On Balance (Good News Series)...
7 Dec. Washington Times editorial - On Balance.
The first in a series of editorials on underreported good news from Iraq.
If Washington seems increasingly pessimistic about Iraq these days, Iraqis themselves aren't. In fact, 47 percent of Iraqis surveyed by the International Republican Institute in October said that the country is headed in the right direction (37 percent said it wasn't). That's a higher percentage than last year, when 42 percent of Iraqis thought so (45 percent did not) -- despite the problematic ongoing security problems. Here are some of the underreported reasons why...
8 Dec. (Part II)
On Balance.
Whatever happened to Baghdad's infamous airport road? "Route Irish," so named for the Fighting 69th, which patrolled it until recently, is still the only way to reach the capital by air. But it has dropped from the headlines -- because it is now relatively safe...
12 Dec. On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
There aren't many mentions of Najaf in headlines these days. That's a good thing: The city's security situation is vastly improved, and so Najaf is less interesting to the media...
13 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Yesterday, Ambassador Dan Speckhard, head of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office in Washington, reported that 30,000 new businesses have registered with the Iraqi government in the last year. "And who knows how many unregistered business starts there were?"...
14 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Are coalition forces showing progress on Iraq's problematic Syrian border? One promising sign is how little resistance coalition forces have met in their Euphrates River-area campaign to sweep out Sunni insurgent strongholds and notorious al Qaeda in Iraq sites near Syria...
15 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
In today's Iraqi elections, Coalition forces will not be providing protection at polling sites. They have provided Jersey barriers, wire, other tools and are making "quick-reaction forces" available. But otherwise, Iraqi forces will be on their own -- a sign of confidence in the country's new-and-improved police and military forces...
16 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Amid what appears to be record turnout in yesterday's Iraqi elections, violence at the polls hit a record low...
19 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Sunni turnout was so high in Thursday's Iraqi elections that emergency shipments of ballots were needed in some polling stations to accommodate voters...
20 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
As vote-counting got underway in Iraq late last week, authorities announced preliminary nation-wide turnout estimates near 70 percent of the Iraqi electorate...
21 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
In last week's Iraqi elections, voters in Ramadi turned out in droves. Turnout in the notorious insurgent terrorist stronghold and capital of the Sunni-dominated Anbar province was estimated at 75 to 85 percent, according to election officials. Terrorist violence ground to a halt as leaders sympathetic to or affiliated with the insurgency urged voters to participate and enforced a temporary ceasefire during the vote.
22 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Iraqi police and military combat fatalities have decreased on a month-to-month basis since the summer...
The improvement comes during a period in which Iraqi forces have received added responsibilities -- including the handling of security during last week's elections.
23 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
The number of Iraqi civilians killed in the ongoing war appears to be dropping since deaths spiked in August...
27 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Increasingly, Iraqi citizens have been giving their government tips about the activities of the terrorist insurgency. Tips multiplied by a factor of 10 from March to September, according to a report that the National Security Council submitted to Congress last month. In March, Iraqi authorities reported 483 instances of private citizens offering information on insurgent activities. That total jumped to 3,341 in August and then to 4,700 in September...
28 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Three weeks ago, the Iraqi Stock Exchange opened permanent headquarters in Baghdad after more than a year in temporary housing, raising hopes for further improvements in an already emergent Iraqi economy...
29 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Poland's new conservative government plans to extend the country's military activities in Iraq, reversing plans to withdraw the more than 1,400 Polish troops there over the coming months. Poland now plans to keep troops in Iraq through 2006, subject to the approval of President Lech Kaczynski.
Explaining the move, Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said the troops are needed to help train the new Iraqi security forces and to focus more on training than aiding the counterinsurgency...
30 December On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
This week, for the first time, the United Nations pronounced Iraq's elections "transparent and credible" despite ongoing calls by some Sunnis for new elections...
3 January On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
South Korea, the Coalition's third-largest contributor of troops behind the United States and United Kingdom, is reducing its forces in Iraq by one third and extending its overall mission there by another year...
4 January On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Iraq's largest Sunni coalition is preparing to drop claims that the December elections were tainted. Yesterday, the Iraqi Consensus Front announced it had broken with other Sunni groups and plans to accept the results once the election-monitoring process is complete...
9 January On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Could Sunni Iraqi opinion finally be turning against Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi's terrorist organization? There's no definitive sign that is the case. But after more than 130 people died in violence on Thursday, which capped off one of the most violent weeks since the 2003 invasion -- Sunnis in Ramadi, once a a city notorious for sympathizing with the terrorist insurgency, were condemning Al Qaeda in Iraq publicly for the first time...
Last edited by SWJED; 01-10-2006 at 08:39 AM.
10 January On Balance
Washington Times - On Balance.
Of course if the Turkish deployment is only in Northern Iraq ("Kurdistan") this might not be such good news....On Turkish television Sunday, the country's foreign minister suggested Turkey might send troops to Iraq in the coming months or years if the Iraqi government requests it...
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