Pentagon: Iraqi violence still rising

Source: AP

WASHINGTON - Violence in Iraq, as measured by casualties among troops and civilians, has edged higher despite the U.S.-led security push in Baghdad, the Pentagon told Congress on Wednesday.

In its required quarterly report on security, political and economic developments in Iraq, covering the February-May period, the Pentagon also raised questions about Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ability to fulfill a pledge made in January to prohibit political interference in security operations and to allow no safe havens for sectarian militias.

Overall, however, the report said it was too soon to judge whether the security crackdown was working.

The security operation was launched Feb. 14 and is still unfolding as the last of an additional 28,000 or so U.S. forces are getting into position in and around the Iraqi capital. The Pentagon is required by Congress to provide its initial assessment of the operation in July, and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has said he will report in September.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070614/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_pentagon_report

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Overall violence in Iraq has not diminished, report says
By Nancy A. Youssef
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A Defense Department report released Wednesday acknowledges that violence in Iraq has not diminished, despite the arrival of thousands of additional U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad.


The report, which measured Iraq's progress from February to May, gives a less optimistic assessment of the impact of the so-called surge than commanders on the ground offered during that same period.


In April, Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, had called the improvement in security "a good bit better," though he added that "I am not trying in any way, shape or form to indicate that this is a satisfactory situation whatsoever."


The report, however, pointed out that overall attacks and casualties had increased in Iraq 40 percent over the same period a year ago and that while sectarian murders declined, car bombings and other attacks increased. Violence in Baghdad dropped with the arrival of more American troops there, but rose in other areas, particularly Diyala province northeast of the capital and Nineveh, a mostly Sunni province to the north, the report said.

more:http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/17364853.htm?source=rss&channel=krwashington_nation

No Drop in Iraq Violence Seen Since Troop Buildup

By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 14, 2007; Page A01

Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.

The report -- the first comprehensive statistical overview of the new U.S. military strategy in Iraq -- coincided with renewed fears of sectarian violence after the bombing yesterday of the same Shiite shrine north of Baghdad that was attacked in February 2006, unleashing a spiral of retaliatory bloodshed. Iraq's government imposed an immediate curfew in Baghdad yesterday to prevent an outbreak of revenge killings.


Yesterday's attack adds to tensions faced by U.S. troops, who are paying a mounting price in casualties as they push into Iraqi neighborhoods, seeking to quell violence that the report said remains fundamentally driven by sectarianism.

Iraq's government, for its part, has proven "uneven" in delivering on its commitments under the strategy, the report said, stating that public pledges by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have in many cases produced no concrete results.

more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/13/AR2007061302357.html

The more we shoot at them, the more they shoot back.

Do we have anyone employed at the Pentagon who has ever even been in a fistfight?

(I know, rhetorical.)