NY Times - Militants Said to Flee Before U.S. Offensive by John Burns.

The operational commander of troops battling to drive fighters with Al Qaeda from Baquba said Friday that 80 percent of the top Qaeda leaders in the city fled before the American-led offensive began earlier this week. He compared their flight with the escape of Qaeda leaders from Falluja ahead of an American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004.

In an otherwise upbeat assessment, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, told reporters that leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia had been alerted to the Baquba offensive by widespread public discussion of the American plan to clear the city before the attack began. He portrayed the Qaeda leaders’ escape as cowardice, saying that “when the fight comes, they leave,” abandoning “midlevel” Qaeda leaders and fighters to face the might of American troops — just, he said, as they did in Falluja.

Some American officers in Baquba have placed blame for the Qaeda leaders’ flight on public remarks about the offensive in the days before it began by top American commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, the overall commander in Iraq. But General Odierno cast the issue in broader terms, saying Qaeda leaders were bound to know an attack was coming in light of President Bush’s decision to pour nearly 30,000 additional troops into the fight in a bid to secure Baghdad and areas around the capital that have been insurgent strongholds. That included Baquba, which lies 40 miles north...
Washington Post - Iraq Push Revives Criticism of Force Size by Tom Ricks.

The major U.S. offensive launched last weekend against insurgents in and around Baghdad has significantly expanded the military's battleground in Iraq -- "a surge of operations," and no longer just of troops, as the second-ranking U.S. commander there said yesterday -- but it has renewed concerns about whether even the bigger U.S. troop presence there is large enough.

As the U.S. offensive, code-named Phantom Thunder, has been greeted with a week of intensified fighting in areas outside the capital -- areas that the U.S. military has largely left untouched for as long as three years -- the push raised fears from security experts and officers in the field that the new attacks might simply propel the enemy from one area to another where there are not as many U.S. troops...
The Fourth Rail - One Week of Operation Phantom Thunder by Bill Roggio.

Operation Phantom Thunder, the corps coordinated operation across three theaters in the Baghdad Belts, has completed it seventh day. Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the ground forces commander, briefed on the operation. To date, Coalition and Iraqi forces have killed 159 al Qaeda and insurgents, wounded 41, and detained 721 suspects. Coalition and Iraqi forces found and destroyed 304 roadside bombs, seven car bombs and 128 weapons caches.

Operation Arrowhead Ripper, the campaign in the Diyala theater, remains the hottest of the three. So far the bulk of the fighting is occurring in Baqubah, the provincial capital. "At least 55 al-Qaida operatives have been killed, 23 have been detained, 16 weapons caches have been discovered, 28 improvised explosive devices have been destroyed and 12 booby-trapped structures have been destroyed," since the start of Arrowhead Ripper, Multinational Forces Iraq reported. Coalition and Iraqi forces also found an al Qaeda "torture chamber." Upwards of 1,000 al Qaeda fighters are thought to be holed up in the western half of the city.

Al Qaeda prepared for the assault on Baqubah. "Days before the offensive, unmanned U.S. drones recorded video of insurgents digging trenches with back-hoes," the Associated Press reported. "About 30 improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, were planted on Route Coyote, the U.S. code name for a main Baqubah thoroughfare." About fifteen percent of the western portion of the city is said to have been cleared, and the operation could take up to 60 days...
LA Times - In Iraq, Role of Tribes is Divisive by Alexandra Zavis.

When the Sunni Muslim sheik sent his representatives into the heaving Baghdad slum where a Shiite Muslim militia holds sway, many thought he was courting disaster. Sunnis mutter darkly that the only members of their sect who enter Sadr City are the ones stuffed into the trunk of a car.

But on this occasion, the head of a Shiite family stood up and recited a poem calling Abdul Sattar Rishawi "the honest, the decent, the good sheik, who would not bow his head in humiliation." The sheik's representatives were so pleased, they asked him to read it again.

This kind of bold move has persuaded the U.S. command to champion tribal leaders such as Rishawi as a way around the government stalemate in Baghdad. Rishawi has formed an alliance of Sunni Arab tribes that are fighting Al Qaeda-linked insurgents in Al Anbar province. Military leaders, who have provided weapons and other material to some tribal groups there, hope that Rishawi's effort can be replicated in other provinces.

But some Western officials question the wisdom of encouraging tribalism in Iraq, when such loyalties have helped to cripple development and stir conflict in other parts of the world. Iraq's Shiite-led government also is uneasy over the alliances, which Prime Minister Nouri Maliki warns could end up creating even more militias if weapons fall into the wrong hands...