Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Daily News
March 27, 2008 By Richard Sisk, Daily News Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON— The Pentagon portrayed the new wave of sectarian violence sweeping Iraq yesterday as offering a positive sign of the Iraqi Army building on the success of the U.S. troop surge.
“Part of the point of the surge was to give them the time, the training, to increase their capability, and they are now displaying it,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said of the Iraqi Army’s move against militias in Basra.
“At this early stage, it looks as though it is a byproduct of the success of the surge in the sense that the Iraqi government has grown and increased in capability” to confront the Mahdi militias of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Morrell said.
U.S. ground commanders were more cautious in assessing the fighting.
“I’m concerned about some of the same violence and extremism migrating to Diyala Province,” north of Baghdad, said Army Col. Jon Lehr.
In Baghdad yesterday, two more U.S. troops were killed in separate attacks, raising the U.S. death toll in the sixth year of the war to 4,003. And at least 16 rockets hit the U.S. Green Zone.
In Basra, local officials put the death toll in two days of clashes between the Iraqi Army and Moqtada’s followers at more than 100. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gave the Basra militias 72 hours to desist.
President Bush yesterday went to the Pentagon for closed briefings on the war ahead of Army Gen. David Petraeus’ report to Congress next month on the prospects for troop withdrawals.
March 27, 2008 By Richard Sisk, Daily News Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON— The Pentagon portrayed the new wave of sectarian violence sweeping Iraq yesterday as offering a positive sign of the Iraqi Army building on the success of the U.S. troop surge.
“Part of the point of the surge was to give them the time, the training, to increase their capability, and they are now displaying it,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said of the Iraqi Army’s move against militias in Basra.
“At this early stage, it looks as though it is a byproduct of the success of the surge in the sense that the Iraqi government has grown and increased in capability” to confront the Mahdi militias of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Morrell said.
U.S. ground commanders were more cautious in assessing the fighting.
“I’m concerned about some of the same violence and extremism migrating to Diyala Province,” north of Baghdad, said Army Col. Jon Lehr.
In Baghdad yesterday, two more U.S. troops were killed in separate attacks, raising the U.S. death toll in the sixth year of the war to 4,003. And at least 16 rockets hit the U.S. Green Zone.
In Basra, local officials put the death toll in two days of clashes between the Iraqi Army and Moqtada’s followers at more than 100. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gave the Basra militias 72 hours to desist.
President Bush yesterday went to the Pentagon for closed briefings on the war ahead of Army Gen. David Petraeus’ report to Congress next month on the prospects for troop withdrawals.