Middle East Update

Iraqis are returning to their homeland by the hundreds each day, by bus, car and plane, encouraged by weeks of decreased violence and increased security, or compelled by visa and residency restrictions in neighboring countries. (By Sudarsan Raghavan, The Washington Post)

Caroline Glick (Jerusalem Post)
Former federal prosecutor and the head of the non-governmental International Intelligence Summit, John Loftus, has released a report on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program, based on a private study of captured Iraqi documents.

AP
British soldiers began withdrawing Sunday from their last base inside the southern Iraqi city of Basra, a move likely to prompt a further reduction in troop numbers, lawmakers and officials said. Around 550 soldiers stationed in the Basra Palace base were leaving the downtown site to join 5,000 other personnel at an [...]

Salam Faraj
“After several rockets hit FOB (Forward Operating Base) Hammer on July 11, the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team maneuvered to find the source of the attack,”
a U.S. military statement said July 13. The next morning an
“unmanned aerial vehicle located 46 rocket launchers in the northern section of Besmaya Range Complex aimed at FOB Hammer.”

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki shrugged off U.S. doubts of his government’s military and political progress Saturday, saying Iraqi forces are capable and American troops can leave “anytime they want.”

Iraqi security forces seized 200 explosive belts found during a search of a truck that had crossed into Iraq from Syria, Interior Ministry spokesman Maj.-Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said.
American military spokesman Brig.-Gen. Kevin Bergner said 60 to 80 foreign fighters enter Iraq “in any given month” - 70% of them through Syria. He said up to [...]

A major Sunni political party on Monday July 2 demanded that the U.S. and Iraqi militaries halt a security operation aimed at rooting out insurgents in and around the Diyala province city of Baquba.

A top special operations officer from Lebanon’s Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah has been captured in Iraq, where U.S. officials say he played a key role in a January attack that killed five Americans.

An Iraqi court on Sunday June 24, sentenced Saddam Hussein’s cousin known as “Chemical Ali” and two other former regime officials to death by hanging for their roles in a 1980s scorched-earth campaign that led to the deaths of 180,000 Kurds.

More than four years after the fall of Baghdad, the United Nations is spending millions of dollars in Iraqi oil money to continue the hunt for Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. (By Colum Lynch, The Washington Post)