Shailagh Murray opens the Post's front-page coverage with a look at the positioning going on among the four Democratic senators running for president -- with the Senate floor as their latest jousting arena. When next week's Defense Department authorization bill his the floor, look for all four candidates -- Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois, Joe Biden of Delaware and Chris Dodd of Connecticut -- to push their favored plan for Iraq as amendments. Clinton's proposal is the most radical: a deauthorization of President Bush's war powers -- an ironic suggestion given her 2002 vote to authorize the war. And while the Senate has traditionally not been a great source for presidential success, this time may be different. "The war has been absolutely huge for them," according to Barry C. Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Next week's debate will let the senators show off their positions and foreign-policy flair in what will essentially be free air-time. (Although mainly on C-SPAN.) Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is struggling as a presidential candidate, has tried to stay away from the Senate, but as the highest-ranking member of of the Armed Services Committee, he'll have to be there to manage the defense bill. Whether he can manage being a presidential candidate and a senator who's on "the wrong side of public opinion on Iraq," as Murray writes, remains to be seen.
Roundups
The suspected ringleader of a series of bombings and assassinations, including the 2003 killings of Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, the head of SCIRI, and Abdel Zahara Othman, head of Iraq's Governing Council, has been hanged, reports Stephen Farrell for The New York Times. Oras Muhammad Abdul-Aziz, who was hanged three days ago, according to the Iraqi Justice Ministry, was a member of al Qaeda in Iraq as well as Ansar al-Islam, a progenitor of Zarqawi's terror group. He was arrested in 2004 in Mosul by U.S. forces before being turned over to the Iraqis. The killings of al-Hakim and Othman, as well as an attack that killed 19 Italian servicemembers, were linked to Abdul-Aziz and were some of the earliest high-profile bombings in Iraq. Also, in a kind of journalistic version of Chekhov's gun, Farrell notes that 84 other people have been hanged, but it's unclear if that number means those hanged recently or since June 2004 when Iraq regained its sovereignty, since Farrell never picks that back up from the leade. Farrell also reports that on Friday, three policemen were killed in heavy fighting against Mahdi Army militiamen in Samawa, and a suicide car bomb struck a cafe near the city of Khanaqin in the Kurdish area near the Iranian border. Seventeen people were killed and four wounded. The Times tacks on an AP story about an investigation into wrongful killings by Marines in November 2004 in Fallujah. (See Washington Post below, in other coverage.)
The Post leads its roundup by Sudarsan Raghavan with criticism from the United Nations that donor countries are neglecting the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees who are swamping Syria and Jordan. In April, the United States and other countries pledged help to Syria and Jordan, but donations so far have totaled only $70 million with an addition $10 million in pledges. Hundreds of millions of dollars are needed, the U.N. said. Further adding to Iraqi refugees' woes, Sweden announced that its generous open-door policy is closing; it soon will be more difficult for Iraqis to seek asylum and those denied refuge will be deported "by force." Sweden has taken in more Iraqis -- more than 18,000 -- than the United States or any other European country since 2006. The U.S., in contrast, has taken in less than 800 since 2003. Raghavan gets the fighting in Samawa, but adds that Samarra saw a roadside bomb attack that killed four cops and wounded three civilians. In Hilla, mortars struck near a U.S. base, attracting Iraqi police and army units to investigate. When they got there, a roadside bomb blew up, killing four Iraqi soldiers and injuring two. In Kirkuk, a gang of gunmen killed a soldier in a drive-by shooting, while 30 miles to the southwest, in Hawija, gunmen killed another Iraqi soldier.
In other coverage
WASHINGTON POST
Josh White reports for the Post on another investigation into possible wrongful killings of Iraqis by Marines of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment in Anbar province. A Marine, identified as Cpl. Ryan Weemer, applied for a government job and in the interview said eight insurgents were killed by a Marine squad after being captured in Fallujah during the November 2004 assault on the city. The investigation has been underway for several months already, but no criminal charges have been filed. Kilo Company came to prominence because of investigations into an alleged massacre in Haditha in 2005.
A retired Foreign Service officer, Kiki Munshi, contributes an op-ed about her experiences in Baqoubah in 2006. Somewhat surprisingly -- from a U.S. governmental officer, anyway -- she calls what some of the insurgents are doing in Diyalah province "resistance" and says the "new" strategy of working with Sunni tribal leaders to go after foreign jihadi elements isn't new at all; it's exactly what she and the commander of the 4th Infantry Division were doing last year. But for her, the past is prologue. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki appointed a new, sectarian Shi'ite commanding general who blew away the goodwill the Americans were developing among the Sunni ex-Ba'athists in Diyalah and the patient, relationship-building 4th ID was replaced with a cavalry unit that favored guns over talking. The results were predictable: The Sunni Arabs in Diyalah, who feared Iran and Shi'ites more than they did America, turned back to insurgency and al Qaeda. The friendly mayor of Baqoubah was arrested as an insurgent. While Americans in Iraq forget last year's history quickly, the Iraqis don't, she warns.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Melik Kaylan writes a fawning piece on Ahmad Chalabi for the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page, calling him the "nearest thing Iraqis currently possess to a genuine walk-and-talk democratic politician." For many Americans, that may be hard to stomach, as the guy has been roundly criticized for peddling false WMD information to eager listeners at the Pentagon. (He once said, "As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. ... We are heroes in error.") In Chalabi's views, everything would have been hunky-dory in Baghdad if the Americans had just let the Iraqis run the show, presumably with him in charge. (Which was pretty much the plan until those meddlin' State Department kids showed up.) Furthermore, without once mentioning that Chalabi is Shi'ite himself, Kaylan says Chalabi recognizes the realities of Iraq and its ethnic makeup, admitting that Shi'ites will be dominant. Well, other than Sunni insurgents, does anyone really dispute that? Kaylan seems to have been snookered by Chalabi, who thrills Iraqis by wandering amongst the people. Admirable yes, but Chalabi has almost zero support in Iraq and perhaps the reason he's able to walk and talk relatively safely in public is because no one takes him seriously anymore.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
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USA TODAY
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