Word: iraqi
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...ongoing TIME investigation has turned up several tactics insurgents use to evade detection and get past the security arrangements. Most of the tactics are designed to exploit the ineptitude of Iraqi security forces - the 30,000 soldiers and 21,000 police who are meant to support U.S. troops. Lacking in training, equipment and motivation, the Iraqis are the soft underbelly of the surge. A U.S. military internal assessment of the surge in late May showed that they are often unable to perform the simplest tasks, like manning checkpoints. And insurgent groups take full advantage, easily slipping men and munitions...
...striking three targets on Monday - including the highly fortified Mansour Hotel in central Baghdad. Early reports put the combined death toll at 50, and climbing. But how are militant groups sneaking their bombs and bombers past the giant security dragnet around Baghdad? There are over 70,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi policemen spread across the city, conducting house-to-house searches and street patrols, walling off entire neighborhoods and setting up hundreds of checkpoints...
...group has recruited many government officials and even soldiers. "I'm bringing weapons into the city in official cars," he said. In the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad, some fighters in the Brigades of the 1920 Revolution say they have been ordered to sign up for the Iraqi Army in order to get official papers that would allow them to move freely in the city...
...incompetence of Iraqi forces helps to explain why, after a sharp drop in the early weeks of the surge, the civilian death toll from sectarian violence has begun to climb. Nearly 2,000 Iraqis were killed in May, the highest since the start of the security crackdown. The familiar signs of Shi'ite militia activity have returned: grossly mutilated bodies of Sunnis are turning up in the streets and Sunni residents in mixed neighborhoods are again being forced out of their homes. Sunni suicide bombings have multiplied...
...Despite all this, Thabit believes he can quickly regain control of Samarra, where gunfights break out almost daily as insurgents target U.S. and Iraqi forces. Thabit says he needs 20 days to get the situation under control. But already he is losing ground...