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View Full Version : Iraq War Attacks UP 40% as Civil War Rages.



Nickdfresh
07-20-2006, 12:51 PM
U.S. Says Attacks in Iraq Up 40 Percent
Thursday, July 20, 2006 11:34 AM EDT
The Associated Press (http://www.adelphia.net/news/read.php?ps=1012&id=12957375&_LT=HOME_LARSDCCL1_UNEWS)
By RYAN LENZ

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Iraq's top Shiite cleric urged his followers Thursday to refrain from reprisal violence against Sunnis, his strongest call yet for an end to increasing sectarian bloodshed. The statement by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani came as U.S. military officials reported a 40 percent increase in the daily average of attacks in the Baghdad area.

U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said there has been an average of 34 attacks a day against U.S. and Iraqi forces in the capital over the past five days. The daily average for the period June 14 until July 13 was 24 a day, he said.

"We have not witnessed the reduction in violence one would have hoped for in a perfect world," U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said at a news briefing Thursday. "The only way we're going to be successful in Baghdad is to get the weapons off the streets."

Caldwell said militias and death squads have responded to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's call for a crackdown by intensifying attacks to derail Iraq's new unity government.

Last month, al-Maliki announced a security plan for Baghdad, including up to 50,000 police and soldiers on the streets, more checkpoints, and raids in neighborhoods where violence is high. But with surging attacks in the capital — including the kidnapping of high-ranking Iraqi officials — leading politicians from Shiite and Sunni parties have declared the plan a failure.

The government said Thursday that al-Maliki had dismissed security officials for failing to respond to a Monday attack south of Baghdad in which at least 51 people were killed. Suspected Sunni gunmen went on a rampage through a market in Mahmoudiya, shooting at shoppers and vendors. Most of the victims were Shiites.

Al-Maliki's office said an undisclosed number of security officials would be replaced and that teams would be sent to examine a water shortage that has led to public discontent.

Shiite politicians complained that local police and soldiers failed to respond to the attack until the gunmen fled.

Still, National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said Iraqis will be in charge of security in eight of the nation's 18 provinces before year's end. However, he said the fight against insurgents could last for years.

Al-Rubaie's comments came a week after British and Australian forces handed over security for the relatively peaceful southern province of Muthanna to Iraqi forces in the first such transfer.

"There is a detailed plan for the withdrawal of multinational forces from provinces and it started in Muthanna," al-Rubaie said. "It will be followed by other provinces like Najaf, Karbala, Maysan, the three Kurdish provinces, then Wasit."

Officials also said Thursday that four more people abducted last weekend during an Olympic Committee meeting had been released, bringing the number freed to 10. But dozens are still missing, including National Olympic Committee chairman Ahmed al-Hijiya.

Until now, al-Sistani has been credited with restraining the majority Shiite community from widespread retaliation against Sunnis in the face of horrific attacks on Shiite civilians by al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni religious extremists.

But the ability of the aged cleric to continue holding back Shiite militias and others has been called into question as attacks increase. The United Nations said this week that about 6,000 civilians had been killed in May and June, many of them in sectarian violence.

Alarmed by the rising pattern of tit-for-tat violence over the past five months, al-Sistani urged religious and community leaders to "exert maximum efforts to stop the bloodletting." He warned that the ongoing violence will only prolong the presence of U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

The cleric said the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra had unleashed a "blind violence" that was sweeping the country. Unless the violence stops, he said, it "will harm the unity of the people and block their hopes of liberation and independence for a long time."

In violence Thursday:

—A car bomb exploded at a northern gas station, killing 10 people who gathered around the vehicle after discovering a corpse inside. Seven others were injured in the blast near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, police Capt. Arkan Ali said.

—A U.S. Marine assigned to the 1st Armored Division was killed in western Iraq. A U.S. statement said the Marine died in Anbar province, which includes Ramadi and Fallujah. His death brings to at least 2,557 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

—A car bomb exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing one person and wounding seven.

—The bodies of four men were found in two areas in eastern Baghdad.

—Gunmen assassinated a former official of Saddam's Baath party in Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad.

Also Thursday, the Defense Ministry again called for members of Saddam Hussein's former army to contact military recruiting centers.

While a previous appeal did not yield substantial results, a senior army officer said the call was reissued "to reduce violence," suggesting there was hope that some insurgents might return to government service. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to give information to the press.

Many former intelligence and security officials were believed to have joined the rebellion after former U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer disbanded Iraq's 350,000-strong military on May 23, 2003, a month after the regime collapsed.


How's that 'Iraqization' policy going....:rolleyes:

LoungeMachine
07-20-2006, 09:11 PM
Why do you HATE the troops so much Nick, you Liberal America Bashing Commie Fag???????


Truth is ATTACKS aren't up.

Just the deaths reported by the Liberal Media.


Bet you burn flags and love gays, too.

Nickdfresh
07-20-2006, 10:14 PM
Originally posted by LoungeMachine
Why do you HATE the troops so much Nick, you Liberal America Bashing Commie Fag???????


Truth is ATTACKS aren't up.

Just the deaths reported by the Liberal Media.


Bet you burn flags and love gays, too.

You forgot to mention that I feed and cloth illegal immigrants and give them jobs on my farm.

Anyhoo...

Sen. Reid: Iraq devolves into 'civil war'
Democratic leader will try to revive Senate debate on Iraq

From Dana Bash
CNN Washington Bureau
Thursday, July 20, 2006; Posted: 9:03 p.m. EDT (01:03 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) (http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/20/iraq.democrats/index.html) -- Declaring that he believes the situation in Iraq has devolved into a civil war, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday he plans to try to bring the war back up for debate on the Senate floor.

The Nevada Democrat said he has been "somewhat gingerly approaching this.... No longer. There is a civil war going on in Iraq. In the last two months, more than 6,000 Iraqis have been killed. That's averaging more than 100 a day being killed in Iraq and we need to make sure there is a debate on this."

Republicans questioned why Reid wants to go over old ground and were ready to highlight the divisions among Democrats once again. (Watch how daily routines prove deadly for Iraq civilians -- 2:17)

"Talk about your bad summer reruns," said Eric Ueland, Chief of Staff to Majority Leader Bill Frist, "if they want to do that we'll go to the mats," he said.

Ueland threatened that Republicans would offer a proposal from Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, which calls for U.S. troops to come home by July of 2007.

That plan garnered only 13 Democratic votes in June, and illustrated the party's divide over the issue.

Republicans offered Kerry's plan before he did in June as well.

A Republican aide also warned that another debate about the Iraq war could prevent the Senate from completing work on necessary military spending bills.

Bob Stevenson, a Frist spokesman, told CNN, "We need to get the defense appropriations bill done and I would hope they would cooperate in getting the appropriations bill done to fund our troops, rather than engaging in partisan political games."
A 'cut and run' strategy?

Last month Senate Democrats offered two Iraq resolutions centering on U.S. troop withdrawal, and during several days of highly partisan debate, Republicans accused them of advocating a "cut and run" strategy.

Senate Democratic leaders call Iraq the top issue on voters' minds this election year and say they want to continue talking about it in Congress, especially since the situation appears to be deteriorating.

"The American people find it hard to believe that we can continue with our daily business here ignoring the obvious, which is the daily situation is getting worse," said Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin.

"It is more dangerous, we're still losing American lives and the Iraqis have not stepped up to defend their own country," the Illinois Democrat said. "That is a fact, and that will be a fact that people will remember in November."
Tactical error?

Some Democratic strategists told CNN at the time that Democratic senators made a tactical error in allowing June's Iraq debate to focus on troop withdrawal, an issue that divides the party, instead of playing up what they call administration blunders and lack of accountability from a GOP Congress.

Durbin noted that 39 Democrats voted for a non-binding resolution that would have urged the president to begin a phased troop withdrawal this year, but, he said, "Republicans said nothing. They had no response."

"We know, and they (Republicans) know, that this is the number one issue on the minds of people across America. When they say they want significant change in America, and you ask them what they're talking about, their answer is Iraq," Durbin said.

Democratic leaders say they do not yet know what kind of resolution or resolutions they plan to offer, but they hope to come up with what Reid called "lots of" Iraq-related measures the last week of July, when the Senate debates the defense appropriations bill.

Senate rules governing a funding bill limit their options.

A part of their strategy appears to be challenging Republicans, especially those facing tough re-election campaigns, on whether they will remain squarely behind the president, as they were during June's debate.

Nickdfresh
07-22-2006, 11:16 AM
Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-maliki22jul22,1,1153478.story?coll=la-headlines-world)

U.S. Plans Shift in Iraq Strategy
By Peter Spiegel
Times Staff Writer

July 22, 2006

WASHINGTON — President Bush is expected to announce a significant shift in strategy for improving Baghdad's security when the Iraqi prime minister visits Washington next week, an acknowledgment that a much-publicized military operation launched last month has failed to stem the violence.

The U.S.-Iraqi offensive was touted as a major initiative by the government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. But the operation has failed to prevent sectarian violence in Baghdad from escalating to unprecedented highs.

A United Nations study released this week found that 3,149 civilians were killed in Iraq in June — an 18% increase from May — and that most of the deaths occurred in Baghdad.

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, as is routine when discussing future White House initiatives, said the new strategy that Bush and Maliki intended to hash out would include "shifts in resources" and "shifts in emphasis."

The change could include redeploying U.S. forces from elsewhere in the country to Baghdad.

"There's been a Baghdad security plan in place for about five weeks now, and I would say it's fair to say the results, or the initial results, of that plan have been disappointing," the official said. "There's an open question about whether … more forces will come from other parts of the country."

Iraqi forces have taken over security responsibilities in several Baghdad neighborhoods in recent months.

Asked whether the shift in strategy could lead U.S. forces to reassume control of those areas, the official said, "That certainly would be an appropriate thing … to discuss."

During a trip to Baghdad last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the number of U.S. forces in the Iraqi capital had already increased from 40,000 to 55,000 in response to the surge in attacks. Any additional increase would make it difficult for the Bush administration to follow through on its goal of reducing the U.S. troop level in Iraq before the November congressional elections.

The new security policy for Baghdad probably will include an increased emphasis on rounding up local leaders who are instigating and provoking sectarian violence, such as members of the militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. He has been blamed for inspiring much of the anti-Sunni violence perpetrated by Shiite death squads.

The early stages of this strategy have been rolled out in recent days in both Baghdad and Basra, the southern port city where unrest also has increased, and U.S. officials say the move has shown promise.

Maliki's U.S. visit, which is to begin Monday, will include an address Wednesday to a joint session of Congress. In his speech, he is expected to thank U.S. forces and the American people for the sacrifices they have made in Iraq and to extol his country's progress in establishing a democratic form of government.

But the visit will not be highlighted by the type of pomp and circumstance that, for example, accompanied Hamid Karzai's first visit to Washington as Afghan president, a reflection of the dire security situation in Iraq.

The administration official called the four-day trip "a quintessential working visit."

The administration's acknowledgment that the Maliki government has failed to improve security in Baghdad in its first months in office is the latest in a series of assessments about Iraq that are more sobering than those previously issued by U.S. officials.

The new tone comes as Republicans in Congress have urged the White House to be more open about the challenges in Iraq and less rigid about acknowledging mistakes.

Apart from the security situation, Bush and Maliki probably will discuss the prime minister's recent denunciation of Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, the first major policy split between the U.S. and Iraq since Maliki assumed office in May. Maliki heads a Shiite political party in majority Shiite Iraq; Hezbollah is a Shiite militant group that has become increasingly popular with Lebanese Shiites.