American troops should be out of Iraq within the next two years, the U.S. military’s top commander said Sunday. “As you ask me today, I believe it’s a 10 – that we will be gone by 2011,” Gen. Ray Odierno told CNN when asked to gauge, on a scale of one to 10, the likelihood that the withdrawal meet the timeline agreed upon by U.S. and Iraqi governments. Read more.

Obama Visits Iraq Impromptu
President Obama marked another first on his first trip overseas; he made an unscheduled stop to Iraq. According to the White House Press Pool traveling with Obama, although Turkey was supposed to be his last stop before heading back to Washington D.C. late this afternoon, the president had Air Force One land in the capital city of Baghdad in hopes of directly reaching out to Iraqi leaders. Full story.

Milwaukee’s Black Cultural Center Nixed
The $10 million African-American Cultural Center, which organizers in Milwaukee have been planning for the past 13 years, has fallen victim to the recession. Planners say that the current economic crisis has made it nearly impossible to raise the money needed to build the 60,000-square-foot center with space for meetings, banquets, exhibits and businesses. The operation officially will shut down on April 15. Tyrone Dumas, chairman of the African-American Cultural Center Board, says in a statement that the poor economy forced organizers to give up. Money raised for the project will be donated to other cultural organizations. Eight months ago, the recession claimed another victim, America’s Black Holocaust Museum.

Keeping his plan to bring military troops home, President Barack Obama has announced a deadline for withdrawal. But the date next year comes three months later than what Obama promised as the end of Iraq’s assignment when he was still campaigning for the White House. Saying the “combat mission in Iraq” will end by Aug. 31, 2010, Obama drew both praise and critical comments on Friday. The proposed 19 months into his presidency will, nonetheless, conclude six years of deadly conflict initiated by ex-President George W. Bush. “We are leaving Iraq to its people and we have begun the work of ending this war,” Obama announced. The war has cost about $1 trillion and led to over 4,000 American military personnel deaths. Countless numbers of Iraqis have also died.
 

Sounding a familiar theme, President Barack Obama said that he would begin withdrawing U.S. troops from war-ravaged Iraq with a year. “We are in a position to start putting more responsibility on the Iraqis, and that’s good news for not only the troops in the field but also their families, who are carrying an enormous burden,” Obama said Sunday in an interview with Matt Lauer, anchor of NBC’s TODAY show. Read more about it here.

Obama and Lincoln are Linked
It seems that the media have an obsession with the Barack Obama-Abe Lincoln parallels. But Obama definitely has played a role in fueling those parallels. Read more here.
 

Americans Continue to Die in Iraq
An unnamed U.S. soldier died in Iraq Saturday, bringing the total number of U.S. soldiers who died in that country to 4,224, since the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, The Associated Press reports. This figure includes eight military civilians killed in action. At least 3,403 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers. In addition to U.S. deaths: The British military has reported 178 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia and Georgia, three each; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand and Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and South Korea, one death each.

The shoe-throwing Iraqi apologizes. The Iraqi journalist who tried to bean President Bush with his shoes is begging not to be sent to prison. Describing his action as “an ugly act,” Muntadhar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for an Iraqi-owned television station based in Cairo, Egypt, said in a letter that he would like to be forgiven. He could spend two years in prison for insulting a foreign leader. He has been jailed ever since being wrestled to the floor by security guards last Sunday during a news conference featuring Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. A spokesman for Maliki, Yassin Majid, told The Associated Press that al-Zeidi went on in the letter to recall an interview he conducted with the prime minister in 2005, when al-Maliki invited him into his home, saying: “Come in, it is your home too. …So I ask for your pardon, Excellency.”White House press secretary Dana Perino said Thursday that “the president harbors no hard feelings about it, and the Iraqis have a process that they’ll follow… .But he did urge them not to overreact, because he was not bothered by the incident, although it’s not appropriate for people to throw shoes at a press conference, at any leader.” Many  Iraqis have hailed al-Zeidi as a hero for defying a president they blame for destroying their country.

U.S. Iraq withdrawal is closer.  While last-minute maneuvering delayed a vote on the agreement to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and limit U.S. powers, observers say they were still encouraged because the move symbolized that the budding democracy is taking hold. And finally, on Thursday, the long, costly story of American military involvement in Iraq moved closer to an end when the Iraqi Parliament approved an agreement that requires all foreign troops to be out in three years, marking the first clear timetable for a U.S. exit since the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. The vote for the security deal followed months of tough negotiations between U.S. and Iraq officials that at times reached a near breaking point. Then, days of deal-making between ethnic and sectarian groups with centuries-old rivalries made worse by the war, finally ended in an agreement that all parties could live with. The issue was decided by elected parliamentarians, not by gunmen on the streets, giving hope to observers that democracy has finally taken hold. The government won the support of leaders from the Sunni minority, so that the plan could be seen as having a national consensus rather than one that was steamrolled through by the mainstream Shia parties. The terms of the security pact reflect that confidence: U.S. forces will withdraw from Iraqi towns and cities by June 30 and the entire country by Jan. 1, 2012, reports The Associated Press. American troops could leave sooner if President-elect Barack Obama makes good on a plan to pull out combat troops within 16 months of moving into the White House in January. However, some troops are likely to be redeployed to Afghanistan, where terrorist forces have taken hold and expanded. The war has cost the lives of more than 4,200 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. It has also cost America billions of dollars as well as global stature.

Women and children are killed during a U.S. raid. Eleven people – mostly women and children – were killed Sunday during a U.S. raid on a house in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul, The Associated Press reports. The deaths, which U.S. military officials blamed on al-Qaeda forces who used innocents as human shields, included five “terrorists,” three women and three children, AP reported. “This is just another tragic example of how al-Qaeda in Iraq hides behind innocent Iraqis,” U.S. military spokesman Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll said. U.S. troops were blasted as they went into a house searching for a suspected insurgent, U.S. officials said in a statement. Once inside the home, the officials said, a man exploded his suicide vest, killing the 11 people, including a 7-year-old boy. No American lives were lost in the incident. But locals blamed the tragedy on U.S. troops disregard for Iraqi lives. “Most of the Mosul residents live in fear because of such raids conducted by U.S. forces, and even sometimes the Iraqi forces,” Thaier Ahmed, a 32-year-old teacher, told AP. “It is a horrible incident that has led to the killing of innocent people, including children.” Another Iraqi, 35-year-old Abu Tiba, told AP that “the blood of Iraqis is worth nothing to the U.S. Army.” The deaths could not have come at a worse time for the Bush administration, which has been pointing out that violence in Iraq is 80 percent lower than it was a year ago.

Palin is smearing his name, Obama argues. Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah is merely trying to distract voters from the real issues confronting Americans by stating that he “pals around with terrorists,” Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Sunday. He called her comments “smears” and said that the economy and its effect on struggling workers are the issues that are paramount during this election season. But Palin wasn’t backing down. Throughout the weekend she repeated her charges, saying that Obama is buddies with Bill Ayers, a former member of the radical Weather Underground who acknowledged a role in several bombings, including one that killed a San Francisco policeman more than three decades ago. He and Obama have served on the same charity and live near each other in Chicago. Obama was 8 years old when Ayers was rabblerousing. “The comments are about an association that has been known but hasn’t been talked about,” Palin said in Long Beach, Calif. “I think it’s fair to talk about where Barack Obama kicked off his political career, in the guy’s living room.” Hours later, while speaking to an exuberant crowd in Omaha, Neb., Palin took it a step further. “In fact, Obama held one of his first meetings hoping to kick off his political career in Bill Ayers’ living room,” she said. Obama adviser David Axelrod described Palin’s claims about the Obama-Ayers association as exaggerated. And Obama, speaking at a rally in North Carolina said that McCain and his campaign “are gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance.”

Noted Black chemist and educator dies. Dr. Joseph Gayles Jr., a noted chemist and mathematician who helped create the Morehouse School of Medicine, died of heart failure last week at his home in Atlanta. He was 71. “Dr. Gayles played a key role,” Dr. Louis Sullivan, the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Sullivan, a founding dean and president of Morehouse School of Medicine, said that Gayles was a “great team player and very intense and committed” to the plan to start the new medical school for minorities, according to the newspaper. Raised in Birmingham, Ala., Gayles earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry and mathematics from Dillard University in New Orleans. He then earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from Brown University, the Journal-Constitution reports. Before going to Morehouse to teach, he worked at the IBM research lab for three years. Between 1977 and 1983, he served as president of Talladega College in Alabama. He returned to Morehouse School of Medicine, where he was the vice president of institutional development until 1996. He is survived by a daughter, Monica Dorsey of Fairburn; a son, Jonathan Gayles of Atlanta; and two grandchildren. Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Cascade United Methodist Church in Atlanta. Murray Brothers Funeral Home is handling arrangements.

Was Obama right about Iraq?

It looks like President Bush will do just what Sen. Barack Obama has been suggesting all along; return troops home from Iraq and send more to Afghanistan. Could Bush and Obama be on the same page? Find out more at Pamela on Politics.

Condoleezza Rice: State Department needs more Blacks.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she doesn’t see enough people who look like her in the State Department.  “I have lamented that I can go into a meeting at the Department of State – and as a matter of fact, I can go into a whole day of meetings at the Department of State – and actually rarely see somebody who looks like me. And that is just not acceptable,” she said in an address Monday before the annual conference of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. She also praised Black colleges for the number of scholarships and grants students received from the State Department for things such as study abroad programs. “It’s good for the students, but it is good for America too. …[W]hen I go around the world, I want to see Black Americans involved in the promotion and development of our foreign policy. I want to see a Foreign Service that looks as if Black Americans are part of this great country,” she said.

Obama tours the Middle East and makes headlines around the world
This week Sen. Barack Obama embarked on his tour of the Middle East and managed to monopolize the media, annoying his headline-starved Republican rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) More at Pamela On Politics.