Summary: In the deadliest attack in Iraq in months, a suicide bomber struck a crowd that gathered where an explosion moments earlier had damaged a bus full of schoolgirls, killing at least 31 people and wounding 71. Meanwhile in Baqouba, a female suicide bomber attacked a security checkpoint, killing five and wounding 15.
Summary: Shiite clerics have warned the Iraqi government not to sign a security pact that would keep U.S. troops in Iraq until 2012, as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki studied what U.S. officials described as the final draft of the U.S.-Iraq status-of-forces agreement. … Referring to President-elect Barack Obama, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said she was “extremely grateful that we have an African-American who has won this year,” calling Obama’s victory “a tremendous signal we sent.”
Summary: Iraqi officials, who see President-elect Obama’s views on the timing of a U.S. withdrawal as consonant with their own, appear to be leveraging his election to pressure the Bush administration to make last-minute concessions in negotiations to reach a status-of-forces agreement with the United States. … Iraqi and U.S. officials are concerned about a surge in “sticky bombs.” In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai urged U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to stop the killing of civilians in coalition operations, which undermines popular support for the Afghan government and the international mission.
Summary: U.S. president-elect Barack Obama faces major foreign policy challenges. Summary of intertwined issues Barack Obama inherits from George W. Bush.
Summary: On Election Day 2008 — the 17th and final day of his write-in campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District — Aubrey Immelman reissued his Statement on the Iraq War, reiterated instructions for casting a write-in ballot, and reported on ongoing violence in Iraq.
Summary: On the ninth day of his write-in campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in line with his focus on national security, reported that despite millions of dollars of U.S. expenditure in Mosul since 2003 to improve electricity, overhaul army facilities, and rehabilitate schools and other infrastructure, five years of war had reduced much of Iraq’s third-largest city to rubble.
Summary: On the eighth day of his write-in campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in line with his focus on national security, reported that Iraq’s largest Sunni Arab political party suspended all dealings with U.S. civilian and military personnel after U.S. and Iraqi forces carried out a raid in which a senior official of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi’s Iraqi Islamic Party was killed. He also published links to personality profiles of presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, with implications for their likely leadership style as president, developed at the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, which he directs.
Summary: On the fifth day of his write-in campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in line with his focus on national security, reported on ongoing violence in the Iraq war.
Summary: On the fourth day of his write-in campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman thanked supporters for their messages of encouragement and online contributions and published excerpts from Eric Zaetsch’s “Developers are Crabgrass” blog entry for Oct. 20, 2008 regarding Immelman’s write-in candidacy.
Summary: On the first day after announcing a write-in campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman reported former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s stinging rebuke of Bachmann for alleging Barack Obama “may hold anti-American views” and suggesting that the media investigate which members of Congress are “pro-America or anti-America.” Immelman also reported on halting progress in the U.S.-Iraq status-of-forces agreement, ongoing violence in Iraq, and escalating violence in Afghanistan.