Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
San Diego Union-Tribune
August 7, 2008
By Kim Gamel, Associated Press
BAGHDAD – Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen who fled U.S.-Iraqi operations in Baghdad hope to return, but the U.S. military is confident they won't receive a warm homecoming, officials said yesterday.
U.S. commanders believe many senior militants escaped the offensives by going to sympathetic areas in southern Iraq and neighboring Iran. That has raised concerns that the militants – many of them nominally loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr – are trying to regroup.
“The leadership has by and large departed the area,” said Lt. Col. Tim Albers, director of intelligence for U.S. forces in Baghdad. “We do have indications that they want to return.
“We're certainly concerned with it,” he said during a news briefing. “We're trying to be pre-emptive with our operations to prevent it and make it an inhospitable environment for them.”
Those measures include plastering concrete walls, buildings and even armored vehicles with posters of wanted militants to make it harder for them to slip back into the capital unnoticed, officials said.
The U.S. military also plans to spend nearly $110 million – $81.1 million from the Americans and $27.3 million from the Iraqis – on improvement projects in the Shiite district of Sadr City, which houses nearly half the capital's population and was the base of al-Sadr's Mahdi army militia.
“We've got operations to continue to make it an inhospitable area for them to return to so that they cannot get back into Baghdad ... to get the population to realize they're better off without them,” Albers said.
Tips from local Iraqis have helped the military uncover more than 700 weapons caches in Baghdad since May, the military said.
More than 600 suspected Shiite militiamen have been killed or captured during that time, along with 581 suspected members of the predominantly Sunni insurgency, according to the military figures.
The U.S. military has said a cease-fire by al-Sadr was a major factor in a sharp decline in violence in the capital in recent weeks. It also credits a Sunni revolt against al-Qaeda in Iraq, a buildup of U.S. troops and an improved Iraqi security force.
But attacks continue, including a roadside bombing Monday that killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded a third in eastern Baghdad – the first deadly attack on U.S. troops in the capital in more than a month.
The explosion was caused by an armor-piercing bomb known as an explosively formed penetrator that tore through the Humvee in which the soldiers were riding, Col. Allen Batschelet said, providing new details of the attack.
Also underscoring the continued dangers, Iraqi troops on Monday seized 28 107mm Iranian rockets, one 107mm Chinese rocket and seven 122mm Russian rockets along with other munitions and videotapes of attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. The U.S. military announced the find yesterday.
August 7, 2008
By Kim Gamel, Associated Press
BAGHDAD – Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen who fled U.S.-Iraqi operations in Baghdad hope to return, but the U.S. military is confident they won't receive a warm homecoming, officials said yesterday.
U.S. commanders believe many senior militants escaped the offensives by going to sympathetic areas in southern Iraq and neighboring Iran. That has raised concerns that the militants – many of them nominally loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr – are trying to regroup.
“The leadership has by and large departed the area,” said Lt. Col. Tim Albers, director of intelligence for U.S. forces in Baghdad. “We do have indications that they want to return.
“We're certainly concerned with it,” he said during a news briefing. “We're trying to be pre-emptive with our operations to prevent it and make it an inhospitable environment for them.”
Those measures include plastering concrete walls, buildings and even armored vehicles with posters of wanted militants to make it harder for them to slip back into the capital unnoticed, officials said.
The U.S. military also plans to spend nearly $110 million – $81.1 million from the Americans and $27.3 million from the Iraqis – on improvement projects in the Shiite district of Sadr City, which houses nearly half the capital's population and was the base of al-Sadr's Mahdi army militia.
“We've got operations to continue to make it an inhospitable area for them to return to so that they cannot get back into Baghdad ... to get the population to realize they're better off without them,” Albers said.
Tips from local Iraqis have helped the military uncover more than 700 weapons caches in Baghdad since May, the military said.
More than 600 suspected Shiite militiamen have been killed or captured during that time, along with 581 suspected members of the predominantly Sunni insurgency, according to the military figures.
The U.S. military has said a cease-fire by al-Sadr was a major factor in a sharp decline in violence in the capital in recent weeks. It also credits a Sunni revolt against al-Qaeda in Iraq, a buildup of U.S. troops and an improved Iraqi security force.
But attacks continue, including a roadside bombing Monday that killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded a third in eastern Baghdad – the first deadly attack on U.S. troops in the capital in more than a month.
The explosion was caused by an armor-piercing bomb known as an explosively formed penetrator that tore through the Humvee in which the soldiers were riding, Col. Allen Batschelet said, providing new details of the attack.
Also underscoring the continued dangers, Iraqi troops on Monday seized 28 107mm Iranian rockets, one 107mm Chinese rocket and seven 122mm Russian rockets along with other munitions and videotapes of attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. The U.S. military announced the find yesterday.