Summaries here and here and here.

Re-rolling the dice, rebalancing the scales?

MP Izz al-Din al-Dawlah said on Saturday the parliamentary blocs of Accordance, Fadhila (Virtue), Sadrist, Iraqi National List, National Dialogue, Turkmani, and Yezidist had made progress in negotiations to establish an expanded front within the House of the Representatives to combat the U.S. Senate resolution on dividing Iraq.

[snip]

If a new front was established by these blocs, it will occupy some 125 out of a total 275 seats within the Iraqi parliament, while the Shiite and Kurdish alliance will hold no less than 140 seats.

“The first decision taken by the negotiating blocs is to stand against the U.S. Senate resolution on dividing Iraq,” al-Dawlah said. Article

Latest verse, same as the first — except that in this case, the timetable happens to coincide with the end of the woebegone G. Walker admnitsrtaion’s term of office.

Iraq will ask the U.N. Security Council to extend the mandate of 160,000-stong U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq for only one more year – through the end of 2008, foreign ministry officials told The Associated Press on Saturday.

The officials said Iraq would then seek a long-term, bilateral security agreement with the United States like the ones Washington has with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Egypt.

Aides to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the mandate extension for the U.S.-led forces in Iraq, due to be discussed at the end of this year, would be “the last extension for these forces.”

[snip]

The resolution, drafted by the United States, authorizes a review of the mandate at the request of the Iraqi government every six months. The mandate last was extended for one year on Dec. 31 and expires at end of this year.

“We will ask the council to extend the mandate for another year…then our negotiations with the Security Council will be kicked off,” Zebari was quoted as saying.

[snip]

According to a provision in the current mandate, which comes up for renewal in December, the council would cancel it at any time “if requested by the government of Iraq.”

Last June, legislators led by followers of a radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr passed a resolution requiring the government to seek parliamentary approval before asking the United Nations to extend the U.S. mandate.

The measure was approved along party lines – with Sunnis joining the bloc loyal to al-Sadr and another disaffected Shiite party to support it – and Shiite and Kurdish backers of al-Maliki’s government in opposition.

The parliamentary move could snarl the mandate renewal, as Iraqis and their legislative representatives grow increasingly disenchanted with the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Article

The album of testimony grows. It is exceedingly crude (but blatantly necessary, very unfortunately) to ask what percentage of weight Iraqi witnesses are accorded (as opposed to U.S. and U.S.-funded sources) within the woebegone G. Walker administration?

Iraqi forces held their fire as Blackwater security guards shot into a crowd in Baghdad, five alleged witnesses claim.

“The Iraqi security forces had the right to shoot at them when they saw the (Blackwater) convoy shooting at the people, but they did not shoot at the convoy,” said Ahmed Ali Jassim, 19, a maintenance worker who said he saw the Sept. 16 incident.

The account contradicts initial reports from Blackwater and the U.S. State Department, which maintain Blackwater guards were returning fire when they shot into the crowd, killing at least 11 Iraqis, The Washington Post reported Saturday. Article

Related: Reckless, rampant Rambo-ism.

On Sept. 9, the day before Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker told Congress that things were getting better, Batoul Mohammed Ali Hussein came to Baghdad for the day.

A clerk in the Iraqi customs office in Diyala province, she was in the capital to drop off and pick up paperwork at the central office near busy al Khilani Square, not far from the fortified Green Zone, where top U.S. and Iraqi officials live and work. U.S. officials often pass through the square in heavily guarded convoys on their way to other parts of Baghdad.

As Hussein walked out of the customs building, an embassy convoy of sport-utility vehicles drove through the intersection. Blackwater security guards, charged with protecting the diplomats, yelled at construction workers at an unfinished building to move back. Instead, the workers threw rocks. The guards, witnesses said, responded with gunfire, spraying the intersection with bullets.

Hussein, who was on the opposite side of the street from the construction site, fell to the ground, shot in the leg. As she struggled to her feet and took a step, eyewitnesses said, a Blackwater security guard trained his weapon on her and shot her multiple times. She died on the spot, and the customs documents she’d held in her arms fluttered down the street.

Before the shooting stopped, four other people were killed in what would be the beginning of eight days of violence that Iraqi officials say bolster their argument that Blackwater should be banned from working in Iraq.

During the ensuing week, as Crocker and Petraeus told Congress that the surge of more U.S. troops to Iraq was beginning to work and President Bush gave a televised address in which he said “ordinary life was beginning to return” to Baghdad, Blackwater security guards shot at least 43 people on crowded Baghdad streets. At least 16 of those people died.

Two Blackwater guards died in one of the incidents, which was triggered when a roadside bomb struck a Blackwater vehicle.

Still, it was an astounding amount of violence attributed to Blackwater. In the same eight-day period, according to statistics compiled by McClatchy Newspapers, other acts of violence across the embattled capital claimed the lives of 32 people and left 87 injured, not including unidentified bodies found dumped on Baghdad’s streets.

The best known of that week’s incidents took place the following Sunday, Sept. 16, when Blackwater guards killed 11 and wounded 12 at the busy al Nisour traffic circle in central Baghdad.

[snip]

A joint commission of five U.S. State Department officials, three U.S. military officials and eight Iraqis has been formed to investigate the incident, though almost two weeks later, the commission has yet to meet. A U.S. Embassy statement on Thursday, the first official written comment from the embassy since the al Nisour shooting, said that the group was “preparing” to meet.

Blackwater and the U.S. Embassy didn’t respond to requests for information about the other incidents.

[snip]

Three days later, Blackwater guards were back in al Khilani Square, Iraqi government officials said. This time, there was no shooting, witnesses said. Instead, the Blackwater guards hurled frozen bottles of water into store windows and windshields, breaking the glass. Article

Noted FYI:

In view of a recent cholera-caused death in Iraq, the Ministry of Health [of Kuwait] recently announced a state of alert amongst its emergency and preventive health staffs. “Though Kuwait is still safe of such danger, we warn people of having any food stuff coming from Iraq,” informed sources at the preventive health department pointing out that the department staffs were highly experienced in facing such diseases in Iraq. Article