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The question was disturbing: Why do you live here?
Outside it was pitch dark. The six American soldiers couldn't see much of the desert landscape streaming by outside the small windows of their armored vehicle. They were hushed and exhausted from an all-night drive — part of the last convoy of U.S. troops to leave Iraq during the final moment of a nearly nine-year war.
In the hometown of the late Saddam Hussein, arrests have become so commonplace that whenever a police car shows up, young men flee from the street.
Weeks before the U.S. pullout, Iraq's prime minister confidently predicted Saturday that his country will achieve stability and remain independent of its giant neighbor Iran even without an American troop presence.
Inside palace walls built by Saddam Hussein, U.S. generals plotted the war's course, tracked the mounting death toll and swore in new American citizens under gaudy glass chandeliers.
The issue of legal immunity for foreign troops in Iraq, which already torpedoed plans to keep a U.S. military presence in the country, has emerged as a key stumbling block in talks over the extension of a NATO training mission here.
American troops marked their last Thanksgiving in Iraq Thursday with turkey, stuffing and a rocket fire alarm.
Iraq's prime minister said Saturday that 615 people have been detained in a security sweep targeting members of the former ruling Baath party.
Imad Talib al-Obeidi ticks off 18 places he had to visit to start his bottled water plant: the police, the environment directorate, the health directorate, the city council and the district council, for starters.
The question of whether American troops who stay in Iraq to train Iraqi forces would have immunity from local prosecution is shaping up to be the most contentious issue as the two countries try to hammer out an agreement on whether to keep a small training force here next year.
Soldiers at this base sleep with their shoes on so they don't cut their feet running under rocket fire. Elsewhere in Iraq the tanks are being packed up, but here they still serve in the hunt for insurgents. And when U.S. troops hand out soccer balls to village children, Apache helicopters circle above.
Iraqis who lived through the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein see eerie similarities in the scenes of Libyans parading through Tripoli ripping up posters of Moammar Gadhafi. But Iraqis also saw looting, bloodshed and bombings in the days and years since.
Iraq and Kuwait, two countries that share a small border and big history of mutual suspicion and war, are at it again. This time they are arguing about Kuwaiti plans to build a mammoth port that Iraq claims interferes with its shipping lanes in the Gulf.
The bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in this Sunni city in central Iraq opened the worst chapter of the war, two years of sectarian bloodshed.
A trove of Jewish books and other materials, rescued from a sewage-filled Baghdad basement during the 2003 invasion, is now caught up in a tug-of-war between the U.S. and Iraq.
Available soon: nine palaces in lakeside complex frequented by visiting kings and dictators, beautiful molded ceilings and light fixtures, many bidets, Saddam Hussein mural and former prison cell. As is, with Tomahawk missile damage. Contact: U.S. Army.
Harry Potter-inspired witches in flowing black satin gowns and pointed hats shimmied onstage as young warlocks in black-and-red capes looked on. Nearby, Indian-themed music blared from a boom box at a Baghdad version of a Bollywood movie set.
It's easy to identify the Iraqis fleeing the violent uprising in Syria as they arrive by bus in Baghdad.
American forces are facing an increasingly dangerous environment in southern Iraq, where Shiite militias trying to claim they are driving out the U.S. occupiers have stepped up attacks against bases and troops.
A week after the death of Osama bin Laden, his longtime deputy is considered the front-runner to succeed the iconic al-Qaida founder. But uprisings in the Middle East and changing dynamics within the group could point to another scenario: a decision not to appoint anyone at all to replace the world's most-wanted terrorist.
The sewing machines have been furiously churning out red and white Bahraini flags at a basement workshop in downtown Baghdad, and Iraqi customers are snapping them up to wave at protests, unfurl from buildings and fly from car antennas.
A surge of protests against Iraq's U.S.-backed democratic government has provoked a violent crackdown on demonstrators and journalists that is raising concerns about a rollback of civil liberties throughout the country.
Thousands rallied across Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq on Friday in anti-government demonstrations that defied security checkpoints and a vehicle ban that forced many to walk for hours to the heart of the capital.
At a time when other parts of the Arab world are in turmoil, Iraq is feeling stable enough to begin removing some of the tall concrete blast walls that went up as protection against bombings and insurgents during the height of the war.
Iraqi politicians face the contentious question this year of whether to ask U.S. troops to stay beyond an end-of-2011 deadline for their departure. That decision has become far more complicated with the return to Iraq of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
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