Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Bush on baghdad   [Rich Lowry]

Here's what Bush said specifically about Baghdad yesterday:

There was no question that the — that Baghdad itself was the place where Casey needed to move more troops, which he has done, in conjunction with the Iraqis...

...In terms of Baghdad, we are working with the Iraqis to put a plan in place — they got the berm surrounding the city, they're beginning to go neighborhood to neighborhood. And so the accountability is, violence is on the rise, what are you doing about it? And as George Casey has said, let's see how we are heading into Ramadan.

Bush is referring to the plan, as it has been explained to me, that will divide Baghdad into 9 major districts, with one point of entry and exit. Those major districts will be divided, in turn, into sub-districts, also with one point of entry and exit. Meanwhile, a kind of ring will be established around the entire city with a berm, barricades, and natural geographic barriers. Points of entry will be controlled, to the extent they can. (Obviously major thoroughfares can't be tightly controlled.) The model here is the U.S. success in Tal Afar. The clearing and sweeping is being done by the Fourth Infantry Division, which controls a swath of Iraq from Baghdad down to Karbala and Najaf, together with a Stryker Brigade. The Fourth Infantry Division has flowed troops from other areas under its control into Baghdad, and the Stryker Brigade had been in Mosul. They will create what is, in effect, these gated communities, and—this is where it gets dicey—hand them over to Iraqi police. How the Iraqi police will do in holding the gains of the American troops is, of course, open to doubt, although Gen. Casey has focused a lot of energy this year on training them.

09/13 05:18 PMShare