John H wrote:
On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 21:00:31 GMT, "Jim," , right on the
heels of Harry Krause wrote some more stuff which was snipped:

And now for some good news:

The New York Times
April 6, 2005
Iraqis in Accord on Top Positions, Ending Deadlock
By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 5 - Iraq's major political parties agreed Tuesday evening
to appoint a president and two vice presidents at a meeting of the national
assembly on Wednesday, breaking a two-month deadlock in negotiations to form a
new government, senior Iraqi officials said.

The assembly is expected to select Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader, as
president; Adel Abdul Mahdi, a prominent Shiite Arab politician, as vice
president; and Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, the Sunni Arab president of the interim
government, as the other vice president, said Hussein al-Shahristani, an
assembly vice speaker.

The agreement ends a stark impasse between the main parties that had threatened
to wreck the confidence built during the Jan. 30 elections, when Iraqis defied
insurgent threats to walk in droves to polling stations. The Iraqi public has
shown increasing impatience with the gridlock, and American military commanders
have warned that a continued lack of a government could lead to a rise in
insurgent violence.

The Kurds had been pushing hard for Mr. Talabani to be president, and the Shiite
parties said weeks ago that they would respect the nomination. Although the
prime minister, likely to be a Shiite, will wield the most power, Mr. Talabani's
appointment will give the Kurds strong leverage in the new government and in
negotiations over the permanent constitution, during which the Kurds will no
doubt press for broad autonomy.

The president and vice presidents, who make up the presidency council, will have
two weeks to pick a prime minister, who would then select a cabinet. The new
government would have to be approved by a majority vote of the assembly.

Because a two-thirds vote of the 275-member assembly is needed to install the
presidency council, the main Shiite and Kurdish blocs, which together have
enough seats to meet that requirement, haggled for weeks to try to use their
leverage to its maximum. They debated issues from control of oil revenues to the
role of Islam in the new government. More recently, the two blocs argued with
Sunni Arab parties over who should get the top government posts.

Party leaders say they are close to a final agreement on cabinet positions, but
have put off compromise on the larger strategic issues until the installation of
the government.

Dr. Shahristani, a nuclear physicist and prominent member of the Shiite bloc,
said the presidency council could officially appoint the prime minister as soon
as Wednesday evening or Thursday. The leading candidate for that job is Ibrahim
al-Jaafari, the head of the Dawa Islamic Party, a religious Shiite party.

As the political stalemate appeared to be coming to an end, American and Iraqi
officials reported a wave of violence that resulted in the deaths of three
American soldiers and a marine and at least one Iraqi Army officer.

Two of the Americans and the Iraqi officer were killed in a pitched battle on
Monday with dozens of insurgents in eastern Iraq, the American military said.
The battle began at 4 p.m., when two battalions of the Iraqi Army stumbled
across the guerrillas during a search for weapons in Diyala Province, the
military said. American forces sent in air support and troops from the 278th
Regimental Combat Team.

The battle was the most recent in a string of engagements in which American and
Iraqi troops have fought large bands of insurgents. Last Saturday, 40 to 60
insurgents made a coordinated assault on Abu Ghraib prison, wounding at least
two dozen Americans and 13 Iraqi prisoners. Iraqi and American forces last month
raided a lakeside training camp that housed about 80 insurgents north of
Baghdad. That came just days after an American convoy repelled an attack by
dozens of insurgents in the town of Salman Pak, southeast of Baghdad.

American military officials say it is unclear whether the insurgents have
changed their tactics and begun organizing large-scale operations and setting up
big encampments.

The military said a soldier with Task Force Baghdad died Tuesday morning when
his vehicle hit a roadside bomb in the southern part of the capital. A marine
was killed Monday by an explosion in Anbar Province, the restive desert region
dominated by Sunni Arabs west of Baghdad.

In another sign of growing sectarian tensions, an Interior Ministry official
said about 50 armed Shiite Arabs blocked off a road southeast of Baghdad on
Tuesday and detained 40 Sunni Arabs in retaliation for the kidnapping of seven
Shiites the day before. The police sent officers to the area and found 13 of the
detained Sunnis in nearby homes, the official said.

Officials in Babil Province, south of Baghdad, said Tuesday that police from the
town of Musayyib had found a mass grave in their area. In the grave were the
bodies of 10 policemen and Iraqi Army officers, all blindfolded and with their
hands tied. They were killed with several bullets each to their heads, the
officials said.

The Interior Ministry official said gunmen in west Baghdad kidnapped an Iraqi
commander, Brig. Gen. Jalal Muhammad Saleh, and several of his guards on Tuesday
morning.

Romanian officials in Bucharest said three Romanian journalists kidnapped last
week had been released, news agencies reported. A French journalist abducted in
January, Florence Aubenas, is still missing.

Leaders of the main Shiite Arab and Kurdish political blocs have said it was
crucial to bring the Sunni Arabs into the political process in order to dampen
the insurgency. The Sunni Arabs largely boycotted the elections and so have few
seats in the assembly. In recent days, the Shiites and Kurds have been
negotiating with the Sunnis Arab over who should take the vice presidential slot
that the parties had agreed should go to a Sunni.

On Tuesday evening, three Sunni groups each presented a list of three candidates
to the Shiite and Kurdish blocs, and the one name that appeared on all the lists
was that of Sheik Yawar, Dr. Shahristani said.

The Shiites and Kurds agreed more than a week ago that Mr. Talabani should be
president and Mr. Abdul Mahdi should be a vice president. After reviewing the
Sunni lists on Tuesday, they settled on Sheik Yawar as the other vice president,
completing the selection process, Dr. Shahristani said. "He was the common
denominator, if you like, of all the lists," Dr. Shahristani added.

Adnan Pachachi, a prominent Sunni politician and former foreign minister, gave a
different version of events. He said that on Tuesday afternoon, a group of more
than 80 Sunni Arab leaders met in Baghdad to decide whom they should nominate
for vice president. Mr. Pachachi said most endorsed him but decided to present a
list of three names to the Shiites and Kurds.

The two blocs then selected Sheik Yawar rather than Mr. Pachachi from the list,
Mr. Pachachi said. The sheik "is not the choice of the Sunni Arabs," he said.

On Sunday, the national assembly appointed Hajim al-Hassani, an
American-educated Sunni Arab politician, as its speaker, a mostly symbolic post.

Halliburton Settles Billing Dispute

Halliburton Co. said Tuesday that it had struck a deal with the Army on a
billing dispute over food service provided to troops in Iraq, Reuters reported.

The company also said it had completed 27 outstanding orders valued at more than
$10.5 billion related to Iraq-related services that its Kellogg Brown & Root
subsidiary provided the military.

The Army will pay Kellogg $1.176 billion and retain $55.1 million of about $200
million in payments that had been withheld while those issues were being
resolved.

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Yep
The Army and Halliburton have finally resolved their dispute and
Halliburton's the big winner
(http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1...icle%2Dbody%29)
.. In all, the Pentagon is going to pay about 95 percent of what
Halliburton has billed, "despite numerous concerns by Pentagon auditors
that the company couldn't provide adequate documentation to justify its
expenses." For example, far from holding Halliburton accountable, the
Pentagon awarded the company a "no-fault grace period" for the months
during which "the largest allegations of overcharging occurred."