Wednesday, May 9, 2007
The latest developments in Iraq:
The House of Representatives is expected to vote as soon as Thursday on a new Democratic plan to release only about half of the funds that President Bush requested for the war in Iraq, enough to last through July. Congress would vote again in mid-July on whether to release the rest, enough to last through September, based on whether Iraq's government has made progress toward national reconciliation. The new version, unlike the one Bush vetoed last week, contains no date for a U.S. withdrawal to begin, but it isn't the no-strings version that Bush wanted. Congress would vote in July on whether to continue backing the president's troop "surge" plan or use the remaining funds to begin withdrawing troops.
The global war on terror, as Bush calls the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and related military operations, is about to become the second-most-expensive conflict in U.S. history, after World War II. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress has approved more than 609 billion for the wars. Requests for 145 billion more await congressional action and would raise the cost in inflation-adjusted dollars beyond the cost of the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
A suicide car bomber sent a fireball through a crowded market Tuesday in the Shiite holy city of Kufa, killing at least 16 people and threatening to further stoke sectarian tensions in relatively peaceful areas south of Baghdad. Kufa, 100 miles south of Baghdad, is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia, which is loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. U.S. officials have expressed fears that Sunni insurgents led by al-Qaida are carefully picking their targets to provoke retaliatory violence to derail efforts to stabilize the country.
Residents in Baqouba, a volatile city northeast of Baghdad, claimed that a U.S. helicopter opened fire on an elementary school, killing seven students and wounding three. U.S. spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said the military was investigating the reports. "We do all we can to avoid civilian casualties. That's why we're going to look into this to see what happened," Garver said.
Source: Combined dispatches