Iraqi Army

A month of relentless allied bombing may have killed or wounded 50,000 to 60,000 Iraqi soldiers, according to a pair of military analysts experienced in estimating battlefield casualties. There are no confirmed Iraqi casualty figures available, but formulas developed in the aftermath of past conflicts indicate that as many as 18,000 Iraqi troops may have died in the bombing, according to military historian Trevor Dupuy. Dupuy, a retired U.S. Army colonel, estimated the total Iraqi casualties at 60,000.

The U.S. military yesterday began airlifting Shiite Muslim refugees from southern Iraq to a camp in Saudi Arabia, where they are expected to stay until it is safe for them to return home. Five planes yesterday carried about 340 refugees from a U.S. Army-protected camp in Safwan to a camp erected by the Saudi government in Rafha. By tomorrow, the daily number of passengers is expected to increase to as many as 1,500, so that by early next month, up to 15,000 Iraqi Shiites will be moved to Rafha.

Two more U.S. soldiers have been killed and another wounded in violence in Iraq, the military said yesterday. The deaths occurred when a patrol from the Fourth Infantry Division was ambushed Saturday night southwest of Kirkuk, about 160 miles north of Baghdad. The attackers fired small arms and rocket-propelled grenades at the Americans. U.S. troops returned fire, but no further contact was made with the guerrilla fighters, the military said. The names of the dead were withheld pending notification of families.

An allied air strike last month hit a Kuwaiti hospital complex, killing five civilians, including three nurses and a 3-year-old girl, and wounding 36 others, witnesses said. Among the injured was an Egyptian doctor who lost an eye and part of his nose but performed major surgery seven days later. "My philosophy is that God left me one eye to see and left for me my hands to work," said Hamid Labib, 45, a Cairo native. He said he bore no grudge against the allied pilots who attacked the Al Adan hospital about 2 p.m. Feb. 9. "No, no, no," he said.

By allowing Iraq's new military to be organized largely along ethnic and religious lines, the United States may be inadvertently deepening the divisions among the country's Kurdish north, Shiite Muslim south and Sunni Arab west - leaving the sects to fight over the heart of the country. The creation of a national army to help unify and pacify Iraq is key to U.S. plans to begin significant withdrawals of American troops from Iraq in 2006, and President Bush and other top officials frequently cite the growing number of trained Iraqi troops as evidence of progress.

The woman was screaming: "We don't have the strength to endure any more. " It was Monday in this city's wealthy al-Khudra district. The woman stood around the corner from where a car bomber had just missed the police station but incinerated 16 cars along with several shoppers. Elegantly dressed under a modest black cloak, she cried out, "I put the responsibility on the Americans, because they came here. Iraqis are going crazy. " Her words sum up the dilemma facing occupation authorities.

In a move that could help improve security here, Kurdish peshmerga units are preparing to help bolster Iraq's fledgling police and army. "We are planning with the coalition forces to distribute peshmerga forces among the border guards, the police forces, and training them to merge with the new Iraqi army," said Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and one of nine rotating council presidents who took up leadership of the...

Turkish authorities launched a major effort yesterday to move tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees from encampments near the Iraqi border, apparently to protect them from Iraqi army units that have been combing the frontier for Kurdish rebels. As many as 100,000 Kurds have poured across the boulder-strewn peaks of northern Iraq and into Turkey over the last two weeks to escape a massive Iraqi military campaign against Kurdish separatists. Following reports over the weekend that Iraqi troops had fired over the border into one of the refugee encampments, Turkish authorities began transporting the refugees, in the backs of government-owned trucks, to relief centers farther from the border.

ASSEMBLY AREA SPARTAN, southern Iraq - The First Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment's own vehicles could prove to be a tougher opponent than the Iraqi army. At least one-fifth of the battalion's large fleet of amphibious assault vehicles broke down, overheated, or ran out of fuel during the 100-mile trip from its dispersion area in northern Kuwait through rural terrain in southwestern Iraq. The journey took nearly 30 hours, ending early yesterday. Radio communication breakdowns during the latter stages hampered coordination among the battalion's five companies.

FOR WEEKS now, the insurgents in Iraq have been conducting their own bloody version of "Rock the Vote. " In a war that is about symbols more than it is about traditional military victories, succeeding in stopping the Jan. 30 election in Iraq would be a huge win for the opposition. For that reason alone, the election cannot be delayed. So yes, despite the assassination of the governor of Baghdad, of election officials, of Iraqi police and American soldiers, the election must go on. Delaying it would just give insurgents another day to literally shoot for. But in saying that, it's important to keep expectations realistic, despite the rhetoric coming from the Bush White House.

BAGHDAD - Militants downed an Iraqi army helicopter on Thursday in clashes that have killed at least 19 people including 11 policemen, a regional official said, in what appeared to be part of an al-Qaeda surge to retake one of its former strongholds. The fighting around the town of Hadid, north of the Diyala provincial capital of Baqubah, follows a warning last weekend from al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq to push back into areas the group was driven out of by the U.S. military after sectarian fighting peaked in 2007.

BAGHDAD - Two suicide bombers killed 46 members of a U.S.-backed anti-al Qaeda Sunni militia in Iraq, the highest such death toll in two months, an Iraqi Interior ministry official said. Officials blamed al Qaeda in Iraq, which has frequently targeted such militiamen, though no immediate claim of responsibility was made. The militia, called the "Awakening" or Sahwa in Arabic, was formed in 2006 in al Anbar Province by tribal men and former members of al Qaeda and other insurgent groups who decided to join with the U.S. military to fight al Qaeda.

As violence diminishes and U.S. troops draw down, Iraqis are trying to figure out what kind of political system will emerge when American influence fades. The nature of that system matters to Americans, too. The purpose of Gen. David Petraeus' "surge" strategy was to stabilize Iraq so it would no longer provide a haven for al-Qaeda or a fertile field for Iranian intervention. But Iraq's political system is increasingly fragmented. Although Shiites and Sunnis are no longer fighting, there are growing splits within those sects, and tensions between Kurds and Arabs.

On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, Americans are more focused on threats to the economy than on events in Baghdad. But, having spent five years focused on this war that will haunt us for at least five more, I'm mesmerized by recent revelations about a crucial postwar mistake. I refer to the administration's decision to officially dissolve the army of Iraq. America's abolishment of the Iraq army in May 2003 left tens of thousands of armed men without salaries or job prospects.

"We used to joke that there were 500 ways to do it wrong," says Barbara Bodine, American diplomat and former coordinator for central Iraq, of how the United States could rebuild the Middle Eastern nation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. "And only two or three ways to do it right. " No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson's lucid, concise and devastating account of what went wrong in Iraq, patiently counts those 500 ways. The result is a heartbreaking, soul-searching chronicle of how America snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in a nation where outraged citizens look into Ferguson's camera and testify, "Saddam was awful, but the Americans are worse!"

"In the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the sacredness of your sorrow, I have ventured to address you this tribute to the memory of . . .. your brave and early fallen child. May God give you that consolation which is beyond all earthly power. " - Abraham Lincoln A team member recalls Travis Manion's toughness, dedication and quiet leadership en route to a Catholic League football championship. A classmate remembers a strapping, well-liked Travis who went out of his way to befriend the not-so-athletic and less-popular.

There are no good options left to deal with the chaos in Iraq. But the Iraq Study Group report released yesterday offers the best of the remaining choices for the United States to proceed in the Persian Gulf. The main recommendation of gradually changing the U.S. military's role from combat to training and supporting Iraqi forces is worth a try. So is convening a conference of Iraq's neighbors and restarting diplomacy to create a Palestinian state that stands alongside a secure Israel.

Militiamen loyal to an anti-American cleric re-emerged yesterday in the southern city of Amarah, hunting down and killing four policemen from a rival militia in a brutal Shiite-on-Shiite settling of scores. The Iraqi army set up a few roadblocks but didn't interfere in the movement of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters after police fled the streets. The latest attacks came despite a public call by al-Sadr to halt the tribal vendetta, suggesting that splinter groups were developing within his militia.

Violence in Iraq shows no sign of easing. With Americans soon to head to the polls and the U.S. death toll in Iraq nearing 3,000, the mission is certainly not accomplished. Politicians and pundits both line up to point the finger of blame. The insurgency in Iraq is the fault of poor leadership, they argue. Many single out Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head L. Paul Bremer's orders disbanding the Iraqi army and implementing de-Baathification, the removal from their jobs of members of Saddam Hussein's political party, as reasons for the current quagmire.