US shifting resources to fight 'terrorism threat' in Iraq

The United States and its coalition partners are shifting tactics and resources to meet the emerging and complicated threat of terrorism in Iraq, senior U.S. officials said in a series of television news appearances on August 24.

Paul Bremer, administrator of the civilian Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stressed that the struggle against terrorism in Iraq is one shared by Americans, Iraqis, and the entire international community, as the recent bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad demonstrated.

Bremer said that the terrorist threat in Iraq is a complex one and has three distinct elements. One consists of foreign groups -- particularly Ansar al-Islam, which has al Qaeda ties -- that have infiltrated the country. The second element consists of what Bremer called "bitter enders" of the old regime, who are responsible for most of the attacks against coalition forces and are confined to a small area of the country. The third component is the sabotage of infrastructure such as electric power and oil pipelines by ex-regime members, according to Bremer.

"And in the case of all three of these, what we are doing is trying to engage more Iraqis in the fight," Bremer said on Fox News Sunday. "We have now almost 60,000 Iraqis in the police force and the border police, in the new Iraqi army, in the Iraqi civil defense force, all of them working together."