2007 Is Deadliest Year for US in Iraq
By Lauren Frayer, Associated Press
November 7, 2007

5 US soldiers, 1 sailor killed, making 2007 deadliest year of Iraq War for US troops.

Baghdad - The U.S. military on Tuesday announced the deaths of five more soldiers, making 2007 the deadliest year for U.S. troops despite a recent downturn, according to an Associated Press count.

At least 852 American military personnel have died in Iraq so far this year the highest annual toll since the war began in March 2003, according to AP figures.

The grim milestone passed despite a sharp drop in U.S. and Iraqi deaths here in recent months, after a 30,000-strong U.S. force buildup. There were 39 deaths in October, compared to 65 in September and 84 in August...

Some 850 troops died in 2004, mostly in larger, more conventional battles like the campaign to cleanse Fallujah of Sunni militants in November, and U.S. clashes with Shiite militiamen in the sect's holy city of Najaf in August.

But the American military in Iraq reached its highest troop levels in Iraq this year: 165,000. Moreover, the military's decision to send soldiers out of large bases and into Iraqi communities means more troops have seen more "contact with enemy forces" than ever before, said Maj. Winfield Danielson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad...

Meanwhile, the U.S. said it planned to release nine Iranian prisoners in the coming days, including two captured when U.S. troops stormed an Iranian government office in Irbil last January. The office was shut after the raid, but it reopened as an Iranian consulate on Tuesday, Iraqi and Iranian officials said.

A military spokesman said Iran appears to have kept its promise to stop the flow into Iraq of bomb-making materials and other weaponry that Washington says has inflamed insurgent violence and caused many American troop casualties.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week that Iran had made such assurances to the Iraqi government.

"It's our best judgment that these particular EFPs ... in recent large cache finds do not appear to have arrived here in Iraq after those pledges were made," Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of the Multi-National Force-Iraq's communications division, told reporters Tuesday.

Among the weapons Washington has accused Iran of supplying to Iraqi insurgents are EFPs, or explosively formed projectiles. They fire a slug of molten metal capable of penetrating even the most heavily armored military vehicles, and thus are more deadly than other roadside bombs.

The No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, said last week that there had been a sharp decline in the number of EFPs found in Iraq in the last three months. At the time, he and Gates both said it was too early to tell whether the trend would hold, and whether it could be attributed to action by Iranian authorities. Iran publicly denies that it has sent weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq.

Also Tuesday, the U.S. military said Iraqi troops had discovered 22 bodies in a mass grave northwest of Baghdad over the weekend. The bodies were found during a joint operation Saturday. It was the second mass grave found in the area in less than a month.

After the discovery, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched an operation Sunday, including ground raids and air assaults targeting al-Qaida in the area, the U.S. statement said.

About 30 suspects were detained, it said. Two car bomb facilities and a number of weapons caches also were found, it added.

Iraqi officials were trying to identify the bodies and notify families.


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From www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/916758.html

Livni behind closed doors: Iran nukes pose little threat to Israel
By Gidi Weitz and Na'ama Lanski, Haaretz Correspondents
October 25, 2007

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel, Haaretz magazine reveals in an article on Livni to be published Friday.

Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears. Last week, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy said similar things about Iran.

The article also reveals for the first time a document Livni prepared and sent to Olmert a few months after the Second Lebanon War proposing a new division of labor between the two. "Enclosed is a proposal for work procedures between us, with the aim of providing an answer to Israel's strategic needs and facilitating early planning and the formulation of coordinated Israeli positions ... within the framework of cooperative relations, full transparency and continuous mutual updates," wrote Livni.

She described in the document a number of required arrangements: "The prime minister and the foreign minister will hold regular work meetings at least once a week." In an allusion to her absence form critical discussions during the war in Lebanon, she wrote: "The foreign minister will be invited to meetings with the prime minister on security matters and other meetings with serious implications."

The most important part of the document relates to the talks with the Palestinians. Livni wrote: "The foreign minister shall represent the prime minister and the government of Israel, and will act on their behalf as the director of the dialogue with the relevant Palestinian representatives, and in accordance with the policy and methods to be coordinated in advance with the prime minster, while keeping him informed."

It is reasonable to assume that Olmert's decision to appoint Livni as head of the negotiating team with the Palestinians at the Annapolis summit is connected to the document.

The Haaretz article also reveals for the first time a draft of a document prepared for Livni by her advisor, Dr. Tal Becker of the Foreign Ministry, who is slated to serve as a senior member of the negotiating team with the Palestinians. The draft, named the Diplomatic Horizon, is pessimistic about the chances of reaching a permanent solution in the near future.