Word: baghdad
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...Allen fund raiser in Virginia. "We will keep the enemy on the run." This, on a day when Major General William B. Caldwell IV issued the starkest assessment of the carnage to date: that our Operation Together Forward-the half-baked attempt by Iraqi and U.S. forces to secure Baghdad-had failed. Privately, high-ranking military officials were saying that the situation on the ground in Iraq was now dire. Indeed, Bush's Iraq project and his Republican Party seemed to be spinning out of control simultaneously, with Shi'ites fighting Sunnis in the north (and rival Shi'ite militias...
...Haass admitted that the various timetables for withdrawal all have downsides. If we park a few divisions in the north of the country, he said, Baghdad burns. If we ask for allies to form a trusteeship, he noted, none will come. "It's inapplicable now," he said, in a tart dismissal. And he is not sure there is any public will for more troops-even if we had them to send. "We are reaching a tipping point both on the ground but also in the political debate in the United States... about Iraq. We are reaching the point... where simply...
...advocates on the right, Iraq recalled the great American triumph of rebuilding postwar Japan and Germany. Yes, it is hard to imagine that they were serious, but it wasn't simply PR, either - some of the policy documents used by the U.S. occupation administration in Baghdad were based on policies used in the Allied occupation of Germany...
...Sunni insurgency has successfully prevented the U.S. and its allies from stabilizing even Baghdad beyond the Green Zone, but it can never hope to restore the control that Saddam Hussein once had over the whole country. The Shi'ites are the dominant force in the elected government and have more men under arms (in their militias and in the government security forces) than do the Sunnis, but the Shi'ites are not really aligned with the U.S. (If anything, they're closer to Iran.) And as the U.S. has pushed back against the Shi'ites in the hope of dimming...
...Then the killings began. A couple of Sunnis were killed in a neighboring town. In retaliation, Sunnis killed about a dozen Shi'ite laborers. The Shi'ites then called in their militias from Baghdad, and set off an orgy of violence. At least 100 have been killed, and you can be sure there will be more attacks and counterattacks in the days and weeks ahead. The peace of Balad has forever been shattered...