Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top spokesman for the United States military here, sounded a cautious note on Wednesday at a briefing in which he provided his own assessment of the security plan’s first month. “We know that there has been a decrease in violence, but things still need to get better,” he said. “We still need to be patient.”
Image Quieter Baghdad An Iraqi boy approached an American soldier in Baghdad Wednesday after hearing gunshots. The Iraqi military said violence in the capital had fallen in the first month of the new security plan. Credit... Maya Alleruzzo/Associated Press
General Caldwell did not provide counts of civilian deaths. He said assassinations were down 50 percent, but that February “was an all-time high” for car bombs. According to American military figures, 44 car bombs struck Baghdad in February, out of 77 nationwide. In January, 40 car bombs exploded in the capital, out of 73 nationwide. Only one other stretch appeared to be worse: during eight days in late April and early May 2005, 60 car bombs exploded throughout the country  a rate that has yet to be repeated, according to military officials.
Car bombs have been a hallmark of the Sunni insurgency for years, and they are among the most difficult weapons to stop. General Caldwell nonetheless said that eliminating such high-profile attacks was now the primary goal of American troops across Baghdad. Troops have focused raids on suspected car bomb factories, and blast walls have been set up around Baghdad markets to minimize casualties from car bombs that manage to get through.
General Caldwell’s comments  combined with praise for the cooperation of Shiite officials and negotiators for the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia loyal to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr  seemed to suggest that the military was returning to its former strategy of concentrating on Sunni extremists. That would represent a change from American officials’ comments in the past few months that identified Shiite militias as Iraq’s largest threat.
General Caldwell declined to answer a question about whether any recent attacks or assassinations could be attributed to the Mahdi militia, and he said car bombs from radical Sunnis had become Iraq’s most sinister source of sectarian violence.
As Sunnis have continued to attack, General Caldwell said, Iraqis in Shiite neighborhoods have exercised restraint. He provided two examples: the decline in assassinations typically conducted by Shiite groups as a form of vengeance and intimidation, and the joint Iraqi-American negotiations in the Sadr City district of Baghdad that he said had laid the groundwork for a security operation there that had faced little resistance from residents.
General Caldwell said that 12 reconstruction projects, worth about $3.5 million, had been approved for Sadr City. The biggest-ticket item was an amusement park on the neighborhood’s eastern edge that had been requested by the district’s mayor and other neighborhood officials. He said the scale of killing over the past week, even with an increase in deaths in attacks on Shiites making a pilgrimage to Karbala, was still below what occurred in the fourth week of the two previous efforts to secure the capital.
Map of Iraq

Iraqi Brigadier General Qassim Atta al-Mussawi reported that ''Operation Law and Order'' (Arabic: ''Fardh Al-Qanoon'') has been successful in curbing violence in the capital.  Coalition forces have swept through various Baghdad neighborhoods in the past few months.  Atta, a spokesperson for the operation cited comparative statistics for the four-week periods of mid-January to mid-February versus mid-February to mid-March:
* Civilian killing: 1440 to 265
* Roadside bombings: 163 to 102
* Carbombs: 56 to 36
* Mortar attacks: 204 to 109
* Assassination incidents: 519 to 22
* Kidnappings: 98 to 10

It is not clear what these numbers are based on, and independent estimates of the death toll are much higher. According to data compiled by Iraq Body Count (IBC), a volunteer project that maintains a database of civilian deaths in Iraq from media reports, at least 393 people died in and around Baghdad between February 15 and March 11.

The ''New York Times'' estimates 450 Iraqi civilian deaths in and around the capital in the period, using initial reports provided by hospitals and the Iraqi Interior ministry.

The Associated Press reports that deaths from bombings have dropped by a third (528 to 370) after the start of the operations. It also reports that the number of bodies found in Baghdad, believed to be victims of sectarian death squads, has dropped from more than 200 a week to about 80 a week.

At a separate news-conference, US military spokesperson Major General William Caldwell said the security plan is showing signs of progress. "The murders and executions have come down by over 50 percent," Caldwell said. He did acknowledge that reduced violence in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood may be linked to the absence of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who he said was still in neighboring Iran as of 24 hours ago.

All this comes as the United States Congress is debating resolutions on re-deploying troops from Iraq.  The troop surge has also been in recent debate on whether or not it is the right move as of now.  Meanwhile the United Kingdom announced that it would start withdrawing soon.