US pulling out 2,000 soldiers from Iraq

The beginning of the end of the surge? Actually it wasn't the surge that turned things around in Iraq. It was the negotiations with the Tribes, the Sadrist ceasefire, and pure exhaustion.

Reuters - 07 March, 2008
Some 2,000 US soldiers are being withdrawn from Baghdad as part of a planned reduction of US forces in Iraq, the US military said yesterday. The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, was part of the extra 30,000 soldiers sent last year to stop savage sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims that had threatened to tip the country into a civil war.

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No end to the suffering?

How different perspectives can be. Zaki travelled with me - as he always does if he needs to get into the interior of Iraq - and he saw things as bad whereas I saw them as phenomenally better - better than they have been in years.

Any Iraqis who had dared believe that security was returning to their troubled country had their illusions shattered when, on 23 November, an explosion at al-Ghazl pet market in central Baghdad claimed the lives of 15 Iraqis and injured about 60 more.
Four members of a Shia cell were arrested by Iraqi and US forces and admitted that they had carried out the attack, planting the bombs in crates to blend innocently with those of traders selling chickens, pigeons and sheep for household use. They claimed under interrogation that they had hoped local people would assume al-Qaeda had targeted the market - as it has many times in the past - and turn to the Shia militias for protection.

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Interesting Interview with Toby Dodge

Interesting Interview:

Toby Dodge, one of the world’s foremost experts on modern-day Iraq, has been visiting the country regularly since 2003. FP recently sat down with a deeply pessimistic Dodge to get his take on U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, the surge, and the Biden-Gelb plan for partitioning Iraq.

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