By Steven Hurst
The Associated Press, 15 March 2007
BAGHDAD - The U.S. military and its Iraq partners in a month-old Baghdad security crackdown have been turning marketplaces — a favorite target of al-Qaida and Sunni insurgent suicide car bombers — into pedestrian-only zones and commerce is reviving dramatically in the capital, the U.S. military said Thursday.
"There's a sense of suspense in the air. A sense of anticipation and expectation (of decreased violence) with the Iraqi people," Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr. told reporters.
"I think it is being met by this operation," said the general, who is in charge of Baghdad.
But he, like other top military officials, cautioned against expecting quick overall success from the third and perhaps last-chance effort to curb sectarian violence that has shaken Baghdad and its residents.
"The enemy has not quit the battlefield by any means. In some ways he's fighting back harder than he ever was," he said at a luncheon meeting.
With the U.S. Congress pressing to set a date for a U.S. troop withdrawal by next year, Fil said he found it impossible to predict if the mission in Iraq could be wound up successfully by that deadline.
"My guess is things are going to be substantially better in 2008. But whether or not we will be finished here, I don't think we can answer now," he said. "We weren't finished in Germany (in five years), we weren't finished in Japan, we weren't finished in Korea, we weren't finished in Bosnia. I don't know why we would expect to be finished here."
Fil also said the United States would have American soldiers in as many as 100 garrisons scattered throughout Baghdad by the time the last of the additional 20,000-plus troops allocated by President Bush arrive at the end of May. There are now 77 such posts, he said.
The bases will be a combination of Joint Security Stations — command and control centers operated jointly with Iraqis — and small combat outposts.
Fil, who is on his second tour of Iraq, acknowledge the security crackdown was putting U.S. troops at greater risk in the capital simply because they were in the streets in greater numbers. Statistics on American deaths bore that out.
While the total number of American deaths during the first 28 days of the security drive fell to 80 from 104 in the previous four-week period, the percent of deaths in Baghdad rose to 36 percent from 25 percent.
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Citation: Steven Hurst. "U.S. Says Baghdad Crackdown Succeeding," The Associated Press, 15 March 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070315/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_baghdad_security&printer=1;_ylt=Aj.b3NGv6ZM_4vzdcwi9c7kUewgF
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