Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.
Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, talked with USA TODAY's Csar G. Soriano on Wednesday. Edited excerpts are available in this Q&A piece.
Top US congressional Democrats bluntly told President George W. Bush Wednesday that his Iraq troop "surge" policy was a failure, as the Pentagon submitted a report saying early results of the strategy were mixed.
Violence increased throughout much of Iraq in recent months, despite a security crackdown in Baghdad that at least temporarily reduced sectarian killings there.
As of Wednesday, June 13, 2007, at least 3,513 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,881 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
A September progress report on the U.S. troop increase in Iraq that President George W. Bush called an important moment for his war strategy is unlikely to be a "pivotal" assessment, officials now say.
Earlier this month, a U.S. commander in Iraq Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil Jr. described the nightmare that keeps him up at night: a "major, Samarra-mosque-type catastrophe" together with a failure of Iraqi security forces.
A coalition of non-governmental groups on Wednesday took the UN Security Council to task for its "shocking silence" on alleged violations of international law by US-led forces in Iraq and urged an early end to their mandate.
June 13 (Bloomberg) -- Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said he would consider increasing U.S. troops in Iraq if the head of military operations there, U.S. Army General David Petraeus, requested them.
Italian Foreign Minister Massimo d'Alema cautioned Turkey on Wednesday against an incursion into northern Iraq to pursue Kurdish rebels, saying Iraq cannot take more tension.