NYT,pg1: There Are Signs the Tide May Be Turning on Iraq's Street of Fear

[DeepModem Mom]

There Are Signs the Tide May Be Turning on Iraq's Street of Fear
By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: March 21, 2005


BAGHDAD, Iraq - Nearly two years after American troops captured Baghdad, Haifa Street is like an arrow at the city's heart. A little more than two miles long, it runs south through a canyon of mostly abandoned high-rises and majestic date palms almost to the Assassin's Gate, the imperial-style arch that is the main portal to the Green Zone compound, the principal seat of American power.

When most roads in central Baghdad are choked with traffic, there is rarely more than a trickle of vehicles on Haifa Street. At the day's height, a handful of pedestrians scurry down empty sidewalks, ducking into covered walkways that serve as sanctuaries from gunfire - and as blinds for insurgent attacks in one of Iraq's most bitterly contested battle zones.

American soldiers call the street Purple Heart Boulevard: the First Battalion of the Ninth Cavalry, patrolling here for the past year before its recent rotation back to base at Fort Hood, Tex., received more than 160 Purple Hearts. Many patrols were on foot, to gather intelligence on neighborhoods that American officers say have been the base for brutal car bombings, kidnappings and assassinations across Baghdad.

In the first 18 months of the fighting, the insurgents mostly outmaneuvered the Americans along Haifa Street, showing they could carry the war to the capital's core with something approaching impunity.

But American officers say there have been signs that the tide may be shifting. On Haifa Street, at least, insurgents are attacking in smaller numbers, and with less intensity; mortar attacks into the Green Zone have diminished sharply; major raids have uncovered large weapons caches; and some rebel leaders have been arrested or killed....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/21/international/middleeast/21haifa.html?pagewanted=all&position=

[dArKeR]

1. I've heard this same 'news' for the last 18 months. Hasn't Mr. Burns

been watching TV or reading?

[Career Prole]

2. No kidding, Times? They have a street named "Street of Fear"?

Oh, never mind. It's just more hyperbolic happy-talk bullshit.
The real "Street of Fear" should be Wall Street.

[Logansquare]

11. Yep, it's like Monopoly

Baghdad is our big game board, and all the "bad guys" are on playing cards and get cool villain names like "Chemical Ali." Was it Wallace Shawn who said history was now being written like a bad comic book?

[DemoTex]

12. Vietnam had a "Street without Joy."

The French called QL-1 in Quang Tri provence La Rue Sans Joie. That became the French title of a book by Bernard Fall. To US troops it was The Street without Joy.

[merwin]

3. So just because they are attacking somewhere else in the city/country

now means that the insurgency is faltering? Wow.

[Barrett808]

4. I don't believe a word from official sources

They have more motivation than ever to lie their @sses off. Square this with last week's DIA report to the Senate.

This is pure propaganda. It's designed to obscure and confuse Admiral Jacoby's report.

[Teaser]

5. It's a tactical shift.

The insurgents have refocused their attacks to northern Iraq, which is much more of a tinderbox than Baghdad or Southern Iraq. With this shift, there has also been increased targetting of Iraqi security forces who are slaughtered in greater numbers and at higher levels than our own troops ever were.

[gratuitous]

6. Or maybe . . .

Haifa Street no longer presents a target-rich environment. Sounds like it's being patrolled to a fare-thee-well, and I know that were I to attack someone, I'd be more likely to attack them at a weak point than where their defense and vigilance were the strongest.

So Haifa Street is "safer". How goes the rest of the country?

[Spazito]

7. This article actually show how very bad it really is in Iraq

When the admin can only find 'good news' on ONE street in one city, there is more than a whiff of desparation in that, imo.

This article alone talks about 8, repeat 8, different attacks in 8 different places on Sunday alone:

Insurgents kill civilians, Iraq soldiers

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Insurgent attacks across Iraq on Monday left seven civilians and three Iraqi soldiers dead, a day after U.S. troops killed 26 militants in one of the largest battles since the Jan. 30 election.

In the deadliest attack Monday on civilians, a roadside bomb killed four women and three children in Aziziyah, 35 miles southeast of Baghdad, police Capt. Falah al-Muhmadawi said.

An Iraqi soldier was killed in Sherqat, 160 miles north of Baghdad, when a mortar shell landed on his camp, while another soldier died and four others were wounded when an Iraqi army vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in western Baghdad, a Defense Ministry official said.

In Baghdad's Amiriyah neighborhood, gunmen in two speeding cars fired on an Iraq army foot patrol, killing another soldier and wounding a third, police Capt. Talib Thamir said.

more

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1111406268952_91/?hub=World

[Barrett808]

8. Yes, I think the body count for yesterday was 45 n/t

[ochazuke]

9. U.S. Media echo chamber

One of the major nightly news programs reported on Haifa Street over the weekend.

No coincidence, I'm sure.

[w4rma]

10. Every time the NY Times puts out propaganda like this a huge car bomb

blows up and kills about 50 or so people. It's as if they said "Bring it on."

[heidler1]

13. With the new gov. acting self destructive any distraction from that fact

maybe unproductive.