For Iraqis, Not Much to Celebrate in 2004
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For many Iraqis, the June 28 handover of political power by the U.S.-led occupation authority was nothing more than a date on the calendar, a moment to mark and then forget, lost in a brutal insurgency that has shown little mercy ever since.
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The U.S.-led occupation authority's disbanding of the Iraqi Army over a year ago casts a shadow over the occupation.
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BAGHDAD -- These days the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq is talking less and less about Islam and not at all about revolution.
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Iraqis were promised billions of  dollars in mainly American aid to rebuild their country after  last year's U.S.-led invasion, but mounting violence has choked  reconstruction spending to almost nothing.
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Monday's address is expected to highlight improvements in Iraq, but not reforms for immigration or Social Security.
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Beset by daily violence, Iraqis found some solace in their soccer team's run to the final of the Asian Games, even though it ended in defeat on Friday. For many fans, just getting that far was a triumph over adversity.
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Some days it&#39;s hard to imagine how the news from Iraq can get any worse, although it has a way of doing just that with unsettling regularity.
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Many Americans said they were dispirited or angry about the war in Iraq, but many expressed equal unhappiness about seeing a lack of options.
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It is the Iraqi people who come best out of the end of the Najaf siege. This has been a triumph for the moderate majority who until yesterday felt themselves powerless to influence the wretched course of events in their own country.
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It has been 17 months since U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq, but people who live and work on Abu Nawas Street say that they no longer believe the promises of reconstruction.
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Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. While he certainly harbored ambitions to get them, the Iraqi programs to build them had decayed to become mere wisps of what they once were.
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In a grim marker of the longevity of the Iraq war, children too young to remember losing a parent in action are growing up.
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Iraqâs second-largest city is now without foreign forces for the first time since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
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Most Iraqis believe that no major or drastic change will take place in the war-torn country after the US elections since the coming White House
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Despite the presumed political damage suffered by Prime Minister Tony Blair over Iraq, voters are largely unconcerned at events in the country.
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Analysis: No one seems happy with the Iraqi Prime Minister, but he has held on for two reasons: his political acumen and the lack of a good alternative
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In this strange year of 2004, many of the big news stories have been about what didn't happen.