagiarizing his remarks.
| Source:
Reno Gazette-Journal
|
| March 2, 2005 | - Four Iraqis and four Afghans sued Donald Rumsfeld for torture.
| Source:
Chicago Tribune
|
| February 28, 2005 | - A suicide bomber in Iraq killed over one hundred people as they stood waiting to join the Iraqi National Guard.
| Source:
New York Timesimes
|
| February 28, 2005 | - In the U.K., Bournemouth University announced that it has developed two artificial mass graves, each containing about thirty fake skeletons, to be used to train Iraqi
war-crimes investigators.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| February 26, 2005 | - Four American soldiers and thirteen Iraqis were killed in Iraq.
| Source:
Khaleej Times
|
| February 25, 2005 | - Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed out that insurgencies tend to last from seven to twelve years.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 21, 2005 | - Eight suicide bombings killed ninety-one people in Iraq, and United States Marines and Iraqi security forces were fighting insurgents in Ramadi, seventy-five miles west of Baghdad.
| Source 1:
The Age
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| February 20, 2005 | -
American forces opened negotiations with Iraqi insurgents.
| Source:
Time
|
| February 17, 2005 | - President George W. Bush nominated John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the first director of national intelligence. Negroponte was ambassador to the U.N. from 2001-2004 and ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985; he is alleged to have turned a blind eye to human rights abuses in Honduras and to have helped the Nicaraguan Contras find funds. Negroponte will oversee fifteen separate intelligence agencies and will deliver the daily intelligence briefing to the president.
| Source 1:
Reuters
Source 2:
Talahassee Democrat
|
| February 16, 2005 | - An Episcopal priest who fought in Vietnam, distraught over the war in Iraq, killed himself in Wenatchee, Washington.
| Source:
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
|
| February 14, 2005 | -
Iraq's
election results were announced. Several parties gained seats in the newly created Iraqi parliament, including the United Iraqi Alliance, the Kurdistan Alliance, the Iraqi List, “Iraqis,” the Turkmen Iraqi Front, National Independent Elites and Cadres Party, the Communist Party, the Islamic Kurdish Society, the Islamic Labor Movement in Iraq, the National Democratic Alliance, National Rafidain List, and the Reconciliation and Liberation Entity.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| February 11, 2005 | -
Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq.
| Source:
News24
|
| February 2, 2005 | - Shiites claimed victory in the Iraqi election.
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| February 1, 2005 | -
Iraq's president called the notion of a U.S. troop withdrawal "complete nonsense."
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| January 31, 2005 | - Approximately eight million people turned out to vote in Iraq. International monitors gave the election their seal of approval, though all 129 of them stayed inside Baghdad's Green Zone.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 28, 2005 | -
Security measures included sealing the country's borders, banning travel between provinces, prohibiting private vehicle traffic, and imposing curfews in cities.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 26, 2005 | - The Bush Administration requested an additional $80 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year,
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 24, 2005 | - The interim government announced that to minimize insurgent attacks, curfews would be extended, traffic restricted, national borders sealed for three days, and the locations of polling stations would be kept secret until the night before the vote.
| Source:
BBC
|
| January 23, 2005 | - and a video showed two Iraqis being beheaded for delivering food and supplies to an American base in Ramadi.
| Source:
CNN
|
| January 21, 2005 | -
George W. Bush was sworn in again as president, and threatened to bring "the untamed fire of freedom" to the world. In his 20-minute speech the president used the words "free," "freedom," and "liberty" 49 times, but never said "war" or "Iraq."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| January 20, 2005 | - Three British soldiers were court-martialed for mistreating
Iraqis who were detained for stealing food and powdered milk, and photos emerged showing naked prisoners forced to feign sex acts and soldiers simulating beatings; one captive was wrapped in netting and suspended from a forklift, and one was forced to lie on the street as a soldier stood on him, pretending to surf. The images were discovered by a British photo lab technician after a soldier dropped off the film for processing.
| Source:
CNN
|
| January 18, 2005 | - Car bombers, suicide attackers, and kidnappers in Iraq were exceptionally busy, killing dozens to protest the country's impending election,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 17, 2005 | -
Iraqi polling places were bombed.
| Source:
New York Timesimes
|
| January 17, 2005 | - In Mosul, a Syrian archbishop was kidnapped.
| Source:
New York Timesimes
|
| January 17, 2005 | - The Army was planning to deploy knee-high robots equipped with machine guns to fight Iraqi insurgents.
| Source:
Modesto Bee
|
| January 11, 2005 | - Ukraine pulled its troops out of Iraq.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| January 11, 2005 | - A soldier who sued the Army for requiring him to return to Iraq was sent back to serve another tour of duty.
| Source:
Army Times
|
| January 10, 2005 | - More reports surfaced detailing torture in Iraq, this time with Navy SEALs and the CIA as the instigators.
| Source:
Sacramento Bee
|
| January 7, 2005 | -
President Bush called the upcoming Iraqi elections "hard."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 6, 2005 | - Nearly 25 percent of Iraq will not be secure for the election, according to one U.S. military commander, who still insisted the poll date should not be changed. "I think there is a greater chance of civil war with a delay than without one," he said.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 4, 2005 | -
Iraqi Security Force General Mohamed Shahwani said the insurgents outnumber the U.S. military,
| Source:
The Telegraph
|
| January 4, 2005 | - and the second assassination attempt on the governor of Baghdad succeeded.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 30, 2004 | - President George W. Bush stayed on vacation down at the ranch in Crawford, Texas, and complained about the U.S. being called stingy. He then doubled his initial aid offer to $35 million. Senator Patrick Leahy noted that "we spend $35 million before breakfast in Iraq."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 28, 2004 | -
Osama bin Laden named the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as Al Qaeda's "emir," or prince, in Iraq, and the largest Sunni party in the country withdrew from the election.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 24, 2004 | -
Donald Rumsfeld made a surprise trip to Mosul on Christmas Eve.
| Source:
New York Timesimes
|
| December 24, 2004 | - A third poll showed that three-quarters of Iraqis intend to vote in upcoming elections; 41 percent incorrectly believe that they are voting for an Iraqi president.
| Source:
Omaha.com
|
| December 23, 2004 | - A study found that the number of starving
Iraqi children has nearly doubled in the last 21 months.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| December 22, 2004 | - South of Baghdad, an explosives-rigged gas tanker blew up, killing at least eight.
| Source:
AP
|
| December 21, 2004 | - A suicide bomber set off a bomb at a mess tent on a U.S. base in Mosul, killing 22 and wounding 69. Among the dead were 13 American soldiers and four employees and subcontractors of Halliburton. A spokeswoman for Halliburton called for a full investigation into the attack. South of Kirkuk, insurgents set an oil well on fire.
| Source:
AP
|
| December 21, 2004 | - A poll showed that 56 percent of Americans believe the Iraq war is “not worth fighting.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| December 20, 2004 | - The ACLU circulated memos, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that suggest President George W. Bush directly authorized torture against detainees in Iraq.
| Source:
ACLU
|
| December 19, 2004 | - The Iraqi Special Tribune opened hearings into the crimes of prominent former Baath government officials, most notably Hassan Al-Majeed, aka "Chemical Ali." Evidence against him included a tape on which he boasted that if any Kurd defied him, he would "blow him away, cut him open like a cucumber," and bury him with a bulldozer.
| Source:
The Telegraph
|
| December 19, 2004 | - and car bombs killed more than 60 people in Najaf and Karbala.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 18, 2004 | - and the United States forgave $4.1 billion in Iraqi debt.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| December 16, 2004 | - and Osama bin Laden urged Muslims to attack oil facilities in Iraq and the Persian Gulf.
| Source:
TurkishPress.com
|
| December 15, 2004 | - The election season began in Iraq with 73 parties participating,
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 15, 2004 | - The United Nations reported that there had been widespread smuggling of oil out of Iraq under the Coalition Provisional Authority,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 12, 2004 | - It was revealed that the Bush Administration has been tapping the phone of Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency who questioned U.S. intelligence on Iraq, in an effort to find a reason to block his reappointment next summer.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| December 6, 2004 | - Representatives from forty Iraqi political parties called for the January 30 elections to be delayed.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 5, 2004 | - In attacks this weekend in and around Baghdad, Mosul, and Tikrit, insurgents killed more than eighty Iraqis, mostly security officers and those working with American authorities
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 4, 2004 | - More photos documenting the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq were acquired by American news sources. The pictures, many taken in the aftermath of raids, show Navy Seals abusing hooded and handcuffed men by sitting on them, holding guns to their heads, and stepping on their chests. A woman whose husband had served in Iraq had posted the pictures on a photo-sharing website, and an AP reporter found them through a Google search.
| Source:
AP
|
| December 3, 2004 | -
President Bush selected former bodyguard, undercover cop, corrections officer, and New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik to replace Ridge; Kerik has made millions of dollars in partnership with Rudolph Giuliani in a post-9/11 security consulting firm and recently has been in Iraq training its police officers.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 2, 2004 | - The U.S. ordered more than 10,000 troops to extend their tours, raising the number of soldiers in Iraq to its highest levels since last year's invasion. "It's mainly to provide security for the election," a military spokesman said.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 30, 2004 | - One hundred thirty-five American soldiers died in Iraq in November, tying last April as the deadliest month for U.S. forces during the war.
| Source:
CNN
|
| November 26, 2004 | - The Bush Administration reversed itself and declared that non-Iraqis captured fighting in Iraq are not protected by the Geneva Conventions; such prisoners, it was reported, have already been transferred out of Iraq in recent months and could be taken to Egypt or Saudi Arabia where torture is more common than it is in the United States.
| Source:
Scotsman
|
| November 21, 2004 | - Senator John McCain called for up to 50,000 more troops in Iraq.
| Source:
AFP
|
| November 20, 2004 | - There was fighting in Baghdad, Addhamiya, and Mosul, where nine Iraqi soldiers were executed.
| Source 1:
Reuters
Source 2:
Fox News
|
| November 17, 2004 | - A U.S. Marine was caught on videotape as he shot and killed a wounded, apparently unarmed man in a Falluja mosque.
| Source:
AP
|
| November 13, 2004 | - Troops were diverted from Falluja to quell uprisings in Mosul.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| November 13, 2004 | - There were at least five explosions in Central Baghdad.
| Source:
Al Jazeera
|
| November 8, 2004 | - In Iraq, the United States took control of Falluja. Thirty-eight U.S. troops, six Iraqi soldiers, and 1,200 insurgents were killed in Operation al-Fajr (the Dawn), previously known as Operation Phantom Fury.
| Source:
Global Security
|
| November 8, 2004 | - The United States invaded Falluja for the second time in six months and conquered the city's general hospital. Patients and doctors were tied up and an Iraqi soldier shot himself in the leg.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 8, 2004 | - Insurgents disguised as policemen murdered a dozen Iraqi national guardsmen who were traveling to Najaf.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 7, 2004 | - Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of Iraq declared martial law after twenty-two policemen were killed in one day; moments later a car bomb blew up in Baghdad near the home of the finance minister. A British contractor was killed in Basra, attacks on American soldiers continued, and three Iraqi translators were found dead in Tikrit.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 7, 2004 | - Four car bombs blew up in Samarra and three police stations were attacked nearby, a roadside bomb went off in Kufa, and a police car was bombed in Ramadi.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 28, 2004 | - U.S. forces were preparing for another large military assault on Falluja, and nearby Ramadi was said to be "slipping into chaos."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 26, 2004 | - A newly released document revealed that F.B.I. agents witnessed Iraqi prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib but failed to report it because they saw nothing unusual about the abuse. One agent said that what he saw at Abu Ghraib was similar to what goes on in prisons in the United States.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 25, 2004 | - The chief contracting officer for the Army Corps of Engineers called for an investigation of how Halliburton was awarded large government contracts for work in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 24, 2004 | - The interim Iraqi government officially notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that 380 tons of extremely powerful HMX and RDX explosives that American forces simply failed to secure have disappeared from a former military facility called Al Qaqaa. The explosives can be used to destroy buildings, arm missile warheads, and detonate nuclear devices, and it was generally conceded that the Al Qaqaa cache, which was under seal by the IAEA prior to the U.S. invasion, is the most likely source of the explosives used in the extremely effective roadside and suicide bombs that have been the primary weapon of the Iraqi insurgency. The Department of Defense has known about the loss of the explosives for more than a year.
| Source:
The Nelson Report
|
| October 23, 2004 | - Attacks on Americans in Iraq were up about 30 percent.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 22, 2004 | - Tribal sheiks from Falluja asked the Americans to please stop bombing their city.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 20, 2004 | -
Pat Robertson revealed that God told him the Iraq war would be a disaster and that he tried to warn President Bush, who refused to listen. "I mean, the Lord told me it was going to be (a), a disaster, and (b), messy," Robertson said. "I warned him about casualties."
| Source:
CNN
|
| October 16, 2004 | - Members of an Army Reserve unit in Baghdad refused to deliver a fuel shipment because they said that it was a "suicide mission."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 16, 2004 | - The U.S. was bombing Falluja again.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 16, 2004 | -
Poland said that it will begin reducing its forces in Iraq next year.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 11, 2004 | - President Bush said that the report proved that Iraq was "a gathering threat."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 10, 2004 | - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq and told soldiers that the violence there will probably get worse; while he was in the country two car bombs went off in Baghdad, killing 11 people.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| October 7, 2004 | - The Iraq Survey Group issued its final report and concluded that Saddam Hussein dismantled his nuclear weapons program in 1991 and did not attempt to revive it. The inspectors said that there was no evidence that Iraq continued to possess chemical or biological weapons, and they concluded that Hussein refused to admit he had disarmed because he wanted to maintain a deterrent against Iran.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 6, 2004 | -
Iraqi politician was indicted for suggesting that the country open negotiations with Israel.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 5, 2004 | -
L. Paul Bremer, President Bush's former proconsul in Iraq, told an audience of insurance agents that "we never had enough troops on the ground" and that "the single most important change — the one thing that would have improved the situation — would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout." Bremer said that he had argued for more troops but that his requests were denied. The Bush Administration first denied that Bremer asked for more troops and then admitted that, yes, in fact, he did.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| October 4, 2004 | -
Condoleezza Rice was still trying to use the discredited story of Iraq's
aluminum tubes to justify the invasion of Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 3, 2004 | - Senator John Kerry defeated President George W. Bush in their first debate. Bush was criticized by experts for giving simplistic answers, smirking, slouching, and repeating himself. He said eleven times that his job is "hard work," and referring to Missy Johnson, whose husband was killed in Iraq, the president said that "it's hard work to try to love her as best I can."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 30, 2004 | - In Baghdad, suicide bombs killed dozens of children who were gathering to receive candy from U.S. soldiers.
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 30, 2004 | -
Iraqi
schoolchildren were still waiting to start school, which has remained closed because of the ongoing civil war.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 27, 2004 | - The United States military was planning a large new offensive in Iraq to prepare for the scheduled January elections.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| September 26, 2004 | -
Colin Powell said that the Iraqi insurgency is "getting worse," and U.S. forces arrested a high-ranking officer in the Iraqi National Guard, one week after he was appointed commander of the Diyala province, because he supposedly has ties to insurgents.
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 24, 2004 | -
Halliburton was thinking about selling its KBR subsidiary, which handles the company's contracts in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 23, 2004 | - President Bush said that John Kerry's criticisms of his policies in Iraq are hurting the war effort.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| September 19, 2004 | - The Pentagon announced that it will issue microwave pain guns to its forces in Iraq.
| Source:
Daily Telegraph
|
| September 19, 2004 | -
Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi broke his hand.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 19, 2004 | - The president said that the country is on a path to a democratic future. Some Republicans were worried about the contradiction between the president's optimistic comments and what is actually happening on the ground. Senator Chuck Hagel observed that "we are in deep trouble in Iraq."
| Source:
Voice of America
|
| September 18, 2004 | -
Chaos continued to rule Iraq; there were many attacks by insurgents, including several large suicide bombings, hostages were beheaded, and many civilians, including women and children, were killed in American airstrikes.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 17, 2004 | - American weapons inspectors in Iraq once again concluded that Saddam Hussein would have liked to have developed unconventional weapons but did not in fact have such programs.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 3, 2004 | -
Iraqi insurgents blew up another oil pipeline.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| September 2, 2004 | -
Colin Powell admitted that the Bush Administration misjudged the potential for armed resistance in Iraq.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 31, 2004 | - Twelve Nepalese hostages were apparently videotaped as they were killed by Iraqi militants.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 29, 2004 | - Hundreds of thousands of people marched in New York City to denounce George W. Bush and his policies, particularly the war in Iraq.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 28, 2004 | - Moktada al-Sadr's militia surrendered the shrine of Imam Ali, U.S. tanks withdrew, and Iraqi ambulances began to recover the decaying bodies of casualties.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 27, 2004 | -
Iraqi saboteurs attacked two oil pipelines.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 26, 2004 | - Two government reports, one civilian and one military, were issued on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. The Army reported that military intelligence officers and civilian contractors were deeply involved in the abuse; the civilian report went to great lengths to avoid the logical conclusion that the Bush White House had created the conditions (legal, operational, and military) that directly led to the Abu Ghraib horrors. Both reports found that many of the techniques employed at Abu Ghraib originated in CIA torture chambers in Afghanistan.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 19, 2004 | - Moktada al-Sadr refused to disarm the Mahdi Army,
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 18, 2004 | - President Bush was concerned about the "Soviet dinar," and
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| August 15, 2004 | - Peace talks between the new Iraqi government and Moktada al-Sadr broke down;
| Source:
Times of Oman
|
| August 13, 2004 | - A British journalist was kidnapped in Basra and released a few days later; an Islamic website posted photographs of the beheading of an Egyptian.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 9, 2004 | - Moktada al-Sadr defied the new Iraqi government and said he would continue to battle American forces: "the Mahdi Army and I will keep resisting. I will stay in holy Najaf and will never leave. I will stay here until my last drop of blood."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 8, 2004 | -
Iraq's new government reinstated capital punishment and issued an arrest warrant for Ahmad Chalabi on counterfeiting charges; Salem Chalabi, Ahmad's nephew and the head of the special tribunal that will try Saddam Hussein for war crimes, was accused of murder.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 7, 2004 | - It was the 40th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave President Lyndon Johnson the authority to escalate the war in Vietnam; historians noted its similarity to the October 2002 congressional resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq, which was also based on falsehoods.
| Source:
Newsday
|
| August 7, 2004 | - Prime Minister Iyad Allawi signed an amnesty law for Iraqis who have committed minor crimes since the American occupation began, and he ordered the closure of the Baghdad office of Al-Jazeera for one month.
| Source:
CTV.ca
|
| August 7, 2004 | - there were at least 12 explosions in Baghdad on Saturday night.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 2, 2004 | -
John Kerry promised to significantly reduce the number of American troops in Iraq by the end of his first term as president.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 2, 2004 | -
Iraqi gunmen executed a Turkish truck driver.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| August 1, 2004 | - Five Christian churches in Baghdad were targeted by suicide car bombers, and
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 28, 2004 | - A Jordanian company said that it would pull out of Iraq after a militant faction called the Group of Death kidnapped two of its employees.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 22, 2004 | -
Iraqi militants continued to abduct foreign workers and threatened to cut off their heads unless their employers leave Iraq. "We have warned all the countries, companies, businessmen, and truck drivers," said one statement given to reporters, "that those who deal with American cowboy occupiers will be targeted by the fires of the mujahedeen."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 22, 2004 | - The Government Accountability Office said that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are running $12.3 billion over budget this year.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 17, 2004 | - Iraq's justice minister narrowly escaped when a suicide car bomber attacked a convoy in Baghdad.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 14, 2004 | -
Iraqi militants killed the governor of Mosul in an ambush, and
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 10, 2004 | - The Senate Intelligence Committee released a scathing report on the CIA's unfounded, unjustified, and unreasonable claims about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction; the report was oddly silent, however, about the Bush Administration's well-documented and apparently successful campaign to intimidate the CIA into coming up with justifications for the President's fraudulent case for the invasion.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 7, 2004 | -
Iyad Allawi, the prime minister of Iraq's new puppet government, signed a law giving him the power to declare martial law and ban seditious groups. Allawi hinted recently that national elections, which are scheduled for January 2005, might be delayed.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 7, 2004 | - Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain admitted that weapons of mass destruction might never be found in Iraq but continued to maintain that "we know" Saddam had such weapons: "I do not believe there was not a threat in relation to weapons of mass destruction."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 4, 2004 | - Outgoing proconsul L. Paul Bremer warned that Iraq's path to democracy would be messy, and noted, "It wasn't very pretty around here either between 1776 and 1787."
| Source:
Salon
|
| July 2, 2004 | - Court proceedings began at "Camp Victory," the American base near Baghdad, against Saddam Hussein, who identified himself as the current president of Iraq, and eleven members of his administration. "You know that this is all a theater by Bush, to help him win his election," Hussein observed. He was read criminal charges covering thirty years, including the 1988 gassing of Kurds in Halabja, which he recalled hearing about "on the radio." The U.S. said that Hussein had not provided any useful information while in custody, though he explained that he had his army invade Kuwait in 1990 to keep them busy.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 29, 2004 | - In a furtive ceremony held two days ahead of schedule in order to pre-empt violence, the United States transferred "sovereignty" to Iraq. About 140,000 American troops remained in the country, with no mechanism in place between the two countries to govern the troops, and 150 Americans stayed on in Iraqi ministries as advisers.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 27, 2004 | - Three Turks and a Pakistani were kidnapped, and militants threatened to kill a captured U.S. Marine.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 25, 2004 | -
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, apologized for saying the reporters in Iraq were just repeating rumors because they're too afraid to travel.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 25, 2004 | -
Colin Powell said that declaring martial law in Iraq would make things worse.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 25, 2004 | - A poll showed that most Americans now think the invasion of Iraq was a mistake that has made the country more vulnerable to terrorism.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| June 25, 2004 | -
Cheney said he felt much better after he told Senator Patrick Leahy, who has been critical of Halliburton's war profiteering in Iraq, to go fuck himself.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 24, 2004 | - L. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Iraq, in one of his final acts before handing over "sovereignty" to Iraq's new interim government, decreed that American forces will remain immune from prosecution by Iraqi courts for crimes against Iraqi citizens or destruction of property. It was noted that a similar grant of immunity in Iran in the 1960s had unfortunate consequences. "Our honor has been trampled underfoot; the dignity of Iran has been destroyed," said the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1964. He said that the order "reduced the Iranian people to a level lower than that of an American dog."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 24, 2004 | -
Iraqi insurgents killed more than 100 people in one day in attacks all across the country.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 18, 2004 | - At least 35 Iraqis were killed and 145 were wounded in a suicide car bombing at an army recruiting office in Baghdad; elsewhere six people were killed in another bombing.
| Source:
Chicago Tribune
|
| June 17, 2004 | - President Bush said that "life is better" in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 17, 2004 | - The 9/11 commission released two staff reports concluding that there is no credible evidence that Iraq ever entered into an alliance with Al Qaeda; the commission also detailed for the first time the surprising level of confusion and miscommunication among top administration officials on the day of the attacks.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 17, 2004 | - "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," said President Bush at a news conference.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 17, 2004 | - The Senate refused to increase penalties for companies that overcharge for work done in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 16, 2004 | - Oil exports from Iraq's main oil terminal were shut down because of two explosions, at least one of which was caused by a bombing. Officials said that the cost of the shutdown could reach $1 billion.
| Source:
San Jose Mercury News
|
| June 16, 2004 | - The CIA classified most of a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the agency's failures and mistakes leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 15, 2004 | -
Chaos continued to rule Iraq; a suicide bomber killed at least 13 people when he attacked a convoy of civilian contractors in Baghdad, whereupon a mob descended on the wreckage and set it on fire under the watchful eyes of Iraqi policemen; on the same day other bombs killed eight people.
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| June 14, 2004 | - A series of car bombs killed people in several Iraqi cities.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 12, 2004 | - It was reported that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez personally approved the torture of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and that he ordered guards to hide at least one prisoner from the Red Cross.
| Source:
Washington Post, US News
|
| June 12, 2004 | -
Britain's Labour Party suffered huge losses in local elections and came in third behind the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 11, 2004 | - The Shiite militia loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, who reportedly plans to establish a political party, took over a police station in Najaf.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 10, 2004 | - Evidence continued to emerge that high-level officials in the Bush Administration approved the torture of prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere; although
| Source:
The Hill
|
| June 10, 2004 | - Iraqi militants attacked oil pipelines near Kirkuk.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 9, 2004 | - Former CIA officials said that the new prime minister of Iraq, Iyad Allawi, was involved with a CIA-funded terrorist group in Iraq in the early 1990s; the group apparently carried out a bombing campaign, blowing up a movie theater and possibly a school bus.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 9, 2004 | - The United Nations Security Council voted to support the transfer of Iraqi "sovereignty" to the new interim government; the resolution did not make reference to the interim constitution, however; this omission upset the Kurds, whose autonomy is guaranteed in that document, and they threatened to withdraw from the new Iraqi state if necessary.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 6, 2004 | - President George W. Bush traveled to France to attend a ceremony commemorating the D-Day invasion and attempted to play down his dispute with President Jacques Chirac over the invasion of Iraq; Bush told French journalists that he was never angry with the French or with Chirac for his refusal to endorse the war, and he even invited Chirac to visit the ranch down in Crawford, Texas. "If he wants to come and see cows, he's welcome to come out here and see some cows," Bush said, apparently unaware that Chirac, a former agriculture minister, is a cattle expert.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 5, 2004 | - The acting U.N. high commissioner for human rights said that the American abuses of Iraqi prisoners might qualify as war crimes.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 3, 2004 | - The Army decided to extend the service commitment of all soldiers bound for Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 2, 2004 | - Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile who once sat next to Laura Bush at a State of the Union address, was accused of telling an Iranian intelligence agent that the United States had broken Iran's secret communications code.
| Source:
Nelson Report
|
| June 1, 2004 | - The Iraqi Governing Council announced a new interim government that includes Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, and Christians.
| Source:
Guardian, New York Times
|
| May 31, 2004 | - American officials and the Iraqi Governing Council were still fighting over who would be the interim president.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| May 31, 2004 | - An Army Corps of Engineers email revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney's office "coordinated" Halliburton's multi-billion-dollar Iraq contract; Cheney has said that he had nothing to do with the contract, which was awarded without competing bids.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| May 30, 2004 | - One hundred Iraqi policemen who were sent to Najaf reportedly deserted and ran away.
| Source:
CNN
|
| May 29, 2004 | - It was reported that interrogators from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, went to Iraq last fall and trained military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib prison.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 29, 2004 | - Iyad Alawi, a doctor who has long been on the CIA payroll, was chosen to be the new Iraqi prime minister when "limited sovereignty" is handed over to an interim "caretaker" government on June 30.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 29, 2004 | -
Richard Perle, James Woolsey, and other right-wing American allies of Ahmad Chalabi met with Condoleezza Rice to announce their displeasure at what they called the recent smear campaign against the Bush Administration's former favorite Iraqi.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 28, 2004 | - The International Atomic Energy Agency said that looters have carried off whole buildings from Iraqi military and industrial sites,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 26, 2004 | -
The New York Times published an extraordinary editors' note admitting that the newspaper had been manipulated by members of the Bush Administration and by Iraqi exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi into running false stories (especially on the subject of Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction) that advanced the administration's war agenda and had failed to follow up aggressively on many of those stories, and had failed, in those instances when it did follow up, to make prominent note of the fact that the stories were false. The retraction was published on page A10, where many readers would fail to notice it.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 25, 2004 | - President Bush unveiled his new "five-point plan" for Iraq during a speech at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and offered to destroy the Abu Ghraib prison if Iraqis want him to; the president also promised to give Iraq a modern prison system.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 24, 2004 | - General Anthony Zinni, the former commander of all U.S. troops in the Middle East, said that the invasion of Iraq was "the wrong war at the wrong time with the wrong strategy."
| Source:
CBS News
|
| May 22, 2004 | -
American forces attacked what survivors said was a wedding party in Iraq, near the Syrian border, and killed at least 43 people, including 12 women and 14 children; U.S. military officials said they had attacked a safehouse for foreign fighters and that there was no evidence of a wedding; confronted with video footage that strongly supported survivors' claims, an official said: "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."
| Source:
Associated Press, New York Times
|
| May 22, 2004 | - Evidence continued to emerge that the United States has systematically used torture on prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in its secret detention centers around the world.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 22, 2004 | - A former Iraqi prisoner described being sodomized with a nightstick; another said he saw a prison interpreter raping an Iraqi boy as a female soldier took pictures.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 21, 2004 | - U.S. forces raided Ahmad Chalabi's offices in Baghdad, smashed furniture and photographs and carried away documents and computers.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 18, 2004 | -
Iraqi torture victims were beginning to file lawsuits against the U.S. seeking damages.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 17, 2004 | - A suicide bomber killed the president of Iraq's Governing Council.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| May 17, 2004 | - Sarin nerve gas was found in a small partly detonated shell in Baghdad.
| Source:
Bloomberg
|
| May 15, 2004 | - It was reported that the Abu Ghraib torture fiasco was a product of a covert Pentagon operation — a so-called special-access program, authorized by Donald Rumsfeld and run by his undersecretary Stephen Cambone — that applied unconventional interrogation techniques developed for use in Afghanistan to the situation in Iraq.
| Source:
New Yorker
|
| May 15, 2004 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell said that U.S. troops would leave Iraq if an interim government asked them to.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 13, 2004 | - Members of Congress were given a private viewing of unreleased photographs and videos from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq; some showed Pfc. Lynndie England having sex with other soldiers in front of prisoners; other images showed prisoners cowering before attack dogs, Iraqi women being forced to expose their breasts, naked prisoners tied up together, prisoners being forced to masturbate, and a prisoner repeatedly smashing his head against a wall. "It was pretty disgusting, not what you'd expect from Americans," said Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota. "There was lots of sexual stuff — not of the Iraqis, but of our troops."
| Source:
New York Post, New York Times
|
| May 13, 2004 | - One photograph that was shown to U.S. Congressmen showed an Iraqi
sodomizing himself with a banana. "My conclusion is that was probably coerced somehow," said Representative Trent Franks, a Republican from Arizona.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 13, 2004 | -
Rumsfeld, who this week made a surprise visit to Abu Ghraib prison, compared the Iraq war to the American Civil War and said that "the carnage was horrendous, and it was worth it."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 12, 2004 | - An American businessman named Nick Berg was decapitated on video by Iraqi militants.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| May 9, 2004 | - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized for the torture of Iraqi prisoners and said that there are "many more photographs and indeed some videos" of American soldiers engaging in "blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman" behavior; Rumsfeld took "full responsibility" for the abuse but still refused to resign. "It's going to get a good deal more terrible, I'm afraid." Specialist Sabrina Harman, who faces court martial because of her role in the torture, said in an email that she never even saw a copy of the Geneva Conventions until recently. "I read the entire thing," she said, "highlighting everything the prison is in violation of. There's a lot." Harman said her job was to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| May 8, 2004 | - President Bush continued to maintain that the Abu Ghraib torturers were un-American, but human-rights advocates pointed out that similar abuse takes place in U.S. prisons all the time, especially in Texas.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 7, 2004 | - Sheikh Abdul-Sattar al-Bahadli, an aide to Moktada al-Sadr, offered rewards for the capture or killing of British soldiers; he said that female soldiers could be kept as slaves.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| May 6, 2004 | - It was reported that CACI International, the company that employs one of the accused Abu Ghraib torturers, also sells the Bush Administration ethics training tapes.
| Source:
Intelwire
|
| May 5, 2004 | - American soldiers allegedly put a harness on an elderly Iraqi woman and rode her like a donkey.
| Source:
Newsday
|
| May 5, 2004 | -
Sudan, where government-sponsored Arab militias called Janjaweed have been slaughtering black farmers, was elected to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights over the objections of the United States. One Sudanese diplomat scoffed at the U.S. objection and pointed to the American atrocities in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 1, 2004 | - Photographs were published of British troops beating an Iraqi man and urinating on him; the pictures also showed a soldier striking the man in the genitals with a rifle; the victim's jaw was reportedly broken and his teeth were smashed before he was thrown off the back of a moving truck.
| Source:
Daily Mirror
|
| April 30, 2004 | - Six American soldiers, including a general, were facing court martial over the torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison, which was famous for its torture chambers under Saddam Hussein. Photographs of the abuse were broadcast on U.S. television; one image depicted a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his genitals.
| Source:
BBC
|
| April 30, 2004 | - The United States used F-15E and F-16 warplanes, F-14 and F-18 fighter-bombers, AC-130 gunships, and AH-1W Super Cobra helicopters to bomb Fallujah. British Tornados were also used. Some three dozen laser-guided 500-pound bombs were dropped, and at least one building was blown up by accident.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 27, 2004 | -
Iraq's Governing Council unveiled a new national flag that was immediately condemned for its strong resemblance to the flag of Israel, which features the same shade of blue.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| April 26, 2004 | - Fifty former senior British diplomats signed a letter denouncing Tony Blair for following American policies in Iraq and Israel that are "doomed to failure."
| Source:
Financial Times
|
| April 23, 2004 | - The Bush Administration continued to insist that sovereignty will be turned over to an Iraqi government on June 30 but revealed for the first time that the sovereign will be unable to make new laws or command the armed forces.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 23, 2004 | - Pictures of American coffins returning from Iraq finally became public after a website received them via a Freedom of Information Act request.
| Source:
The Memory Hole
|
| April 22, 2004 | - General Electric and Siemens, two large contractors in Iraq, suspended most of their operations in the country.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 22, 2004 | -
Suicide attacks continued; in Basra dozens of people were killed, including more than 20 children who were on their way to school.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 20, 2004 | - Bob Woodward's new book continued to shape the news; it was the source of accusations that the Bush Administration improperly diverted funds to prepare for the conquest of Iraq, and that Saudi Arabia promised President Bush to deliver low fuel prices to help with his reelection.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 18, 2004 | - The new Socialist prime minister of Spain ordered the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| April 17, 2004 | - Bob Woodward reported in a new book that Colin Powell warned President Bush that if he invaded Iraq he would have to face the "you break it, you own it" rule. "You're going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," Powell told the president in the summer of 2002. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all." Powell also let it be known that Dick Cheney was the "powerful, steamrolling force" behind the decision to invade.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 17, 2004 | -
Iraqi militants continued to kidnap foreigners, though some hostages were released.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 17, 2004 | - Al Jazeera broadcast a videotape showing an American soldier who was captured west of Baghdad. "I came to Iraq to liberate it," said Pfc. Keith M. Maupin. "But I didn't want to come here because I wanted to be with my son."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 16, 2004 | - President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela expressed his support for the Iraqi insurgency.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 14, 2004 | -
president defended his decision to conquer Iraq and said that the Iraqis were "deceptive at hiding things. We knew they were hiding things. A country that hides things is a country that is afraid of getting caught. And that was part of our calculation."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 9, 2004 | -
Administration officials insisted that the widespread uprising in Iraq, which appeared to show a new alliance between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, was not in fact a widespread uprising but rather a few isolated pockets of "thugs, gangs, and terrorists."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 7, 2004 | -
Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, held a press conference: "We're trying to explain how things are going, and they are going as they are going," he said. "And this is a moment in Iraq's path toward a democratic and a free system. And it is one moment, and there will be other moments. And there will be good moments and there will be less good moments."
| Source:
Defense Dept. Operational Briefing
|
| April 5, 2004 | - A Shiite militia known as the Mahdi Army rose up across Iraq in response to a call by Moktada al-Sadr, a militant cleric, to "terrorize your enemy." Last week Sadr announced that he is "the beating arm for Hezbollah and Hamas here in Iraq."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 4, 2004 | - President George W. Bush attended a fund-raiser that night and made fun of Senator John Kerry; he did not mention the killings in Fallujah.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 4, 2004 | -
Colin Powell admitted that the Iraqi National Congress, the U.S.-funded Iraqi exile group, was the source of "the most dramatic" bits in his notorious United Nations presentation on Iraq's mythical weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| March 31, 2004 | - Four American mercenaries employed by Blackwater Security Consulting were pulled from their vehicles in Fallujah, Iraq, hacked to death, burned, and dragged through the streets; the remains of two were then hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River along with a sign that said "Fallujah is the cemetery for Americans."
| Source:
BBC
|
| March 31, 2004 | - Attacks on occupation forces were averaging about 26 per day, and Bell Pottinger, the British PR firm, was hired to teach Iraqis about democracy.
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| March 29, 2004 | - Condoleezza Rice did appear publicly on 60 Minutes and confirmed Clarke's claim, originally denied by the White House, that on September 12, 2001, President Bush ordered Clarke to focus on possible Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks, which the CIA had already concluded were carried out by Al Qaeda.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 28, 2004 | - Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was said to be considering a fatwa declaring the new government illegitimate and condemning all Iraqis who take part in it.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 27, 2004 | - Political violence continued in Kosovo, Gaza, Ivory Coast, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan, Taiwan, Afghanistan, Thailand, and Syria; there was unrest in Haiti, where armed gangs continued to terrorize the people; in Congo, where the government put down a coup attempt; and in France, where firefighters battled police during a strike over retirement benefits. The firefighters threw garbage cans, firecrackers, and smoke bombs; the police fired tear gas.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 26, 2004 | - The Army confirmed that the suicide rate has been higher among soldiers stationed in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 25, 2004 | - Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism official who has criticized the Bush Administration for its poor efforts at fighting terrorism and its misguided invasion of Iraq, appeared before the commission investigating September 11 and apologized for the government's and his own failure to prevent the attacks. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice have all refused to testify publicly before the commission.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 23, 2004 | - Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani warned the United Nations not to endorse the interim Iraqi constitution
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 23, 2004 | - Millions of protesters filled streets around the world to mark the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 22, 2004 | - Richard Clarke, the former head of counterterrorism under Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, published a book in which he claims that George W. Bush has done a "terrible job" fighting terrorism. Clarke says that prior to September 11, Bush ignored warnings about the threat from Al Qaeda and that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in the days just after the attacks, wanted to bomb Iraq rather than Afghanistan because Iraq had better bombing targets. Clarke charges that the president made it very clear that he wanted to find a connection between September 11 and Saddam Hussein even though there was no evidence of such a link.
| Source:
CBS News
|
| March 19, 2004 | - The president of Poland acknowledged publicly that the United States "deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. "We were taken for a ride," he said.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| March 18, 2004 | - A car bomb destroyed the Mount Lebanon Hotel in Baghdad, killing at least 27 people.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 15, 2004 | - Seven American soldiers were killed in Iraq over the weekend; officials said that the Iraqi resistance has begun using more sophisticated tactics.
| Source:
Globe and Mail
|
| March 14, 2004 | - A videotape emerged in which Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the March 11 bombings in Madrid. "This is an answer to your cooperation with the Bush criminals and their allies," the tape said. Three days later, Spanish voters, who overwhelmingly opposed their government's support of the Iraq war, turned out the ruling Popular Party in favor of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, which pledged to bring Spanish troops home from Iraq.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| March 12, 2004 | - Criminal investigations of Halliburton for its war profiteering in Iraq were ongoing; the company has acknowledged that mistakes were made.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| March 11, 2004 | - The Pentagon was still paying $340,000 a month to the Iraqi National Congress, the exile group that provided much of the discredited intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 8, 2004 | - The Iraqi Governing Council signed an interim constitution; Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani denounced the new constitution and again called for direct elections.
| Source:
Bloomberg
|
| March 7, 2004 | -
Iraqis were demanding to know the whereabouts and condition of more than 10,000 men and boys (ages 11 to 75) who are being detained by American forces.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 4, 2004 | -
Baghdad's
sewage continued to flow untreated into the Tigris River.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 3, 2004 | - Two hundred seventy-one Shiite worshipers were killed in simultaneous bombing attacks on mosques in Baghdad and Karbala; international telephone service was knocked out on the same day by a rocket attack.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| March 1, 2004 | -
Iraq's governing council approved an interim constitution.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| February 28, 2004 | - Powerful Republicans were said to be urging President Bush to get rid of Dick Cheney, who continued to insist, contrary to all evidence, that stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, and that Saddam Hussein was allied with Al Qaeda. "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?" Cheney asked an interviewer. "It's a nice way to operate, actually."
| Source:
Asia Times
|
| February 27, 2004 | - It was revealed that Hans Blix's conversations in Iraq were bugged.
| Source:
Bloomberg
|
| February 26, 2004 | - The British government declined to prosecute Katharine Gun, the linguist who leaked a United States National Security Agency memo asking British intelligence to spy on United Nations diplomats before the invasion of Iraq; there was speculation that the government was trying to avoid another embarrassing debate about the legality of the war.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 26, 2004 | - Clare Short, a Labor member of parliament who resigned from the Blair cabinet over Iraq, charged that British agents had spied on United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan just before the invasion of Iraq, and said that she had seen transcripts of Annan's conversations.
| Source:
Independent
|
| February 23, 2004 | -
Halliburton, the former employer of Vice President Dick Cheney, was running television commercials pleading that its lucrative government contracts in Iraq were granted "because of what we know, not who we know."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 23, 2004 | - Ten people died in a suicide attack on an Iraqi police station in Kirkuk.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 21, 2004 | -
Colin Powell said that the conquest of Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein would have used weapons of mass destruction if only he had had some.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| February 19, 2004 | -
Iraqi guerrillas were killing sidewalk alcohol vendors.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 16, 2004 | - One hundred twenty-five people died in various attacks in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 13, 2004 | - A new poll found that most Americans believe that President Bush lied or knowingly exaggerated evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The poll also showed Senator John Kerry beating the president by nine percentage points.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| February 9, 2004 | -
Prince Charles visited Iraq and Iran.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 8, 2004 | - President George W. Bush, apparently worried that John Kerry was beating him in recent opinion polls, appeared on a Sunday morning talk show. Bush defended his decision to conquer
Iraq, and although he admitted that his stated reason for invading was false, he also suggested that weapons of mass destruction might still be found. The president said that he had total confidence in the CIA but suggested that he had been misled by incorrect intelligence. "Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons," Bush said. "I believe it is essential that when we see a threat, we deal with those threats before they become imminent. It's too late if they become imminent."
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 4, 2004 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell said that he might not have supported the invasion of Iraq if he had known that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction; within a few days he corrected himself and affirmed that the president had made the right decision no matter what the facts really were.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 3, 2004 | -
President Bush submitted a $2.4 trillion budget to Congress but failed to include the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The budget, which projects a record $521 billion deficit, calls for big increases in military spending and cuts for programs that help people without much political influence.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 2, 2004 | - It was reported that David Kay, the former American arms inspector, was shocked at the huge controversy created when he simply spoke the truth about the nonexistent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 2, 2004 | - At least 67 Iraqi Kurds were killed and 247 were wounded in another suicide bombing.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 1, 2004 | - Three American soldiers were killed when a homemade bomb destroyed their Humvee, and nine Iraqis died when a suicide attacker drove a car into a police station.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 28, 2004 | - In Iraq, a suicide bomber drove a car into a Baghdad hotel and killed three people.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 28, 2004 | -
U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan sent a team to Iraq to see whether it was safe enough to hold elections.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 26, 2004 | - Kay made it clear that the United Nations weapons-inspection process had succeeded in disarming Iraq and said the Iraqis had been reduced to experimenting with ricin, a primitive but deadly poison easily made from fermented castor beans; Kay also said that the CIA had completely misread the situation in Iraq, largely because the agency had no on-the-ground spies after the U.N. inspectors were removed.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 26, 2004 | - Skepticism was growing that the United States will succeed in handing power over to an Iraqi client regime before the presidential election, and the head of the occupying authority's Tribal Affairs Bureau admitted that he had been relying on a 1918
British report in his attempts to make sense of local politics.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 24, 2004 | -
David Kay, the outgoing head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that Iraq got rid of its illegal weapons programs years before the United States invaded.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 23, 2004 | -
Halliburton, which received most of its Iraq contracts by administrative fiat rather than through a competitive bidding process, admitted that its employees in Iraq have accepted $6.3 million in kickbacks.
| Source:
CNN
|
| January 21, 2004 | - Archbishop Desmond Tutu called on the United States and its allies to confess that the conquest of Iraq was wrong.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| January 20, 2004 | - More than 100,000 Iraqis filled the streets of Baghdad in a march supporting the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in his demand for direct elections.
| Source:
Seattle Times
|
| January 19, 2004 | - The Bush Administration, worried that it might not be able to hand over Iraqi sovereignty before the U.S. presidential election, decided to ask the United Nations for help.
| Source:
Globe and Mail
|
| January 18, 2004 | - A U.S. Army study concluded that the tactics of the Iraqi guerrillas are getting more sophisticated; officials said that they feared the guerrillas were studying the flight patterns of American helicopters and other aircraft.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 17, 2004 | -
L. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul of Iraq, said he was willing to compromise with the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (who has declared that only direct elections will legitimize a new government) but said any changes would be very limited, and that direct elections would not be considered.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 14, 2004 | - It was revealed that the U.S. military found a directive in the possession of Saddam Hussein telling his followers not to cooperate with foreign Arab jihadists who might enter Iraq to fight the Americans, because their agendas are incompatible.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 14, 2004 | -
President Bush changed his mind and decided to let Canada bid on Iraqi reconstruction projects, and he announced a new plan to spend $1.5 billion to promote heterosexual marriage.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 13, 2004 | - The Army War College published a report concluding that the conquest of Iraq was a "detour" that undermined the war on terrorism.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 11, 2004 | - American soldiers killed two Iraqi policemen in Kirkuk.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 9, 2004 | - Former secretary of the treasury Paul O'Neill revealed in a new book that President George W. Bush was already looking for an excuse to invade Iraq during the first few weeks of his presidency. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it," O'Neill said. "The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'"
| Source:
CBS News
|
| January 9, 2004 | - O'Neill said that the very first meeting of the National Security Council involved discussions of a "post-Saddam Iraq," peacekeeping troops, and war-crimes tribunals. O'Neill provided the book's author, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, with 19,000 internal documents — one of which, from March 5, 2001, was entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" and included a map of Iraqi oil fields listing contractors and countries with interests there.
| Source:
CBS News
|
| January 9, 2004 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that he never saw any hard proof of Iraqi links to Al Qaeda but failed to explain why he lied to the U.N. Security Council last February.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 9, 2004 | - Another U.S. helicopter was apparently shot down in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 8, 2004 | - The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace issued a report concluding that Iraq did not in fact possess any weapons of mass destruction. The report, which drew on intelligence material and documents discovered by weapons inspectors after the war, criticized the United States government for its deliberate exaggerations of Iraq's military capabilities.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| January 8, 2004 | - The Bush Administration withdrew a 400-member weapons-inspection team from Iraq because they are no longer needed.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 8, 2004 | - Thirty-five soldiers were wounded when Iraqi guerrillas shelled a U.S. camp west of Baghdad.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 3, 2004 | - Another U.S. helicopter was shot down in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 1, 2004 | - A car bomb blew up a restaurant in Baghdad.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 1, 2004 | - It was reported that the CIA is planning to set up a new secret police force in Iraq, modeled after the Phoenix program of the Vietnam War, that will ensure the United States retains control over the country after official sovereignty passes to a native government. The secret plan, of which Dick Cheney was the purported secret author, will cost $3 billion and will be funded from the CIA's secret budget.
| Source:
London Telegraph
|
| December 28, 2003 | - Several American soldiers were killed by Iraqi guerrillas in various attacks around the country. One died in a car accident.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 28, 2003 | - Two Thai and five Bulgarian soldiers and seven Iraqis were killed in four major coordinated car-bomb attacks by guerrillas in Karbala; 500 Bulgarians were evacuated from the area, because their base was destroyed.
| Source:
Washington Post, Reuters
|
| December 25, 2003 | - Grenades, rockets, and mortars were fired at the Ishtar Sheraton Hotel in Baghdad.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| December 19, 2003 | - There were reports that David Kay, the head of the American team looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is planning to resign.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| December 17, 2003 | -
France and Germany agreed to cooperate on restructuring
Iraq's debt.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 14, 2003 | - A suicide car bomber blew up outside an Iraqi police station, killing at least 17 people; a gas truck exploded in the middle of Baghdad, and an American soldier died while trying to disarm a bomb.
| Source:
Christian Science Monitor
|
| December 14, 2003 | -
Saddam Hussein was found cowering in a pit on a farm near Tikrit.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 12, 2003 | - The Pentagon accused Halliburton, which recently removed its name from outside its corporate headquarters in Houston, of overcharging for gasoline in Iraq.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 11, 2003 | - A bank in suburban Baghdad was robbed of about $800,000.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 10, 2003 | - U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz decreed that Canada, Germany, France, Russia, and other nations that opposed the conquest of Iraq will be ineligible for $18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts. The announcement was greeted with astonishment by the blacklisted countries; Russia said that it would now refuse to consider restructuring Iraq's $8 billion debt, and Canada said the decision would probably rule out further reconstruction aid.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| December 7, 2003 | - U.S. forces were using Israeli-style tactics against troublesome Iraqis, surrounding some villages with razor wire and forcing residents to carry identification cards, demolishing homes and buildings associated with attacks on Americans, and imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 6, 2003 | -
L. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul of Iraq, warned that attacks against occupying forces will probably increase.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| December 5, 2003 | - Wesley Clark claimed to have a plan to get America out of Iraq but then refused to say what it was.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 5, 2003 | - It was revealed that George W. Bush's famous Iraqi
turkey was a mere prop.
| Source:
Daily Mail
|
| December 3, 2003 | -
Iraqis were wondering why their gas lines were so long.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 1, 2003 | - U.S. forces fought a major battle with guerrillas in Samarra and killed up to 54 Iraqis; American officials said the casualties were members of the Fedayeen but local residents said that most were civilians who fought back in self-defense.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| November 29, 2003 | - Seven Spanish intelligence agents were killed near Baghdad.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 29, 2003 | - Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said that some U.S.-trained Iraqi
policemen had carried out attacks on occupation forces.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 28, 2003 | -
President Bush showed up in Iraq for Thanksgiving wearing an Army
tracksuit; Bush stayed in the country for two and a half hours, the same amount of time spent by President Lyndon B. Johnson in Vietnam, in 1966.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 26, 2003 | -
L. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul, declared that the situation in Iraq is getting better all the time.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 22, 2003 | -
Iraqi guerrillas were using homemade rocket launchers pulled by donkeys and concealed by piles of hay.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 21, 2003 | - President George W. Bush traveled to Great Britain, along with 650 companions, including five personal chefs, but was unable to move freely in the country because of massive protests. At Buckingham Palace the president dined on roasted halibut with herbs, free-range chicken, potatoes cocotte, salad, and a sorbet bombe but presumably skipped the Puligny-Montrachet and the Veuve Clicquot, Gold Label, 1995. Truck bombs blew up the British Consulate and a British bank in Istanbul, killing at least 27 and wounding hundreds. Bloody victims ran screaming through the streets. Two hotels in Baghdad used by Westerners were bombed as was the headquarters of a pro-American Kurdish group in Kirkuk.
| Source:
New York Times, Daily Telegraph
|
| November 18, 2003 | - L. Paul Bremer, the American proconsul of Iraq, said that Saddam Hussein is "a voice in the wilderness."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 16, 2003 | - Seventeen U.S. soldiers died when two Black Hawk helicopters collided in Mosul after one of them came under fire.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 15, 2003 | - The Pentagon was planning to launch a 24-hour satellite television channel based in Baghdad to make it easier to circumvent the news media "filter" that Bush Administration officials believe is misleading the public by emphasizing bad news about the occupation of Iraq.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| November 15, 2003 | - General John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, said that it was "beyond my imagination" that Saddam Hussein had planned for a guerrilla war prior to the fall of Baghdad.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 14, 2003 | - It was noticed that more U.S. soldiers have died so far in Iraq than in the first three years of the Vietnam War.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 13, 2003 | - The Bush Administration, worried about the political cost of the Iraq war and increasingly plagued by comparisons with Vietnam, decided to speed up its "Iraqification" plan by transferring sovereignty to a provisional native government by June 30.
| Source:
New York Times, USA Today
|
| November 13, 2003 | - "They are, we believe, ready for it," said Condoleezza Rice. "And they have very strong ideas about how it might be done." President Bush said that he believes the Iraqis "have the capacity to run their own country."
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 13, 2003 | - Four soldiers just back from Iraq were charged with stabbing another soldier to death, setting his body on fire, and leaving it in the woods.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| November 13, 2003 | - Twenty-six people were killed in the car bombing of the Italian paramilitary headquarters in Nasiriya; seventeen Italian military policemen died along with nine Iraqis, including three ten-year-old schoolgirls who happened to be driving by in a minibus.
| Source:
New York Times, Nelson Report
|
| November 12, 2003 | - The American-appointed mayor of Sadr City, a suburb of Baghdad, was killed after he drove into a forbidden area and got into a "wrestling match" with an American soldier, whose gun went off.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 8, 2003 | - Six U.S. soldiers died when their Black Hawk helicopter exploded in midair near Tikrit; there was speculation that a rocket-propelled grenade was responsible.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 8, 2003 | - U.S. forces responded with airstrikes, the first in Iraq since May 1, when the president dressed up as a fighter pilot and declared victory.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 5, 2003 | -
President Bush, who has refused to comment directly on the daily casualties in Iraq and has not attended a single funeral for a soldier killed there, traveled to California to inspect the damage from the recent wildfires and was photographed hugging a woman who lost her home.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 3, 2003 | - Iraqi guerrillas hiding in a grove of date palms shot down an American military helicopter near Fallujah; 16 died and 20 were wounded. Most of the soldiers were leaving Iraq on furlough. Two civilian contractors and one U.S. soldier were killed the same day by roadside bombs. "In a long war," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "we are going to have tragic days. But they're necessary."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 31, 2003 | - A new study from the Center for Public Integrity revealed that the 70 companies that have benefited the most from $8 billion in government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan collectively contributed more than $500,000 to President Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.
| Source:
Boston Globe, New York Times
|
| October 31, 2003 | - Congressional negotiators stripped a measure criminalizing war profiteering from the final version of the $87 billion spending bill for Iraq.
| Source:
U.S. Newswire, Office of Sen. Patrick Leahy
|
| October 29, 2003 | -
President Bush denied that his political operatives had been responsible for the erection of the "Mission Accomplished" banner that flew behind him on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, when he dressed up like a fighter pilot and declared victory in Iraq. He said that his advance men "weren't that ingenious" and that the banner was put up by crew members, "saying that their mission was accomplished." Scott McClellan, the president's press secretary, later admitted that the banner was in fact created by the White House.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 25, 2003 | - Iraqi guerrillas using a homemade launching pad fired eight to ten rockets at the Al Rasheed hotel in Baghdad, where American officials have been staying since April. Some of the Americans were seen fleeing the luxury hotel in their pajamas and shorts; one of the missiles struck a floor just below Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, but he escaped unhurt. The following day, a suicide bomber driving an ambulance struck the offices of the International Red Cross in Baghdad; the bomb left a six-foot-deep crater and broke windows a mile away. Within 45 minutes, bombers struck four police stations in other neighborhoods; at least 34 died and more than 200 were injured in the attacks. "The more successful we are on the ground," said President Bush, "the more these killers will react."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 22, 2003 | - Several soldiers home from Iraq on leave went AWOL.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 20, 2003 | - Iraqis in Faluja were photographed dancing on a demolished U.S. Army truck after it was blown up and set on fire by local residents.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 19, 2003 | - President George W. Bush traveled to Asia and gave a speech in Manila comparing Iraq to the Philippines, a former U.S. colony that was "liberated" from Spain in 1898 and occupied for 48 years. Bush said that the Philippines, which he called "the oldest democracy in Asia," should be seen as the model for a new democratic Iraq, and then quickly left the country because of security concerns.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 16, 2003 | -
Commerce Secretary Donald Evans introduced the new Iraqi dinar, printed in Britain minus the face of Saddam Hussein, in a live broadcast from the Baghdad International Airport, and encouraged investors to come to Iraq. "You have to look beyond these isolated incidents that are occurring," he said.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 15, 2003 | - A car bomb blew up outside the Turkish embassy in Baghdad; it was the third Baghdad car bomb in less than a week.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 14, 2003 | - "The person who is in charge is me," President Bush declared when asked about the factional intrigues among his advisers; the president went on to say that he was making "very good progress about the establishment of a free Iraq."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 12, 2003 | - International aid workers continued to flee Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 12, 2003 | - American soldiers bulldozed ancient groves of date, orange, and lemon trees in central Iraq because, the soldiers said, the farmers know who is in the resistance but refuse to tell.
| Source:
Independent
|
| October 10, 2003 | -
President Bush gave a speech before a military crowd in New Hampshire and said that the situation in Iraq is "a lot better than you probably think." On that day in Iraq, a car bomb attack killed eight policemen, a Spanish diplomat was assassinated, and a U.S. soldier was murdered.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| October 9, 2003 | - Tensions were beginning to surface publicly between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, over the creation of Rice's Iraq Stability Group, which will oversee the chaos in Iraq. Rumsfeld was irritated that he was not told about the new group, and there were rumors, which the White House denied, that Rumsfeld has fallen out of the president's favor.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 7, 2003 | -
Congress was working to cut "gold plated" items from the administration's request for the reconstruction of Iraq; among the items at issue were 40 new $50,000 garbage trucks and $9 million for a new postal zone system.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 6, 2003 | -
President Bush created a new "Iraq Stabilization Group."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 6, 2003 | -
David Kay, the head of the CIA team searching for traces of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, issued his status report; Kay admitted that no unconventional weapons had been found but did point to a single vial of botulinum toxin, which an Iraqi scientist had stored in his refrigerator since 1993, as evidence of evil intent. President Bush cited the vial and said that the report justified the invasion.
| Source:
Washington Post, International Herald Tribune
|
| October 6, 2003 | - and Robin Cook, the former foreign minister and leader of the Commons, who resigned to protest Britain's participation in the conquest of Iraq, claimed that Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted privately to him two weeks before the invasion that Saddam Hussein had no weapons that posed a "real and present danger."
| Source:
BBC
|
| October 2, 2003 | - A two-year-old Iraqi girl was shot dead in her home by American forces after a roadside bomb went off next to a military convoy. "If we determine there were deaths and/or injuries to innocent civilians as a result of U.S. forces responding to an attack," said Major Anthony Aguto, "we will compensate the family with three years of standard Iraqi salary." The grandfather of the dead girl said they didn't want the money: "I submit my complaint only to God."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 30, 2003 | - The Bush Administration rejected calls for an independent counsel in the matter of Valerie Plame, whose identity as an undercover CIA operative was revealed by at least one senior White House official, possibly Karl Rove, in retribution for her husband's skeptical remarks about the president's case against Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 30, 2003 | - American officials said that there are 650,000 tons of ammunition lying around Iraq, much of it unsecured. General John Abizaid told Congress that "there is more ammunition in Iraq than any place I've ever been in my life, and it is all not securable." Pentagon officials had previously claimed that "all known Iraqi munitions sites are being secured by coalition forces."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 30, 2003 | - It was noticed that Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and until recently the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has set up a consulting firm to help clients exploit the occupation of Iraq. According to the company's website, "New Bridge Strategies, LLC is a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq." The company describes the "opportunities" in Iraq as "unprecedented" in nature and in scope.
| Source:
New Bridge Strategies
|
| September 29, 2003 | - The Defense Intelligence Agency concluded in an internal assessment that most of the information received from Iraqi defectors before the war was completely useless.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 28, 2003 | - At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department began investigating charges that the White House leaked the name of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame to the press in retaliation for remarks by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, challenging President Bush's
claim that Iraq tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Africa. An unnamed administration official told the Washington Post that two White House officials had revealed the agent's identity to at least six journalists. "Clearly," the official said, "it was meant purely and simply for revenge." The White House denied that Karl Rove was responsible for the leak, which was a violation of the Intelligence Protection Act and carries penalties of up to 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| September 28, 2003 | - Ranking members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence criticized the Bush Administration for basing its case for the invasion of Iraq on piecemeal, out of date, deficient intelligence.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| September 26, 2003 | - Colin Powell gave Iraqis six months to come up with a new constitution.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 26, 2003 | - L. Paul Bremer, the American overseer of Iraq, was having a hard time explaining to Congress why he needs so much money. In an attempt to explain a $400 million request for two 4,000-bed prisons, which comes to $50,000 per bed, Bremer explained that there is a "shortage of cement" in Iraq.
| Source:
Financial Times
|
| September 26, 2003 | -
Donald Rumsfeld claimed that the president's $87 billion request for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan constituted an "exit strategy."
| Source:
Financial Times
|
| September 25, 2003 | -
Mongolian troops returned to Baghdad for the first time since 1258, when Hulegu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, destroyed the city and killed 800,000 people.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 25, 2003 | - Administration officials tried to play down a disappointing progress report by the American team searching Iraq for signs of weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 22, 2003 | -
Iraq's governing council announced that it was opening the entire Iraqi economy, including essential services such as electricity, telecommunications, and health, to foreign investors. Taxes and trade tariffs will be cut, though oil and other natural resources will be exempt from the new policy.
| Source:
Independent
|
| September 22, 2003 | - The next day Chirac called for an immediate transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 22, 2003 | - L.
Paul Bremer, the American overseer of Iraq, said that Iraqis were not quite ready for self-rule.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 22, 2003 | - Akila al-Hashemi, one of three women on the Iraqi governing council, was severely wounded in an assassination attempt.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 21, 2003 | - Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and President Jacques Chirac got together to talk about the latest American proposal for a Security Council resolution on Iraq.
Chirac noted that "On Iraq, our views are not fully convergent."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 20, 2003 | - An American soldier who was drinking beer after hours at the Baghdad city zoo shot and killed a Bengal tiger that had bitten another soldier who was trying to feed it.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 19, 2003 | - American soldiers continued to die in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 18, 2003 | - The Dalai Lama met with singer Ricky Martin and then said that it was too early to tell whether the conquest of Iraq was a mistake.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 15, 2003 | -
Colin Powell claimed that Americans "are not occupiers" of Iraq.
"We came as liberators," he said.
"We have liberated a number of countries."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 13, 2003 | - Ten Iraqi
policemen and one Jordanian hospital worker were killed in a firefight with American soldiers; the policemen were chasing a stolen BMW when they ran into two American tanks on patrol, with unhappy results.
Guards at a nearby hospital fired shots, prompting the tanks to attack the hospital.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 11, 2003 | - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that a new Security Council resolution would be helpful, because it would allow other countries to pretend that the Iraqi occupation was a multinational operation, which would justify sending more money.
Rumsfeld said that tourism will soon be a major industry in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 11, 2003 | - A British parliamentary report concluded that the Blair government did not intentionally lie in its controversial dossier on Iraq's military threat; the report did criticize the government, however, and said that its false claim that Iraq was capable of launching weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes was "unhelpful," and that the dossier should have made clear that Iraq was not, in the opinion of the intelligence services, an imminent threat to Great Britain.
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 11, 2003 | - A suicide bomber struck in Kurdish Iraq, killing one child and wounding about 50 people.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 11, 2003 | - A new Osama bin Laden videotape was released.
Bin Laden called on his "mujahedeen brothers in Iraq" to "devour the Americans just like the lions devour their prey."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 10, 2003 | - Pentagon officials testified before a congressional hearing that the military was having a hard time in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 8, 2003 | -
President George W. Bush made a televised address to the nation and declared that Iraq was now the "central front" in the war on terrorism.
He called for national resolve and national sacrifice and said that he will ask Congress for $87 billion in emergency funds for the occupation.
It was noted that this new request, which comes on top of $79 billion already approved, will probably push the current budget deficit up to $600 billion. Howard Dean said the speech, which made no mention of Osama bin Laden, was "outrageous" and said it reminded him of Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War.
Senator Bob Graham observed that Bush now wants to spend more on Iraq this year than the federal government will spend on education.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 8, 2003 | - and surface-to-air missiles were fired at a transport plane in Baghdad.
Donald Rumsfeld, who was nearby, said that such attacks are just a cost of doing business.
Rumsfeld claimed that there has been "breathtaking" progress in Afghanistan since the war ended.
"I'm not being Pollyannaish," he said.
"I'm telling the truth."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 6, 2003 | - Gunmen fired on a Sunni mosque in Baghdad just after morning prayers and injured three people, a car bomb exploded near the headquarters of the Baghdad police department, a British bomb squad expert was killed, an American Humvee was blown up, and Lt.
Gen.
Ricardo Sanchez said that attacks on American forces were down to about 14 or 15 a day.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was touring Iraq and Afghanistan, complained that the news media was ignoring "the story of success and accomplishment" in Iraq.
| Source:
Austin American-Statesman
|
| September 3, 2003 | - The World Council of Churches denounced the invasion of Iraq as "immoral" and "ill advised" and called for the withdrawal of American forces.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 3, 2003 | - A congressional study found that the occupation of Iraq is unsustainable given the current size of the U.S. military, and the United States released a draft resolution calling on the United Nations to create a multinational peacekeeping force for Iraq that would remain under American military and political control.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 3, 2003 | - Jessica Lynch, the former Army private who was captured by Iraqis and became the subject of an elaborate heroic fiction, signed a book deal and reportedly received a $1 million advance.
Lynch will share the advance with her co-author Rick Bragg, a former New York Times reporter.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 30, 2003 | -
L.
Paul Bremer, the American overseer of Iraq, was on vacation and no one knew when he would be back.
"I think someone is writing up a statement, somebody, I'm not sure," said Mahmoud Othman of the Iraqi governing council.
"We don't have a satellite, you know, that's one of the problems.
The Americans should give us a satellite."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 29, 2003 | - Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain testified before the Hutton inquiry and denied the BBC's claim that his aides had "sexed up" his dossier on Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction; Blair said he would have resigned if the story had been true.
| Source:
Guardian, BBC, New York Times
|
| August 29, 2003 | - General John Abizaid repeated the Bush Administration's claim that there is no need for additional American troops in Iraq;
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 28, 2003 | - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers revealed that Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, has received more than $1.7 billion in military contracts in Iraq, far more than was previously known. It was noted that the practice of outsourcing logistical operations to private contractors was pioneered by Cheney during the first Gulf War when he was secretary of defense. Brown and Root won the first such contract, and Cheney was hired as CEO of Halliburton soon afterward.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 27, 2003 | - American soldiers continued to die in Iraq, and the number of Americans killed since President George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier to declare that "major combat operations" in Iraq were over exceeded the number killed during the war.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 27, 2003 | - The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to condemn the destruction of the U.N.
headquarters in Baghdad.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 26, 2003 | -
Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, compared the Iraqi guerrillas to the Nazi Werewolves who resisted the Allies after World War II; Rice pleaded for patience and suggested that building democracy in Iraq might take a very, very long time.
"Our own history should remind us that the union of democratic principle and practice is always a work in progress.
When the Founding Fathers said, 'We the People,' they did not mean me.
My ancestors were considered three-fifths of a person."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 26, 2003 | -
Kidnappings were on the rise in Baghdad.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 25, 2003 | - A bomb went off in Najaf, Iraq's holy city, and killed three guards of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Said al-Hakim.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 23, 2003 | - Three British soldiers were killed in Basra.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 22, 2003 | - American soldiers were still dying in Iraq,
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 20, 2003 | - A suicide bomber in a shiny new cement truck blew up the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and killed 23 people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N.
special representative in Iraq.
A pair of hands and a pair of feet, possibly those of the truck's driver, were found 150 yards from the wreckage.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 17, 2003 | - In Iraq, saboteurs blew up a large oil pipeline to Turkey three days after it reopened,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 17, 2003 | - a water main was bombed in Baghdad, and U.S. soldiers "engaged" and killed a Reuters cameraman;
| Source:
Austin American Statesman
|
| August 17, 2003 | - the police chief of Mosul was shot and two other officers died in an ambush; a Danish soldier was killed, some American soldiers were shot as they left a restaurant, and a sewage plant was set on fire.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 13, 2003 | - "Every American needs to believe this," said General Ricardo Sanchez, the head of U.S. forces in Iraq, "that if we fail here in this environment, the next battlefield will be the streets of America."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 10, 2003 | -
L. Paul Bremer, the American overseer of Iraq, said he thought the bombing was carried out by "outside" forces because he wasn't sure the "ex-regime people" who have been shooting U.S. soldiers had the know-how to make a car bomb.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 9, 2003 | - Seventeen people died in a car-bomb attack on the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, and President Bush told reporters down at the ranch in Crawford, Texas, that his men were making "good progress" in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 9, 2003 | - Engineers from the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that the mobile laboratories found in Iraq were probably used to make hydrogen for weather balloons, just as Iraqi scientists have claimed.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 7, 2003 | - General Richard Sanchez said that he was scaling back aggressive roundups of Iraqis in the search for Saddam Hussein and Baath Party loyalists because he was afraid that "maybe our iron-fisted approach to the conduct of ops was beginning to alienate Iraqis. I started to get those sensings from multiple sources."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 3, 2003 | -
Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay were buried in the town of Awja; a jackhammer was required to dig their graves in the parched earth.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 1, 2003 | - The State Department agreed to pay $30 million to the Iraqi who snitched out Uday and Qusay Hussein.
| Source:
Bloomberg News
|
| July 30, 2003 | - In Iraq, the occupation government detained two Iranians who had identified themselves as journalists.
Said an occupation official: "They were detained for doing things that we do not consider journalism."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 30, 2003 | -
Colin Powell called Saddam Hussein "a piece of trash."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 24, 2003 | - After killing Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, U.S. forces circulated grisly photos of the corpses in hopes that the images would help to dispel conspiracy theories, popular among Iraqis, that the United States is still in league with Saddam Hussein.
| Source:
Agence-France Presse
|
| July 23, 2003 | - The report, which also found no evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, had been slated for release in December 2002 but was delayed due to administrative wrangling over which sections should be classified.
| Source:
UPI
|
| July 23, 2003 | - The Los Angeles Times refused to allow a Secret Service agent to interrogate a cartoonist who had depicted a figure labeled "politics" pointing a gun at President Bush against a background labeled "Iraq."
| Source:
AP
|
| July 21, 2003 | - Deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz warned Iraq's neighbors not to meddle with the American occupying forces, proclaiming, "I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq."
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 20, 2003 | - The International Red Cross demanded information on the status of three dozen Iraqi scientists detained in unknown locations.
| Source:
Observer
|
| July 18, 2003 | - A woman from Delaware shipped 200 air-conditioning units to American soldiers in Iraq.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| July 18, 2003 | -
President Bush told a group of surprised reporters that Saddam Hussein had refused to permit weapons inspectors to return to Iraq: "And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 18, 2003 | -
British prime minister Tony Blair addressed the United States Congress and predicted that history will "forgive" him even if weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq.
He received 19 standing ovations; after the first one he responded: "This is more than I deserve and more than I'm used to, frankly."
| Source:
Guardian
|
| July 18, 2003 | -
Dr.
David Kelly, a British Ministry of Defense scientist who was accused of being the source of news reports that the British government had doctored its intelligence on Iraq, was found dead two days after he was interrogated by a parliamentary committee.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| July 18, 2003 | - "This is the future for the world we're in at the moment," a special assistant to Donald Rumsfeld said about the unrest in Iraq.
"We'll get better as we do it more often."
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| July 17, 2003 | -
CIA director George Tenet testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee and again took responsibility for President Bush's false claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, but he admitted that he didn't know the claim, which he successfully removed from at least one of the president's previous speeches, would be included in the State of the Union address.
Tenet said that his staff should have told him about it.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 17, 2003 | - General John Abizaid, the head of U.S. forces in Iraq, admitted that his troops face "a classical guerrilla-type campaign" and said that troops might have to double their expected tours of duty in order to pacify the country.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 16, 2003 | - Several U.S. soldiers complained on television that morale was low and that they wanted to go home.
"If Donald Rumsfeld were here, I'd ask him for his resignation," said one.
"I would ask him why we are still here," said another.
"I don't have any clue as to why we are still in Iraq."
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 14, 2003 | -
Iraq's new interim Governing Council was announced.
Its first act was to abolish six holidays associated with Saddam Hussein; April 9, the date of the fall of Baghdad, was declared a new national holiday.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 13, 2003 | -
President Bush, asked whether he regretted his false claim about the uranium, responded by saying there was "no doubt" in his mind that he was right to conquer Iraq.
"And there's no doubt in my mind, when it's all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 13, 2003 | - American soldiers continued to die in Iraq,
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| July 12, 2003 | -
President Bush's approval rating was down to 59 percent, according to a new poll, and 52 percent of respondents said that the level of American casualties in Iraq was "unacceptable."
| Source:
Slate
|
| July 10, 2003 | -
Danish troops in Iraq received a supply shipment of lawn mowers and snowplows.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| July 9, 2003 | - The White House admitted that President Bush's claim in his last State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger was based on "unsubstantiated" intelligence;
| Source:
CNN
|
| July 7, 2003 | - Seven Iraqi
policemen who had just completed an American training course were killed and 50 were injured by a bomb as they marched down the street as part of their graduation ceremony.
| Source:
Independent
|
| July 6, 2003 | - Rumors were circulating among Iraqis that power shortages were the result of American retribution for guerrilla attacks, and
| Source:
BBC
|
| July 6, 2003 | - a resistance group called the Muslim Fighters of the Victorious Sect warned that it will execute Iraqis who collaborate with the Americans.
| Source:
Charlotte Observer
|
| July 4, 2003 | - A tape of a man claiming to be Saddam Hussein was broadcast on Al-Jazeera television; the man said he was in Iraq and planning more attacks on his enemies.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| July 4, 2003 | - The commander of the American forces in Iraq acknowledged that the war was not over.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 3, 2003 | - President George W. Bush dismissed growing complaints that he exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq in the buildup to the invasion and invited Iraqis who remain loyal to Saddam Hussein to attack American troops: "There are some who feel like that if they attack us, that we may decide to leave prematurely," he said.
"My answer is: bring them on.
We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
| Source:
Orlando Sentinel
|
| July 3, 2003 | -
Poland's foreign minister admitted that his country sent troops to Iraq because it wanted to obtain direct access to Iraqi oil supplies.
| Source:
BBC
|
| June 30, 2003 | -
L. Paul Bremer, the overseer of Iraq, warned Iraqi malcontents that resistance was futile.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 25, 2003 | - A State Department intelligence analyst told a congressional hearing that he had felt pressure to make his reports conform to the administration's position on Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 25, 2003 | -
Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, made the surprising claim that "before the war, there was no debate about whether Iraq had unconventional weapons."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 25, 2003 | - American and British soldiers continued to die in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 19, 2003 | - Stansfield Turner, a former director of central intelligence, criticized the Bush Administration for its use of intelligence to justify the conquest of Iraq: "There is no question in my mind [that policymakers] distorted the situation, either because they had bad intelligence or because they misinterpreted it."
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| June 19, 2003 | - American soldiers in Iraq were being killed at a rate of one per day.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| June 18, 2003 | -
North Korea announced its intention to accelerate its program to build a nuclear deterrent and said that a U.S. naval blockade or embargo could lead to "all-out war"; a state-run newspaper said that "the Iraqi war proved that disarmament leads to war.
Therefore it is quite clear that the DPRK can never accept the U.S. demand that it scrap its nuclear weapons program first."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 16, 2003 | -
Iraqi civilians continued to die in what Lt. Gen. David McKiernan called "a cycle of action, reaction and counter-action"; among those who were killed by mistake was a family of shepherds and a family that was trying to put out fires in their wheat field that were set by American flares.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| June 16, 2003 | - CBS News sent an interview request to Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the American P.O.W. whose dramatic rescue in Iraq turned out to be largely simulated, that included "ideas" from CBS Entertainment, MTV, and Simon & Schuster; some news critics found the combination of news and entertainment offers "troubling."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 14, 2003 | - An Iraqi shepherd filed a $200 million lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld for the deaths of 17 family members and 200 sheep.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| June 11, 2003 | - The American soldiers looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were running out of places to look. "It doesn't appear there are any more targets at this time," said Lt. Col. Keith Harrington. "We're hanging around with no missions in the foreseeable future."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 11, 2003 | - Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, said that it doesn't matter whether WMD are found, "because the rationale for the war changed. Americans like a good picture. And one photograph of an Iraqi
child kissing a U.S. soldier is more powerful than two months of debate on the floor of Congress."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 10, 2003 | -
President Bush was still "absolutely convinced" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 9, 2003 | - Two of the highest-ranking Al Qaeda leaders in United States custody denied that Al Qaeda had worked with the Iraqi government.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 9, 2003 | - The British government admitted that Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's director of communications, wrote a letter to the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service apologizing for a report, "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation," which contained material that was plagiarized from an old out-of-date term paper found on the Internet.
Campbell promised to take "greater care" in the future.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 8, 2003 | - A growing number of weapons experts, engineers, chemists, and other scientists said that the "germ trailers" trumpeted by the Americans are not at all what one would expect from a mobile weapons lab and that the units appear to be designed to produce hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, which is what Iraqi scientists have claimed.
It was reported that the British sold such a system to Iraq in 1987.
| Source:
Observer
|
| June 8, 2003 | - International weapons inspectors were wondering why American troops failed to stop Iraqi villagers who live near Tuwaitha nuclear complex from dumping uranium yellowcake and nuclear sludge on the ground and using the empty radioactive barrels to haul drinking and bathing water; one woman from a nearby village called Al Mansiya ("The Forgotten") wondered why so many journalists were coming to visit.
"We are like a string of beads that has been cut, and all the beads are on the floor," she told a reporter.
"We love the Americans, but we loved Saddam because he was our father.
He was the tent over us — he was the string in our beads."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 6, 2003 | - President Bush flew over Iraq shortly after he told U.S. troops in Qatar that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would eventually be found.
"We're on the look," he said.
"We'll reveal the truth."
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| June 6, 2003 | - Officials said that the president did not set foot in Iraq because the situation on the ground was too risky.
There were also concerns that such a visit would appear too "imperial."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 6, 2003 | - Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, said that the quality of American intelligence on Iraq was very poor and suggested that the American and British governments had "jumped to conclusions" about weapons of mass destruction.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| June 5, 2003 | - Douglas Feith, an undersecretary at the
Pentagon, denied what he called the "urban legends" that the Pentagon
lied about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction or that intelligence
analysts were pressured to come up with slanted reports. "I can't
rule out what other people may have perceived," he said. "Who knows what people perceive? I know of
nobody who pressured anybody."
| Source 1:
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Source 2:
Toronto Star
|
| June 1, 2003 | -
President Bush went on a tour of Europe and visited the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, where he wrote "never forget" in the guest book; a few hours later he made a speech at a castle and used the occasion to congratulate himself for invading Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 30, 2003 | - "The time has come when the British government needs to concede that we did not go to war because Saddam was a threat to our national interests," said Robin Cook, the former British foreign secretary who resigned over the Iraq war.
"We went to war for reasons of U.S. foreign policy and Republican domestic politics."
| Source:
Independent.co.uk
|
| May 30, 2003 | - President George W. Bush did not quite deny reports of a possible American attack on Iran: "We've had all kinds of reports that we're going to use force in Syria and now some are, I guess, saying force in Iran, force here and force there.
This is pure speculation.
We used force in Iraq after a long, long period of diplomacy."
| Source:
UPI
|
| May 30, 2003 | - Lt. Gen. James Conway, the top U.S. Marine in Iraq, said that American forces have looked very hard for weapons of mass destruction but that "they're simply not there."
| Source:
UPI
|
| May 29, 2003 | - A senior British official claimed that his government had "transformed" an intelligence report on Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction to make it "sexier." "The classic example," he said, "was the statement that weapons of mass destruction were ready for use within 45 minutes."
| Source:
BBC
|
| May 28, 2003 | - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in response to complaints that weapons of mass destruction still have not been found in Iraq, speculated that Iraq might have destroyed its illegal weapons before the war began.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 18, 2003 | - Kurdish leaders, who have been running their own affairs for about 12 years, were particularly irritated, and there were widespread accusations that the United States was now revealing its true agenda to occupy Iraq and exploit its oil supply.
| |
| May 18, 2003 | - Looters continued to dismantle Iraq's infrastructure, and most of the equipment needed to restore the national electric grid, such as the computers that regulate power distribution, has been stolen. Nostalgia for the days of Saddam Hussein was spreading among the people.
| |
| May 17, 2003 | - L. Paul Bremer, the new American overseer of Iraq, informed Iraqi leaders that the United States and Britain had changed their minds about setting up an interim government made up of Iraqis and that he would remain in control until further notice. Bremer toured Mosul and praised it as "a great example of embryonic democracy"; elsewhere in the city a crowd chanted "America is the enemy of God."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 15, 2003 | -
Donald Rumsfeld denied reports that U.S. soldiers in Iraq were going to start shooting looters on sight, though he did tell the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee that American forces in Baghdad "will be using muscle to see that the people who are trying to disrupt what is taking place in that city are stopped and either captured or killed."
| |
| May 4, 2003 | - Prime Minister John Howard of Australia was rewarded for his country's service in the invasion of Iraq with a sleepover down at the Presidential Ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he was served green-chili cheese grits for supper.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 3, 2003 | - India said it would reestablish diplomatic relations with Pakistan, Nepal opened negotiations with its rebels, the United States made a truce with an Iranian-backed guerrilla army in Iraq, and mercenaries in Ivory Coast murdered a rebel leader who told them to lay down their weapons.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 2, 2003 | -
President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier in an S-3B Viking airplane and, clad in a military jumpsuit with the words "Commander in Chief" printed on the back, he informed the assembled sailors, whom he said were "the best of our country," that the war on Iraq had been won.
The commander in chief, who served as a pilot in the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam War, told reporters that he had briefly flown the airplane. "I miss flying," he said. Few publications mentioned the president's long unexplained failure to report for duty during that period, and his daring arrival was widely hailed as a "Top Gun moment."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 1, 2003 | - American soldiers shot and killed 15 Iraqi civilians who were demonstrating against the occupation on Saddam Hussein's birthday; a few days later another demonstration was held to protest the killings, and soldiers shot a few more.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 1, 2003 | - Rumsfeld also made a victory tour of Iraq and was photographed autographing a Baghdad street sign that some soldiers had apparently taken as a souvenir.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 29, 2003 | -
The North Koreans admitted they already have nuclear weapons and may test, export, or use them depending on U.S. actions; Donald Rumsfeld thought this might present an opportunity for another “regime change.” The U.S. warned Iran not to meddle in Iraq's political affairs and accused the country of sending agents into the south to promote an Iranian model of government; to counter the damage, troops and intelligence officers were asking Iraqi clerics to please issue fatwas in support of the American administration of the country.
| |
| April 29, 2003 | -
The U.S. warned Iraqis not to exploit their country's power vacuum by appointing themselves to political positions, and American soldiers arrested the former exile who announced that he was the mayor of Baghdad.
| |
| April 29, 2003 | -
Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, negotiated a surrender to Diane Sawyer of ABC News but changed his mind and turned himself in to military officials, who were also holding the former liaison to U.N.
weapons inspectors and a quarter of the 55 “most wanted” Iraqi fugitives.
| |
| April 29, 2003 | -
Bush was feeling nostalgic for Iraq's former information minister, who famously overstated the Baathist defense of Baghdad: “He's my man; he was great.
| |
| April 29, 2003 | -
Donald Rumsfeld denied that the Bush Administration wishes to establish military bases in postwar Iraq and worried that the widely reported story might give other countries the wrong impression.
| |
| April 29, 2003 | -
President Bush told a group of Arab Americans that Iraqis will be free to choose whatever form of government they like, as long as it's a democracy.
| |
| April 29, 2003 | -
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shiites traveled to Karbala to flagellate themselves in commemoration of the death of Hussein, Muhammad's grandson.
| |
| April 29, 2003 | -
The White House was pondering ways to punish France for opposing its invasion of Iraq, and noted that when President Bush attends an economic summit meeting in the French Alps in June, he will sleep in Switzerland.
| |
| April 29, 2003 | -
President Bush prophesized that the U.S. would find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but rejected international calls for United Nations inspectors to augment the search.
| |
| April 29, 2003 | -
“On principle, we don't want the United Nations running around Iraq.” Hans Blix, the U.N.
weapons inspector, pointed out that “We found as little, but with less cost.” Military officials admitted that they were holding children in the high-security prison for terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, even though they have not been accused of any offense, and said that they would be detained “until we ensure that they're no longer a threat to the United States.” A Florida mother said she accidentally stabbed her 19-year-old son in the buttocks with a 12-inch knife when he wouldn't get out of bed for work.
| |
| April 27, 2003 | - Anonymous Bush Administration officials were beginning to speak more candidly about the president's rationale for invading Iraq, saying that Iraq's potential as a military threat was less important than its strategic location and the president's desire to make a "global show of power and democracy."
| Source:
Independent.co.uk
|
| April 22, 2003 | -
Iraqis exercised their newfound freedom to complain, with tens of thousands publicly protesting their conditions and the possibility of a long-term American occupation.
| |
| April 22, 2003 | -
U.S. officials insisted they were not interested in occupying Iraq, but expected to retain four military bases there to be used for future crises.
| |
| April 22, 2003 | -
The White House was said to regard Syria, Cuba, and Libya as members of a “junior varsity axis of evil,” but although the administration repeated accusations that Syria was providing sanctuary to Iraqi fugitives, Colin Powell assured the world that Washington has no war plan “right now” to address that country's disobedience.
| |
| April 22, 2003 | -
Another administration official worried about wasting an opportunity in the Middle East: “We have to make it clear that we didn't just come to get rid of Saddam.
We came to get rid of the status quo.” The United States persuaded some Iraqi civil servants to show up for work with a promise of $20 for each, and a returning exile declared himself mayor of Baghdad.
| |
| April 22, 2003 | -
Some looters were surrendering stolen goods after learning that a cleric issued an edict forbidding Iraqi wives from having sex with their looter husbands.
| |
| April 22, 2003 | -
The Ministry for Religious Affairs was set on fire, destroying thousands of Korans, some a thousand years old.
“When Baghdad fell to the Mongols in 1258, these books survived,” said a ministry official.
“If you talk to any intellectual Muslims in the world, they are crying right now.” A poll found that most Americans believe that the war against Iraq will have been worthwhile even if weapons of mass destruction are never found and Saddam Hussein is never captured or killed.
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| April 22, 2003 | -
Pizza Hut and Burger King set up their first Iraqi franchises, on a British military base near Basra.
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| April 22, 2003 | -
America disabled an oil pipeline that had been carrying 200,000 barrels a day from Iraq to Syria, in flagrant violation of United Nations economic sanctions.
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| April 22, 2003 | -
President Bush was anxious for the U.N.
to lift the 12-year-old sanctions against Iraq, so that its oil could be sold to help pay for the country's rebuilding, but the six nations that border Iraq — Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, and Jordan — argued that sanctions should not be removed until a legitimate government, formed by Iraqis, was in place.
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| April 22, 2003 | -
The Bechtel Corporation, whose chairman advises President Bush on international-trade issues and whose senior vice president advises Donald Rumsfeld on defense policy, won the first major Iraq reconstruction project, with a value of up to $680 million.
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| April 22, 2003 | -
The Great Sasuke, a professional wrestler who campaigned for a state assembly seat in Japan while wearing his trademark mask, won and vowed to continue wearing his mask: “I won support from voters with this face, and to take it off would be breaking promises.” Iraqi doctors said that the much-televised rescue of prisoner of war Jessica Lynch from a hospital “was just a big, dramatic show,” since her captors had fled before rescuers arrived, leaving only four doctors and two patients, one of whom was paralyzed and connected to an IV drip, to be bound and handcuffed by American forces.
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| April 15, 2003 | -
Faced with the unlikelihood of finding any nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons in Iraq, the Bush Administration was beginning to suggest that Saddam Hussein had moved all his weapons of mass destruction to Syria.
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| April 15, 2003 | -
President George W. Bush, asked whether Syria has weapons of mass destruction, replied: “I think that we believe there are chemical weapons in Syria, for example, and we will — each situation will require a different response, and of course we're — first things first.
We're here in Iraq now, and the second thing about Syria is that we expect cooperation.”
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| April 15, 2003 | -
President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair both went on Iraqi television and told the Iraqi people, almost none of whom had electricity, that “the nightmare that Saddam Hussein has brought to your nation will soon be over.”
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| April 15, 2003 | -
Kurds were driving Arab families from their homes in northern Iraq.
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| April 15, 2003 | -
Baghdad and other cities in Iraq were in chaos; mobs were looting businesses, government offices, and private homes.
“You cannot do everything simultaneously,” said Donald Rumsfeld. “It's untidy.
And freedom's untidy.
And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes.”
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| April 15, 2003 | -
One notable crime was the looting of the National Museum of Iraq, which held a massive collection of ancient artifacts from more than 7,000 years of Mesopotamian civilization. Occupying forces intervened briefly but then left; what was not stolen was destroyed.
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| April 15, 2003 | -
The Army Corps of Engineers revealed that the Pentagon contract to fight oil fires in Iraq, which was awarded to Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, Dick Cheney's most recent private employer, will be worth up to $7 billion. The contract was given without the usual competitive bidding process.
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| April 8, 2003 | -
Pentagon officials and Army commanders were complaining that Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, had prevented them from deploying enough ground troops to carry out the invasion of Iraq.
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| April 8, 2003 | -
“If the tide turns, there's nothing else that keeps his boat afloat.” Most of these complaints disappeared soon after American forces completed their drive to Baghdad and made two strikes into the city center; officials said they had killed more than 2,000 Iraqi fighters and many civilians.
“We just wanted to let them know that we're here,” said Maj.
Gen. Buford C. Blount III.
“It was real scary,” said one soldier.
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| April 8, 2003 | -
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said that “slowly but surely the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people are being won over as they see security increase in their areas, as humanitarian deliveries are stepped up.” American officers said they had been studying the Israeli occupation of Palestine for pointers.
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| April 8, 2003 | -
Two female Iraqi suicide attackers, one of whom was apparently pregnant, killed three U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint about 120 miles north of Baghdad.
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| April 8, 2003 | -
Administration officials continued to characterize the war in Iraq as a “demonstration conflict” aimed at communicating the new reality of international politics.
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| April 8, 2003 | -
Some counterterrorism officials expressed surprise that little evidence has emerged of an imminent terrorist attack on the United States in retaliation for the invasion of Iraq.
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| April 8, 2003 | -
The Southern Baptist Convention said that it has about 800 missionaries ready to deliver relief aid and the word of Jesus to the people of Iraq, and Samaritan's Purse, a group run by the Rev. Franklin Graham, who believes that Islam is evil and inherently violent, was preparing relief efforts as well.
| |
| April 2, 2003 | - Officials continued to play down the possibility that any significant weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq; one senior White House source speculated that what might turn up were some "precursors," and said that Saddam Hussein "couldn't put them together as long as the inspections were going on."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 1, 2003 | -
American and British forces in Iraq were slowed in their advance toward Baghdad by severe dust storms and by attacks from Iraqi militias, who were harassing the long, exposed supply lines between Kuwait and the front. American commanders were forced to change their tactics because of the unexpected resistance.
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| April 1, 2003 | -
Lt. General William Wallace, commander of Army forces in the Persian Gulf, said that “the enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we war gamed against.” American and British casualties were heavier than expected, and soldiers said they were having a hard time distinguishing Iraqi forces from civilians. “It's not pretty,” said one marine. “It's not surgical. You try to limit collateral damage, but they want to fight. Now it's just smash-mouth football.” The bombing of Baghdad continued; one reporter described seeing a severed hand, a pile of brains, and the remains of a mother and her three small children who were burned alive in their car after two American missiles landed in a crowded market.
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