Word: anbar
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...biggest albatross is Iraq. The arguments for Bush's war strategy are both well known and unconvincing to nearly 70% of Americans. Even with the recent stabilization in Anbar province, Iraq is selling like California real estate and Chinese toys, and foreign affairs have quickly become Perino's weak spot. Before becoming deputy to McClellan, Snow's predecessor, her experience was in domestic issues. When hit with tough questions on Iraq, Perino often reverts to yawn-inducing talking points. In late September, defending Bush's decision to go to war, she droned, "Saddam Hussein decided to defy the international community...
...vaunted U.S. strategy in Anbar province that has put a dent in al-Qaeda in Iraq involved establishing ties with Sunni tribes. But there has always been skepticism about whether the same strategy would work in Shi'ite areas of the country. However, that may be changing. In Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad and not far from the holy city of Karbala, American officers are taking advantage of a network of "concerned citizens" in this predominantly Shi'ite area to help quell violence stemming from both Sunni insurgents and erratic elements of powerful Shi'a militias. Just...
Seeing a window of opportunity in their own sector, officers quickly mobilized, taking cues from the Anbar program and redesigning it to fit local conditions, enlisting volunteers from the town of Musayyib and surrounding villages to be part of ad hoc militias supported and paid by the U.S. military. It's still a work in progress and sometimes dangerously clumsy. Members of the American battalion here recently shot and killed three of the new local volunteers at a checkpoint just north of town, saying they mistook them for insurgents planting roadside bombs...
...volunteer militias sprang up here in Babil province over the last two months under local leadership after the tribes saw successes scored by Sunni tribesmen in adjacent Anbar Province. Those homegrown groups in Anbar turned on al-Qaeda and teamed up with American forces to clear their regions of extremists, or at least put them on the run, reaping a windfall of American aid money in the process. What has surprised military officials about the groups around Musayyib, though, is that they are Shi'ite or of mixed sect, containing both Sunnis and Shi'ite residents who rejected the excesses...
...turn of events that underscores just how complicated the fight in Anbar remains, on Friday an Iraqi police official said that one of the men arrested as part of the assassination plot was the head of Sheik Sattar's security detail. Reports from the Iraqi Security Forces have to be taken with a grain of salt, but if the story is true, then AQI offered the security chief $1.5 million to set up his boss...