Baghdad security drive not working, says US military
The US military has acknowledged that its two-month drive to crush insurgent and militia violence in the Iraqi capital Baghdad has fallen short, calling the raging bloodshed disheartening and saying it was rethinking its strategy to rein in gunmen, torturers and bombers.
The admission by military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell came as car bombs, mortar fire and shootings around the country killed at least 66 people and wounded 175. The dead included the Anbar province police commander, killed by gunmen who burst into his home in Ramadi.
The US military also announced the deaths of three US troops in fighting, raising the toll for American troops in October to 74. The month is on course to be the deadliest for US forces in nearly two years.
The high death tolls this month for both Americans and Iraqis have pushed the long and unpopular war back into the public eye in the US, forcing the Bush administration and the military to address difficult questions in the final weeks of the US congressional election campaign.
Vice President Dick Cheney said the US was not looking for a way out of Iraq. “I know what the president thinks. I know what I think. And we’re not looking for an exit strategy. We’re looking for victory,” Cheney said in an interview posted on Time magazine’s website.
Caldwell told reporters the US-Iraqi bid to crush violence in the capital had not delivered the desired results, with attacks in Baghdad rising by 22 per cent in the first three weeks of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when compared to the three previous weeks.
“In Baghdad, Operation Together Forward has made a difference in the focus areas, but has not met our overall expectations in sustaining a reduction in the level of violence,” Caldwell said at a news briefing. He was referring to the security sweep, which began on August 7 with the introduction of an additional 12,000 US and Iraqi troops into Baghdad.
“The violence is indeed disheartening,” he said.
Caldwell said US troops over the past week were forced to launch a second sweep of southern Baghdad’s Dora district after a surge in sectarian attacks. At least eight people, including four policemen, were killed in bombings and shootings in Dora yesterday, police said.
“We find the insurgent elements, the extremists are in fact punching back hard, they’re trying to get back into those areas,” Caldwell said.
He said security plans were being reviewed for the sprawling, low-rise capital of six million people, where rival Shiite and Sunni Muslim sects live in uneasy proximity to each other and the bodies of victims of sectarian death squads are found dumped on the streets each morning.
“It’s clear that the conditions under which we started are probably not the same today and so it does require some modifications of the plan,” Caldwell said.
His gloomy assessment came amid tensions between the US and the nearly five-month-old government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.
Frustration over Maliki’s failure to crack down on sectarian groups could be exacerbated by revelations that the prime minister ordered US troops to release Mazin al-Sa’edi, a top organiser in western Baghdad for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
