Iraqis Take Control Of Security
More and more areas of Iraq are becoming the responsibility of Iraqi forces.
Iraqis are taking more responsibility for security. In Mosul, some one-thousand-five-hundred Iraqi soldiers are now operating in parts of the city once patrolled by U.S. forces. Likaa Talal, a housewife in Mosul, told a reporter, "Every day there is shooting. There used to be more bombs before," she says, "but now there is less." The foreign terrorists and remnants of the Saddam Hussein regime continue to fight progress by targeting the citizens, institutions, and infrastructure of a free Iraq. President George W. Bush says, "These killers will stop at nothing to undermine the new government, divide the Iraqi people, and try to break their will": "Our work in Iraq is difficult because our enemy is brutal. But that brutality has not stopped the dramatic progress of a new democracy. In less than three years, the nation has gone from dictatorship to liberation, to sovereignty, to a constitution, to national elections. At the same time, our coalition has been relentless in shutting off terrorist infiltration, clearing out insurgent strongholds, and turning over territory to Iraqi security forces." President Bush says that the U.S.-led coalition "will continue to hand over territory to the Iraqis so they can defend their democracy": At this moment, more than thirty-five Iraqi battalions have assumed control of their own areas of responsibility -- including nearly half of the Baghdad province, and sectors of south-central Iraq, southeast Iraq, western Iraq, and north-central Iraq." In 2006, more areas will become the responsibility of Iraqi security forces. The goal, says Mr. Bush, is "having the Iraqis in control of more territory than the coalition by the end of 2006."