Violence continues today. National Iraqi News Agency reports a mortar attack on any army station in Anbar Province has left 1 Iraqi soldier dead, and a Mosul roadside bombing claimed the lives of 2 bodyguards for the 7th Regiment Commander (three more were left injured). Alsumaria reports an armed Mosul attack has left 1 police officer dead. All Iraq News notes at least three bombing in Kirkuk -- apparently targeting Turkmen -- and states that a number of people are dead and injured. On two bombings, AFP says 12 dead and eight injured. Reuters counts 14 dead and also counts two bombings.
Meanwhile an interesting meeting took place in Baghdad today. Alsumaria reports Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq entertained American guests. Topics included the "moral obligation" the US has to Iraq and the security situation and agreements between the two countries about security. No surprise, one of the guests was US Ambassador Stephen Beecroft. The other? US Army Gen Lloyd Austin. Austin used to be a commander in Iraq, he now heads CENTCOM over the entire region. The agreements? Let's again drop back to the April 30th Iraq snapshot:
December 6, 2012, the Memorandum of Understanding For Defense Cooperation Between the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Iraq and the Department Defense of the United States of America was signed. We covered it in the December 10th and December 11th snapshots -- lots of luck finding coverage elsewhere including in media outlets -- apparently there was some unstated agreement that everyone would look the other way. It was similar to the silence that greeted Tim Arango's September 25th New York Times report which noted, "Iraq and the United States are negotiating an agreement that could result in the return of small units of American soldiers to Iraq on training missions. At the request of the Iraqi government, according to [US] General [Robert L.] Caslen, a unit of Army Special Operations soldiers was recently deployed to Iraq to advise on counterterrorism and help with intelligence."
Strange, I've checked DoD, CENTCOM and the US Embassy in Baghdad's official websites, I've checked the Facebook pages for the three and the Twitters feeds. Nothing on Austen's visit. So we'll include a screen snap of the Alsumaria story which includes a photo documenting that the visit has taken place.
The picture* demonstrates that it did take place. It's interesting that the US government isn't publicizing the meeting. Or maybe it's not, maybe it's fairly typical. It reminds me of the delegation that visited on November 18, 2011 that the US government apparently didn't want Americans knowing about -- and the US press complied -- which we covered in that day's snapshot and the following day with "Yeah, a US delegation is in Iraq -- even if the US media pretends otherwise."
It's strange how we live in a supposed democracy but if you want to know which US officials are in Iraq, you better learn to read Arabic and start visiting the Iraqi press.
[The picture? Fotki sometimes allows it to display, sometimes doesn't. 5-26-2013 we uploaded the photo to the dreaded Flick so it would display and replaced the Fotki image here.]
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iraq
national iraqi news agency
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all iraq news
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