U.S. Army soldiers from 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment stand in formation, they are the last American combat brigade to serve in Iraq, Saturday, Aug. 21, 2010 at Camp Virginia, Kuwait. (Maya Alleruzzo / AP Photo)
When I returned to Baghdad for the first time in two years, I found a festive streetlife that hadn't existed before—but it masks the fact that we're not leaving any time soon.
By the end of this month, all combat operations in Iraq will officially be over—a date much trumpeted by the administration. After all, to end that war was President Obama's campaign promise.
But August 31 is not much of a milestone. The big shift happened last year, when American troops withdrew from the cities and stopped going on patrols.
Having lived in Baghdad at the height of the war between 2005 and 2007 as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, it was striking to come back then and see how the city had changed, especially in terms of the visibility of American troops.
When I first arrived on a winter's day six years ago, the airport building looked desolate, as if abandoned in a rush. The shelves in the shops were barren and the concourse was empty except for a band of Kalashnikov-carrying mercenaries and a couple of listless porters in dirty blue overalls.
I just saw the movie "Invictus" — the story of how Nelson Mandela, in his first term as president of South Africa, enlists the country’s famed rugby team, the Springboks, on a mission to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup and, through that, to start the healing of that apartheid-torn land. The almost all-white Springboks had been a symbol of white domination, and blacks routinely rooted against them. When the post-apartheid, black-led South African sports committee moved to change the team’s name and colors, President Mandela stopped them. He explained that part of making whites feel at home in a black-led South Africa was not uprooting all their cherished symbols. "That is selfish thinking," Mandela, played by Morgan Freeman, says in the movie. "It does not serve the nation." Then speaking of South Africa’s whites, Mandela adds, "We have to surprise them with restraint and generosity."
I love that line: "We have to surprise them." I was watching the movie on an airplane and scribbled that line down on my napkin because it summarizes what is missing today in so many places: leaders who surprise us by rising above their histories, their constituencies, their pollsters, their circumstances — and just do the right things for their countries.
(CNN) -- Iran began fueling its first nuclear energy plant in the southern city of Bushehr on Saturday, the nation's state media reported.
The effort will help the country create nuclear-generated electricity, Press TV said.
The transfer of nuclear fuel was being watched by the International Atomic Energy Agency and senior officials from Iran and Russia, Press TV said.
Some Western nations have questioned whether the nuclear fuel will be used solely for electricity or would Iran eventually try to enrich uranium on its own, providing material for nuclear weapons.
It will take about two months for the reactor to begin generating electricity, state media has reported. Russia's nuclear agency says it will take longer.
“Quién sólo conoce España, no conoce España”, nos dice el gran hispanista británico Hugh Thomas. Y esa oración es válida, en estos tiempos de la mundialización, para todo el quehacer humano. Ni lo bueno ni lo malo conocen fronteras. La misma tecnología que nos contacta a todos para el discurrir diario, puede ser usada por quienes ven la política, la cultura o la economía como una oportunidad más para su provecho propio, o para atacar la democracia, la libertad y la paz, valores primordiales para el Partido Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba.
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