This is reported on Saudi TV Al-Arabiya and then by the for­eign media “Iraq sends extra police to Syr­ian bor­der”, the strange thing is that they don’t report the denial of the Iraqi Defense Min­istry spokesman:

The Iraqi Defense Min­istry denies deploy­ing any addi­tional troops to the bor­der with Syria, the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment reduced its forces on the Syrian-Iraqi bor­der is the Iraqi For­eign Min­istry mat­ter, not the defense.

Defin­ing “Major Crimes”

Al-Watan says that one of the biggest prob­lems in SOFA’s final draft is the legal def­i­n­i­tion of “Major Crime”, which is used in the con­text for sol­diers who com­mits major crimes out­side the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary bases. Accord­ing to the U.S. law, mur­der and rape are fed­eral crimes.

The news­pa­per added that teams from the both sides are work­ing to define the term.

Cha­l­abi is back

A very inter­est­ing report on Al-Watan says that Cha­l­abi came back more pow­er­ful than ever. Accord­ing to the news­pa­per sources, Cha­l­abi offi­cially joined the United Iraqi Alliance and he is present in the meet­ings of the National Secu­rity Coun­cil as Al-Hakim’s representative.

Cha­l­abi cut a deal approved byAl– Maliki to be assigned as the head of the gov­ern­ment advi­sors com­mit­tee, and super­vise all the intel­li­gence ser­vices insti­tu­tions in Iraq [Gen­eral Intel­li­gence, Inte­rior Min­istry Intel­li­gence and Defense Intel­li­gence].

This explains Cha­l­abi crit­i­ciz­ing the Spy Agency yesterday.