Pat Dollard | Young Americans

But according to the AP - their on the rise - Who you going to believe??

A MSM outlet or the soldiers on the ground?

MNFI

Tuesday, 24 June 2008
By John J. Kruzel
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON — The number of weekly attacks in Iraq has dropped from about 1,200 a week in June 2007 to about 200 a week now, the commander of the tactical unit responsible for command and control of operations in Iraq said June 23.

Mirroring this reduction in violence has been a 70 percent decrease in roadside-bomb attacks and an 85 percent spike in the number of weapons caches Coalition forces have found over the past year, Army Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, commander of Multi-National Corps - Iraq, told reporters via satellite from Baghdad at a Pentagon news conference.

“I attribute most of these hard-fought gains in security to a few key factors: our Coalition forces aggressively pursuing the enemy, the improving capability of the Iraqi Security Forces, and the Iraqi people participating in the rebuilding process of Iraq,” he said.

But the general tempered his optimism, characterizing security improvements as fragile gains that coalition troops are attempting to solidify as they build the capabilities of their Iraqi counterparts.

“While the improved security is a great achievement, we clearly understand that our progress is fragile, and we continue to work to make this progress irreversible,” he said.

The general praised coalition troops for having al-Qaida “on its heels,” yet he identified the organization as the “primary threat” remaining in Iraq. The terrorist group yesterday launched an attack in Baqouba that killed at least 15 people, including several police officers, and wounded dozens of others.

“Even though we assess that they are on the run, they are still capable of launching spectacular attacks,” Austin said, noting yesterday’s bombing in the Diyala province city. “As a result, our operations in the north are focused on defeating their capability to perform these attacks.”

Austin cited recent operations in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, as examples of the increasing capabilities and effectiveness of Iraq’s security forces. Combined forces in the Ninevah province city over the past four days detained 16 suspects, including four high-ranking al-Qaida operatives.

“We continue to aggressively pursue al-Qaida and to take away their safe havens and to close off all their escape routes when they try to flee,” he said.

Austin, who assumed command of Multinational Corps Iraq in February, said coalition forces will continue helping to develop Iraq’s national security operators under his leadership.

“I’m absolutely confident, based on the indicators from the last few months, that they’ll continue to make significant improvements, and we will be with them, side by side, as they progress,” he said.

Though they have made significant progress, Iraqi security forces in many instances are not yet prepared to take over day-to-day operations, thereby allowing coalition troops to assume an overwatch role, the general said.

Before Iraqi forces become autonomous, he said, they need to develop “combat enablers” with the capability of calling in and integrating fire support into formation. They also be capable of supporting themselves logistically, and begin using their own surveillance and reconnaissance to cull intelligence, then plan their own operations, the general said.

“We are working hand in hand with our coalition partners in all parts of the country,” he said. “They have improved significantly, but we’ve been clear about saying that they’re not there yet.”

As Iraqi security forces mature in the midst of combating al-Qaida and Iranian-backed “special groups,” they meanwhile are gaining the support and confidence of Iraqi citizens, the general said. The majority of Iraqis have rescinded allegiance to extremism, he added, praising the efforts of civilian security groups like the “Sons of Iraq.”

“Now the overwhelming majority of the population has turned against the insurgents and the criminals,” Austin said. “Iraqis understand that al-Qaida and outside influences are not in the best interest of their country.”

Dovetailing with Iraqi security forces’ rise in public status has been a reduction in the number of people being held in detention. A coalition-led detainee release program has freed roughly 4,000 people who combined forces have deemed nonthreatening.

“[It] demonstrates that the coalition is committed to the welfare of the Iraqi population and to reconciliation,” he said.

Now - the AP MSM Bullshit Report…

US forces face spike in deadly violence in Iraq

BAGHDAD - Roadside bombs killed four U.S. soldiers in northern Iraq, the military said Wednesday, in a spike of violence that pushed to at least 10 the number of Americans who have died here this week.

In the latest attack, one soldier was killed by an explosively formed penetrator, or EFP, about 9 a.m. Wednesday in the predominantly Shiite eastern half of Baghdad, the military said. The armor piercing bombs are believed to come from Iran and have been used by Shiite extremists to kill hundreds of American forces.

The U.S. military said three other U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were killed late Tuesday by a roadside bomb in the northern Ninevah province, where al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni extremist groups remain active.

The four U.S. fatalities brought the monthly death toll for American troops in Iraq to at least 26 — well below figures of last year but an increase over the 19 who died in May, the lowest monthly tally of the war.

In all, at least 4,110 U.S. military service members have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The U.S. military says violence in Iraq has dropped to its lowest level in more than four years, but attacks are continuing as Sunni and Shiite extremists try to regroup and undermine security gains.

“The level of violence has dropped dramatically,” said Lt. Col. Steve Stover, spokesman for the U.S. command in Baghdad. “It has gotten quieter. But that doesn’t make these losses any easier.”

He said militants “are constantly thinking of ways that they can undermine us, undermine the government, undermine the Iraqi security forces.”

The bombing in Nineveh occurred a day after a bombing in a district council office in the Baghdad Shiite district of Sadr City killed four Americans — two soldiers and two government employees.

The government employees were identified as Steven L. Farley of Guthrie, Oklahoma, a member of a provincial reconstruction team, and Nicole Suveges, a 38-year-old political scientist from Wauconda, Illinois, who was working with the military.

The Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman suggested that the four Americans were not the main targets of the attack. Five Iraqis and an Italian-Iraqi interpreter for the Americans also were killed.

Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari, the spokesman, said a preliminary investigation indicated that internal Shiite rivalries among the council members were to blame.

“The presence of the American forces and embassy employees was by chance,” al-Askari said. “Chance played a role in the casualties among the Americans.”

On Monday, a Sunni gunman waiting in a car killed two U.S. soldiers and an interpreter as they emerged from a meeting with municipal officials in Madain, about 15 miles southeast of Baghdad.

The U.S. military said American soldiers on Wednesday killed three suspected militants, including two women, after they came under small-arms from a vehicle near the Baghdad International Airport — one of the most heavily guarded areas in Iraq.

The soldiers, who were part of a convoy that was stopped on the roadside, returned fire. That caused the vehicle to run off the road and explode, killing the three people inside, the military said.

But a security official at the hospital that received the bodies said the three people killed were bank employees and not militants. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he said he was not authorized to release information.

U.S. soldiers acting on tips also found nine rockets in the back of a truck ready to be fired at a joint American-Iraqi base in the Shiite militia-dominated neighborhood of Hurriyah in northwestern Baghdad.

Col. William Hickman, the commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division that operates in the area, said the attack most likely would have “hurt many of our soldiers but it easily could have killed many innocent civilians also.”

A car bomb also killed three people and wounded seven in Baghdad’s Karradah district, witnesses and police said.

South of Baghdad, a bomb exploded on a minibus near one of the most revered Shiite shrines in the holy city of Karbala. At least two people including a young boy were killed, and 14 were wounded, police said

___

Ill take the first report from MNFI