Departing from the usual bang-bang writing, Michael Gordon of the Times looks at what he says is "one of the most delicate phases" of Operation Arrowhead Ripper: "Reintroducing the city’s residents to their own army." Sunni residents of Baqoubah fear and dislike the mainly Shi'ite Iraqi troops that have accompanied the Americans' advance into the city, and they will be responsible for holding the city once the Americans leave -- a continuation of the faltering "clear, hold, build" strategy. The Americans are trying increase the city's comfort level with Shi'ites, who many Sunni residents consider "foreign" troops, by seeding Iraqi units with American troops so they can keep a closer eye on them. "Some of these I.A. guys believe what they hear," Gordon quotes Sgt. First Class Eric Beck as saying. "So when they come in here and see the people that live here, it might change their mind about the area that they are going into. We are bonding the population of this area with the I.A. and giving them a chance to actually see them and gain trust in them." This is Iraq, so it's unclear whether Beck is saying the Iraqi soldiers need to gain the trust of the locals of that the locals need to gain the trust of the soldiers. Knowing Iraq, it's both.
Further south, both the Times and the Post got on the same embed slot, with Timesman Richard Oppel filing a detailed story on the dangers facing American troops as they push into Arab Jabour, a Sunni area 10 miles southeast of Baghdad that hasn't seen much coalition presence in the last year or so. He focuses on the massive fertilizer bombs militants have buried under the roads, some big enough to destroy a 130,000-pound Abrams tank. Three soldiers have been killed so far this week, with one bomb flipping a tank and another taking the front off a Bradley fighting vehicle. Oppel notes that this is part of a simultaneous operation with the Baqoubah offensive to take back insurgent-controlled "belts" encircling Baghdad, which have provided havens for insurgents fleeing the U.S. surge in Baghdad.
Josh Partlow and John Ward Anderson tackle the Post's story on Arab Jabour, getting in the all-important number of troops involved: about 1,200. Partlow and Anderson also report that this is the first week of the southern offensive, called Marne Torch, which has already killed five militants and left more than 60 detained. Both papers note that three troops have been killed since Monday.*
Partlow gets at the interesting notion that the U.S. has finally learned its lesson about escaping jihadis. He notes:
In past large-scale assaults, U.S. soldiers frequently descended on suspected enemy hideouts only to find that many of the male adults had fled. This time, attack aircraft have dropped thunderous explosives on roads to cut off escape routes. They have destroyed at least 17 boats on the Tigris that soldiers suspected were being used to ferry munitions north to Baghdad. Two other brigades operating on the eastern and western flanks of the Marne Torch operation are trying to keep fighters from leaving the area.
The air assets brought to bear have been impressive: B-1 bombers, F-16 fighter jets and "other aircraft." Eight 2,000-pound bombs were dropped in the first night.
However, while the Post says the U.S. is being more effective in stopping the exodus of fighters, the Times says no adult men have been found in any homes the soldiers have searched, with some residents saying they were already detained by the Americans and others saying they had fled. Oppel also notes that a fight is looming with the planned clearing of a base south of the Americans' outpost where 150 insurgents are thought to have holed up, fortified by roadside bombs. Maybe that's where all the men are.
Both Partlow and Oppel describe an attack on the Americans' FOB in an abbreviated fashion and both accounts of a grenade attack that wounded two children feel strangely detached.
The Post reports that a house that was bombed in Baqoubah, allegedly by mistake, was the headquarters for the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a nationalist Sunni group. Its members are cooperating with the U.S. in Baqoubah and helping to identify foreign jihadis. According to a spokesman, two members were killed and four wounded in the attack. This probably won't help the shaky entente between Ba'athist and nationalist groups and the United States.
Alissa Rubin pens the Times' roundup from Baghdad, leading with the deaths of 14 U.S. troops killed in combat in five attacks over 48 hours in the capital and elsewhere. Only one of them was killed in Diyala, under Arrowhead Ripper. The high casualties are partly the result of the completion of the so-called surge and partly the result of stronger, more deadly roadside bombs. With more more U.S. troops in place in Baghdad and Anbar Province, they are now going into areas run by Sunni militants that were previously off-limits. "We now have the ability to fight everywhere at once," said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman in Baghdad. "One of the challenges is that we are now moving operations into areas where we haven't been regularly."
Rubin beats the Post on one part of the day's events, however: U.S. and Iraqi troops are involved in operations in Hilla, about 30 miles south of Baghdad in a bid to capture or kill members of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
In other coverage
WASHINGTON POST
Robin Wright reports that the House voted overwhelmingly (355-69) to call the Iraq Study Group back to session to issue a report around the same time as the Bush administration is to issue its progress report on Iraq. Wright credits public pressure on Congress to do something about the Iraq war for the vote, which was sponsored by Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., in an amendment to a $34.2 billion State Department appropriation bill. If all goes well, the group will be able to issue a report alongside the assessments of Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus and have it initially ignored again by President Bush.
Elsewhere in Washington, Josh White reports on the continued good-soldierism of departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, who did his best to play down expectations for September, when Petraeus is due to give a progress report on the surge in Baghdad and Anbar Province. See, looking at the level of violence in Iraq is "the wrong metric," Pace told reporters at the Pentagon. Violence will rise, he and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. "We're going to go in and hold, as we're taking the fight to the enemy with the additional troops, we can expect that there's going to be tough fighting ahead," said Pace. But it's not about the violence, the general said, "it's about progress, in fact, being made in the minds of the Iraqi people" that their government is working well. Didn't we hear this in 2004, 2005 and 2006? Yes, we did. So why did the Post blow 875 words on this article, when they could have just reprinted White House talking points from the last three years?
Finally, Al Kamen, an op-ed columnist, writes a strange mini-profile of U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, who, according to confidential sitreps from there, survived shrapnel blasts into his office yesterday from nine to 10 rounds of indirect fire that hit the embassy compound. The blasts inflicted damage, but no casualties. For Kamen, his admiration for Crocker is boundless: Survived Beirut embassy bombing. Working in Baghdad. Ho-hum. "A little shrapnel? Please," Kamen writes. "Just get out the plywood and get back to work." Memo from Baghdad Embassy: Dear Al, please stop publicizing that indirect fire almost killed the ambassador. Now insurgents know they one of their lucky shots was almost very lucky, and they might learn something from that. Thanks, Ryan.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
No Iraq coverage today.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
No Iraq coverage today.
USA TODAY
No original Iraq coverage today.
CORRECTION: Original copy incorrectly stated that the Post reported a lower number than the Times. This has since been corrected. Return to original sentence.
