IRAQ: Beyond the Green Zone - Inter Press Service

IPS Correspondent Gareth Porter talks to Real News.

The U.S. military establishment believed they could easily pressure President Obama to back down on his pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq within 16 months. Having found Obama unconvinced by their argument, they have now launched a campaign in Washington to blame Obama's withdrawal policy for any future instability in Iraq.

IRAQ: The River Too Tells the Story
By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD - There is less water now in the Tigris, and it is less clean. The river has fewer fish, and rising fuel and other costs mean they are more costly to catch. It's not, as Hamza Majit finds, a good time to be a fisher.
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MEDIA: Climate of Fear Pervades Many Newsrooms
By Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS - In Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, journalists are becoming increasingly vulnerable to physical violence as a result of their work, says a U.S.-based media watchdog in a new report released Tuesday.
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RIGHTS: Violations Privatised Away
By David Cronin
BRUSSELS - The intimate involvement of the private sector in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq received international attention in September 2007, when staff with the security firm Blackwater shot dead 17 civilians in the vicinity of Baghdad's Nisoor Square.
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POLITICS-US: Petraeus Leaked Misleading Story on Pullout Plans
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - The political maneuvering between President Barack Obama and his top field commanders over withdrawal from Iraq has taken a sudden new turn with the leak by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus - and a firm denial by a White House official - of an account of the Jan. 21 White House meeting suggesting that Obama had requested three different combat troop withdrawal plans with their respective associated risks, including one of 23 months.
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IRAQ: No Unemployment Among Gravediggers
By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD - Amidst the soaring unemployment in Iraq, the gravediggers have been busy. So busy that officials have no record of the number of graves dug; of the real death toll, that is.
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US-IRAQ: Generals Seek to Reverse Obama Withdrawal Decision
By Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON - CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.
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IRAQ: Elections Could be a Telling Signpost
Analysis by Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD - After strong polling for the provincial elections Saturday, Iraqis are looking out for new signposts of political recovery from the U.S.-led invasion and occupation.
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IRAQ: Threat of Violence Looms Again Over Fallujah
By Dahr Jamail
FALLUJAH - The threat of violence hangs over Fallujah again as leaders of the Awakening Council fight for political power through the elections Jan. 31.
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IRAQ: Elections Dawn on Changed Political Landscape
By Ali Gharib
WASHINGTON - Despite the possibility of isolated violence and other problems, close watchers of Iraq's upcoming provincial elections say that a relatively smooth process there could be a bellwether for better days ahead, according to a new report.
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IRAQ: Tentative Hope Rises Ahead of Elections
By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD - Uncertainty and tension are running high in Baghdad ahead of the provincial election due Jan. 31. But this time fears are also touched by a new hope.
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EUROPE: Watching That Space, and Seeing More of the Same
By David Cronin
BRUSSELS - Polished, clever and charismatic, Barack Obama appears the very antithesis of the bungling cowboy that his predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush was widely believed to be. That in itself helps explain why his election as the first black president of the U.S. in November delighted millions in Europe.
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BOOKS-US: Wounded Veterans Treated as an Afterthought
By Dahr Jamail
MARFA, Texas - "But the [George W.] Bush administration was never seriously interested in helping veterans. The sorry state of care for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans is not an accident. It's on purpose."
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POLITICS-US: Vets Health System in Need of Triage
Analysis by Aaron Glantz*
SAN FRANCISCO - Eighteen U.S. veterans kill themselves every day. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas. One in every three homeless men in the United States has put on a uniform and served his country. On any given night, the U.S. government estimates 200,000 veterans sleep on the street.
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U.S.: Bush Foreign Policy Legacy Widely Seen as Disastrous
Analysis by Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON - While in a farewell press conference Monday George W. Bush once again expressed the belief that his eight-year presidency, particularly his foreign-policy record, will be vindicated by history, the portents are not particularly good.
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U.S.: Networks' Int'l News Coverage at Record Low in 2008
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Despite two wars involving more than 200,000 U.S. troops and a global economic crisis, foreign-related news coverage by the three major U.S. television networks fell to a record low during 2008, according to the latest annual review of network news coverage by the authoritative Tyndall Report.
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IRAQ: It Could be More Than Three Years to US Departure
Analysis by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
CAIRO - Washington and Baghdad signed a security agreement earlier this month allowing the U.S. to maintain a military presence in Iraq for another three years. But while Baghdad officials hailed the pact as the "beginning of the end" of the U.S.-led occupation, Egyptian commentators - like much of the Iraqi opposition - say the agreement simply reflects U.S. strategic interests.
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Unlike most other international news media, who report on Iraq from inside the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, IPS's Iraqi correspondents spread across the country to bring you some of the boldest reporting about this war-torn nation. To this IPS adds incisive coverage from the international centres of power where the future of Iraq is being moulded.