Tens of thousands of Americans rallied against the war in major cities on Saturday.
The US military is turning over security duties in Karbala to the Iraqi security forces (dominated in that city by the Badr Corps, the paramilitary trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps). This turn-over has now been carried out in 8 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. There never was much of a US military presence in the 3 Kurdish provinces of the Kurdistan Regional Authority, so actually it is just 5 that have effectively been turned over– the Shiite provinces of Muthanna, Dhi Qar, Najaf, and Maysan– and now Karbala.
A departing US general has accused the Shiite-dominated ministry of the interior of dragging its feet on hiring Sunni Arab policemen. Sectarian concerns, he implied, are interfering with the establishment of security in Iraq.
Undiagnosed brain injuries among soldiers and civilians are a major legacy of the Iraq War.