Top general pleads for more time on Iraq surge

The commander of US forces in Iraq has been in Washington pleading for patience from America's politicians.

General David Petraeus has been on Capitol Hill making the case that the extra American forces in Iraq are yielding mixed results but are returning some positive results

And in a briefing to Congress he said the security surge strategy needed to be given more time to work.

"We are actually ahead of where I wanted to be in some areas and probably behind where we might have hoped to be in some other areas," he said.

"We are ahead I think with respect to the reduction of sectarian murders in Baghdad, progress in Anbar is almost something that's breathtaking."

"We're only about two months into the surge we won't have all the forces on the ground until mid-June," he told reporters outside the briefing.

"I pointed that out to them that Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker [US ambassador to Iraq] and I would be doing an assessment in early September and provide that to our respective bosses at that time."

Democrats emerged from the briefing saying it reinforced their view that the solutions to the problems in Iraq are political not military. Republicans say the general made it clear that withdrawal would hurt the US efforts to bring peace.

General Petraeus also accused Iran of playing an exstensive role in the violence in Iraq.

"We have learned a great deal more about Iranian involvement, very nefarious involvement, involving funding, training on Iranian soil, advice and the provision of lots of arms and ammunition including these explosively-formed projectiles that have been so lethal against some of our armoured vehicles," he said.

In another development, Democrats in Congress have voted to subpoena Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify about the justifications for the invasion of Iraq.

The Bush Administration says it might fight the subpoena, saying the matters are covered by executive privilege.

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Gus: executive privilege — the right to tell porkies?.

And as far as patience, my mother used to tell me that patience and time do a far more that force and rage... But mixing force and patience is likely to, albeit slowly, create an unfortunate result. Troops out by 2008.

Yes Gus, the deluded continue to delude & deny ....

Surge, charge, hold, retreat, attack, counter-attack, victory, defeat .... it's still an obscene killing field.

‘Sectarian violence continued to claim the lives of a large number of Iraqi civilians in Sunni Arab and Shiite neighbourhoods of Iraq's capital, despite the coalition's new Baghdad security plan, the UN said today.

In its first human rights report since the security plan was launched on February 14 – and began increasing US and Iraqi troops levels in the capital - the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said civilian casualties in the daily violence between January and March remained high, concentrated in and around Baghdad.

American troops are facing increasing danger as they step up their presence in outposts and police stations in Baghdad and areas surrounding the city, as part of the security crackdown to which US President George Bush has committed an extra 30,000 troops.

Thousands of Iraqi soldiers are also being deployed in the streets of the capital in an attempt to pacify it.

"While government officials claimed an initial drop in the number of killings in the latter half of February following the launch of the Baghdad security plan, the number of reported casualties rose again in March," the study said.

But UNAMI also said that for the first time since it began issuing quarterly reports on the human rights situation in Iraq, the new January 1-March 31 one did not contain overall mortality figures from Iraq's Ministry of Health because it refused to release them.’

UN: Baghdad Security Operation Has Failed