More on the Iraq reversal

In the LATimes, Army Lt. Gen Chiarelli talks about the redeployment out of superbases and back into the neighbohoods of Baghdad. He actually give something approaching firm numbers.

"Nine thousand U.S. soldiers, 8,500 Iraqi soldiers and 34,000 Iraqi police officers provide security in Baghdad. Military officials plan to bolster those numbers with 4,000 additional U.S. troops and 4,000 more Iraqi soldiers."

But I think the telling quote is at the end.

"Quite frankly, in 33 years in the United States Army, I never trained to stop a sectarian fight," he said. "This is something new."

Meanwhile in Baghdad, the violence goes on with an attack that killed 31 and injured 153 in the wealthy Karrada district. (Reuters - "Karrada was regarded as one of the few remaining relatively safe areas of the city.")

(AP) The explosion occurred about 200 yards from the house of Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite and a senior figure in the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's biggest Shiite party. One of the mortars exploded about 150 yards from SCIRI's headquarters in Karradah.....

The district, a mixed but mostly Shiite neighborhood, is also home to President Jalal Talabani and SCIRI leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim.

So, the Sunnis targeted the Shia leadership? In other violence, ethnic cleansing and highway robbery($1.3 million) in government uniforms and vehicles.

(And, Juan Cole may have something big brewing. While the US is concentrating in Baghdad, tensions are rising (street warfare) in Basra between the British and the Mehdi militia, but the key thing to note is that, maybe, the four top Shia clerics including Sistani agree with this statement,

"We fear the coming of a day when we cannot restrain a revolution of the people, with all its unsavory consequences." He said that the Iraqi government must take over security altogether from the foreign forces in Iraq.

Is this a negotiating point, a concerned statement, or a warning of the future?