A story in the Washington Times bears the headline, U.S. threatens crushing offensive to calm Baghdad.
It's going to be an operation unlike anything this city has seen," Col. Doug Heckman added. "It's a multiple-order magnitude of difference, not just a 30 percent, I mean a couple hundred percent" larger than previous offensives.
The job of stabilizing Baghdad had become increasingly urgent after a wave of violence that, an Interior Ministry official said, claimed nearly 1,000 lives in the past week alone -- about135 of them in a single truck bombing on Saturday. At least 103 persons were killed or found dead yesterday, most of them in Baghdad, police reported.
The officers said the new security operation will be headed by Lt. Gen. Abboud Gambar, a Shi'ite in his early 60s who was named to the post under pressure from the U.S. military. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki initially had selected Lt. Gen. Mohan al-Freiji for the job.
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