The Washington Times reports the House last night overwhelmingly voted down a resolution calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

The Resolution simply read:

It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately.

The vote was 403-3, with six voting present and 14 not voting.

From California Yankee.

Note: Available from Chrenkoff, as well as “WSJ Opinion Journal,” Winds of Change.NET and GoodNewsFromTheFront.com. As this is my last contribution to the series, an extra special thanks to WSJ's James Taranto and Joe Katzman of Winds of Change.NET, as well as to countless readers and bloggers for your support and encouragement right from the beginning. Here is the entire series.

It's been almost a year and a half since I first started compiling the under-reported and often-overlooked stories of positive developments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Major changes and events have taken place in both countries. With the constitutional referendum in Iraq and a parliamentary election in Afghanistan still ahead, however, it is time for me to say good-bye. A change in my work circumstances will unfortunately prevent me carrying this forward or blogging at Chrenkoff; nevertheless, the trend has been set.

I have no doubt that good news will continue to come out of the Middle East and Central Asia - and that it is likely to continue to lose prominence to stories of violence, mayhem, dislocation and crisis. With the Support of The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, however, GoodNewsFromTheFront.com has risen to fill the news void and redress the imbalance of negativity. Future reports will be found there; other briefings may arise as well.

Big thanks go to James Taranto, the editor of WSJ's “Opinion Journal”, who had the courage, imagination and foresight to provide a forum for this news. If the American press and networks across the ocean had more editors like James, I'm certain Americans news providers would face a far less disillusioned public. As they don't, however, it's a huge loss for everyone. Big thanks also to all of my readers for your support and encouragement.

I don't know what Iraq and Afghanistan will look like in five or ten years time, but I hope for the best. I hope that despite all the horrendous problems and challenges, both countries manage to make it through and join the international family of normal, decent and peaceful nations. If so, it will be all due to the amazing spirit and commitment of the majority of their people, and to the crucial help of the Coalition members both in and out of uniform. If that does indeed happen, many will wonder just exactly how these two countries, seemingly in the news only when blood flows, ever managed to get there. But you, who have read these round-ups for the past year and a half, will not be surprised.

So here's another two weeks' worth of stories from Iraq that the great majority of news consumers rarely get to hear.

• Society
• Economy
• Reconstruction
• Humanitarian Aid
• Security

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from Iraq that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. This briefing is brought to you by Joel Gaines of No Pundit Intended and Andrew Olmsted of Andrew Olmsted dot com.

TOP TOPICS

• The battle for Tal Afar, mentioned here last week, has expanded to include an attempt by the Iraq government to seal the Syrian border to prevent insurgents from slipping into the country to augment those already there. The fighting in Tal Afar itself seems to have slowed, however.

• JK: Michael Yon describes the operation in which Lt. Col. Kurilla was shot (he posts the photo of that exact moment) - an operation in which he picked up a gun in the middle of combat and charged in to help the wounded LTC and men of Deuce Four. The jihadi who did it had been released from Abu Ghraib in August. What a surprise. You'll be happy to hear that LTC Kurilla will make a full recovery, but now that he's state-side in hospital, he's annoyed at media coverage that absolutely fails to reflect the reality he lived. What a surprise. Maybe it would be different if they were there, and had the guts to do what Michael does.

• Someone purported to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi released an audio tape in which he claimed the U.S. was using chemical weapons in Tal Afar. Al-Zarqawi claimed the Coalition would be defeated in Tal Afar, and he cursed the Iraqis who were joining Iraq's army and security forces as traitors.

Other Topics Today Include: a hostage freed; RadioShack IED finders; Iraq takes the lead in Tal Afar; Iraq's stock exchange on the move; reconstruction highlights; working the constitution; Carnival of the Liberated; Dawn Patrol.

Read the Rest…

Reuters reports up to 500 people died when a crowd of Iraqi Shi'ites stampeded off a bridge over the Tigris river in Baghdad on Wednesday, fleeing rumors of a suicide bombing threat:

“So far we have 500 dead,” Jalil Al-Shumari, the deputy minister, told Reuters.

The crowd, on its way to the Kadhimiya mosque for an important religious ceremony, panicked as rumors spread that a suicide bomber was preparing to blow himself up.

Earlier at least seven people died in three separate mortar attacks on the crowd.

Bloomberg reports that suspected al-Qaeda fighters were killed in western Iraq today when precision guided bombs destroyed three terrorist hideouts in two cities near the Syrian border:

Four bombs were dropped on a house “occupied by terrorists” outside the city of Husaybah in the first strike, the military said in a statement e-mailed from the capital, Baghdad. Then at 6:20 a.m. local time two bombs were dropped on a second house, killing a man identified as “Abu Islam, a known terrorist” and several others, the military said.

At about 8:30 a.m. another attack was conducted, this time on a house in the city of Karabilah, six kilometers south east of Husaybah, where some of Islam's followers are believed to have fled, the military said. Several terrorists were killed, according to the statement.

From California Yankee.

The Washington Times reports that firebrand Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is gaining support among Iraqi youth, raising fears he could eventually unify Shi'ites and Sunnis against American forces.

Followers of al-Sadr have been engaged in two days of violent clashes with the rival Iranian-trained Badr Brigades in the holy city of Najaf:

Fighting between the Mahdi militia and the Badr Brigades — the military wing of the leading Shi'ite political party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) — began after Sheik al-Sadr's followers tried Wednesday to reopen an office in Najaf.

Armed men moved to stop them, setting the office on fire and killing four al-Sadr followers. The Mahdi militia blamed the Badr Brigade and retaliated by attacking SCIRI offices in several southern cities.

According to the Washington Times, the clashes reveal a struggle for influence among the Shi'ites of south and central Iraq, with Sheik al-Sadr emerging as a liberating figure for many angry and alienated youth. But he also is attracting support from Sunni militants not connected with the religiously driven followers of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi.

Babak Rahimi, a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, said he was taken aback by the dedicated following accumulated by the young cleric over the past two years:

“This is an anti-American resistance movement, and he will eventually exploit this, he will eventually merge with the Sunni insurgents,” Mr. Rahimi predicted. “This would prompt a stronger force against American troops in Iraq and he will have a lot more followers,” he said.

From California Yankee.

Italy hid four Iraqi insurgents from U.S. forces and had them treated by the Red Cross in exchange for the freedom of two Italian aid workers kidnaped last year in Baghdad.

According to the Associated Press, in exchange for the release of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, who were abducted on Sept. 7 and freed Sept. 28,

“The mediators asked us to save the lives of four alleged terrorists wanted by the Americans who were wounded in combat,” Scelli was quoted as saying. “We hid them and brought them to Red Cross doctors, who operated on them.”

They took the wounded insurgents to a Baghdad hospital in a jeep and in an ambulance, smuggling them through two U.S. checkpoints by hiding them under blankets and boxes of medicine, Scelli reportedly said.

Also as part of the deal, four Iraqi children suffering from leukemia were brought to Italy for treatment, he said.

From California Yankee.

From BBC News:

President George W Bush has restated his policy that the US will “stay the course” in Iraq as he interrupted his holiday to address war veterans.

Mr Bush said a “policy of retreat and isolation” would not make the US safer.

His remarks in Salt Lake City are the first of two speeches on the war this week and come with anti-war protesters still camped outside his Texas ranch.

The US anti-war movement has been reinvigorated by Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq.

Read the rest of the story here.

The Washington Times reports that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says Iran is arming Iraqi insurgents:

“I see intelligence reports and we know that we're finding Iranian weapons inside the country,” Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters on his way to visit Paraguay earlier this week. “They don't just get there by accident. They don't fly there.

“And we know that Iran has a system of government it would like to replicate in Iraq. And we know the system of government they have with a handful of clerics running the place and telling everyone what to do is fundamentally inconsistent with the kind of a constitution that's currently being drafted in Iraq,” he said.

Time magazine reports that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has established a network of insurgents headed by Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani with the express purpose of committing violence against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. According to a U.S. military-intelligence document obtained by Time, the U.S. believes al-Sheibani's team consists of 280 members, divided into 17 bombmaking teams and death squads. The U.S. believes they train in Lebanon, in Baghdad's predominantly Shi'ite Sadr City district and “in another country” and have detonated at least 37 bombs against U.S. forces this year in Baghdad alone.

From California Yankee.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Sunni Arabs and followers of a radical Shiite cleric held protests Friday against federal provisions in Iraq's proposed constitution, as negotiators sought to reach agreement on the charter by next week's deadline.

Sunni Arab negotiators are holding out against Shiite and Kurdish proposals for a federal structure for Iraq, saying such proposals would divide the country.

The Sunnis want a strong central government.

On Thursday, masked gunmen burst into the Sunni grand mosque in the tense city of Ramadi as religious, political, and tribal leaders met to discuss possible Sunni participation in the constitutional process.

The gunmen asked participants to end their meeting and then opened fire on them, said Omar Seri, secretary of the governor of Anbar province.

Three members of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars and a bodyguard were injured, Seri said.

Source: Fox News

Gloabl Guerillas describes the IED “marketplace” in Iraq, including the roles various specialists play and some of the common tactics and methods. Read and it your ability to discuss the IED threat, how it really works, and options to counter it will improve substantially.

Winds ran a recent lessons learned article about these roadside bombs, which may interest you. Dan Darling also noted that some of that marketplace consists of foreign imports, via Iran and/or Hezbollah.

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from Iraq that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. This briefing is brought to you by Joel Gaines of No Pundit Intended and Andrew Olmsted of Andrew Olmsted dot com.

TOP TOPICS

• Iraqi political leaders met Sunday in an attempt to break the deadlock over the new Iraqi constitution. The National Assembly is supposed to approve the document on 15 August, meaning the deadline is fast approaching and there may be a great deal of wheeling and dealing to get a final document in place.

• Insurgents gained possibly their largest propaganda victory of the war with the destruction of a Marine AAV that killed 14 Marines alongside the deaths of six other Marines all from one Ohio town. The insurgency is using larger bombs as IEDs now, resulting in significantly great risk to forces travelling throughout Iraq. Dan Darling reports that the shaped IED are coming from Iran.

• Journalist and blogger Steven Vincent was murdered last week. Jim Henley takes a look at what Vincent was doing and comes to the sad conclusion that some problems are universal.

Other Topics Today Include: Monday and God's Will; U.S. troop withdrawal thoughts; Reconstruction highlights; Women's rights and the Iraqi constitutions; Carnival of the Liberated; Saddam's trial approaches; Rice says the insurgency is losing strength.

Read the Rest…

Note: As always, also available from “The Opinion Journal” and Chrenkoff. Thank you all - your support is what's making this project so personally worthwhile.

Monsignor Rabban al Qas, Chaldean bishop of Amadiyah and Arbil, was recently asked by a foreign interviewer whether there is any good news coming out of Iraq: “Twenty-three Iraqis are killed every day in Iraq. Nearly two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, there is no security as yet. Is there still hope in Iraq?” To which Monsignor al Qas replied:

What the media portray is true: explosions, killings, attacks. But if you see how much order, discipline, transport, displacements, and work have improved, there is a change for the better compared to one or two years ago. Now people understand there is a government, the structure of a new state. Thousands and thousands of allied and Iraqi soldiers are present. There is a constitution which is being drawn up, laws are being enacted.

The presence of authority is recognised. This was not the case before. And Al-Qaeda integralists and terrorists coming from abroad seek to penetrate Iraq precisely to destroy the beginnings of this social organization.

A war for the future of Iraq is going on, no doubt about it, but not all of that war is being fought with guns and explosives. Terrorists and insurgents might be killing both soldier and civilians and sabotaging infrastructure, and the Iraqi and the Coalition security forces might in turn be hunting down the enemies of the new Iraq, but every step towards self-government, every new job created, every new school opened are a small victory against those who would want to turn Iraq's clock back three or 1300 years. Below are some of these stories that often get lost in the fog and smoke of war.

• Society
  
• Economy
  
• Reconstruction
  
• Humanitarian Aid
  
• The Coalition Troops
  
• Security

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from Iraq that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. Joel Gaines and Andrew Olmsted are taking vacations with their families, so Joe Katzman is filling in for today's report. Been a while since I did one of these…

TOP TOPICS

• Arthur Chrenkoff's latest edition of Good News from Iraq is up!

• The Carnival of the Liberated, a sampler of some of the best posts of the week from Iraqi and Afghani bloggers, is up at Dean's World.

• Mudville Gazette takes a long, hard look at press coverage in Iraq. Interesting to hear some reporters saying the military officers who stay in the Green Zone have no idea what's going on in Iraq. Take that argument to its logical conclusion, boys, as you sit in the hotels….

Other Topics Today Include: Targeting Michael Yon; Counter-guerilla cascades; Iraqi unemployment, economic growth; Reconstruction highlights; The constitution; Zakaria on talks with Ba'athists; Does al-Sadr own the Basra police?; Iraq & Syria; Did Iran win?; Algeria & Algeria; Changes in British debate; JAG promotion questioned; Strategy review; PA's idiot LtG; Over There underwhelms; Support the Troops.

Read the Rest…

Welcome! This briefing will be looking hard at the dark places the mainstream media sometimes seem determined to look away from, to better understand our declared enemies on their own terms and without illusions. Our goal is to bring you some of the top jihadi rants, idiotarian seething, and old-school Jew-hatred from around the world, leaving you more informed, more aware, and pretty disgusted every month. This Winds of Change.NET HateWatch briefing is brought to you by Lewy14 (hatewatch@winds…), and by zorkmidden of Discarded Lies. Past briefings and posts on related topics can be found here. Entil'zha veni!

HIGHLIGHTED TOPICS

• Religious Hate: British Islamists on 7/7; Convert “Sheikh” in Australia: Muslims can’t be friends of non-Muslims; Gay advocacy group reports threats by Muslim fundamentalists in Britain; Michael Graham: Islam is a terrorist organization; Saudi Imam’s incitement thrown down the memory hole; Iraqi Christians fear new constitution; Christians, Ahmadiya face persecution in Indonesia.

• Idiotarian Seethings: Colorado congressman: bombing Mecca an option; Retired Lebanese General gets creative with “Global Zionism” theme; Retired Egyptian General: Israel behind Sharm e-Sheikh bombings.

• Race and Culture: Moderate Muslims in Egypt undermined by conspiracy theories; Aryan Nations embraces “jihadeen”; Highbrow incitement against Jews in the Ukraine; Lowlife thugs murder Vietnamese in Moscow; Two essays on the evolution of modern radical Islamism.

• A Hopeful Note: Musharraf calls for jihad against… extremism; U.N. to (finally) define “terrorism”?; Iraqi prime minister calls Arab media on double standards.

Updating a Previous Post….

Finally avoiding the confusion of having two Alan's on TCP, the one is Australia is changing her name soon, to Zoe.

More pics here.

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from Iraq that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. This briefing is brought to you by Joel Gaines of No Pundit Intended and Andrew Olmsted of Andrew Olmsted dot com.

TOP TOPICS

• Saddam Hussein was brought before an Iraqi tribunal official to set a hearing date for his first trial. Saddam will face charges of mass murder for the 1982 massacre of 143 inhabitants of Dujail, a small Shia village north of Baghdad. As we wait for the date of an actual trial, the people of Iraq are being reminded of the horrors that defined Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

• Kris Alexander provides an at-a-glance analysis of the current situation in Iraq called the Road Map to Victory. What are your thoughts - too much progress shown, or not enough?

• Iraqi security forces have captured the suspected mastermind behind last week's bombings south of Baghdad, which killed more than 100 and wounded scores. Meanwhile, terroist attacks continue in Baghdad.

Other Topics Today Include: PA lt. governor crashes funeral, hanging out with IP SWAT, Iraqi forces pictorial, Devil's Foyer, World bank loan, Reconstruction highlights, Constitution almost finished, Sunnis getting involved, Saddam nephews' assets frozen, Three moments of silence in Baghdad, Roggio on River War

Read the Rest…

Note: Also available from “The Opinion Journal” and Chrenkoff. As always, many thanks to James Taranto and Joe Katzman, and all of you readers and fellow bloggers who keep supporting this project. Please note that because of the changes in recent publishing schedule, this installment contains the good news from the past three, instead of usual two, weeks.

Traveling overseas can definitely broaden your horizons, not to mention make you appreciate your home even more:

[Spc. Christopher] Bean, 20, of Port Gibson, finished up a year-long stint in Baghdad as a truck driver with the 594th Transportation Co., a 101st Airborne division. His time in the military has given him a different perspective on the Fourth of July.

“In Iraq, we’re not fighting for ourselves,” said Bean, from his home base in Fort Campbell, Ky. “We’re over there fighting so the Iraqis can have their own Fourth of July.”

One of the things that struck Bean most about his time in Iraq was the people themselves. Most of the Iraqis he met were proud to have the Americans there, he said, and watching them go through their daily lives made him appreciate the historic significance of our Independence Day.

“Being there really opens your eyes to what our forefathers went through to get the freedom we have today,” he said.

Nation-building is never quick and never easy; hard-work and heartache are today, and the results often only years if not decades ahead. But the Iraqi people, with the assistance of the Coalition, have commenced their journey, and despite all the hardships, every day is another step forward. Below, some of these often much under-reported and unappreciated steps from the past three weeks.

• Society
  
• Economy
  
• Reconstruction
  
• Humanitarian Aid
  
• The Coalition Troops
  
• Security

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from Iraq that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. This briefing is brought to you by Joel Gaines of No Pundit Intended and Andrew Olmsted of Andrew Olmsted dot com.

TOP TOPICS

• 15 suicide bombers struck the Baghdad area over the weekend, including a single attack in a vegetable market beside a mosque that killed some 70 Iraqis and injured 95 more. The failure of the Iraqi government to stop the attacks has some Iraqis calling for the return of popular militias, a move that could increase the threat of civil war between Iraq's ethnic groups.

• Sy Hersh is at it again. The New Yorker is reporting that the United States attempted to influence the January elections in Iraq to suppress Iranian influence in Iraq. The Bush administration has denied the charges, but Al Jazeera already has the story and its accuracy or lack thereof will matter little to demagogues seeking to undermine the Iraqi government.

Other Topics Today Include: Task Force Liberty; Baghdaddy reports; Angels Among Us; reconstruction highlights; preparing for the elections; Carnival of the Liberated; British pullout plans; Iraq PM visits Iran; Hussein formally charged.

Read the rest…

Just breaking on CNN…

Link soon.

Sky has this:

Court proceedings against deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein could begin within days, according to a special tribunal which says it has made the first charges against him.

The tribunal's chief investigating judge says Saddam has been charged along with three other defendants in connection with the killing of Shi'ite Muslims in the village of Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982.

At least 19 people have been killed in a rash of suicide bombings today in and around Baghdad.

Iraqi police say there have been four attacks in the capital, including one that missed a U-S convey, but struck two minibuses, killing six civilians.

At least six police officers were killed in the three other attacks, that also left seven civilians dead.

Read more…

A suicide attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body Saturday at a gas station near a Shiite mosque south of Baghdad, triggering a huge explosion in a fuel tanker and killing at least 54 people, police said.

Eighty-two people were injured.

Police Capt. Muthanna Khaled Ali said the attack occurred in Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad.

Update:

Reuters has the death toll at 98:

Stricken townspeople swept away the wreckage of a fuel truck bomb that killed 98 people south of Baghdad as three more suicide car bombers struck the Iraqi capital on Sunday in a relentless new campaign.

The overnight attack which devastated the highway town of Musayyib was the deadliest since the new Iraqi government took power in April and the highest death toll from a single car bomb since 125 people were killed in February in Hilla, also south of Baghdad.

Saturday's bombing prompted denunciations of the authorities in parliament and calls for local militia to take up arms.

Car bombs and explosions rocked wide areas of the Iraqi capital Friday, targeting U.S. and Iraqi security forces and killing at least 29 people. Two U.S. Marines died in a blast near the Jordanian border.

At least 111 people, including seven American soldiers, were wounded in the bombings — at least seven of them homicide attacks. One of the homicide bombings occurred after sundown on a bridge over the Tigris River near the home of President Jalal Talabani .

Three security guards were killed and nine people were wounded in that attack. Talabani was at home at the time, aides said, but the target may have been a U.S. convoy.

Read more..

A car bomber sped up to American soldiers distributing candy to children and detonated his explosives Wednesday, killing up to 27 other people, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. One U.S. soldier and about a dozen children were among the dead.

At least 21 others, including three U.S. soldiers, were wounded in the attack, the second major homicide bombing in Baghdad this week. A bomber killed 25 people Sunday at an Iraqi army recruiting center.

The fireball from Wednesday's blast also set a nearby house ablaze, the U.S. military said. The attack stunned the impoverished east Baghdad neighborhood of mostly Shiite Muslims and Christians.

Read more…

Reuters reports that a key operative in the organization of Iraq's al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been captured:

Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the PBS program “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” that Monday's capture of Abu Abd Al-Aziz, whom he called Zarqawi's “main leader in Baghdad,” was “going to hurt that operation of Zarqawi's pretty significantly.”

Myers said Al-Aziz was picked up “on the battlefield,” but provided no other details.

A defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, added, “When you look at the picture of the Zarqawi network of the different elements that are known to exist, he's the second-in-command of the Baghdad element and has the reputation of being the 'emir of Baghdad' for Zarqawi.”

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from Iraq that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. This briefing is brought to you by Joel Gaines of No Pundit Intended and Andrew Olmsted of Andrew Olmsted dot com.

TOP TOPICS

• The U.S. and UK are