mosul

Yesterday’s Pentagon briefing featured a telling exchange about Iraq between a reporter (whom I think was McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef) and  spokesman Geoff Morrell. If the United States is on pace to withdraw from Iraq, the reporter wanted to know, wasn’t the United States declaring victory? Morrell came up with a couple of unsatisfying evasions — [...]

Huge news if true: according to The New York Times, the Iraqi government has agreed to allow the Kurds to export the oil developed within the borders of their autonomous super-province. This isn’t the same thing as the passage of the much-desired-and-much-delayed hydrocarbons law, but it has large implications for both that law and the [...]

For the past several weeks, the U.S. military command in Iraq has repeatedly floated the prospect of asking the Iraqi government to extend the deadline for ending U.S. combat operations in certain Iraqi cities beyond the June 30 date stipulated in the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement. It made me wonder if the decision — [...]

We’ve gotten word for weeks now that the U.S. military probably planned to request that Mosul be the exception to the July 30 deadline for U.S. combat troops to leave Iraqi cities set by the Status of Forces Agreement. Now that’s definitely the case, with a twist thrown in, according to The New York Times:
[Iraqi [...]

Much as Gen. Raymond Odierno recently said, here’s Col. Gary Volesky, commander of the U.S. brigade combat team in Mosul:
Q Hi, sir. This is Daphne Benoit with Agence France-Presse. Given the recent acts of violence in the Mosul region, are you still confident that you’re going to be able to [...]

The Iraqi north is a place where the war hasn’t stopped, and may not even have started in earnest, as Arabs, Kurds and other minorities compete for land and oil resources in cities like Mosul and Kirkuk. Befitting President Obama’s call yesterday for concerted Iraqi efforts at sectarian reconciliation and political unity, Juan Cole reprints [...]

Coming on the heels of Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry’s nomination to become ambassador to Afghanistan, Ambassador  Chris Hill, most recently the Bush administration’s extremely-well-regarded North Korea troubleshooter, is set to succeed Ryan Crocker as ambassador to Iraq, The Washington Post reports.

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan – For those, like myself, who’ve never before been to Afghanistan, the sprawling Bagram Air Field is known for two things: transit and torture.
Naturally I saw no evidence of torture during my brief in-processing, after which I went on to Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost Province, near the Pakistan border. [...]