Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The latest security crackdown in one part of Baghdad has led to significantly fewer attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces with improvised explosive devices, an American Army commander said on Friday. Col. J.B. Burton, who heads a brigade patrolling a 36-square-mile (93-square-km) area of western Baghdad where about 1 million people live, cautioned that difficult work lay ahead and that the United States was not declaring victory. "It is important to note that the overall effects of this new Baghdad security plan ... will not be seen in days or weeks, but over the course of months,"...

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - Pentagon investigations into the shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians are focused on about a dozen enlisted Marines and do not target their commanding officers, the lawyer for one of the officers said Tuesday. The investigations of up to two dozen killings and whether Marines covered them up are focused on the troops who were in a four-vehicle convoy hit by a roadside bomb last Nov. 19 in the western Iraqi city of Haditha, attorney Paul Hackett said. Meanwhile, Iraq’s prime minister said on Tuesday his patience was wearing thin with excuses from U.S. troops that they...