Iraq Today

CIA Gets Their Man In Charge of Iraq

The United States has warmly endorsed a decision by the Iraqi Governing Council to select a longtime exile with strong ties to the CIA to be the new prime minister of Iraq's interim government despite U.N. concerns over his past links.

Intelligence Agents Accused of Widespread Abuse

Several U.S. guards allege they witnessed military intelligence operatives encouraging the abuse of Iraqi prison inmates at four prisons other than Abu Ghraib, investigative documents show.

Interrogators hid identities, Army insisting small group of guards responsible

Efforts to determine who orchestrated the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison may be complicated by the ways in which many military intelligence officials, covert U.S. agents and civilian contractors obscured their identities.

Meanwhile, military prosecutors appear to be developing a theory of the case that dovetails with the stance taken by top officials at the Pentagon: that the abuse was not systemic and was the work of a small group of low-level soldiers.

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Fallujah may be a glimpse of Iraq's future

With U.S. marines gone and central government authority virtually nonexistent, Fallujah resembles an Islamic mini-state - anyone caught selling alcohol is flogged and paraded in the city. Men are encouraged to grow beards and barbers are warned against giving "western" hair cuts.

"After all the blood that was shed, and the lives that were lost, we shall only accept God's law in Fallujah," said cleric Abdul-Qader al-Aloussi, offering a glimpse of what a future Iraq may look like as the U.S.-led occupation draws to a close. "We must capitalize on our victory over the Americans and implement Islamic sharia laws."

Besides Halliburton - Massive Looting Operations Underway In Iraq

As the United States spends billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq's civil and military infrastructure, there is increasing evidence that parts of sensitive military equipment, seemingly brand-new components for oil rigs and water plants and whole complexes of older buildings, are leaving the country on the backs of flatbed trucks.

In what some experts call a massive looting operation, at least 100 semi-trailers loaded with what is billed as Iraqi scrap metal are streaming each day into Jordan, just one of six countries that share a border with Iraq.

In the past several months, the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, Austria, has been closely monitoring satellite photographs of hundreds of military-industrial sites in Iraq.

Initial results from that analysis are jarring, said Jacques Baute, director of the agency's Iraq nuclear verification office: entire buildings and complexes of as many as a dozen buildings have been vanishing from the photographs.