Sunni insurgents have launched a systematic campaign to assassinate police chiefs, police officers, other Interior Ministry officials and tribal leaders throughout Iraq, staging at least 10 attacks in 48 hours, reports said yesterday.
In Washington, the US Government triggered a bruising new battle with Congress by demanding the mammoth sum of almost $US190 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 2008 budget request from the Pentagon - $US42 million higher than an earlier estimate - was the Bush administration's largest plea for funding yet for the six-year-old war on terror.
As Defence Secretary Robert Gates laid out his case for the extra money in a Senate hearing, senior Democrat Robert Byrd said the “nefarious, infernal war in Iraq” had now cost more than $US450 billion on its own.
Meanwhile, in a vote of 75 to 23, the Senate passed the non-binding resolution on dividing Iraq, which is touted by backers as the best hope to produce a political solution to murderous sectarian strife.
The measure would not force a change in President George W. Bush's war strategy, but provides a key test of an idea drawing rising interest in Washington despite opposition from the Bush administration.
The plan, offered as an amendment to a defence policy bill, would provide for decentralizing Iraq in a federal system as permitted by Iraq's constitution to stop the country from becoming a failed state.
It proposes to separate Iraq into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni entities, with a federal government in Baghdad in charge of border security and oil revenues.
We've already gone over this argument the first time we had to realize we bought it(because we broke it). Separating Iraq is not a good idea for anybody. The Iraqis don't like it and neither does any other country in the region. And like Cole suggests, we don't have the authority anyways. The Iraqis have a government WITH a constitution, if they want to change that it's in their hands. Not some stuffed shirts in the Senate.
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