Friday, Dec 19th
Last update08:48:44 AM GMT
War Glance
U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion, sent by the planeload in cash and intended for Iraq's reconstruction after the start of the war.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born.
The US mission in Baghdad remains the world's largest embassy, built on a tract of land about the size of the Vatican and visible from space. It cost just $736 million to build—or was it $1 billion, depending on how you count the post-construction upgrades and fixes?
In its post-"withdrawal" plans, the State Department expects to have 17,000 personnel in Iraq at some 15 sites. If those plans go as expected, 5,500 of them will be mercenaries, hired to shoot-to-kill Iraqis as needed, to maintain security. Of the remaining 11,500, most will be in support roles of one sort or another, with only a couple of hundred in traditional diplomatic jobs.
America's military alliance with Europe - the cornerstone of U.S. security policy for six decades - faces a "dim, if not dismal" future, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in a blunt valedictory address.
In his final policy speech as Pentagon chief, Gates questioned the viability of NATO, saying its members' penny-pinching and lack of political will could hasten the end of U.S. support. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in 1949 as a U.S.-led bulwark against Soviet aggression, but in the post-Cold War era it has struggled to find a purpose.
Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi politician who played a key role in persuading the administration of President George W. Bush to invade Iraq and overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, said Tuesday that it's time for U.S. forces to go home.
"Are Iraqis ready to carry the responsibility for their country?" he asked rhetorically during a panel discussion held with political supporters at his family compound in Baghdad. "Is Iraq ready to be its own master?" "We want to be the masters of ourselves and to carry our responsibilities in this region," Chalibi said.
In what passes for a mausoleum here, the body of Saddam Hussein lies in the middle of a marble octagon, under a giant twinkling chandelier and purple, orange and blue blinking lights. His grave is covered with Iraqi flags, candies thrown from children and bundles of plastic flowers.
It has been four years since the former Iraqi leader was executed, and over that period it has been rare to see any more than a trickle of Iraqis show up to pay tribute in his home town, just outside Tikrit But over the past few months, the crowds have begun to grow.
A U.S. Army helicopter brigade is set to pull out of Baghdad in December, as part of an agreement with the Iraqi government to remove U.S. forces. So the armed helicopters flying over the Iraqi capital next year will have pilots and machine gunners from DynCorp International, a company based in Virginia.
On the ground, it's the same story. American soldiers and Marines will leave. Those replacing them, right down to carrying assault weapons, will come from places with names like Aegis Defence Services and Global Strategies Group — eight companies in all.
MI6 plotted the toppling of Saddam Hussein nearly 18 months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, secret papers revealed.
Spy chiefs discussed with Downing Street a plan that was layered ‘like an onion’, with ministers openly supporting ‘regime change’ while behind the scenes working closely with those carrying out a coup.
The intelligence service also made clear in newly declassified papers that the ‘prize’ for removing the Iraqi dictator was ‘new security to oil supplies’.
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