Summary: The upcoming January 2009 provincial elections will be Iraqis’ fourth national ballot since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime. … David Enders of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting examines the power struggle among competing Shiite factions in Iraq.

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Summary: In his January 20, 2009 inaugural address, President Barack Obama promised to “begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people” and forge “a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan,” the two wars he inherited from President George W. Bush. President Obama’s promise to end the war in Iraq is on the agenda for the first full day of his presidency, January 21, 2009, when the new commander in chief meets with top national security aides and senior commanders.

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Summary: President George W. Bush presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, with economists across the ideological spectrum increasingly viewing his two terms as a time of little progress on the nation’s thorniest fiscal challenges. Specifically, the number of jobs in the nation increased by about 2 percent during Bush’s tenure, the most tepid growth over any eight-year span since data collection began seven decades ago. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, grew at the slowest pace for a period of that length since the Truman administration. And Americans’ incomes grew more slowly than in any presidency since the 1960s, other than that of Bush’s father George H. W. Bush.

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Summary: Iranian demonstrators, waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Death to Obama,” burned photographs of Barack Obama in Tehran as they protested against America’s inaction over Israel’s Gaza offensive. Iranian demonstrators have often burned effigies or pictures of U.S. presidents, but this appeared to be the first time Obama’s picture had been defaced, a week before his inauguration as president.

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Summary: In response to President George W. Bush’s ultimatum to Iraq to disclose illegal weapons and disarm — or face serious consequences — Saddam Hussein on December 7, 2002 apologized for invading Kuwait in 1990 and delivered a 11,800-page weapons disclosure to U.N. inspectors in Baghdad, which he said proved that Iraq had no illegal weapons programs.

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Summary: Anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called on the Iraqi resistance to stage “revenge operations” against American forces to protest Israel’s Gaza offensive.

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Summary: Iraq remained the deadliest country for media workers in 2008, followed by India and Mexico, although the number of deaths was down sharply from the previous year. A total of 109 journalists and support staff in 36 countries died while covering the news in 2008, down from 172 in 2007, largely due to a decline in the number of media workers killed in Iraq.

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Summary: In an exit interview on CBS “Face the Nation,” Vice President Dick Cheney offered a spirited defense of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, of which he was a key proponent and architect, saying the United States was close to achieving its aims in Iraq.

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Summary: A female suicide bomber killed at least 38 and wounded 72 in an attack on pilgrims entering the revered Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine in Kadhimiya, northwestern Baghdad, on January 4, 2009. … Security incidents in Iraq on Jan. 3, 2009, as reported by Reuters. … January 2008 update of key facts, figures, and statistics on Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

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Summary: Tensions are mounting between Sunni Arabs and Kurds in the Iraqi city of Mosul, where political violence is increasing ahead of provincial elections. … A suicide bomber blew himself up at a luncheon gathering at a tribal leader’s home, killing at least 23 people and wounding dozens.

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