Saddam Hussein

The United States is concerned about how heavy Iranian weaponry might be used inside Iraq, including as Iran-backed militia help the offensive to retake the Iraqi city of Tikrit from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants, a U.S. official said on March 18.
   

Not one billboard was saved. Gigantic posters with "President Erdo?an is honoring our city" inscribed in bold letters decorated the entire city.

The CIA declassified a letter Dec. 11 that suggests US intelligence had grave doubts about part of the case made by former president George W. Bush's White House to justify the war in Iraq.
      

The Iraqi army has retaken from Islamist insurgents a sprawling complex where aging remnants of late President Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons programme are stored in bunkers, the country's deputy foreign minister said on Dec. 1.

Whatever else you may say about the “young war criminal” (as British journalist Alan Watkins used to call former prime minister Tony Blair), he certainly fights his corner with great determination. He is condemned to spend his life defending his part in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and last weekend he was at it again.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a terrorist organization and Ankara does not pay attention to how “a terrorist organization describes itself,” a Turkish Foreign Ministry official has said, following the group’s announcement that it has established an “Islamic caliphate.”

The ISIL jihadists whose sweeping Sunni militant offensive has captured swathes of Iraq have declared an "Islamic caliphate" in their territory as Iraqi forces battle to retake Saddam Hussein's hometown Tikrit.

Iraq said it received the first batch of Sukhoi warplanes from Russia as it pressed a counter-attack June 29 against Sunni militants whose offensive threatens to tear the country apart.

Human Rights Watch said June 26 that fighters inspired by al-Qaeda had executed Iraqi soldiers en masse this month in Tikrit.

In mid-June, militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) posted photos online of what they claimed to be the bodies of dozens of captured security forces members they had executed.

Islamist insurgents invaded the Baiji oil refinery, the biggest such facility in Iraq, as they are pushing toward the capital Baghdad after having seized a number of cities.

Some 75 percent of Baiji, located 210 km north of Bagdad, is now under the control of militants led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), as the BBC reports citing officials.