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Not long after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Donny George, an Iraqi Christian whose family had lived in the region for thousands of years, received a death threat in an envelope containing a Kalashnikov bullet. The letter accused George of working for the Americans and said his youngest son had disrespected Islam. George quickly arranged to send most of his family to Damascus, Syria, but he stayed behind to work at the Iraqi National Museum, becoming chairman of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in 2005.

Within a year, though, he too decided to flee ”” first to Damascus, and eventually to the USA.

“I was told by some people in the same ministry that ”¦ such an important institution should not be headed by a Christian,” George told the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom last year.

Many Iraqi Christians have suffered far worse fates. As documented by the U.S. State Department, Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq have endured extensive persecution since 2003, including the murder of their religious leaders, threats of violence or death if they do not abandon their homes and businesses, and the bombing or destruction of their churches and other places of worship. According to one Iraqi Christian leader, half of Iraq’s Christians have fled the nation since 2003, and some have likened the situation to ethnic cleansing.

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Paula Davis, Gina Barnhurst and Beth Belle are charter members of a club no mother ever wants to join.

These women and others meet informally at Arlington National Cemetery. There, they sit at the gravesides of their sons who were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. They also talk with each other. And cry. And listen.

They call themselves Section 60 Mothers, after the section at Arlington that holds the fresh graves of men and women killed in America’s current wars. The group meets roughly every week now, with the help of an e-mail list.

But it’s their deep wounds, they say, that have linked them together with deep bonds.

Definitely better to listen to it if you can to get the full impact; if not, read it all.

Iraq will award contracts to 41 foreign oil firms in a bid to boost production that could give multinationals a potentially lucrative foothold in huge but underdeveloped oil fields, an official said on Sunday.

“We chose 35 companies of international standard, according to their finances, environment and experience, and we granted them permission to extract oil,” oil ministry spokesman Asim Jihad told AFP.

Six other state-owned oil firms from Algeria, Angola, Pakistan, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam will also be awarded extraction deals, Jihad said.

The agreements, to be signed on June 30, are expected to be short-term arrangements although the ministry has yet to provide a timeframe.

The deal paves the way for global energy giants to return to Iraq 36 years after late dictator Saddam Hussein chased them out, and is seen as a first step to access the earth’s third largest proven crude reserves.

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Security is improving in Iraq. After the recent sectarian violence that ripped apart neighborhoods and whole villages, some people are taking a risk and moving back home. That re-integration is bringing tensions and triumphs to different areas of the country.

Listen to it all from NPR.

Before the war, life under sanctions was difficult, …[Sister Diana] said, but there was little violence and she and others were free to pursue their education and worship openly. Now, violence is rampant and random, medicine and medical care are in short supply, electricity is limited to several hours each day, travel is difficult and students only attend school sporadically.

“People thought (the war) would change Iraq, but it didn’t turn out the way they thought,” she said. “We thought it would be different. They promised us there would be freedom.”

Instead, Sister Diana said, “the future of our children is in danger. It’s kind of a tragedy when kids grow up seeing car bombs and bodies in the street. This is not normal. It’s like a fiction movie.”

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Lucy Dillon is baking cookies when the doorbell rings.

It is two weeks before Christmas in 2006, and her son Matthew and all his Marine Corps buddies want snacks for the holidays. As usual, they’ve turned to her.

Matt asked for the cookies and a fruitcake on one of his frequent calls home the day before. He is in Iraq serving his second tour of duty but sounds so casual he could be phoning from down the street. For some reason Lucy doesn’t understand, those boys over there love fruitcake. Maybe it reminds them of home.

Lucy and her husband, Neal, hear the bell, ask each other “Who could that be?” Neal guesses it is the UPS man. Matt said he sent a Marine Corps flag for the new flagpole in the front yard and that it should arrive any day. Maybe 7:30 p.m. was late for UPS but not out of the question.

Neal is so sure the flag has come that he doesn’t even look up when he opens the door, expecting to find a package from Matt on the front porch.

Instead, he sees two pairs of black patent leather shoes. Two Marines stand at attention on his stoop.

Neal is a veteran, all his boys have served, and he knows what this means. Before the soldiers can speak, Neal quietly asks, “Is my boy dead?”

Before the sergeants can finish ”” “We regret to inform you …” ”” Neal Dillon’s knees buckle and he falls. The Marines can do nothing but catch him.

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there’s been a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks — which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”

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The U.S. military on Saturday announced the death of a Marine in Anbar province, as May ended with what could be the lowest monthly toll since American-led forces invaded five years ago.

If no additional deaths are reported, the U.S. military toll for the month will be 19, according to the independent website icasualties.org. The next-lowest toll was in February 2004, when 20 service members were killed. At least 4,084 U.S. personnel have died since the start of the war.

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“I have no future here to stay.”

Written in broken English but with perfect clarity, the message is a stark and plaintive assessment from one of the last Jews of Babylon.

The community of Jews in Baghdad is now all but vanished in a land where their heritage recedes back to Abraham of Ur, to Jonah’s prophesying to Nineveh, and to Nebuchadnezzar’s sending Jews into exile here more than 2,500 years ago.

Just over half a century ago, Iraq’s Jews numbered more than 130,000. But now, in the city that was once the community’s heart, they cannot muster even a minyan, the 10 Jewish men required to perform some of the most important rituals of their faith. They are scared even to publicize their exact number, which was recently estimated at seven by the Jewish Agency for Israel, and at eight by one Christian cleric. That is not enough to read the Torah in public, if there were anywhere in public they would dare to read it, and too few to recite a proper Kaddish for the dead.

Read it all from the front page of this morning’s New York Times.

On the first anniversary of the abduction of five Britons in Iraq, a vicar helping the negotiations revealed he is “the most hopeful” he has been of finding them alive.

Canon Andrew White, dubbed the Vicar of Baghdad, spoke to the Western Mail yesterday to mark the passing of a year since the kidnapping on May 29, 2007.

The families of all five men ”“ two of whom are from Wales, two from Scotland and a Lincoln computer expert ”“ are expected to speak out publicly today for the first time since the men were abducted outside the Finance Ministry in Baghdad’s notorious Sadr City suburb.

They have recorded a video message to be broadcast this afternoon to mark the anniversary.

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U.S. and Iraqi military officials said violence in Iraq has decreased significantly in recent weeks to levels not seen in four years.

That offers some hope to officials that Iraqi security services may be making gains, following recent Iraqi-led military campaigns in Basra in the south, Baghdad’s Sadr City, and Mosul in the north. But similar ebbs in violence have fizzled, the latest as recent as earlier this year, and it was far from clear whether the most recent gains can hold.

U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll said at a news conference here Sunday that weekly attacks in Iraq are down to March 2004 levels, which were about 300 attacks a week.

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More than 4,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March of 2003. Regardless of the politics, the number serves as a sobering reminder of the human sacrifice of war. In his new book Final Salute, journalist Jim Sheeler chronicles a year with Steve Beck – a Marine Major whose story is chronicled in the article and slide show on the previous blog thread.

Listen to the whole KUER story in which Jim Sheeler is interviewed (a little over 52 minute MP3 file).

Go to the main page here and find the link to the audio slide presentation first (click on “Audio Slide Show” on the right hand side of the middle of the page not far down from the top). Next take the time to read through the full print story with pictures here (a 19 page PDF file).

There is no way I am going to spoil it for you by saying anything about the specific story line, but know this: I had to walk around in silence after the audio slide show just to pull myself together–KSH.

Watch it all.

Inside Mifflin Hall at Fort Lee, Va., 11 students gather in a room that could pass for a pre-med class. A model skeleton stands on wheels in one corner; a partially dissected plastic torso rests on a table in the rear. The instructor, Sgt. 1st Class Alisa Karr, begins the lesson with a review of the body’s bones.

But these soldiers are not studying anatomy to become medics. They are learning to care for the dead.

When these 11 students graduate from training at the U.S. Army’s Mortuary Affairs Center, they will earn the title 92M ”” military code for mortuary affairs specialist. Some of those who have volunteered to work with the dead will serve at collection points in Iraq and Afghanistan; others will work in the port mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. They will help recover, identify and prepare the remains of fallen soldiers.

The 92Ms have cared for the majority of the more than 4,500 military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. They operate under a code of conduct that’s part scientific and part symbolic….

I happened to catch this story this week during a run via NPR’s story of the day podcast–very worthwhile I thought; see what you make of it.

Heartwarming to the point of tears for me–watch it and see what you think.

Check it out and consider partcipating.

The leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has been arrested, according to media reports quoting the country’s defence ministry.

Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, was detained in the northern city of Mosul, reports said.

The US military in Iraq said it was currently looking into the reports.

The Egyptian-born militant took over the leadership of the group from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shortly after he was killed in a US air strike in June 2006.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been blamed for or has claimed responsibility for some of the bloodiest insurgent attacks in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.

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Since June, there has been a rash of overdoses at Army hospitals, including some, like [Sgt. Robert] Nichols’, that have resulted in deaths. The medications prescribed for soldiers are so potent that they can be dangerous when taken with other drugs or alcohol. Overdoses have become another problem for the Army to grapple with in the wake of criticism of the care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals.

Eleven medications were found in Nichols’ body, including painkillers to treat his physical wounds from an explosion in Iraq and drugs to ease the nightmares, insomnia and memory loss caused by his post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

Susan Nichols said that several times before he died, Robert Nichols asked his doctors to reduce the medications “because he felt like he was a zombie and he could only function for a small portion of the day.”

Brig. Gen. James Gilman, commander at Brooke, said Nichols’ death is still under investigation, so he could not discuss details. But he said the Army has made changes to try to prevent a repeat of that kind of death.

“We obviously went back and looked at medications and whether there are additional steps to take to make it safer,” Gilman said. “It would be unthinkable not to reassess everything that you’re doing when an event like this happens.”

Read or listen to it all.

Watch it all. “The greatest casulaty is being forgotten”–what a great line.

The killings of three U.S. soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad pushed the American death toll for April up to 47, making it the deadliest month since September.

One soldier died when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. The other died of wounds sustained when he was attacked by small-arms fire, the military said Wednesday. Both incidents occurred Tuesday in northwestern Baghdad.

A third soldier died in a roadside bombing Tuesday night in the east of the capital, the military said.

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The government of Iran continues to supply weapons and other support to extremists in Iraq, despite repeated promises to the contrary, and is increasingly complicit in the death of U.S. soldiers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Friday in a stark new assessment of Iranian influence.

The chairman, Admiral Michael Mullen, said he was “extremely concerned” about “the increasingly lethal and malign influence” by the government of Iran and the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, a special force that aids and encourages Islamic militants around the world. The Quds Forces in Iran were created during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and report directly to the leadership of Iran’s theocratic government.

Pentagon concerns about Iranian influence in neighboring Iraq is nothing new, but the content and tone of Mullen’s remarks left the impression that far from abating, the worries about Iran have intensified in recent months.

“The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago,” Mullen said. “It’s plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way.”

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I was against the war from the start, although my opposition never translated into a protest march in Washington or a letter to my congressman. It remained no more than a quietly held belief. Today, there’s talk of leaving Iraq, but I don’t know what to think. I want our soldiers to come home, but can we really abandon the Iraqi people to what is essentially a civil war of our own making?

I don’t have a solution, but I think I may have figured out what’s missing from my perspective on democracy: pain ”” universal, democratic pain. In terms of the Iraq war, this country’s burden is being shouldered by a select few. Some families and communities have been devastated by the war. Others, like mine, have been far too insulated. We can’t truly share the responsibility for our democracy until we all share in its suffering.

And so, in the name of shared pain, I support the reinstitution of the draft.

Read it all.

Hard but important to watch.

The citation reading moved me to tears–watch it all.

Update: There is more here also.

A new classified intelligence assessment on Iraq says there has been significant progress in security since the last assessment was delivered in August, a senior military official said.

In most ways the new National Intelligence Estimate hews closely to the one delivered nine months ago. That document spoke of security gains since the increase in troop levels began in January 2007, the continued high rate of violence and uneven progress on the part of Iraqi security forces.

“It does not differ significantly from August’s NIE,” a congressional official said in describing the document.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the report is classified. They noted that many of the conclusions of the report are already reflected in public statements and press reports.

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Improved security has contributed to an economic revival in Baghdad, and the United States has a “moral imperative” to keep bringing violence down, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Wednesday.

In a likely preview of his report to Congress next week on the state of the war, Ryan Crocker told USA TODAY that the Iraqi military’s recent attempt to disarm Shiite militias “had its share of problems.” He said the United States only had about 48 hours advance notice of the operation, which caused a wave of violence in Baghdad and southern Iraq.

However, Crocker said security and other areas have shown significant improvement since he last testified in September. “I think you can expect to see a continuation of that political and economic progress,” he said.

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