[Vision2020] Baghdad Campaign Fails

[Tom Hansen]

>From the front page of today's (October 20, 2006) Spokesman Review -

This is what "Stay the course" has brought us.

"The number of U.S. soldiers and Marines killed in Baghdad has skyrocketed,
and October is on course to be the third deadliest month for American
service members since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003."

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Baghdad campaign fails 
General says violence up; U.S. looking for new strategy

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S-led campaign to curb violence in Baghdad
neighborhood by neighborhood has failed, and American officials are looking
for a new strategy, a top U.S. military official said Thursday.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said that instead of quelling violence, the
campaign, code-named Operation Forward Together, had contributed to a spike
in U.S. military deaths.

The operation "has not met our overall expectations of sustaining a
reduction in the levels of violence," Caldwell said. "We are working very
closely with the government of Iraq to determine how best to refocus our
efforts."

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros called
Caldwell's assessment "accurate and candid."

Caldwell's comments, which came during his weekly briefing for reporters
here, were a rare public admission that an American strategy in Iraq hasn't
worked, and it came as Republicans and Democrats in Washington are pressing
the Bush administration to devise a new approach. Polls have shown that Iraq
is the No. 1 issue among U.S. voters less than three weeks before
congressional elections.

Bush administration policy has been built on two assumptions: that American
troops would be able to shed some security responsibilities as the numbers
of trained Iraqi police officers and soldiers grew, and that the elected
government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would be able to assert control
over Shiite Muslim militias aligned with its political supporters.

Neither assumption has proved true. Violence has continued to surge, even as
tens of thousands of U.S.-trained police officers and soldiers have been
added to the Iraqi security forces, and al-Maliki's government has yet to
present a program to disarm the militias.

Operation Forward Together was considered a last-ditch effort to tame
Baghdad, where violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims has reached
unprecedented levels. The plan involved pulling 12,000 American soldiers
from elsewhere in Iraq and teaming them with Iraqi troops to go door-to-door
in Baghdad's most troubled neighborhoods and root out armed groups. The
neighborhoods were then to be the focus of economic-development campaigns.

Shortly after the operation began Aug. 7, Caldwell hailed it, saying
Baghdad's murder rate had dropped 52 percent. But statistics from the
Baghdad morgue suggested a much smaller decrease in violent deaths.

Baghdad police reported that 27 bodies were found around the city Thursday,
11 in neighborhoods originally targeted in the security plan.

The number of U.S. soldiers and Marines killed in Baghdad has skyrocketed,
and October is on course to be the third deadliest month for American
service members since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003.

U.S. officials announced the deaths of two more soldiers and a Marine on
Thursday, bringing the death toll so far this month to 73.

Caldwell sounded despondent as he acknowledged the death toll. He said U.S.
officials were reassessing the assumptions they'd made before implementing
the Baghdad security plan.

Caldwell said "there is no question" that sectarian violence has increased
in the neighborhoods that were swept.

"We find the insurgent elements - the extremists - are in fact punching back
hard. They're trying to get back into those areas," he said.

Caldwell didn't say how American officials might adjust their plans. But he
said U.S. troops were re-entering the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora,
one of the capital's most violent areas. Dora was among the first
neighborhoods swept, and it's now the site of daily discoveries of bodies
bearing signs of torture.

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"Bring 'em Home"
http://www.tomandrodna.com/Songs/Bring_em_home.mp3

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil
and steady dedication of a lifetime." 

--Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.