On August 19, 2009 twin bombings occurred at Iraq’s Foreign and Finance Ministries. Three days later, the Baghdad Operations Command announced that it had arrested a suspect, and his taped confession was later played on television. He said he was a Baathist and former policeman who put together one of the truck bombs in the [...]
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Just as the death of Edward Kennedy marks the passing of one of the most prominent politicians in the American political firmament, today the Iraqi political scene lost one of its key figures as well. Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of one of Iraq’s main Shiite political parties, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), succumbed [...] While President Bush was still in office and his administration was trying to come to an agreement with the Iraqi government on terms governing the continued troop presence in Iraq (what is referred to as the Status of Forces Agreement, or “SOFA”), Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani made a public statement demanding that any such agreement [...] Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s cabinet submitted a draft law to parliament calling for a referendum on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to coincide with the January 2010 parliamentary election. The SOFA was originally passed in November 2008 by the Iraqi parliament. Alongside it was a second law, the Political Reform Document, which also called [...] On July 16, 2009 Al-Hayat newspaper reported that Moqtada al-Sadr visited Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) in his Tehran hospital. Sadr said he was interested in rejoining the United Iraqi Alliance, which the Sadrists left in September 2007. The new alliance is due to be announced later this [...] Mike Hanna is on point, as usual: The United States took an important step yesterday toward leaving Iraq by moving combat troops out of Iraqi population centers in anticipation of the June 30 deadline specified in the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). This redeployment has focused attention on Iraq’s current security situation and triggered stepped-up [...] |
Blake Hounshell (aka praktike), our co-founder and main man, is now managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine. 
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