Iraq News (2 May)

The Good: The Turkish delegation is meeting with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad to discuss political, diplomatic, and economic ties. Turkey is a powerful, secular country in the region and has the potential to help Iraq with oil exploration and infrastructure development. There decision to conduct airstrikes on PKK rebels in northern Iraq during the talks makes for a big, fat question mark, but I guess that's how they do business. The Iraqi delegation to Iran is taking evidence of Iranian weapons and involvement straight to the Quds force commander, General Suleimani, and even Ayatollah Khamenei himself. Supposedly when Maliki met with Ahmadinejad back in August 2007, crazy Mahmoud said he would halt Iran's involvement with Iraq...maybe taking it all the way to Ayatollah will have more sway, but I remain skeptical while Iranian-made rockets keep blowing up in the Green Zone. We'll see what happens. A Special Groups commander has been detained by Iraqi SpecOps in Baghdad.

The Bad: Turns out one of the suicide bombers in Iraq was an ex-Gitmo detainee (possibly)! Guess rehabilitation doesn't work for everyone. A monstrous Al-Qaeda double suicide bombing has killed 35 civilians at an Iraqi wedding in Diyala province. A car bomb has killed on of our soldiers in eastern Baghdad.

The Ugly: Sadr has rejected negotiations with the Prime Minister and with the Iranian delegation on the recent security crisis in Sadr City. This at a time when the US and Iraqi forces erecting the Sadr City wall are coming under heavy fire from militia thugs. The wall is to push out launch sites into the Green Zone and to provide security/humanitarian relief to the southern portion of the district. These walls are nothing new to Baghdad and have been erected in most other districts since 2007, but this one is particularly controversial, as the Mahdi Army has controlled Sadr City for years.

The infamous "wall" in Sadr City