Iraq: Dozens Die in Truck Bombs North of Baghdad (Ghazi/Arango)

First, at midday, a truck exploded near a municipal building in Taji, north of the Iraqi capital. As people rushed to help the injured, a second, larger explosion struck. Nearly three dozen were killed, and many more wounded.

In the afternoon at a nearby hospital in the Baghdad neighborhood of Kadhimiya, a macabre scene unfolded, as women cried and shouted over the bodies of their husbands and sons, and the wounded, bloody and covered in dust, sought care. A list of the dead and wounded adorned a wall; the youngest victim was 3 years old.

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Iraq Feature: When A Country's Leaders Refuse to Speak to Each Other.... (Schmidt/Arango)

Nuri al-Maliki & Ayad Allawi (Photo: Reuters)Fifteen months after an election that was supposed to lay the groundwork for Iraq’s future, the government remains virtually paralyzed by a clash between the country’s two most powerful politicians, who refuse to speak to each other.

The paralysis is contributing to a rise in violence, and it is severely complicating negotiations on the most difficult and divisive question hanging over the country: Whether to ask the United States to keep a contingency force here after the scheduled withdrawal of American troops at the end of the year. The longer the deadlock persists, the harder it becomes for the American military to reverse or slow the withdrawal of the roughly 48,000 troops, the pace of which will pick up over the next few months.

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