The Iraqi government?s aggressive effort includes a plan to help families who had been displaced from mixed neighborhoods and a temporary closing of the borders with Iran and Syria.
The push for a U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, already under fire in South Korea, is being viewed skeptically by U.S. manufacturers, especially carmakers, according to industry and congressional officials.
Emboldened with ideas aired at two private retreats, Senate Republicans are planning as soon as Thursday to release their 2007–2008 legislative agenda, which they hope will help the 21 GOP senators up for re-election next year keep their seats.
The nuclear deal unveiled today in Beijing to freeze North Korea's plutonium-yielding reactor and readmit inspectors is, as a smiling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "the result of patient, creative, and tough diplomacy." True as that is, her statement masks the range of difficulties that had to be overcome in reaching this point. They include not only the obvious North Korean obstinacy but also the nagging policy disputes within a Bush administration that, at times, has seemed ambivalent about doing diplomatic business with a troublemaking communist regime.
AP - Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr fled Iraq for Iran ahead of a security crackdown in Baghdad and the arrival of 21,500 U.S. troops sent by President Bush to quell sectarian violence, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday.
AP - Democrats relentlessly assailed President Bush's policy in Iraq as a catastrophic failure Tuesday as the House plunged into momentous debate on a war that has lost public support and cost more than 3,100 U.S. troops their lives. "No more blank checks," declared Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
AP - A hard-won disarmament pact that the U.S. and four other nations struck with North Korea on Tuesday requires the communist nation to halt its nuclear programs in exchange for oil while leaving the ultimate abandonment of those weapons projects to a potentially trouble-filled future.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace appeared Tuesday to question Bush administration assertions that the Iranian government is supplying arms to Shiite militants in Iraq. Pace said Iranians were involved in Iraq, but he was not sure if they had links back to Tehran. The U.S. military has said a section of Iran's Revolutionary Guard which answers directly to Iran's Supreme Leader is sending armor piercing weapons into Iraq.
Iraq plans to close its borders with Iran and Syria for 72 hours in an attempt to secure the capital, the Iraqi commander in charge of Baghdad's security plan said Tuesday. Baghdad's curfew will be extended during the closures, and Iraqi forces plan to suspend civilian licenses for weapons and ammo.
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