Pentagon reviews Iraq strategy for changes
Commanders had ruled out big cuts to US troops
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is conducting a major review of the military's Iraq strategy to determine "what's going wrong and should be changed" to attain US objectives in the war-torn country, the nation's top general said yesterday.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace, initiated the review after starkly deteriorating security in Baghdad led commanders there to rule out any significant cut in the level of US troops in Iraq -- now at about 145,000 -- according to senior defense officials and sources.
Pace said he is working with Army General George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, and Army General John Abizaid, who as head of Central Command oversees the US military in the Middle East, on recommendations for how to improve Iraq strategy.
The military's growing view is that Iraq is at a crossroads, spurred largely by intensified sectarian fighting and mounting US casualties on the ground. Pace's review coincides with political pressure in Washington to find alternatives to the current Iraq policy, heightened by this week's election.
Pace is scheduled to meet early next week with members of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan commission mandated by Congress to review the Bush administration's Iraq policy and propose changes, a senior defense official said.
"We need to give ourselves a good, honest scrub about what is working, what is not working, what are the impediments to progress, and what should we change about the way we're doing it," Pace said in an interview yesterday with CBS News.
As the US military yesterday announced the deaths of four American troops and at least 60 Iraqi civilians were killed or found dead, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq purportedly challenged the US administration to "stay on the battleground" and face the loss of more lives.
"We haven't had enough of your blood yet," taunted terror chieftain Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, identified as the speaker on a new audiotape.
Muhajir welcomed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's resignation, said he had 12,000 fighters under his command who "have vowed to die for God's sake," and said his fighters will not rest until they blow up the White House and occupy Jerusalem.
The 20-minute recording was posted on a website used by Islamic militants. Its authenticity was not immediately verified, and the CIA said a technical analysis was being done.
Muhajir, an Egyptian also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, boasted that Al Qaeda in Iraq is moving toward victory faster than expected because of President Bush's mistakes.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Bush administration had no comment on the tape.
In one of the bloodiest events yesterday, a suicide bomber in an explosives-rigged car killed six Iraqi soldiers he had lured from behind a checkpoint.
Just hours earlier, Iraq's army said it captured the Egyptian leader of an Al Qaeda cell in Anbar province, an insurgent stronghold.
Throughout the capital and in towns and villages within a 50-mile radius of Baghdad, the Shi'ite and Sunni populations have become more separated as residents flee from death squads and suicide bombers to the safety of places where their Islamic sect is the majority.
Iraq's Immigration Ministry said about 1.5 million people are internal refugees, while the United Nations said a similar number of Iraqis have fled the country altogether. That would be about 12 percent of Iraq's prewar population of 26 million, and both figures are probably low estimates.
The attacks that have divided the two Muslim sects in the capital skyrocketed after the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Two American soldiers were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb Thursday afternoon in west Baghdad, the US military said yesterday. In separate attacks in Anbar province, a US Marine died in combat, and a soldier was killed and another wounded by a roadside bomb west of Haditha.
The new deaths brought to 26 the number of US service members killed in Iraq this month. More than half of the US troops killed by insurgents in November were killed in Anbar.
A suicide car-bomber, targeting an Iraqi Army checkpoint in Tall Afar west of Mosul, killed six soldiers, including Colonel Kareem Jassem, commander of the Iraqi Army's 3d Division.
Material from the Associated Press was included in this report. 
