War in Iraq changing

[ECH1969]

Fourteen shot at a trading company. At least 90 kidnapped at other businesses. Bodies dumped nightly, bound hand and foot, some tortured. A new brand of violence - a deadly mix of organized crime and sectarian murder - is tearing at Iraq.

Its origins are murky. But the savagery has turned March into a pivotal month in the three-year war - a month of gruesome news, mixed with some good. A sharp decline in American deaths appears to be the payoff for handing more duties to the Iraqi army, leaving U.S. forces less exposed to attack.

Or perhaps - as some Iraq officials believe - the insurgents simply switched their targets, moving from American and Iraqi troops to targeting businesses and Iraqi civilians as a way to cause chaos or to fund their terror work.

The tanks in the streets these days aren't American, by and large, but old Russian T-72s driven by Iraqi soldiers. Faces at military checkpoints are increasingly Iraqi. Coincidental with the sharp drop in American deaths was the huge rise in the number of execution-style killings among Iraqis.

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/world/story/3244476p-12002283c.html

[MadMaddie]

1. Do we know if the Iraqi military is involved?

There is absolutely no control without US troops out there and it is too dangerous for US troops to be out there...

What a mess....

[MadMaddie]

2. Self Delete-Dupe

[skamaria]

3. No decline in deaths

Check out http://icasualties.org/oif/
Steady American military deaths for the last three years