Baghdad Crackdown

Enoch · Jun 14, 2006

Operation Forward Baghdad Crackdown

Violence dips as Baghdad crackdown begins
Operation Forward

By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060614/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq;_ylt=Au1wBBMPLYcqY20wGdB.soas0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Government forces fanned out across Baghdad on Wednesday, setting up checkpoints, frisking motorists and causing huge traffic jams on the first day of the largest security operation in Iraq's capital since Saddam Hussein's ouster three years ago.

President Bush, back in Washington after a surprise visit to Iraq, said the crackdown offered the promise of reducing the violence that has plagued the capital.

The only reported clash between army troops and gunmen in Baghdad occurred just before noon in the Azamiyah neighborhood, when heavy exchanges of gunfire shattered the late morning quiet and sent residents, including women and children, scurrying for cover.

Overall, violence dipped slightly in the capital Wednesday, with just one car bombing killing four and wounding six. Another four people died in separate shooting incidents around Iraq.

Many stores were shut in Azamiyah and Dora, both strongholds of the Sunni Arab insurgency. Entire streets looked virtually deserted in Dora, including one residents have dubbed "death road" because of the frequent clashes there between insurgents and police.

"If this security plan really works, then perhaps I will be encouraged to go out of my neighborhood," Mohammed Yehia, a 30-year-old father of two, said at the marble-tiled plaza outside the Grand Imam Abu Hanifa mosque in Azamiyah.
Yehia said fears of being killed by Shiite militants have prevented him from venturing out of Azamiyah since the Feb. 22 destruction of a revered Shiite shrine — an attack which unleashed the worst and longest bout of sectarian violence since Saddam's ouster.

"It has been three years," said Yehia, who makes a living doing odd jobs at the Grand Imam mosque. "We have had enough. We are all yearning for normal lives."

Operation Forward Together, involving 75,000 Iraqi army and police forces backed by U.S. troops, began at a crucial time — one day after Bush visited Baghdad to reassure Iraqis of Washington's continued support and exactly a week after the death of terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

It was also the first major action by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki since his new government of national unity was sworn in on May 20, and a week after he gained the consensus he needed from Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups to fill three key posts — defense, interior and national security.

Tackling Baghdad's tenuous security has been the aim of several past counterinsurgency operations — including one a year ago. That operation, code-named Lightning, failed to have any impact on the bombings, shootings and killings that have become daily fare in Baghdad.

Al-Maliki pledged Wednesday not to negotiate with those who had shed innocent blood, the latest in a series of tough statements he has made since American bombs killed al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.

But it remains to be seen whether al-Maliki, a veteran politician with years of experience as an opposition activist in exile, can back up his uncompromising rhetoric with action.

What he can do is count on Bush and the 132,000 American troops in Iraq.
In a Rose Garden news conference barely more than six hours after his return from Baghdad, a buoyant Bush insisted that U.S. troops would stay until Iraqi forces can do the job on their own.

"If we stand down too soon, it won't enable us to achieve our objectives," the president said. He said those goals include an Iraq that can govern, sustain and defend itself.
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KenH · Jun 14, 2006

Will this be another case where our troops clean out the enemy and then withdraw to see the enemy come back in to the same space, a la Vietnam?

Bro. Curtis · Jun 14, 2006

You're basically a glass-half-empty kinda guy, aren't you ?

Enoch · Jun 14, 2006

KenH said:

Will this be another case where our troops clean out the enemy and then withdraw to see the enemy come back in to the same space, a la Vietnam?
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Ken, to make comments such as yours demonstrates your lack of sagacity.

Brother Curtis you are much more gracious than I. raise:

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