Raw Story | Sunday’s twin suicide bombings in Baghdad that killed at least 155 people and wounded 500 others may have had help from within Iraq’s security apparatus.

MarketWatch | A pair of bomb blasts in downtown Baghdad near two government buildings killed more than 130 people and wounded hundreds.

Joshua Holland | The logic of billionaire T-Boone Pickens.

Uruknet | Young women in Fallujah in Iraq are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed.

Russia Today | Death rather than nation building — that’s what the U.S. army brought to Iraq and is bringing to Afghanistan according to former army sergeant and anti-war activist Matthis Chiroux.

AFP | Token homage to the fallen with Queen allows father to “snub” war criminal Blair.

Stewart Rhodes | The message of the oath and its obligations is spreading, and the Guardians of the Republic are listening and responding.

Army Times | About 1,000 troops will deploy to Iraq in response to existing requests by the theater commanders.

NBC News | The Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at former President George W. Bush in protest was freed from prison and harshly condemned the U.S. presence in his country and accused authorities of torturing him.

| Despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to withdraw US troops from the war-torn country, the US is planning to award contracts to protect US installations at a cost to taxpayers that could near $1 billion.

CNN | Roadside bombings in Iraq killed four American troops and seven Iraqis in a flurry of attacks Tuesday corresponding with a Muslim holy month when insurgents regularly step up their fighting.

Al Jazeera | Hand-picked puppet Maliki ordered the deployment of thousands of police on the border personally.

Reuters | A series of blasts in Baghdad killed 95 people and wounded 536 in Iraq’s bloodiest day this year.

Reuters | A modification of a U.S.-Iraqi security pact will allow U.S. troops to return to towns and villages.

McClatchy Newspapers | “Electricity is dead. Pray for its soul,” reads graffiti scrawled along a wall in central Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood.

Infowars | I found this a bit shocking considering the President’s promise to remove our troops from Iraq as quickly as possible. Why then are we deploying the most troops since WWII?

AP | A federal panel has accused Houston-based KBR Inc. of resisting government oversight and failing to cut costs on support work in Iraq.

Raw Story | Accusations have surfaced that Blackwater is guilty of using child prostitutes at its compound in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone.

Jeremy Scahill | Erik Prince may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company.

Grand Rapids Press | Iraqi forces are flawed yet still capable of defending the country’s government.

New York Times | Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Wednesday that as many as 5,000 United States troops could come home from Iraq earlier than the Pentagon had planned because violence levels in the country were generally down and Iraqi security forces were doing well on their own.

Guardian | Iraqi security forces have taken control of the base camp of an exiled Iranian militia group, after a two year campaign by Tehran to persuade Baghdad to expel them.

USA Today | The stabilization program “is generally thought of as one of the most effective counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq,” accolrding to Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew.

David Sterritt | Nobody benefits when critics are as apolitical as the films they criticize.

Mainichi Daily News | The results of the study, carried out by Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, also showed a steep increase — from 33 percent — in TBI cases since the end of 2008.

Daily Times Monitor | Mullen said Al Qaeda could strike the US from FATA therefore the top objective of the current US strategy was to defeat it, adding that Washington did not have any troops on ground in Pakistan chasing the Taliban.

Politico | After meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri a-Maliki for over an hour, President Barack Obama said the United States is on the path to normalized relations after a long, uneven history between the two nations.

BBC | Iraq has just seen its worst day of violence since American forces withdrew from urban areas just over a week ago.

UN News | The ancient site of Babylon – home to the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – has been significantly damaged due to its use as a military base by coalition forces in Iraq from 2003-2004.

New York Times | Mr. Biden, who has taken on the new role of unofficial envoy to Iraq, arrived in Baghdad Thursday night and spent Friday and Saturday there meeting with American and Iraqi officials.

Daily Express | Weapons inspector David Kelly was writing a book exposing highly damaging government secrets before his ­mysterious death.

CNN | The ongoing presence of U.S. troops in Iraq “shows that the (Iraqi) government and the occupation are not serious about the withdrawal,” a key Shiite cleric in the country said.

Reuters | The number of civilians killed in Iraq jumped to 373 in June, the Health Ministry said, up from a record low of 134 in May because of a spate of deadly bombings in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

BBC | At least 25 people have been killed by a car bomb at a market in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, officials say.

Washington Times | “I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point.”

AFP | Iraq’s security forces were Monday on high alert in Baghdad as US troops finalised their withdrawal from the conflict-hit nation’s urban areas.

Sherwood Ross | Crucifixions the U.S. executes in the Middle East differ from those reported in the New Testament in at least one important respect: Jesus Christ had a trial.

Mail Online | Blair’s lack of remorse over the premeditated slaughter of over a million Iraqis is simply astounding.

Press TV | Senior Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has accused “the occupier forces” of being behind the recent escalated violence in the war-torn country.

Guardian | A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq outlined their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution.

The Independent | Senior military and intelligence officers have condemned Gordon Brown’s decision to hold the Iraq war inquiry in secret, warning that it looks like a cover-up.

Reuters | Hundreds of Iraqi prisoners have launched a protest at dire prison conditions and systematic torture including rape, lawmakers said.

UPI | The pending merger of Heritage Oil and Turkey’s Genel Energy for oil developments in Iraqi Kurdistan may be a watershed for the region.

AFP | Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki warned that attacks could increase in the coming weeks ahead of the US troop pullout from urban areas, after a deadly car bomb hit the south of the country.

Sherwood Ross | Two years before the 9/11 attacks on America, George W. Bush told a Houston journalist if elected president, “I’m going to invade Iraq.”

Raw Story | General David Petraeus said that the US had violated the Geneva Conventions in a stunning admission that the US may have violated international law.

Atheo News | The Obama administration is demanding that a law prohibiting military recruiters from initiating contact with minors be overturned.

Telegraph | Photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Washington’s Blog | Whether or not Obama releases the photographic evidence, he must prosecute all of those who committed such atrocities, stood around and watched, ordered them to be committed, or created an environment in which they could occur.

Xinhua News Agency | An Iraqi study showed Wednesday that 23 percent of Iraq’s population live below the level of poverty line.