The Smarter Darren Bernard

The AP and Reuters offer two different views on how effective the surge has been in the past month. The AP gives a pretty glowing version:

BAGHDAD - Bomb deaths have gone down 30 percent in Baghdad since the U.S.-led security crackdown began a month ago. Execution-style slayings are down by nearly half.

The once frequent sound of weapons has been reduced to episodic, and downtown shoppers have returned to outdoor markets — favored targets of car bombers.

There are signs of progress in the campaign to restore order in Iraq, starting with its capital city.

But while many Iraqis are encouraged, they remain skeptical how long the relative calm will last. Each bombing renews fears that the horror is returning. Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents are still around, perhaps just lying low or hiding outside the city until the operation is over.

U.S. military officials, burned before by overly optimistic forecasts, have been cautious about declaring the operation a success. Another reason it seems premature: only two of the five U.S. brigades earmarked for the mission are in the streets, and the full complement of American reinforcements is not due until late May.

U.S. officials say that key to the operation’s long-term success is the willingness of Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic political parties to strike a power- and money-sharing deal. That remains elusive — a proposal for governing the country’s main source of income — oil — is bogged down in parliamentary squabbling.

Promising signs
Nevertheless, there are encouraging signs. Gone are the “illegal checkpoints,� where Shiite and Sunni gunmen stopped cars and hauled away members of the rival sect — often to a gruesome torture and death.

The rattle of automatic weapons fire or the rumble of distant roadside bombs comes less frequently. Traffic is beginning to return to the city’s once-vacant streets.

“People are very optimistic because they sense a development. The level of sectarian violence in streets and areas has decreased,� said a 50-year-old Shiite, who gave his name only as Abu Abbas, or “father of Abbas.� “The activities of the militias have also decreased. The car bombs and the suicide attacks are the only things left, while other kinds of violence have decreased.�

In the months before the security operation began Feb. 14, police were finding dozens of bodies each day in the capital — victims of Sunni and Shiite death squads. Last December, more than 200 bodies were found each week — with the figure spiking above 300 in some weeks, according to police reports compiled by The Associated Press.

Since the crackdown began, weekly totals have dropped to about 80 — hardly an acceptable figure but clearly a sign that death squads are no longer as active as they were in the final months of last year.

Bombings too have decreased in the city, presumably due to U.S. and Iraqi success in finding weapons caches and to more government checkpoints in the streets that make it tougher to deliver the bombs.

In the 27 days leading up to the operation, 528 people were killed in bombings around the capital, according to AP figures. In the first 27 days of the operation, the bombing death toll stood at 370 — a drop of about 30 percent.

Reuters, however, elected to go with a more tempered and sobering version of events:

Car bombs in Baghdad, at a record high in February, remain a serious concern despite a month-old U.S.-backed crackdown, a U.S. general said in a more sober assessment than one given by Iraqi officials on Wednesday.

Major General William Caldwell said murders and executions in the capital since the Baghdad security plan began on February 14 had been halved but that "sensational" car bombs blamed on al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab militants had spiked in February.

"We reached an all-time high there in February," Caldwell told a news conference, without providing a figure. He said U.S. and Iraqi troops were investing a "tremendous amount of effort" in finding car bomb factories in the Baghdad beltway.

While Caldwell said there had been a "positive" reduction of overall murders and executions since the plan got under way, he warned of a slight "uptick" of violence in the last seven days.

"We are concerned about any levels of violence that indicate an increase versus a decrease ... We are watching it very carefully," he said, adding it would take months before the plan makes a big difference in easing violence that has pushed Iraq to the brink of all-out sectarian war.

"The Iraqis have really shown restraint. They are not taking retribution," he said, referring to retaliatory sectarian violence that in the past has followed car bomb attacks.

But an Iraqi Sunni militant group said on Wednesday it had captured an Iraqi brigadier general and posted copies of Ministry of Defense credentials that identified him as a deputy director but did not describe him as an officer.

Ansar al-Sunna has claimed several abductions and killings since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Earlier, Iraqi military officials offered a less cautious report than Caldwell's, saying civilian deaths and car bombs had fallen sharply in the first 30 days of the plan.

Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier Qassim Moussawi said the number of Iraqis killed by violence in Baghdad between February 14 and March 14 had fallen to 265 from 1,440 and that the number of car bombs was down to 36 from 56.

So one article says bombings have decreased, while the other say it is at an all-time high, what gives? In any case, the Reuters article is correct in noting how changes in troop concentration in any part of the country brings a predictable lull in violence while insurgents and death squads adapt and change their tactics. The Shiite death squads have until now decided to cooperate, but as the last post show, their patience has ended.