Iraq War 2003

U.S. military commanders increasingly believe that American troops will never entirely defeat Iraqi insurgents and now plan to reduce offensive operations and focus on training Iraqi security forces. Under the plan, expected to be launched after the nation's Jan. 30 parliamentary election, up to half of the U.S.

Support for the war in Iraq has continued to erode, but most Americans still are inclined to give the Bush administration some time to try to stabilize the country before it withdraws U.S. troops, the Los Angeles Times Poll has found. The poll, conducted Saturday through Monday, found that the percentage of Americans who believed the situation in Iraq was "worth going to war over" had sunk to a new low of 39%.

A wave of bombings struck this anxious capital Wednesday, killing at least a dozen people 11 days before the nation's landmark elections. Across the country, there were new reports of hostage taking, an ambush and summary executions. Four bomb-laden vehicles detonated within 90 minutes, shattering the morning calm before most commuters hit the streets.

A car bomb exploded in southwestern Baghdad today outside a mosque where Shiites were celebrating the Eid al-Adha holiday, killing at least six people and wounding at least 29, Iraqi police said. An Interior Ministry source said the toll was expected to rise. The explosion outside the al-Taf mosque was the second attack on a Shiite mosque in Baghdad this week. No one was hurt in the earlier blast. Attacks on Shiites have increased in the run-up to scheduled Jan. 30 national elections.

Four days before the landmark Iraqi national election, U.S. officials and their allies are bracing for fresh insurgent attacks with far less of the optimism that marked previous milestones. The capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 was greeted as a likely death blow for the guerrillas, then regarded as an incipient array of ill-organized holdovers from the ousted dictator's Baath Party.

The intractability of the violence gripping Iraq was on graphic display Tuesday with the release of a videotape of an American hostage begging for his life at gunpoint, the assassination of an Iraqi judge and the killing of at least five members of Iraqi security forces. In an admission of the pervasive difficulties, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said during a news conference that it was "futile and dangerous" to give a final date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.

This is Iraq's wild west, where for a year Marines have fought a relentless battle with insurgents and smugglers along hundreds of miles of barren desert that is the unmarked border with Syria. The action here has been overshadowed by ongoing violence in Baghdad, Mosul and in Fallouja and other cities in the so-called Sunni Triangle.

His sergeant called him a coward to his face. His chaplain sent him an e-mail saying he was ashamed of him. His commanders had him formally charged with desertion. Sgt. Kevin Benderman, who has served one tour of duty in Iraq, is refusing to serve another. When his fellow soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division packed their gear and left nearby Ft. Stewart for Iraq last week, Benderman stayed home. He says he has chosen to follow his conscience -- not his commanders.

Insurgents on Monday unleashed their most violent assaults in Iraq since the country's election, killing 15 people in mortar and suicide attacks in the northern city of Mosul and 15 more in a car bombing near a police station northeast of Baghdad. Turmoil reasserted itself as a new batch of election returns indicated that an ethnic Kurdish coalition had garnered more than 1 million votes in two northern provinces.

Four U.S. troops died in Iraq on Sunday in attacks and accidents as insurgents kept up their campaign of violence. One U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded in an "indirect fire" attack on a base near Samarra, north of Baghdad, the military said. Indirect fire usually refers to a mortar or rocket strike. Meanwhile, three U.S. soldiers on patrol died when their armored Humvee plunged into a canal near Balad, also north of Baghdad.