Iraq

World News

Op-Ed: The Iraq War's Lessons For Syria

8:23am April 07, 2013

Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl says that the Iraq War taught him a lot about how we should deal with the civil war in Syria. In an op-ed he argues that without U.S. intervention, Syria could produce "a much worse humanitarian disaster" than Iraq.

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'Tiny Fraction' Took Advantage During Iraq's Reconstruction

10:55am March 22, 2013

This week, Morning Edition has been marking the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Steve Inskeep talks to Inspector General Stuart Bowen about his audit report on U.S. spending and waste in the reconstruction of Iraq.

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Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi-American poet who teaches in Michigan. She has published five books in Arabic and two in English.

Books
Arts

Revisiting Iraq Through The Eyes Of An Exiled Poet

9:45am March 22, 2013

by NPR Staff

Dunya Mikhail fled her homeland in the wake of the first Gulf War, after her writing was labeled subversive by Saddam Hussein's government. She has never physically returned to Iraq, but she remembers it in her poetry.

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Residents visit the tomb of a loved one at the New Kerbala cemetery in the holy city of Kerbala, Iraq, in 2007.

World News

Face To Face With Death In Iraq

6:21pm March 21, 2013

Um Abbas has spent decades performing the Muslim ritual of washing the bodies of the dead to prepare them for burial. The war years in Iraq were terrible, she says, but in some ways, confronting death every day helped her cope with the country's trauma.

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Remembering Iraq: How Personal Stories Square With Press

3:31pm March 20, 2013

NPR's Neal Conan talks with Iraq veterans about how the media coverage and the national conversation around the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq resonates with their personal experiences.

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Veterans Face Red Tape Accessing Disability, Other Benefits

5:05pm March 19, 2013

On the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, journalist Aaron Glantz talks about the challenges American service members face in accessing disability and other benefits. Glantz says there is a backlog of 900,000 claims and that the average waiting period is 273 days.

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An Iraqi policeman stands guard at a checkpoint decorated with plastic flowers in Baghdad in 2008.

World News

Baghdad, A Decade Later

12:00pm March 19, 2013

by Kelly McEvers

Ten years ago Tuesday, the aerial bombardment of Iraq began. It was the opening volley of a U.S.-led invasion that would topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. One of the questions is: Can Iraq's fragile democracy hold, as the region splits along sectarian lines?

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World News

A Decade Later, What Was Accomplished In Iraq

2:16pm March 18, 2013

In March 2003, U.S. troops crossed from Kuwait into Iraq with the goal of toppling dictator Saddam Hussein. Within weeks, the Hussein regime had fallen. The occupation that followed left U.S. combat forces in the country until December 2011. The legacy of the war is still widely debated.

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The Iraq War: 10 Years Later, Where Do We Stand?

10:32am March 17, 2013

by NPR Staff

The war has cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, and there are many who will live with its legacy forever. Now, as it tries to stabilize without U.S. combat troops, the conflict in neighboring Syria could threaten its security.

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Looming Cuts Could Mean Big Changes For U.S. Military

2:01pm February 12, 2013

Without a deal by March 1, across-the-board federal spending cuts will kick in — including deep cuts to the nation's defense budget. Michele Flournoy, former undersecretary of defense for policy, and NPR's Tom Bowman discuss what sequestration might mean for the U.S. military.

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