They called it the Green Zone because within its fortified blast walls lay a sanctuary for Americans, a place so secure that weapons could safely be left unloaded ”” or green, in military parlance.

Outside was the Red Zone, the rest of Iraq, where bombs exploded, bullets flew, ordinary Iraqis lived and endured and no American soldier or official was permitted to venture without a heavily armored convoy.

But the Green Zone now is American no longer. On Tuesday, Iraq took full control of the 4-square-mile enclave in the heart of Baghdad that, to many Iraqis, symbolized so much of what went wrong with the U.S. military presence in Iraq….

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Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced Monday that two top insurgent leaders had been killed, including a somewhat mythic figure who has operated under the name Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. Mr. Baghdadi has been reported dead or detained several times previously, and his very existence had been called into question a few years ago by American military leaders.

After Mr. Maliki’s press conference, the American military released a statement verifying that Mr. Baghdadi was killed in a joint raid between Iraqi and United States forces in the dark hours of Sunday morning near Tikrit, near Saddam Hussein’s hometown.

Also killed, according to Mr. Maliki and American officials, was Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, also known as Al Qeada in Mesopotamia, a largely Iraqi group that includes some foreign leadership.

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Iraq election workers began tallying votes from 47,000 polling stations across the country Monday, a day after the country pulled off a landmark vote despite scattered dozens of explosions that went off in Baghdad and in other parts of the country.

At the bustling headquarters of the Iraqi High Electoral Commission (IHEC), cheers went up as the first boxes of tally sheets from individual polling stations arrived. The boxes, from polling sites from the Rasafah district of Baghdad, were put through metal detectors before dozens of IHEC employees began unsealing the envelopes.

The IHEC said 62.4 percent of eligible Iraqis voted. That’s down from an official figure of 79.6 percent in the last parliamentary elections, when Shiite Arab and Kurdish voters turned out in huge numbers, but represents the first national parliamentary elections with wide Sunni Arab participation.

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Iraq’s second parliamentary election since the 2003 invasion has been hit by multiple attacks, with at least 24 people being killed.

Two buildings were destroyed in the capital and dozens of mortars were fired across Baghdad and elsewhere.

The border with Iran was closed, thousands of troops were deployed, and vehicles were banned from roads.

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A politician widely accused of running death squads might not be expected to have an easy time running for public office.

But this is Iraq. In a nation sadly inured to years of sectarian bloodletting, Hakim al-Zamili not only has a place on a prominent Shiite election slate, but stands poised to win a place in the Parliament, as early voting began Thursday morning for the infirm, people with special needs and members of the military and the police.

It is an astonishing turnabout that shows the limits of political reconciliation. While some Sunni candidates have been barred from running in the election for their alleged support of the Baath Party, Mr. Zamili’s candidacy has provoked nary a protest from the nation’s leading Shiite politicians. That runs the risk that Shiite leaders will be seen as taking steps against only those who persecuted Shiites, not Sunnis.

Mr. Zamili’s new political role has heightened concerns that for all the talk of cross-sectarian alliances among some Shiite and Sunni factions, Iraq may be unable to firmly break with its troubled past.

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With U.S. forces scheduled to begin withdrawal from Iraq this summer, Iraq must now take the lead in rebuilding itself. Iraqi scientists and engineers will hold the key to the future, and Iraqi women hope to be a part of that. Liane Hansen speaks to Dr. Alkazragy and Dr. Mustafa, two female Iraqi scientists who are visiting scholars at American universities. The doctors have asked that their first names be withheld for security concerns.

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Iran’s telecommunications agency announced what it described as a permanent suspension of Google Inc.’s email services, saying a national email service for Iranian citizens would soon be rolled out.

It wasn’t clear late Wednesday what effect the order had on Gmail services in Iran, or even if Iran had implemented its new policy. Iranian officials have claimed technological advances in the past that they haven’t been able to execute.

Google didn’t have an immediate comment about the announcement.

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The ongoing Christian flight from the Middle East was high on the agenda of the Vatican’s secretary for the relations with states, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, when I met with him recently in Rome.

The lengthy exodus of ancient Christian congregations from the greater Middle East’s last redoubts of religious pluralism is accelerating. Terrorism, conflict, and the rise of intolerant Islamism are to blame, Vatican officials explain. There is a real fear that the light of Christian communities that was enkindled personally by the apostles of Jesus Christ could be extinguished in this vast region that includes the Holy Land.

This trend could be reversed or at least halted, but probably not without Western help. Thus far, the rapid erosion of Middle Eastern Christianity has drawn little notice from the outside world.

Pope Benedict XVI, however, is planning a special synod of Roman Catholic bishops next October to discuss this crisis and to promote greater ecumenical unity in the Middle East. The hope for the synod, as reported by the Catholic news agency Zenit, is that “new generations must come to know the great patrimony of faith and witness in the different churches” of this region.

The greater Middle East, of course, holds profound theological significance for all Christians. Broad Christian engagement may be the best hope for the survival of these ancient Middle Eastern churches — the Copts and Chaldeans, the Maronites and Melkites, the Latin Rite Catholics, the Armenians, the Syriac Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, and others.

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As a priest led prayers for a few dozen worshipers inside St. Joseph Chaldean Church here on Sunday, Iraqi police officers stood guard outside. They blocked the street to traffic and frisked those who entered for explosive belts.

At churches in Baghdad this week, Christians are being asked for identification to determine if they have names that security force members recognize as Christian. Some churches around the northern city of Mosul are digging in, surrounding their buildings with giant earthen berms to prevent car bombers from getting too close.

For Christians in Iraq, this will be a year of canceled holiday celebrations and of Christmas Masses spent under the protective watch of police officers and soldiers because of a spate of threats by extremist groups to bomb churches on Christmas Day.

“I’m very sad that we are not able to have our rituals for Christmas this year and not have a sermon, but we do not want any Christians to be harmed,” said Edward Poles, a Christian priest at Sa’a Church in Mosul, which was bombed last week, though no one was killed.

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Speaking at LaGrange College about his varied experiences in Iraq, White recalled the day his Iraqi doctor suggested stem cell treatment and said it could start the next day. White said there are 63 Iraqis with MS who also are receiving the treatment.

“All of us have improved greatly,” he said.

The Anglican clergyman talked about the danger for Christians — and everyone else — in Baghdad. “Everyone in Iraq is faring badly. Everyone is having it difficult,” he said.

“Christians do have it hard,” White said. He said 93 members of his church were killed last year. During the last year, he baptized 13 people — 11 of whom have been killed.

I have thought about that last sentence for a long time. I hope you do as well. Read it all.

The spiritual head of the Anglican Church expressed concern Sunday about Iranian exiles living in a camp in Iraq, saying they faced “human rights violations” that needed to be addressed urgently.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said both the United States and the Iraqi government had a duty to protect the residents of Camp Ashraf, home to the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) dissident group.

“The continuing situation in Camp Ashraf, together with the fact that the 36 people taken from the camp in July have not been released, constitutes a humanitarian and human rights issue of real magnitude and urgency,” Williams said in a statement.

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Nowhere in Iraq is the silence about the Iranian election controversy more striking than in this city, the burial place of the founder of the Shiite sect of Islam and the faith’s theological center for hundreds of years.

Clerics and religious students here shy away from even admitting that they are watching broadcasts of the popular uprising next door, although Iran and especially its clergy in many respects are kith and kin; they study the same texts, follow similar courses of religious study and revere the same saints.

In the last 30 years, since the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the religious powers in the two countries have taken entirely different roads. Najaf’s clerics publicly rejected the idea promoted by Iran’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that clerics have the final say over political matters. As Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatens to use force to subdue protesters calling for an annulment of the election, Najaf’s senior clerics have said nothing.

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Watch it all from NBC (difficult content which may not be appropriate for some younger blog readers).