Roadside bombs, the number one killer of U.S. troops in the Iraq and Afghan wars, is still the biggest challenge facing the military as it ferries thousands of troops and hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment out of Iraq.

Maj. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, Deputy Commanding General for support in Iraq, says the military is taking every precaution possible on its way out of the country, but these bombs are still a risk.

"We continue to experience attacks primarily from improvised explosive devices on our routes," Spoehr told Pentagon reporters while speaking on a video conference from Baghdad on Thursday. "That trend, while it has gone down, has never gone to zero."

A steady flow of heavily armored truck convoys, 30 to 50 vehicles in length, have already moved a huge amount of equipment out of Iraq.

"We had about 2 million pieces of pieces of property," Spoehr said. "Today we're down to about 600,000 pieces of equipment, about 20,000 pieces of which are vehicles or trailers."

Spoehr also announced that "the vast majority of U.S. troops will be out of Iraq by mid-December," adding that most of the 33,000 troops in Iraq today will leave by air, many of them flying to Kuwait first. (read more)

The U.S. State Department, led by Ambassador James Jeffrey and Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides, announced Sunday that it had officially opened the U.S. Consulate General in Erbil, Iraq.

Joined at the opening ceremony by Iraqi Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani and Iraqi First Lady Hero Talabani, Jeffrey said, "It is our fondest wish that a strong and vibrant Kurdistan Region within a democratic and federal Iraq arise from the tragic history of this region."

In recent years northern Iraq and Erbil in particular has been marred by sporadic violence.

In 2004 a suicide attack during a Ramadan celebration killed 109 people, and in 2005 a suicide bomber killed more than 60 people at the Kurdistan Democratic Party office.

Ambassador Jeffrey added, "Our goal is to build an Iraq for all its citizens...Arabs and Kurds, Sunni and Shia, Christian and Muslim, Yezidi and Shebak, one that respects all its citizens and one which is governed by the rule of law."

The office will cover the three provinces of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region; Erbil, Sulymaniyah and Dohuk, and succeeds the U.S Regional Construction Team, which had operated in the Iraqi Kurdistan Regions since 2007. (read more)

Eight years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Colin Powell wants to know why the U.S. struck out with, "Curveball," the name given to the country's critical source of information about alleged Iraqi WMDs.

"It has been known for several years that the source called Curveball was totally unreliable," Powell told the UK's Guardian newspaper about that primary source of American intel, an Iraqi defector named Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi. "The question should be put to the CIA and the DIA as to why this wasn't known before the false information was put into the NIE sent to Congress, the president's state of the union address and my... presentation to the UN."

The well-respected Powell's 2003 address to the United Nations laid out the American case against Iraq on a world stage, and his cooperation was seen at the time as a source of credibility for the Bush administration. However, upon learning that his presentation featured fabricated information provided by the discredited source, Powell said the speech has left a "blot," on his decades-long record. (read more)

Both active and retired U.S. law enforcement officers could soon be serving in new a jurisdiction - Iraq.

The State Department announced Thursday that the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs met last week with local and state law enforcement offices to discuss opportunities available in Iraq this fall. The bureau hopes to build a team of senior level and expert advisers to serve one-year missions there.

The U.S. government will assume full responsibility for the development of Iraq's police and border forces beginning October 1, partnering with the Iraqi government to develop management, leadership and technical skill to support the rule of law and maintain Iraq's internal security.

The announcement comes on a day when an Iraqi government official says twin-bombings killed six policemen and wounded at least 22 people in western Iraq.

A roadside bomb exploded Thursday evening in downtown Ramadi, the region's Sunni-dominated capital. Minutes later, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-packed vest among the crow of police and bystanders responding to the first blast.