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Length: 4:21
JOHN ROBERTS: Now to Iraq and how is this for
surreal. When it comes to the war tonight, a figure
of speech is literally coming true. Right in the
middle of what many are calling a last-ditch effort
to secure Baghdad, they're actually about to start
digging ditches. Iraqi officials today outlined a
plan to ring Baghdad and the 6 million people who
live there with a network of 28 checkpoints with
trenches in between them. It's the latest development
in a season that has already seen thousands of
American and Iraqi troops flooding the city
neighborhoods, while insurgent attacks just keep on
coming. CNN's Michael Ware sees it all up close every
day, he joins us now from Baghdad. Tell us more,
Michael, about this plan to put in these defensive
emplacements around Baghdad, these big trenches.
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, it's
unclear at this stage how serious people will be
taking this suggestion, which has been floated by the
controversial Ministry of Interior. The spokesman for
the Ministry says the idea was inspired from a battle
which was led by the Prophet Mohammad in 627 AD,
where a city was ringed by trenches to defend it from
a much larger force. He's trying to translate that
idea into modern times, saying if it could have been
dug then with hand tools, surely we can do it today
with modern equipment. The idea is to encircle
Baghdad with these trenches, there's no details on
how big or how deep, getting 28 checkpoints or
entrances in and out of the city. Militarily, already
some questions are being raised about the plan,
obviously. Making so many checkpoints or just so many
entrances and exits to city is also choke points,
this is the sort of place that insurgents would love
to attack. A perfect place for a car bomb and we've
seen that sealing off smaller cities still does not
stop the insurgents or the car bombs. John?
ROBERTS: Michael, we know that Baghdad is an area of
real concern for U.S. forces and Iraqi troops, they
have been bolstering the forces in there. The
question is though, are troops being diverted from
other areas of Iraq to come into Baghdad?
WARE: Very much there's a focus on -- as American
commanders at the highest levels and both within the
command structure and military intelligence say it's
Baghdad, Baghdad, Baghdad. They claim that the war
could all but be won or lost here in the capital, if
this massive operation, the Battle of Baghdad,
Operation Together Forward, fails to reclaim the city
from insurgents, militias and death squads, they say
that the whole war could be lost. So focus is being
drawn from elsewhere. Meanwhile, in al-Anbar
province, an al-Qaeda-led insurgency with al-Qaeda
national headquarters sitting there under the noses
of U.S. forces cannot be defeated, according to the
U.S. marine general who owns that province. He says,
"I have enough troops in my current mission which is
to train Iraqis, I do not have enough troops to win."
John?
ROBERTS: And despite all this focus on Baghdad,
Michael, there is still many killings going on there,
dozens and dozens of them. Is the strategy not
working?
WARE: Well, we're still seeing in a period of three
days, well over 100 bodies executed and tortured,
many of them, according to Iraqi police, showing up
in the streets. I mean, this operation, as large as
it is, having searched something like 28,000 homes,
has only found a few dozen weapons caches, made
90-odd arrests, it's very small. And the flaw in the
plan, well one of the questions, should I say in the
plan, is that firstly, they're working with the very
Iraqi security forces that it's alleged the death
squads are coming from and they then hand these areas
over to the same Iraqi forces. John?
ROBERTS: Problem after problem. Michael Ware for us
in Baghdad, Michael thanks very much.
More now on those killings that Michael just talked
about, specifically the rising number of them. Here
is the raw data for you. Since Wednesday, at least
130 bodies have been found in Baghdad, most of the
victims were shot in the head and dumped in various
parts of the city. The U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations says Iraqi casualties climbed 51 percent over
the past three months and the number of weekly
attacks rose 15 percent.