The Bush administration fears that cutting off cash or linking it to performance will further destabilize Pakistan?s president, according to some officials.
Baghdad--Since the Baghdad security plan began on a rolling start in February, many neighborhoods have been cleared of insurgents by U.S. soldiers in armored Stryker vehicles. The second, "control" phase is underway in many areas. "We are very good at clearing areas," says Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, commander of the division carrying out the plan, "but that does not count for anything unless you hold it afterward. This time we have forces in place to stay."
BAGHDAD--The U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is under no illusions about the difficulty of his task. He keeps by his desk a cartoon from an Arab newspaper depicting a small soldier named David looking up at a ferocious, looming Goliath named Iraq. When he returned here in February to lead the U.S. war effort, he was shocked at how deeply sectarian violence had torn the country over the past year. He visited Baghdad neighborhoods where hundreds or even thousands of Iraqis had been killed or forced to move. "It's by far and away the most complex and challenging environment I've ever seen," Petraeus told U.S. News during an interview at his office--far worse than he encountered on his first two tours here as well as on earlier assignments in the Balkan, Haitian, and Central American conflicts.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic mission to Moscow this week has lowered recent tensions between the United States and Russia, especially because it netted "a dedication on both sides to lower the rhetoric," a senior State Department official tells U.S. News.
AP - U.S. forces broadened their hunt Saturday for three missing comrades beyond the rural area south of Baghdad where they disappeared, and their top commander expressed optimism that at least two of them were still alive a week after their isolated outpost was ambushed.
AP - Firefighters appeared to be gaining control Saturday over a wildfire that has threatened homes and other structures in two northern Arizona forests. The 6-square-mile Promontory fire was 60 percent contained and officials projected full containment by Tuesday.
AP - Former presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton put politics aside Saturday, urging University of New Hampshire graduates to focus on helping others both in their community and around the world.
At least two of the three soldiers missing in Iraq for a week could be alive, military commanders told CNN on Saturday. There is "reason to believe" one of the missing soldiers may have died after capture, an official told CNN, but the military will assume that all three are alive until proved otherwise.
Authorities in northern Iraq have arrested four people in connection with the "honor killing" last month of a Kurdish teen -- a startling, morbid pummeling caught on a mobile phone video camera and broadcast around the world.
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