AFP - Crowned with success in Iraq, General David Petraeus, who takes command Friday of US military forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, inherits the next big challenge: devising a winning strategy in Afghanistan.
AP - As of Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008, at least 4,189 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
AP - No one knows for sure, but auditors think the U.S. has paid well over $6 billion to private security companies who’ve been guarding diplomats, troops, Iraqi officials and reconstruction workers in Iraq.
AP - Iraq wants to eliminate any chance U.S. forces will stay here after 2011 under a proposed security pact and to expand Iraqi legal jurisdiction over U.S. troops until then, a close ally of the prime minister said Thursday.
AP - Tens of thousands crowded a Damascus square in a government-orchestrated rally Thursday to denounce a deadly U.S. raid on Syrian territory near Iraq and send a loud message to America: Leave us alone!
AP - An Iraqi opposition lawmaker claimed Thursday that thousands of his countrymen are being mistreated in detention centers outside the official prison system.
McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON Two years ago, President Bush hailed Najim al Jabouri as a symbol of success in the battle to curb Iraq’s sectarian violence. Today, Jabouri is a symbol of how uncertain that success is.
AFP - The White House on Thursday charged that politics and posturing in Iraq were delaying a controversial US-Iraq security accord but said it remained “hopeful and confident” about the pact.
AP - The remains of a North Dakota civilian taken hostage and killed in Iraq nearly three years ago have been recovered along with remains believed to be those of his fiancee, an interpreter for the military, his sister and FBI officials said.
AFP - The parliament in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, under pressure from feminist groups, passed a law on Thursday limiting the circumstances under which a man may have more than one wife.