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Length:
2:25
LOU DOBBS: The Iraqi
government has more than 300,000 police and troops
now trained in its security forces. But the
government appears incapable of stopping this
violence. The number of Iraqi casualties is rising
sharply. Insurgents and terrorists today killed at
least 40 people.
Michael Ware reports from Baghdad.
Michael, what in the world is the Iraqi government
doing there to show some effectiveness, some
capability to at least bring the violence down to
what some might call an acceptable level or even
better, end it?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Lou, it can be said
that the Iraqi government is doing everything within
its power to stem this bloodletting. But given that
the Iraqi security forces, despite American
assurances, are still largely ineffective or deeply
penetrated by the militias, the death squads and the
insurgents that they're supposed to be tracking, that
effort really amounts to very, very little.
We saw across the country today 41 Iraqis were killed
in violence. Eleven by a fuel tanker suicide bomber
targeting police headquarters in the northern city of
Mosul. Eleven more were killed in another suicide car
bomb attack targeting an army patrol in Kirkuk as
they collected their paychecks. In Diyala Province,
just north of the capital, we saw seven people killed
in a crowded marketplace bombing. Two others were
beheaded. Four others in the same province were shot.
In Baghdad, five people died from a roadside bomb
explosion and a police officer was assassinated.
It does not bode well for the abilities of this
government. And perhaps this is one of the things
that saw Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki make a
trip to the southern religious city of Najaf to see
the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leader of the
Shia religious clerics, and Muqtada al-Sadr, the
militiaman who has helped put this prime minister in
power.
In the meantime, we've seen al Qaeda announce that
Iraq is now the Islamic State of Iraq, fulfilling
their promise and their strategy to develop a key
toehold here in this country to develop al Qaeda's
international caliphate -- Lou.
DOBBS: Michael Ware from Baghdad.