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  Newfound Iraqi confidence pleases, worries US
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Last Editedkal  Jul 13, 2008 10:21am
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MediaWebsite - Yahoo News
News DateSunday, July 13, 2008 04:20:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionWajih Hameed is an Iraqi general with an attitude.

His swagger sometimes grates on American officers. But Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond sees it as a hopeful sign the Iraqi army — generals and soldiers alike — has reached a new level of self-confidence, pointing the way toward truly independent Iraqi forces and, eventually, an exit for U.S. combat troops.

The flip side is that the Americans feel their control slipping away. This feeds a worry that Iraqi security forces either will set themselves up for a catastrophic failure or might even decide — at some point when the Americans largely have departed — that the country would be better off under military rule.

For now, the new assertiveness by generals such as Hameed, who commands all Iraqi soldiers in the western part of the capital, is welcomed.

"They have a self-confidence now that they didn't have when (I) first arrived" last fall, Hammond, the top commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, said in an interview. The Iraqi army, he said, was largely limited as recently as last winter to manning checkpoints and "they were struggling with that."

What changed?

Hammond and nearly a dozen other American military officers said in a series of Associated Press interviews this past week that the key was the Iraqis' sudden and largely unexpected leap into hard battle in Basra in March, followed by offensives in the northern city of Mosul and the Sadr City section of Baghdad ending in May.

The Iraqi army faltered initially in the Basra offensive, but the outcome seemed transformative for the Iraqis.

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