Surge addresses 2005-06 security turnover mistake

"The push to expand the U.S. and Iraqi presence in Baghdad's neighborhoods reflects what U.S. commanders now acknowledge was a mistaken drawdown in 2005 and 2006 of American troops in the capital, leaving Iraqi forces in their place.
'What we had been doing for 3 1/2 years didn't keep up with the sectarian violence spreading so swiftly,' said Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., the senior U.S. commander for Baghdad. The new approach 'will take every bit of the five brigades' of combat troops now flowing in as reinforcements in the city of 6 million people, he said.
"It's fairly obvious that we transferred out too soon," said Col. Bryan Roberts, who commands a U.S. cavalry brigade in central Baghdad.
The limited U.S. troop presence was one reason that sectarian killings soared out of control in Baghdad after the February 2006 bombing of an important Shiite mosque in Samarra. That spurred what U.S. officers now call the sectarian cleansing of most of eastern Baghdad and large swaths of the west -- as Shiites forced Sunnis out of all but a few enclaves -- a movement that was arrested only with the troop increase this February.
'The sectarian cleansing is pretty much done on the east side' of Baghdad, said a U.S. military official. But since the influx of U.S. and Iraqi forces began, he said, 'for the most part the Shia expansion is frozen where it is.' "

source
Tyson, Ann Scott. (The Washington Post). Commanders in Iraq See 'Surge' Into '08. May 9, 2007.

posted: sunday, may 13, 2007, 10:33 AM ET
update: sunday, may 13, 2007, 10:45 AM ET

tags: iraq baghdad