Word: baghdad
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Petraeus and his commanders had gotten a lucky break when U.S. forces raided an al-Qaeda command-and-control center in Taji, north of Baghdad. Captured in the raid, Odierno tells Time, was a map of Baghdad that outlined al-Qaeda's plan to capture and control the "belt" cities around the capital and then use those as logistical hubs and staging areas from which to mount attacks on U.S. forces inside the city. The telltale map suggested that to stabilize Baghdad, U.S. forces would also have to root out the troublemakers lurking outside the city. "A lot of people...
...about the same time Odierno was targeting the Baghdad beltway, he tasked his staff to find out how Saddam Hussein had defended Baghdad against the many secret cells and gangs that wanted to upend his regime. The answer came back: Saddam had always maintained a complex perimeter around Baghdad that on paper looked like a series of concentric circles. Saddam had posted his Republican Guard in various towns that ringed the capital, and inside the city, he had stationed his Special Republican Guard. If it had worked for Saddam, thought Petraeus and Odierno, it might work for them against...
...wait. Though Bush announced the surge in January 2007, several months would pass before all 30,000 additional troops reached Iraq and took up their positions. As the troops deployed, Petraeus and Odierno mounted a string of offensive operations against al-Qaeda and insurgent strongholds all over Iraq: in Baghdad, in the belt towns and in cities deeper to the north and south. The idea was to shake the bad guys loose and then chase them down. Even with the extra troops, Odierno and Petraeus didn't have the forces to do this everywhere, but they dispersed their forces...
Some of the initial results worried Odierno: U.S. casualties in May and June?227 killed?were so high that even he thought he might have miscalculated. But over the summer, the landscape began to change. In Baghdad, GIs moved out of their relatively safe megabases on the outskirts and into smaller bases in the city's violent neighborhoods?to live, form networks and walk patrols. Following Saddam's model, Odierno split his troops between Baghdad and the belt towns on a 3-to-2 basis: 3 soldiers inside the capital for every 2 outside the city...
...forces. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is on the run, but it has not been routed, and it still enjoys free rein in some parts of the country. Murder, death threats and kidnappings are still commonplace; more than 100,000 sections of concrete car-bomb barriers now snake around Baghdad's neighborhoods. And in something of an understatement, even Petraeus calls the progress toward political reconciliation "tenuous." The largest Sunni bloc in parliament, known as the Accordance Front, walked out in August. In January, the parliament passed a measure that would extend to former Baathists and supporters of Saddam a measure...