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The final contingent of United States troops in the "surge" against Iraq's resistance deployed yesterday amid deepening gloom in Washington at the military's failure to reduce violence and defeat the insurgency.
The latest US troops took up their positions as the Pentagon released the first hard assessment of President George W. Bush's gamble in stepping up the war in Iraq.
The statistical analysis of the three months from mid-February to mid-May reveals failure on most fronts in Iraq and no overall decrease in violence the President had hoped for.
Over the past three months, fresh US troops have been pouring into sections of Baghdad and Anbar province, setting up fortified positions in the areas of fiercest resistance.
The Pentagon's report to Congress reveals that the arrival of fresh combat troops has merely shifted the violence to other parts of the country.
Despite the gloomy assessment, the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, gave an extraordinary interview to USA Today newspaper, in which he said "astonishing signs of normalcy" have returned to two-thirds of Baghdad.
"I'm talking about professional soccer leagues with real grass field stadiums, several amusement parks - big ones, markets that are very vibrant," the commander of some 150,000 US troops said.
He said these unlikely scenes were a sign that the new strategy was working, even though many problems remain to be fixed.
Although Petraeus painted a scene which few correspondents reporting from Iraq recognise, he would have been fully briefed on the 46-page report, which the Democratically controlled Congress has asked for on a quarterly basis.
As described in yesterday's Washington Post, the Pentagon's report says while there have been some gains by the US military against the insurgents there have been as many setbacks.
The report dispels the initial optimism expressed by the new US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who last March characterised progress in Iraq as "so far, so good".
The Pentagon now says it is too early to say whether the President's strategy will work. That task has been left in the hands of Petraeus and the US Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, who are to report in September to political leaders in Washington on the policy's effectiveness.
Their conclusion will either speed up or delay further the eventual withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq being demanded by US public opinion.
Should it officially be deemed a failure by Petraeus, the ground is already being prepared in Washington to blame the Administration of Nouri Maliki for that failure.
"If the Iraqi Government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people - it will lose the support of the Iraqi people," President Bush said last January. "Now is the time to act."
The Pentagon said yesterday that Maliki's Government was "uneven" in living up to its promises and in many cases produced no successes.
There was "little progress" by the Iraqi leadership in bringing about reconciliation between Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni sides. This was "a serious unfulfilled objective", which "some analysts see as a growing fragmentation of Iraq".
Describing a sharp drop in sectarian killings and attacks from February to April, the report also says that civilian casualties rose to more than 100 a day, largely as a result of suicide bombings.
Whatever drop there may have been in sectarian killings, the latest information from the Baghdad morgue indicates they are back at pre-"surge" levels. The number of suicide attacks has more than doubled to 58 in a three-month period from April to May.
Children long-term victims
An Iraqi doctor has warned of the behavioural damage being done to children in his country, saying it could lead to a future of ongoing violence.
Dr Abdul Kareem Al Obaidi, chair of the Iraqi association for child mental health, has made an open appeal to the United Nations Secretary-General for help .
He said the situation was "desperate" and "urgent". The children had suffered "unbearable traumas and heart-wrenching experiences".
He said behavioural disorders, which never used to be a problem in Iraq, were now prominent, including delinquency, drug and substance abuse.
Emotional disorders such as depression, anxiety disorders including post-traumatic stress disorder and panic disorders were increasing dramatically among children, who make up 55 per cent of the 29 million Iraqi population, he said.
"This is a crisis situation that needs urgent attention. Our children carry the future of Iraq and that future is being corrupted. The risk is great, not just for our country, but for the region and the world."
- Independent
