Summary here.

Twenty five corpses have been found in scattered places in the city of Mosul, according to police.

A police source in Mosul told KUNA Friday that the Iraqi patrol vehicles were able to discover the corpses in scattered places in the city.

It added that some of the corpses were blindfolded and had gunfire scars. Article

Chaos surges as the catalysis creeps.

Iraqi state television said Friday that U.S. air strike killed 16 people in Sadr City, a Shiite stronghold in eastern Baghdad, while the U.S. military said they raided the Shiite bastion and detained a suspected militant.

Al-Iraqia, the Iraqi state-run television, reported the incident, adding 14 more people were wounded in the attack.

The U.S. military did not confirmed the incident. Article

Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard and Eugene Ionesco — combined — would be hard pressed to concoct as bizarre a scenario.

Iraqi authorities have re -arrested 18 policemen who had been detained but then freed over the reprisal killing of up to 70 Sunni Arab men in the northern town of Tal Afar this week, police said on Friday. Article

Those Bulgarian troops ostensibly guarding the MEK coralled in Camp Ashraf make wavelets again.

Two Bulgarian soldiers have been recalled from their mission in Iraq, Darik News reported.

The troops were part of Bulgaria’s non-combat unit that guards the Ashraf refugee camp, located 60 km north of Baghdad.

[snip]

The news comes just weeks after a scandalous amateur Web video exposed Bulgarian soldiers’ humiliating attitude towards Iraqis. The battalion, which was deployed in Kerbala from January 15 to July 15, 2004, used to go on patrolling in the area. It was exactly during such a mission that the video was shot, the ministry announced.

In the video, the soldiers are calling young local citizens names with a Bulgarian word, which means dirty Roma [aka Gypsy — voxd] and has an offensive connotation. Article

Genuinely working at defusing the recent escalation of tensions and rhetoric, sending a signal that the status of Kirkuk (regardless of whether any referendum is held) is a fait accompli, kicking the can tinderbox down the road, or some of each?

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s proposal to Turkey to send a delegation to the strategically important northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, the future of which Ankara has serious concerns about due to a huge recent influx of Iraqi Kurds, was considered by the Turkish capital as “a positive sign clearly showing Iraqi Kurds want a better relationship with Turkey.”

Riyadh was the venue for Talabani’s proposal earlier this week when he met with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who reiterated Turkey’s unease over developments in Kirkuk. Talabani answered him: “Is there a mistake that the Iraqis have made in regards to Kirkuk? Send a delegation; let them carry out investigations in Kirkuk. Let them look into whether the records of deeds have been erased. Let them carry out demographic studies. The base for these deeds is in Baghdad. Let Turkey’s consulate in Mosul look into this.”

…Kirkuk lies just south of the Kurdish autonomous region stretching across Iraq’s northeast. Kurdish leaders want to annex the city. Iraq’s constitution calls for a census and referendum on the issue by the end of this year.

As of Friday, Foreign Ministry officials said that there was currently no concrete plans for sending such a delegation to Kirkuk. “It is a fact that Talabani’s proposal is in itself a positive step reflecting the Iraqi Kurds’ willingness for having a better, milder and — most importantly — appropriate relationship with Turkey,” a senior diplomat told Today’s Zaman, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

[snip]

When reminded of possible interpretations of Talabani’s proposal, such as the Iraqi Kurds using a delegation sent by Turkey to the city for legitimizing their inappropriate activities, the same diplomat sounded confident and firm as on their position: “Ankara has no such worries because Turkey’s stance regarding Kirkuk is very well known by the Iraqi Kurds as well as by the international community.”

Meanwhile, it is still a subject of debate whether there had been any understanding over such proposal of inviting a Turkish delegation to Kirkuk between Talabani and Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, president of the de facto autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, prior to Talabani’s meeting with Erdogan in Riyadh. Article

With the degree of stridency (and directness) at nearly unprecedented highs from Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Jordan all in just one week, something’s afoot.

Policymakers and strategic analysts in the Arab world have little confidence that current US troop surge in Iraq will do much more than – at best – postpone a complete political-security breakdown in Iraq, which, they fear, could then spread across the Middle East. During my lengthy recent discussions with experts in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and with some well-connected Iraqis in Jordan, I heard a lot about how Iraq’s collapse has been affecting these Arab societies.

The news from my Iraqi friends – leaders in quasi-governmental and nongovernmental organizations – was grim. These were people who (on human rights grounds) had supported the US invasion in 2003, and who then worked hard to build an effective, democratic order in their country. Now, I found them downhearted – but thoughtful, as they tried to pinpoint the worst of many US mistakes in Iraq. They told piercingly tragic stories about the violence and sectarianism that affects everyone there.

[snip]

This group also talked about the region-wide fallout from the US troops’ current quagmirelike deployment in Iraq. They all expected to see a substantial drawdown – or perhaps a complete withdrawal – of US troops from Iraq within the next 12 to 18 months, regardless of whether Washington concludes an explicit agreement with Tehran…

Here in London, strategic thinker Hussein Agha told me that, for now, all of Iraq’s neighbors prefer that US troops stay tied down inside Iraq, rather than withdraw. For some countries, the status quo lessens the likelihood of US attacks against them.…

[snip]

Here in London, strategic thinker Hussein Agha told me that, for now, all of Iraq’s neighbors prefer that US troops stay tied down inside Iraq, rather than withdraw. For some countries, the status quo lessens the likelihood of US attacks against them.… Article