Washngton Times - On Balance.
Insurgent groups have engaged in open battles with Al Qaeda in Iraq in recent months -- which U.S. officials hope will open a new dynamic in the war...
11 January On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
In a major pre-dawn raid in Madrid, Barcelona and the Basque region yesterday, Spanish authorities arrested 20 suspected radical Islamists who allegedly recruited and trained militants to send to Iraq...
13 January On Balance
Washngton Times - On Balance.
Insurgent groups have engaged in open battles with Al Qaeda in Iraq in recent months -- which U.S. officials hope will open a new dynamic in the war...
17 January On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Charges of widespread voting fraud in Iraq's December election were put to rest yesterday (at least as far the facts are concerned) with the announcement by Iraq's Electoral Commission that only 227 of the estimated 31,000 ballot boxes around the country would need to be voided due to irregularities...
18 January On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Mongolia's new government will keep its small but symbolically important contingent of troops in Iraq, the country's new ruling party announced yesterday. "We will stick to the policy of support of the war against terrorism," Yondon Otgonbayar, the permanent secretary of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), told Agence France Press...
20 January On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Officials in the once-notorious insurgent stronghold of Anbar province are preparing for local Iraqi forces to assume security responsibilities, perhaps as early as this year.
There has been no official U.S. announcement of an impending transfer nor of a possible timeframe. But according to the Beirut-based Dar Alhayat, U.S. and Iraqi officials have begun discussions to hand over security responsibilities "as U.S. forces withdraw gradually."...
25 January On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Another sign of division between Iraqi insurgents and al Qaeda operatives emerged Monday when insurgents in Ramadi announced a pact against their former al Qaeda allies -- which prompted a round of assassinations between the two sides...
30 January On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
U.S. and Iraqi forces apprehended more than 50 suspected terrorist insurgents throughout Iraq last week...
...including four men who were said to be "closely tied to a terrorist ring responsible for committing murders and beheadings in the area.
31 January On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
The latest evidence that a rift is growing between Iraqi insurgents and al Qaeda in Iraq: The Arab newspaper Al-Hayat reported four days ago that 270 foreigners have been apprehended by authorities in Anbar province. Local tribes, with the cooperation of insurgent forces, are turning on the foreign fighters they once regarded as allies...
1 February On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
During January, the number of insurgent terrorist attacks in Iraq increased, but suicide bombings decreased sharply -- leading some analysts to suggest that new rifts between al Qaeda in Iraq and Iraqi insurgents are harming al Qaeda's effectiveness...
2 February On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
In a January University of Maryland poll of Iraqis whose results are mixed news for the U.S. war effort, a few positives stand out: 77 percent of Iraqis thought the war to oust Saddam Hussein was worth it, even "considering any hardships you might have suffered"...
3 February On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
The 1st Brigade, 7th Division of the Iraqi Army raided a factory in Ramadi yesterday and arrested 15 suspected insurgents who were thought to belong to a cell of foreign terrorists.
Eleven of the 15 suspects are Syrian and 4 were Iraqis, according to the U.S. Marine Corps...
10 February On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
The reputed fourth-in-command of al Qaeda in Iraq was detained this week in Baghdad. "Mohammed Rabih Abu Zar, number four in al Qaeda in Iraq, was arrested a few days ago in Baghdad," Gen. Hussein Kamal, intelligence chief for the Interior Ministry, told Agence France Press. Few additional details were immediately available...
15 February On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Forty of the Iraqi army's 102 battalions have now taken over primary security responsibilities in their areas of operation...
Now, about two-fifths of the force is taking the lead and is doing so in places like Ramadi and Samarra in addition to the capital.
16 February On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
The number of U.S. troops wounded in Iraq in January fell to its lowest monthly total since the beginning of 2004, according to new Pentagon data...
Among the reasons analysts cite are decreased capabilities of the terrorist insurgency, improved methods against improvised-explosive devices and the ongoing turnover of lead security responsibilities to Iraqi forces.
20 February On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
On Saturday Iraqi special forces and an elite Macedonian Ranger unit apprehended 18 suspected terrorists and captured three weapons caches north of Baghdad. The caches contained rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank weapons, surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft guns and scores of smaller arms and munitions.
The strike, dubbed "Operation Level Sand," was intended to reduce terrorists' sanctuary and seize key weapons stockpiles, according to the Multinational Forces Command.
U.S. and Iraqi forces also found a terrain model and two underground tunnels at the site of one of the weapons caches, signs that the cache was a key facility for terrorists before the strike.
23 February On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
The Iraqi army's 5th Brigade, 6th Division formally assumed responsibility for security of parts of central and Southern Baghdad after a transfer ceremony on Monday, the American Forces Press Service reported this week. The transfer means that nearly 60 percent of Baghdad is now officially guarded by Iraqi forces...
3 March On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Iraqi authorities revealed the arrest yesterday of an al Qaeda operative who allegedly confessed to carrying out 116 beheadings. Maj. Raid al-Mafraji of the Interior Ministry said a large weapons cache and three other suspected terrorists were also nabbed...
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