Word: petraeus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...military officials from Baghdad to the Pentagon have made it clear that by Labor Day Washington should have a good handle on whether or not the surge plan championed by Army General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is working. The 30,000 extra troops, largely dedicated to Baghdad, are designed to secure the capital and let the political process take root. While the Guard deployment announced Monday is not part of the surge, by the time those soldiers board airplanes bound for Iraq it should be apparent whether or not the surge is working. Older...
General David Petraeus has repeatedly said, "A military solution to Iraq is not possible." Translation: This thing fails unless there is a political deal among the Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds. There is no such deal on the horizon, largely because of the President's aversion to talking to people he doesn't like. And while some Baghdad neighborhoods may be more peaceful--temporarily--as a result of the increased U.S. military presence, the story two years from now is likely to resemble the recent headlines from Tall 'Afar: dueling Sunni and Shi'ite massacres have destroyed order...
...less than 10, according to Iraqi police. But truck bombs in a Shi'ite section of the northern city of Tal Afar earlier in the week sparked a gruesome round of reprisals that saw local police officers executing some 70 Sunnis men in the town. Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said in a statement Friday that the recent spike in bombings is part of an al-Qaeda in Iraq strategy to reignite sectarian violence and "undermine recent Iraqi and Coalition successes in improving security in Baghdad...
...There's merit to the points made by both Petraeus and Satterfield, according to Antony Cordesman, a military strategy expert with Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies...
...Petraeus, on the other hand, seemed to be addressing Iraqis and Arabs. Many of Iraq's top leaders have repeatedly said that they view the militias as being a kind of neighborhood watch - with some bad apples who do terrible things. The evidence that some Shi'ite fighters engage in systematic kidnapping, torture and execution of Sunnis suggests that's wishful thinking, but that's what they claim. Petraeus knows this and has to calibrate what he says accordingly...