News Analysis: Get-tough tactics in Iraq are not working

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http://www.iht.com/articles/538594.html

BAGHDAD The mayhem that coursed through the Iraqi capital Sunday offered the latest evidence not just of the growing ferocity of the insurgency but also of the extraordinary difficulties faced by the American military as its efforts in Iraq enter a new and potentially decisive phase.

With four months to go before nationwide elections in Iraq, U.S. commanders have begun a series of military operations intended to regain control over the large sections of the country ceded to insurgents in recent months - where, if conditions remained unchanged, the staging of elections would be cast in serious doubt.

In cities like Falluja and Talafar and Sadr City, which have slipped out of the control of the Iraqi government, the Americans are embarking on especially aggressive operations with the full support of the Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi. But as the Americans move to regain control of these areas, the insurgency seems each day to be growing more brazen and more sophisticated.

On Sunday, insurgents struck the Americans and their allies in the Iraqi government in manifold ways: with suicide bombings, with mortars and with rockets, many of them showing a careful aim. Many of those attacks seemed intended not just to hurt the Americans but also to provoke them into overreacting and alienating other Iraqis. In that way, the choices confronting the Americans and their Iraqi allies here are similar to those faced by governments battling guerrilla insurgencies in the past: Ease up and the insurgency may grow; crack down and risk losing the support of the population.

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1. Funny, I heard yesterday

that orders in Iraq are to stay off the roads and near the bases to keep casuality numbers down as the election draws near.