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The BBC has not been a supporter of the Iraq war so it is quite something when its World Affairs Editor John Simpson concludes that America
might finally be pursuing the right tactics in Iraq. Mr Simpson made his conclusion at the end of a report on BBC1's main evening news bulletin. After interviewing General David Petraeus, the Commander of US troops in Iraq, the BBC journalist said that the real battle was no longer in cities like Baquba which American troops had just liberated from Al-Qeada but in Washington where patience was running out.
General Petraeus said that the kind of counter-insurgency operation now underway usually took nine to ten years but his hearts and minds approach to building security in Iraq had only just begun. Mr Simpson contrasted the liberation of Baquba where "only" eleven Iraqi civilians had been killed with the situation in Fallujah where large-scale civilian casualties had hardened Sunni opinion against the coalition. The people of Baquba had also grown tired of the suffocating rule of Al-Qaeda and welcomed the arrival of the Americans.
The Simpson report was not all positive. He noted the tendency, for example, of insurgents to direct their terrorism towards areas which stretched US forces were not targeting. He did say, however, that the extra 29,000 US troops were, perhaps, using the right tactics but two years too late.
Official: Iraq gov't missed all targets
By ANNE FLAHERTY and ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writers 30 minutes ago
A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reforms, speeding up the Bush administration's reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said Monday.
The "pivot point" for addressing the matter will no longer be Sept. 15, as initially envisioned, when a full report on Bush's so-called "surge" plan is due, but instead will come this week when the interim mid-July assessment is released, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the draft is still under discussion.
But another senior official said Bush's advisers, along with the president, decided last week there was not enough evidence from Iraq to justify a change now in current policy.
They had launched discussions about how to react to the erosion of support for the president's Iraq approach among prominent Republicans, that official said, and the debate was part of a broader search for a way out of a U.S. combat presence in Iraq by the end of Bush's presidency.
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