 merrie says: The troop surge was announced Jan. 10 and began soon after that. Gens. David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno took a risky but calculated move to send U.S. troops out of main base camps and set up small patrol stations that were jointly manned with Iraqi forces, essentially living among Iraqis in Baghdad. It made it easier for intelligence to surface but made U.S. troops easier targets. The Times reported that days now pass without a car bombing, unheard of in the height of the insurgency. The number of bodies appearing on the streets has fallen from a peak of 35 eight months ago to five a day, and homicide bombings dropped to 16 in October, half as many as last summer and down from a peak of 59 last March. The Times report, based on interviews with 50 Baghdad residents, said that people are moving freely about Baghdad for the first time in nearly two years. While there still are places people do not enter, there is more travel between Shiite and Sunni areas for everyday routines such as work, shopping and school. Significantly, this travel occurs even after dark, the Time... |
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