Military says attacks on Iraqis, U.S. troops up 43% in Baghdad

A family grieves over the coffin of Riydh Abdul-Hussein, 28, killed along with his friend when gunmen opened fire on a cafe yesterday.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Attacks on U.S. soldiers and Iraqis in Baghdad have increased by 43 percent since midsummer, despite a U.S.-led campaign to secure individual neighborhoods, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said Thursday.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said violence was down by 11 percent in neighborhoods where the sweeps had been focused. But that decline was offset by more attacks elsewhere, and Caldwell said the military was expecting violence to keep rising during the remaining weeks of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

"Historical trends tell us that the attacks will generally increase by 20 percent during this holy month of Ramadan," Caldwell said. "We assume it will still get worse before it gets better."

In Washington, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that the U.S. strategy of training tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police hasn't curbed violence and that senior military commanders were puzzled by its failure. "We do need to take a look" at other factors that might be driving violence, he said.

Pace said a berm designed to encircle Baghdad and restrict the movement of death-squad members and insurgents in and out of the city had been completed recently and that 28 checkpoints staffed by Iraqis controlled the entrances to the city.

But he said death squads continued to operate in the capital after dark even in neighborhoods that U.S. and Iraqi forces had swept. He said he saw no way for U.S. troops to stop that violence until Iraqis tired of the slaughter.

"You cannot have enough men under arms 24-7 to stop the hatred killings," he said.

Read the rest at the Seattle Times

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