"The country and the Congress were misled into war. I regret that we were not given the truth; as I said more than a year ago, knowing what we know now, I would not have gone to war in Iraq. And knowing now the full measure of the Bush Administration’s duplicity and incompetence, I doubt there are many members of Congress who would give them the authority they abused so badly. I know I would not."

Troops Kill 10, Capture Three, Destroy Weapons in Iraq

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2, 2007 – Coalition and Iraqi forces killed 10 insurgents, captured three others and destroyed weapons in Iraq over the past two days, military officials said.

Southeast of Baghdad in Salman Pak today, coalition forces targeted an alleged foreign terrorist facilitator with ties to senior al Qaeda members in the Arab Jabour area.

As troops approached the targeted building, armed terrorists engaged them with small-arms fire. To suppress the enemy fire, troops engaged the terrorists and called for supporting aircraft. Ground forces observed multiple secondary explosions from one of the buildings after coalition aircraft engaged it, which may indicate explosives were housed inside, military officials said.

The ground force continued to receive fire from several individuals who emerged from the target area. Coalition aircraft engaged and killed the enemy fighters. After the firefight, coalition forces found the lifeless bodies of 10 terrorists, two of whom were armed with suicide vests.

At the site, troops also discovered a small weapons cache, which included several suicide vests, heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft artillery. The building and cache were safely destroyed to prevent further use by terrorists, officials said.

Rebels, based in northern Iraq, make forays into Turkey

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki pledged Saturday to work with his country’s neighbors to fight terrorism, comments that come under intense pressure from Turkey and the United States for his government to help put an end to attacks from Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq.

A short time later, Iraqi authorities shut down an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Solution party in Irbil , an organization that allegedly had close ties to Kurdish guerrillas.

The top U.S. diplomat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, was playing go-between with Turkish and Iraqi officials as escalating tensions along the Turkish-Iraqi border overshadowed an international meeting on Iraq’s future. Turkish troops are massed on the border, and world leaders are trying to prevent an assault that could open a new front in the Iraq war.

"Iraq should not be a base for attacks against neighbors," al-Maliki said. "We will cooperate with our neighbors in defeating this threat."

The U.N. chief appealed for dialogue to resolve fears of a Turkish offensive against the rebels.

"The series of incidents along the border between Turkey and Iraq demonstrates the need for continuous engagement to address concerns," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the delegates. "We recognize Turkey’s security concerns."

U.S. can’t account for DynCorp performance in training police, report saysJust as the State Department is trying to work its way clear of its Blackwater troubles, a scathing federal audit released Tuesday exposes a glaring lapse in oversight of another federal contractor in Iraq, DynCorp. DynCorp was supposed to train and equip Iraqi police, but the report says the State Department doesn’t know how most of the money in the billion-plus-dollar program was spent.

The State Department "does not know specifically what it received for most of the $1.2 billion in expenditures under its DynCorp contract for the Iraqi Police Training Program," the audit says. The federal watchdogs, with the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, or SIGIR, said that they even had to suspend their audit because there wasn't enough data to check the books, which were in "disarray."

DynCorp’s contract was part of the U.S. strategy to arm and train a new Iraqi police force in the wake of the 2003 invasion. Training the police was a key part of the Bush administration’s efforts in Iraq. The training was considered crucial because police are often unable to withstand insurgent attacks, and are considered penetrated by various militias.

Personal pitch follows Pentagon chief's request last month

WASHINGTON - President Bush asked Congress on Monday for another $46 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and finance other national security needs.

"We must provide our troops with the help and support they need to get the job done," Bush said in comments a month after his Pentagon chief made the same appeal before lawmakers.

The figure brings to $196.4 billion the total requested by the administration for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere for the budget year that started Oct. 1. It includes $189.3 billion for the Defense Department, $6.9 billion for the State Department and $200 million for other agencies.

Afghan National Army Defeats Taliban in Key Southern Province

By David Mays
Special to American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, – Afghan National Army soldiers assisted by coalition advisors have completely wiped out Taliban insurgents in a key southern province, a coalition commander said today.

"My assessment of the threat in this province is that the insurgency has suffered a total defeat this summer due to the combined efforts of the ANA and coalition forces," Army Lt. Col. Karl Slaughenhaupt told online journalists and "bloggers" during a conference call from the tiny Afghan town of Qalat.

Slaughenhaupt is senior advisor to 2nd Brigade, 205th Corps, of the Afghan National Army. He and his coalition team members support ANA troops as they patrol vast, sparsely-populated Zabul province, through which runs the vital but extremely dangerous highway that links Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, with its major southern city, Kandahar.
"Anti-government elements initially began their spring offensive by conducting fairly spectacular platoon-size, complex attacks and ambushes along Highway 1 targeting Afghan and coalition security forces," the colonel said. "However, these attacks resulted in significant enemy losses."

Military announces deaths of soldiers and sailor, raising year’s total to 853

BAGHDAD - Five more U.S. troops and a sailor were killed in Iraq, the military said Tuesday — making 2007 the deadliest year for American forces in Iraq, according to an Associated Press count.

At least 853 U.S. military personnel have died in Iraq so far this year — the highest annual toll since the war began in March 2003, according to AP figures. Some 850 troops died in 2004.

The grim milestone passed despite a sharp drop in U.S. and Iraqi deaths here in recent months, after a 30,000-strong U.S. force buildup.

BAGHDAD - Twilight brings traffic jams to the main shopping district of this once-affluent corner of Baghdad and hundreds of people stroll past well-stocked vegetable stands, bakeries and butcher shops.

To many in Amariyah, it seems little short of a miracle.

Just six months ago, this mostly Sunni neighborhood was one of the centers of al-Qaida in Iraq operations. The district in western Baghdad was hit by more than a dozen bombings and shootings some days. Few people dared to venture onto the streets.

On Tuesday, women shopped and men drank tea in sidewalk cafes. Occasionally, U.S. soldiers walking the streets were greeted with salaams and smiles.

What is happening here reflects similar trends across Baghdad and parts of Iraq, where civilian and U.S. military casualties have dropped sharply in the past two months. But the speed of the turnaround in places such as Amariyah has taken almost everyone _ including U.S. military forces in the area _ by surprise.

"The progress that we made is almost unbelievable," said Capt. Brendan Gallagher, 29, of Columbia, Md., who serves with the Army's 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division.

The neighborhood is still nowhere near its former gloss at the Beverly Hills of Baghdad, as it was called before the 2003 U.S. invasion. A six-foot-high concrete wall rings the two-square-mile neighborhood, many villas stand empty with broken windows and the streets are littered with trash. There is 70 percent unemployment, U.S. military officials say.

But residents are making the first small steps toward trying to rebuild.

How the Bush-Erdogan meeting produced a solution that allows Turkey to step back from the brink of an invasion of northern Iraq.

For both George Bush and Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the stakes at Monday's Washington meeting could scarcely have been higher. For Bush, Turkey's threat to launch a large-scale invasion of northern Iraq to destroy Kurdish rebels threatened to destabilize the fragile gains of the U.S. military's troop surge—and throw into disarray the only consistently stable part of Iraq, the Kurdish-controlled north.

For Erdogan the risks were, if anything, greater. The Turkish premier has been under intense pressure from the public and the opposition to launch an all-out attack on Kurdish rebels, who have killed more than 40 Turkish soldiers and civilians in the last month alone. But at the same time Erdogan and his government have been seeking a way to get out of actually carrying out their threat to invade. Sending troops into Iraq carries the risk of escalating into an all-out war with Iraqi Kurds, which would doubtless quickly ignite tensions among Turkey's own 14 million-strong Kurdish minority. That would spell disaster both for Turkey's troubled southeast and for its relations with the European Union and the United States.

Fortunately for both sides, yesterday's White House encounter produced a solution that allowed both sides to step back from the brink. Bush not only declared the Kurdistan Workers' Party (or PKK), "an enemy of Turkey, a free Iraq and the United States," but also committed to providing actionable intelligence to Ankara on the whereabouts of PKK positions. Officially, Bush publicly stuck to the line that Iraq's territory should not be violated. In practice, though, the United States would cooperate "in order to chase down people who murder people," Bush pledged. Essentially, that appears to be a green light for the Turks to carry out limited raids into Iraqi territory with the blessing of the United States. And, crucially, it also allows Erdogan to call off a full-scale land invasion—though he stressed that that option remained on the table if raids proved unsuccessful.

By Ahmed Ali, IPS News

The much touted "surge" of U.S. troops in Baquba has caused more problems that it has solved, residents say.

Baquba, capital city of Iraq's Diyala province located 65 km northeast of Baghdad, has long been a volatile city plagued by rampant violence and administrative chaos.

Diyala is controlled by criminal gangs, militias, al-Qaeda like forces, and only on occasion - as at present -- by U.S. forces. Between all of these, normal life has come to a halt.

Amidst the fear and violence, streets remain empty, even of Iraqi army or police.

Iraq Sends Worldwide Terror Deaths Soaring

Iraq

There have been 4,161 coalition deaths -- 3,858 Americans, two Australians, 171

Britons, 13 Bulgarians, one Czech, seven Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Fijian, one Hungarian, 33 Italians, one Kazakh, one Korean, three Latvian, 22 Poles, three Romanians, five Salvadoran, four Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians -- in the war in Iraq as of November 9, 2007

Afghanistan

There have been 713 coalition deaths -- 454 Americans, three Australians, 83 Britons, 71 Canadians, one Czech, seven Danes, 12 Dutch, two Estonians, one Finn, 12 French, 22 Germans, nine Italians, three Norwegians, one Pole, one Portuguese, five Romanians, one South Korean, 23 Spaniards, two Swedes -- in the war on terror as of November 9, 2007