A lot of Seymour Hersh's article 12/5/2005 New Yorker is of his sources telling him the plan is to shift the strategy to Iraqi Troops being on the ground and telling U.S. AirCover where to attack.
The sources(airforce sources) thought this a very dangerous tactic as the Iraqis can use this to just be calling strikes on some vendetta they have with non combatants.
And all the more innocents will be butchered, which just feed the growing the resistance.( The Brain behind this--you got it RumsFeld!)
Well here it is the first Public Bomb the Press of this grand new strategy that Hersh described in detail 3 months ago.
Based on Hersh's being right so many times, i have to take quite seriously the war with Iran is a done deal, it will happen.
My beliefs on this, i note, were formed before i read of Hersh's remark, which i just read very recently.
I just got a reference saying Hersh said in January the next war will be with Iran---he didn't say, maybe with Iran.
US says raid shows Iraqi army taking control By Michael Georgy
37 minutes ago
The U.S. military said on Friday a highly publicized joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive marked a change in the fight against guerillas, showing Iraq's army was becoming more effective and taking greater control.
U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq hinge on the capability of the Iraqi army, disbanded by U.S. authorities in 2003 and now being rapidly rebuilt, in the face of a raging insurgency and a surge in sectarian killings.
"(The operation) really marks a change and it marks an evolution," said a top U.S. commander, Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, adding Iraqi forces would control about 75 percent of the country by later this year, up from under 50 percent now.
"I think operations like 'Swarmer' are operations you're going to see more and more of ... as we turn over more of the large urban areas to Iraqi forces," he told reporters at the Pentagon in a satellite video link-up from Baghdad.
"Had we tried to accomplish a mission like this 11 months ago, it would have been primarily U.S. forces. But in this case ... we had primarily Iraqi forces," said Chiarelli, the number two U.S. commander in Iraq.
U.S. and Iraqi forces pressed on with "Operation Swarmer" as Iraqi leaders failed again to form a coalition government widely seen as vital to avert any slide into civil war from sectarian bloodletting between Sunni Arabs and majority Shi'ite Muslims.
YEARS OF HOSTILITY
Signs of movement to end the political paralysis have emerged with U.S. and Iranian officials saying they could set aside decades of hostility to discuss stabilizing Iraq, where Tehran has gained influence with fellow Shi'ites in power.
The U.S. military said on Thursday the operation in the Samarra area, using 1,500 U.S. and Iraqi troops and 50 helicopters, was the biggest air assault since a similar airlift just after the war to oust Saddam Hussein three years ago.
The military said the operation involved searching a 10-mile-by-10-mile (16-km-by 16-km) area for guerillas, who gather support from the Sunni community, dominant under Saddam.
It said one U.S. soldier was shot and killed while manning an observation post in the town of Samarra.
The military said about 30 people had been detained and arms caches seized in the operation near Samarra, where an alleged al Qaeda bomb destroyed a Shi'ite shrine last month and triggered weeks of sectarian bloodshed.
The operation was launched just before the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion which toppled Saddam. The United States still has about 130,000 troops in Iraq.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been mediating in hopes Iraqi leaders will finally bury sharp differences and form a national unity government three months after parliamentary elections.
Iraqi leaders met in another attempt to strike a deal but there was no outward sign of progress as they posed for the cameras at a news conference.
Political sources said there may be a breakthrough in coming days, with the powerful but factionally divided Shi'ite Alliance appearing more willing to consider an alternative to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Kurdish and Sunni leaders want to see him dropped.
U.S. ACCUSES IRAN
Washington says interference from regional Shi'ite power Iran, through close allies with ties in the Shi'ite-led Baghdad interim government, could further destabilize Iraq.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she believed talks with Iran on stabilizing Iraq would be useful, but White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley expressed skepticism about Iran's offer of discussions.
The United States has accused Iran of shipping components for bombs into Iraq for use against Iraqi and U.S. targets and taking other steps to provoke instability.
Hadley said Iran's offer of talks might be an attempt to divert international pressure over its nuclear ambitions, particularly as the United Nations Security Council was debating Western concerns that Tehran was seeking an atomic bomb.
In new violence in Iraq, a suicide bomber got on to a bus and detonated his explosives belt, killing the driver and wounding four people nearby, police said.
They said three bodies with gunshot wounds to the head and signs of torture were found in Baghdad -- apparently part of the latest wave of sectarian violence that has left more than 100 corpses dumped in the capital alone since Monday.
South of Baghdad in Mahmudiya, in an area known as the "Triangle of Death" for its insurgent attacks, two Shi'ite pilgrims walking to the holy city of Kerbala were killed by a roadside bomb, police said.
Another roadside bomb killed a policeman in nearby Latifiya.
(Additional reporting by Reuters Television, Fares al-Mehdawi, Mariam Karouny, Ross Colvin, in Baghdad and the Tehran bureau)
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