By Chris Tomlinson
Associated Press, 02 December 2005
BAGHDAD - Suicide bombings fell in November to their lowest level in seven months, the military command said Thursday, citing the success of U.S.-Iraqi operations against insurgent and foreign fighter sanctuaries near the Syrian border.
Yet the trend in Iraq has not resulted in less bloodshed: 87 U.S. troops died during the month, one of the highest tolls since the invasion.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a coalition operations officer, warned that Al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, will likely step up attacks in the next two weeks to try to disrupt parliamentary elections Dec. 15.
Lynch told reporters that suicide bombings declined to 23 in November as U.S. and Iraqi forces were rooting out insurgents in the Euphrates River valley west of the capital.
Lynch called suicide bombings the insurgents' "weapon of choice" because they can inflict a high number of casualties while sacrificing only the attacker. Classic infantry ambushes draw withering American return fire, resulting in heavy insurgent losses.
The U.S. command said Thursday that four American service members were killed the day before, three of them from hostile action and the fourth in a traffic accident. The deaths raised the American fatality toll for November to at least 87.
That was down from the 99 American deaths suffered in October -- the fourth deadliest month since the war began in March 2003. But it was well above the 52 deaths in September. U.S. monthly death tolls have hit 80 or above during 10 of the 33 months of the war.
A different picture
Also Thursday, the most senior military officer said that if the American public has a distorted picture of the combat readiness of Iraqi troops, the military is largely to blame for it.
"We have done ourselves a disservice in the way that we have defined how we are tracking the progress of Iraqi forces," Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience of military and civilian students at the National Defense University.
He made the remark after mentioning that people often ask him, "How can there be only one -- count them -- only one Iraqi battalion capable of independent operations?"
He was referring to the public stir that arose when Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told Congress in September that the number of Iraqi army battalions rated at "level one" proficiency -- meaning capable of combat with no U.S. support -- had dropped from three to one. Some interpreted that as evidence the Iraqis were failing.
Pace indicated that Iraqi units do not have to reach "level one" proficiency to be capable of fighting the insurgency and said that even some battalions in the American military would be rated below "level one."
His point was that even though only one Iraqi battalion was rated at "level one," there are now nearly 40 rated at "level two," which is defined as capable of taking a lead role in fighting the insurgency with some degree of U.S. support.
About 80 other battalions are at rated at "level three," meaning they are capable of fighting, but with U.S. troops in the lead.
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Citation: Chris Tomlinson. "Suicide bombings in Iraq drop to a seven-month low, U.S. says," Associated Press, 02 December 2005.
Original URL: http://www.startribune.com/dynamic/mobile_story.php?story=5757192
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