Iraq

WASHINGTON -- Contractors who have worked in Iraq are returning home with the same kinds of combat-related mental health problems that afflict U.S. military personnel, according to contractors, industry officials and mental health experts. But, they say, the private workers are largely left on their own to find care, and their problems often go ignored or are inadequately treated. A vast second army of contractors - up to 180,000 Americans, Iraqis and other foreigners - are working for the U.S. government in Iraq.

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is planning a trip to Saudi Arabia, an official said, for talks expected to focus on regional stability and the sectarian fighting in Iraq and Lebanon. "The two heads of state will discuss issues of the Islamic world, bilateral ties and the situation in the Middle East," Mohammad Hosseini, Iran's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told the Iranian news agency IRNA. He did not say when the trip would be made, but other news agencies reported that it would take place this weekend.

BAGHDAD -- After weeks of hesitation, Iran announced yesterday that it would attend a conference this week in Egypt that is intended as a forum for Iraq's neighbors -- along with the United Nations, the United States and other world powers -- to establish a regional consensus on ways to stabilize Iraq. Without Iran, Iraq's largest and most influential neighbor, it is unlikely that any serious progress could have been made. Topping the American agenda for the meeting is the U.S. allegation that Iran is helping fuel the violence in Iraq by facilitating the supply of weapons, money and sophisticated bomb-making techniques to insurgents.

PHILADELPHIA -- We all know the famous phrase of philosopher George Santayana, who warned: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." But those who raise false historical analogies may harm their cause as much as the memory-challenged. Such is the case with President Bush, who last week compared Iraq to Japan, South Korea - and Vietnam. We are engaged in a national debate of huge importance over how to rescue our Iraq policy from pending disaster. Republican stalwarts, whose support may be fraying, are mostly willing to back Mr. Bush's call to "stay the course," while the Democratic base believes we must leave Iraq as soon as possible.

PHILADELPHIA -- Senators who want America to change course in Iraq should stop wasting their time on opposing the president's troop buildup. Whether or not we deploy a few thousand new troops to Baghdad won't make much difference. The only hope for creating decent conditions for a troop exit is shrewd regional diplomacy that prods Iraq's neighbors to help stabilize Baghdad. Thus far, the White House has rejected the diplomatic track - the main recommendation of the Iraq Study Group. Instead, the Bush team is intensifying its rhetoric against Iran, raising fears it will open a new military front against Tehran to distract from its troubles in Baghdad.

WASHINGTON -- Negotiations to pay for the war in Iraq fell apart yesterday as the White House accused Democrats of "being dug in" on a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops. Democrats charged that President Bush refused to accept any accountability for how the war is proceeding. During a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders offered to drop billions of dollars in domestic spending if Bush would agree to a timetable to pull troops out of Iraq, a schedule that he could waive if he deemed it militarily necessary.

BAGHDAD -- The wails of mourners reverberated yesterday across the Shiite Muslim city of Amarah, still reeling from three car bombs that ripped through its main market the previous day. The provincial Health Department lowered the death toll from 41 to 28, citing confusion in the immediate aftermath of the first major bombing to hit the southern city during the Iraq war. At the same time, the estimate of the number of injured grew to at least 180, said...

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ANBAR PROVINCE, Iraq -- Once the most violence-racked region of Iraq, much of Anbar has become a relatively peaceful haven, ripe for the kind of economic development and political reform that has been the most noble and pressing U.S. goal for the nation it invaded four years ago. About 200 local Iraqi leaders in the dusty Euphrates River towns that stretch more than a hundred miles west of Baghdad have thrown in their lot with U.S. forces, risking their...

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In a symbolic victory for Iraq, representatives of neighboring countries and world powers are gathering here to discuss how they could help stabilize the troubled country. The meeting, scheduled for today, will be a rare opportunity for Iran and the United States to sit at the same table. Syria, another frequent target of American animosity, will be there, too. But at a practical level the meeting is most important for Iraq, a country teetering on the brink of chaos and in desperate need of help from all its neighbors.

Tony Fein, an Iraq War veteran who was a member of the Ravens during the preseason, died Tuesday morning in Port Orchard, Wash., according to his agent. There were no immediate details about his death, said the agent, Milton D. Hobbs. "It's a very sad situation," Hobbs told The Baltimore Sun late Tuesday night. "I am still trying to figure out what happened." Fein, 27, was an undrafted rookie free-agent linebacker who was released by the Ravens in their final major cutdown Sept. 5. Although old for a rookie, Fein, at 6 feet 2, 245 pounds, caught the eyes of scouts at the University of Mississippi's Pro Day, where the school's football players audition for scouts before the NFL draft.

BAGHDAD - -Iraq has appealed to Iran to free three American hikers after concluding that the trio who apparently strayed across the Iranian border were just lost tourists, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Sunday. Zebari said he had no reason to believe the three would soon be freed and had heard no word from the Iranians since making the request last week during a meeting with Iran's ambassador to Iraq But he hoped for an answer in the coming days, the foreign minister said. Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 30, and Josh Fattal, 27, have been in Iranian custody since they crossed into Iran on July 31 while hiking through a scenic mountainous area of Iraq's northern Kurdistan region.

What has been the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since the start of our military involvement there? Anyone who hasn't been paying careful attention could be forgiven for not knowing that the answer is July 2009 - which still has four days left in it. A roadside explosion killed four Americans last Monday, meaning at least 30 have died this month; the previous high was 28 in June 2008. On the same day as the explosion in eastern Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced that the Army will increase in size by as many as 22,000 troops in response to the buildup in Afghanistan and our continuing efforts in Iraq.

John Harbaugh is experiencing a different level of patriotism on this Fourth of July weekend. The Ravens coach is in the middle of the inaugural NFL-USO Coaches Tour of the Persian Gulf, where he has already met nearly 6,000 troops on the morale-boosting trip. Harbaugh has signed autographs, taken pictures and shared stories while feeling the pride of the U.S. soldiers in the Middle East. "This is something I've never dreamed of experiencing," Harbaugh said Friday from Iraq, where he is touring with the New York Giants' Tom Coughlin, Tennessee Titans' Jeff Fisher and former coaches Bill Cowher and Jon Gruden.

The floors were lacquered and shining, the grass was mowed, and the handicapped-access tracks and ramps in the new, $800,000 Pasadena home were ready for use. Just miles away, in Washington, Sgt. David Battle, a triple amputee from injuries he suffered in Iraq, sat in the small suite he, his wife, Lakeisa, and four children have shared at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for the past year and a half. Their bags were packed. A nonprofit group, Homes for Our Troops, and hundreds of Maryland volunteers had built the home from scratch.

BAGHDAD -Two bombers detonated suicide vests outside a gold-domed religious shrine Friday and killed at least 71 people, raising the toll in two days of attacks on Shiite Muslims in Iraq to 159 and reviving fears of a return to sectarian war. The attacks at the Imam Musa Khadimiyah shrine in northeast Baghdad raise concerns that the Sunni insurgency is regrouping just as U.S. forces are preparing to withdraw from Iraq's cities and President Barack Obama...

BAGHDAD -Six years after the U.S. overthrew Saddam Hussein's government, tens of thousands of Iraqis gathered in the rain in Iraq's capital Thursday to mark the anniversary and renew calls for a U.S. withdrawal. The demonstrators came in response to calls by Muqtada al-Sadr, the influential Shiite cleric who has long decried the U.S. military's occupation, but there were also Sunni Muslims in the crowd. Draped in Iraqi flags and chanting, protesters packed Baghdad's Firdous Square, where six years ago a crowd cheered the destruction of a statue of Hussein.

I was the chief of staff of the Army hospital in Baghdad from January 2004 to January 2005. And while much of the article "Untested in Battle" (March 29) was factual, the tenor of the reporting gave the impression that experimental and untested methods were used in Iraq without strict regard to patient safety. That's not true. As the article suggested, when I first arrived in Iraq we did not have a reliable source of platelets in theater. Unlike civilian hospitals, where blunt trauma is common, almost all of our casualties suffered from severe penetrating trauma injuries that often required replacement of blood products.

No one can predict the outcome in Iraq. It certainly is not yet victory in any meaningful sense. There are still serious security threats. U.S. command warns that al-Qaida in Iraq is not yet defeated, and there may still be years of low-level violence before Iraqi forces can eliminate it. Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi militia are down but scarcely out. Sunni-Shiite and Arab-Kurdish tensions can still explode into violence. Iranian influence remains a threat, and so does the threat of Turkish intervention in the north and Syrian tolerance of hostile Sunni infiltration across the Syrian border.

The Johns Hopkins University has disciplined the lead author of a widely publicized study that reported widespread civilian deaths in Iraq as a result of the U.S. invasion. Dr. Gilbert Burnham is barred for five years from serving as a principal investigator on research involving human subjects after a yearlong investigation by the Bloomberg School of Public Health. The school said yesterday that Burnham violated its protocols in collecting the full names of Iraq survey participants, potentially putting them at risk.