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David Kay, a weapons expert who famously led an inspection team into Iraq in 2003 to search for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and faced the ire of the Bush administration after he reported he did not find any nuclear arms or other WMDs, died on Aug. 13 at 82.

Kay died in Ocean View, Del., and the cause was cancer, according to an obituary written by his loved ones. The Washington Post first reported the news.

Before he traveled to Iraq in 2003, Kay served as a chief weapons inspector for the United Nations (U.N.) Special Commission from 1991 to 1992 and as an agent with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Kay led multiple expeditions into Iraq after the Persian Gulf War ended in 1991. He was tasked with determining if the Middle Eastern country was developing WMDs in violation of a U.N. agreement.

The weapons inspector found evidence of uranium enrichment processes, which are used to develop nuclear weapons, located a major assembly plant for the creation of nuclear arms and seized key documents about the Iraqi weapons program.

In one famous incident, during a sweep of Iraq in the 1990s, Kay was stuck in a parking lot for four days as a hostage after seizing documents from a building in Baghdad. Iraqi forces would not let him and his team walk out of the parking lot with the documents in hand.

In a 1999 interview with PBS Frontline, Kay recalled how he tried to make the Iraqis more uncomfortable than he was.

It was dangerous, from our point of view, for us, but you forget, it was also dangerous for the Iraqis. Here they had a group of 43 inspectors stuck in a parking lot, not letting them go, Kay said. We kept trying to emphasize to them that they didnt know how, and that it could be dangerous for them.

The inspection team was eventually released after it used a satellite phone to communicate with the outside world, including media outlets such as CNN. The Iraqi soldiers grew concerned that military action could take place if they did not let the team go.

Kay told PBS that his work in Iraq in the 90s was a huge milestone in holding nations accountable for violating peace accords.

I think we were able toaccomplishsomething that, even in retrospect, Im still amazed at, he said. We were able to uncover a clandestine weapons program.

But Kay is best known as the man who led a team to Iraq in 2003 to search for nuclear weapons and the development of WMDs and finding no evidence of such activity.

The Bush administration had claimed ahead of its March 2003 invasion of Iraq that then-leader Saddam Hussein had violated the post-Gulf War U.N. agreement by developing nuclear weapons and other WMDs. In June 2003, Bush tasked the CIA with finding hard evidence of weapons in the country.

Given his experience, the CIA appointed Kay as the head of a 1,400-member task force known as the Iraq Survey Group. In January 2004, Kay submitted a report that determined Iraq did not have any such weapons in the country.

His findings rankled the CIA and the White House and spurred congressional investigations into U.S. intelligence prior to the Bush administrations invasion.

In a 2011 interview with NPR, shortly after the U.S. announced it would pull troops out of Iraq for the first time since the 2001 invasion, Kay reflected on his controversial role in the war.

What I miss most are the friendships that were shattered by that; just had staked too much of their career on there being weapons of mass destruction, he said. And not only didnt we find them, we found they didnt exist prior to the war.

Kay was born in Houston. He graduated from the University of Texas and earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

He served with the Department of State and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in addition to his service as a weapons expert.

Kay also taught at universities and was a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. He won anIAEA Distinguished Service Award and a commendation medal from the secretary of State.

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David Kay, inspector who did not find nuclear weapons in Iraq, dies at 82 - The Hill

Around 4,000 years ago, this pale, hard-packed spit of Iraqi desert was the centre of civilisation. Today the ruins of the great city of Ur, once an administrative capital of Mesopotamia, now sit in a barren wasteland near Iraq's most notorious prison. In the shadow of the towering prison fences, Abo Ashraf, the self-proclaimed caretaker of the archaeological site, and a handful of tourists are the only signs of life for miles. At the end of a long wooden walkway, an impressive ziggurat is nearly all that remains of the ancient Sumerian metropolis.

To get here, I'd been packed into the backseat of a taxi hurtling through the desert for hours, until I began to see the city's famed monument looming in the distance: the Ziggurat of Ur, a 4,100-year-old massive, tiered shrine lined with giant staircases. A tall chain link fence barricading the entrance and a paved parking lot were the only hints of the modern world.

The very first ziggurats pre-date the Egyptian pyramids, and a few remains can still be found in modern-day Iraq and Iran. They are as imposing as their Egyptian counterparts and also served religious purposes, but they differed in a few ways: ziggurats had several terraced levels as opposed to the pyramids' flat walls, they didn't have interior chambers and they had temples at the top rather than tombs inside.

"A ziggurat is a sacred building, essentially a temple on a platform with a staircase," said Maddalena Rumor, an Ancient Near-East specialist at Case Western Reserve University in the US. "The earliest temples show simple constructions of one-room shrines on a slight platform. Over time, temples and platforms were repeatedly reconstructed and expanded, growing in complexity and size, reaching their most perfect shape in the multi-level Ziggurat [of Ur]."

The Ziggurat of Ur was built a bit later (about 680 years after the first pyramids), but it is renowned because it is one of the best-preserved, and also because of its location in Ur, which holds a prominent place in history books. According to Rumor, Mesopotamia was the origin of artificial irrigation: the people of Ur cut canals and ditches to regulate the flow of water and irrigate land further from the Euphrates River banks. Ur is also believed to be the birthplace of biblical Abraham and, as Ashraf explained while he walked us through the ruined walls of the city, the home of the first code of law, the Code of Ur-Nammu, written around 2100 BCE 400 years before Babylonia's better-known Code of Hammurabi.

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Iraq's answer to the pyramids - BBC

Congress is urging the administration of US President Joe Biden to enhance engagement with Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government over "a range" of ongoing disputes, while condemning Iran's "blatant violations of Iraqi sovereignty".

Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government's escalating disputes over natural resources have threatened Washington's investment in "supporting a stable, sovereign and democratic Iraq free from malign foreign influence", Michael McCaul, Republican leader of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The natural resources dispute has been exacerbated by infighting among Iraq's political parties, which have failed to form a government since elections in October last year.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi pose for a photo after reviewing the honour guard during a welcome ceremony in Tehran. All photos: EPA

"Meanwhile, the Iraqi people suffer, lacking a government that represents their interests and unable to reap the full benefits of revenues from Iraqs oil, gas and other natural resources," Mr McCaul wrote.

Mr McCaul also called for a "robust" administrative response to Iran's actions in the region, condemning recent missile attacks from Tehran as "blatant violations" of Iraq's sovereignty. In an unprecedented assault in March, Iran attacked the Kurdish regional capital Erbil, appearing to target the US and its allies.

Adding to the sense of instability, anger in Iraq has continued to fester after Baghdad accused Washington's Nato ally Turkey of being behind a July attack in the Kurdish district of Zakho that killed at least nine people.

Mr McCaul's letter on Monday highlighted the more than $12.7 billion in foreign, security and humanitarian aid Washington has sent to Iraq since 2014.

"These investments of taxpayer dollars must be accompanied by a commensurate diplomatic push to urge Iraqs leaders in Baghdad and Erbil to negotiate with each other and make the political decisions necessary to protect Iraqs sovereignty and prosperity to benefit the Iraqi people," Mr McCaul wrote.

The minority leader sent the letter weeks after the US embassy in Baghdad expressed concern over the Kurdish government using violence against demonstrators protesting against unpaid state salaries as well as Turkish incursions into border areas.

Non-profit organisation the World Resource Institute's Fragile State Index ranks Iraq as "extremely vulnerable" to collapse, with a score of 100 out of 120.

A woman inspects damage in a children's room following an overnight attack in Erbil, the capital of the northern Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region. All photos by AFP

Updated: August 22, 2022, 11:38 PM

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Biden must engage with Iraq and Kurds to end range of disputes, Congress says - The National

An Iraqi member of parliament yesterday called on the country's auditing and anti-corruption bodies to take legal action to stop an alleged deal between the Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority and an Israeli company, Al-Sumaria News reported.

Alia Nassif revealed that the Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority offered Intel Business, a company that Nassif says has ties with Israel, a business contract through which the company would offer security services for Baghdad International Airport.

The Iraqi legislator claimed that this would give the enemy intelligence access at the Iraqi airport and would result in a breach of the airport's security.

On 26 May Iraq's parliament passed a law criminalising the normalisation of relations with Israel. The law bans all kinds of relations with Israel, including diplomatic, political, military, economic, cultural etc.

It stipulated punitive measures that include imprisonment for encouraging relations with Israel. The law also orders the lifting of immunity, be it political, parliamentary, or judicial, for those who engage in relations with Israel.

READ: More is required for Gaza by the Arab and international community

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Iraq MP calls for stopping deal between Aviation Authority, company with ties to Israel - Middle East Monitor

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Ever since he could remember, Ahmed Shareef dreamed of becoming a soccer player, until a bomb explosion in 2004 hit his hometown in Baghdad, Iraq, during the U.S. invasion of the country, leaving him without his eyesight and a right arm at 7 years old.

I lost my hope and dream to play soccer again, Shareef recalled.

Soon after, he was brought to the United States through a charity called the Global Medical Relief Fund (GMRF), a non-profit organization on Staten Island that supports medical treatment, transportation, lodging and rehabilitation in the United States for children around the world who suffer from the violence of war, natural disasters, or have little or no access to medical resources.

Over the years, Shareef said he found himself going back and forth between Baghdad and Staten Island for medical treatment, seeing over 20 doctors. His third visit to Staten Island -- as a teenager --- became his last, after Elissa Montanti, founder of GMRF and a native Staten Islander, made an exception with Shareefs case and became his legal guardian in 2012.

When he came back when he was 9, he started playing a little keyboard that I had. When he came back at 15, I had a bigger keyboard, and before you know it, I hear him playing tunes. I was like Oh my God, Ahmed!, recalled Montanti, whose organization has helped more than 500 children in 56 war-torn countries over the past 25 years.

Growing close throughout Shareefs visitations to the United States, Montanti said she did not want him to have to keep going back and forth, so she asked his mother if he could stay with her, and she agreed.

Hes my hero. Hes my inspiration. Hes an incredible, incredible musician. Hes like my son, Montanti said. We have coffee together every morning, and he always has a smile on his face.

Shareef started living with Montanti in Arrochar and attended Curtis High School as a teenager, where he played the piano, trumpet and drums in the schools jazz band. Now, Shareef plays in a band with Montanti and other musicians at local venues across Staten Island.

I had no future and no life for me in Iraq, Shareef, now 25, recalled. He still lives in Arrochar and added he keeps in touch with his parents and siblings back home.

DREAMS OF PLAYING SOCCER AGAIN

After graduating from Curtis, Shareef continued playing music and doing internships, working toward becoming a music and English teacher.

That was until he read information online in 2019 about U.S. blind soccer.

He recalled wondering at the time, Is this my dream coming back to me?

Right away, he emailed Kevin Brousard, the finance director for the U.S. Association of Blind Athletes (USABA) and three-time world champion blind athlete, about his love of soccer and how he dreamed of playing again.

Brousard welcomed me to the sport, said Shareef.

The USABA began to build its first soccer programming in 2018.

In 2019, Shareef was flown out to San Diego, Calif., by the USABA, where he traveled solo, for his first blind soccer camp.

Ahmed first attended a USABA blind soccer camp in 2019 in San Diego, and he has shown steady improvement in his skills and field awareness since that time, Brousard said. His passion for the game is palpable, and he has served as an outstanding advocate for growing the sport, especially in the New York City area.

In summer 2021, Shareef was invited to another soccer camp in Ohio.

Most recently, in this past July, Shareef attended soccer camp in Charlotte, N.C., where he was immersed in three full days of training, with two on-field sessions each day, alongside other blind athletes and coaches.

We have to shout the word Voy to communicate with other players when we dont have the ball, so we dont run into each other, Shareef said. Its a new thing. Its different than sighted soccer, but its still soccer.

Training a mix of newcomers and experienced athletes throughout the training camps is an important step for the USABA in identifying talented athletes for the first-ever USA Blind Soccer National Team, to be named in October 2022. The first international competition for the inaugural team will be this December in Guatemala at the International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA) Central American Championships.

BLIND SOCCER IN THE UNITED STATES

Blind soccer is an eye-opening adaptation to the worlds most popular sport, which was debuted for the first time at the Athens 2004 Paralympics. The sport is now played in over 60 countries, and it is one of the fastest-growing Paralympic sport in the world.

The USABA, a member of the the IBSA (which has governed Blind soccer since 1996), received the highest level of certification from the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) in 2022 to become the national governing body for the Paralympic sport of blind soccer.

USABA has provided life-changing opportunities for thousands of Americans who are blind and visually impaired, Brousard said. Not only does USABA provide events and programs to keep participants physically fit and healthy, but participants find a great sense of community and camaraderie through their experience.

The USABA will make its Paralympic debut as the host nation for Blind Soccer at the LA 2028 Paralympic Games.

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At age 7 he lost eyesight in Iraq bombing. Now, at 25 and living on S.I., he is pursuing dream of playing soc - SILive.com