IRAQ: The daily killing of American soldiers in Iraq has stirred anxious debate in the US Congress and has dashed the Pentagon's post-war plans to reduce the number of American troops in Iraq from the current level of 146,000 to 30,000 by the autumn. Conor O'Clery, North America Editor, reports.
The death of yet another soldier north of Baghdad yesterday brought to 52 the number of American military fatalities - 16 in attacks and the rest in accidents - since President George Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1st.
In the latest attack, a rocket-propelled grenade struck a military ambulance 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing the soldier and wounding two more. The ambulance was transporting a casualty from a separate attack.
In other guerrilla assaults reported yesterday by US military officials, three mortar shells exploded outside a coalition-run aid office in Samarra, north of Baghdad, killing an Iraqi bystander and wounding 12 others, a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into a tank in the same town, and an army lorry was destroyed.
An Associated Press photograph widely published in US newspapers yesterday brought home forcibly just how far relations between US troops and Iraqis have deteriorated since crowds joined American troops in pulling down statues of Saddam Hussein.
It showed a line of US troops holding fixed bayonets inches from the chests of unarmed former Iraqi soldiers demonstrating in fury after an American soldier shot dead two of their number when a protest over disbandment of the Iraqi army turned violent.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conceded that there was some debate in the administration over whether the attacks were highly organised or if they were the work of free-lance guerrillas from Saddam Hussein Baath Party, the Fedayeen and other anti-American groups.
He said the resistance came from "small elements" of 10 to 20 people, not large military formations, and while they were deliberate attempts to kill Americans, they were not well coordinated.
"In those regions where pockets of dead-enders are trying to reconstitute, General Franks and his team are rooting them out," he told reporters on Wednesday. "In short, the coalition is making good progress."
The unrest in Iraq has tied down the First Marine Division and the US Army's Third Infantry Division which led the invasion and were due to be rotated home after the war.
Stories have begun appearing in the US media about morale problems among troops who expected to be home by now.
Between 20,000 and 30,000 troops from a dozen US allies will arrive in Iraq in August to replace US forces, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the House Armed Services Committee when Congress members asked why more of their allies had not been persuaded to supply forces.
"I think these people are the last remnants of a dying cause," he said referring to the guerrilla attackers. US forces "have the sympathy of the population, not the surviving elements of the Baathist regime".
His testimony apparently did little to address the growing concern on Capitol Hill - and throughout the country - about the rising hostility towards American troops, the chaos in Iraq, the $3 billion a month cost of the military operation, and the stretching of reserves and units on the ground.
