Premier insists violence easing?

He's drinking from the Bush cool-aide.

US Baghdad counter insurgency strategy - ie, clearing one area and

then moving outward, adding 12k troops, etc

This strategy for victory seems to be failing as well.

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At Least 69 Killed in Attacks Across Iraq
Deadliest Incidents Occur North of Baghdad; Premier Insists Violence Is
Easing

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 28, 2006; A11

BAGHDAD, Aug. 27 -- Gunmen and bombers claimed at least 69 lives in Iraq
on Sunday, even as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki repeated the
assertions of Iraqi and U.S. leaders that violence was easing from a
wartime high set earlier this summer.

While U.S. and Iraqi forces have deployed additional troops in Baghdad
to deal with the surge of sectarian violence, the deadliest of the
attacks Sunday occurred outside the capital, in cities to the north.

The attention of Iraqi and U.S. officials since this spring has been
focused on the rivalry between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Muslims in
Baghdad. Sunday's violence, however, highlighted the country's many
other dangers since the war began: rising crime and growing tensions
among Iraq's other faiths and peoples.

The most lethal attack came in the town of Khalis, near Baqubah, 35
miles northeast of Baghdad. Gunmen stormed the house of a local judge,
Hamdi al-Ubaidi, shot one of his brothers and moved to abduct another,
police said.

When men from a nearby cafe ran to the aid of the family, gunmen opened
fire, killing 12 of the would-be rescuers and injuring 25, police Brig.
Safa al Mandalawi said.

The kidnappers escaped, with the judge's brother as their captive,
Mandalawi said.

The mass killing came about 11 hours after a bomb planted in a
marketplace in Khalis exploded at the height of morning shopping. Nine
people died, and 15 were injured, police Lt. Ali Khayam said.

Gunmen killed five people in three other attacks in the nearby city of
Baqubah, a community with a heavily nationalist Sunni Arab population
that has seen nearly daily violence.

Farther to the north, in the tense oil city of Kirkuk, back-to-back
bombings killed 10 people Sunday outside the house of a police colonel
and outside a meeting hall of Sufis, a mystical Muslim religious sect.

A top Sufi leader in Fallujah last week declared that his previously
nonviolent sect was joining the Sunni insurgency, saying that rising
Shiite militancy left him no choice but to fight for survival. It was
not known whether Sunday's attack was related to the Sufi leader's call
to arms.

Attacks elsewhere in Kirkuk on Sunday targeted offices of the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan, the party of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a
member of Iraq's northern-based Kurdish minority. A car bomb at one of
the offices killed a guard, while security personnel at another office
repelled an assault by gunmen, killing one of the assailants.

Sunni Arabs and Kurds are vying for Kirkuk, one of the country's two
main oil centers. A referendum in the city is to determine whether
Kirkuk is to come under Kurdish or Arab control. Each side is trying to
build up its strength ahead of the vote.

In Iraq's other oil hub, the southern city of Basra, a bomb mounted on a
motorcycle killed seven people, authorities said. Maliki, the prime
minister, has imposed a state of emergency to deal with the deadly
rivalry among the Shiite factions controlling the south.

Another of the day's major attacks was in Baghdad, where a bomb in a
minibus killed nine people at a police checkpoint on Sadoun Street, in
the center of the city near the Palestine Hotel, police said.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed that seven
Iraqi civilians were killed Sunday night in what Johnson said was a
street battle between American forces and insurgents in Baghdad.

It began when a bomb exploded near American troops in a Stryker armored
vehicle in the mostly Sunni west Baghdad neighborhood of Ghaziliyah, a
district where U.S. forces have beefed up their presence in an effort to
quell sectarian violence.

Insurgents opened fire with grenade launchers and guns after the bomb
hit the Stryker, Johnson said. U.S. forces returned fire, wounding four
attackers, whom Americans took into custody, Johnson said. He said it
appeared the civilians had been caught in the cross-fire.

A resident at the scene gave a different account, saying all seven,
including a family of five traveling together, were killed when U.S.
forces opened fire on cars around their vehicle following the bombing.

Also in Baghdad, three American soldiers were killed, two by roadside
bombs and one by insurgent gunfire, the U.S. military said. [Early
Monday, the Associated Press reported that four U.S. soldiers were
killed Sunday in another roadside bombing, according to U.S. military.]

In Baghdad in particular, the toll reflected the growing aggressiveness
of the militias loyal to Iraq's governing Shiite religious parties as
they try to crush the country's Sunni insurgency.

U.S. military leaders stepped up American deployments and patrols in
Baghdad. U.S. commanders also abruptly extended the stay of one
Alaska-based brigade that had been headed home and called in emergency
reserves from Kuwait.

U.S. military leaders have credited their crackdown in Baghdad with what
they say is a reduction in the number of deaths in Iraq in recent weeks.

"The violence is in decrease and our security ability is increasing,"
Maliki said on CNN's "Late Edition" program. Multinational forces have
created an atmosphere of "reconciliation" in the country, Maliki said,
and "Iraq will never be in a civil war."

Maliki's spokesman, Ali Debagh, confirmed Sunday that the prime minister
was shuffling the cabinet in his three-month-old government of Shiite
religious parties, Kurds and Sunnis.

Debagh said at least one and probably two of the ministers to be
replaced belong to the movement of populist Shiite cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr. Sadr commands a militia increasingly accused of taking a lead
in killings of Sunnis.

Debagh played down the idea that the shuffle was largely a purge of Sadr
supporters. Debagh said Sadr "is more and more coming to work as a
political force" within the government while disavowing his militia.

Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad and other Washington Post
staff in Iraq contributed to this report.