Newsview: U.S. Interests on Line in Iraq

An Iraqi burns an American flag as thousands of Shiite Iraqis gathered in a mass demonstration against Israel's bombing of Lebanon, Friday, Aug. 4, 2006, in the Sadr City area of Baghdad, Iraq. Over 200,000 Shiites filled the streets of the Shiite dominated Sadr City slum to attend a rally in support of Lebanon after Friday prayers. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban) (Hadi Mizban - AP)

U.S. and Iraqi officials have given few details about the upcoming operation, expected to start within days or a few weeks. The U.S. military said 3,700 soldiers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade were being shifted from northern Iraq to Baghdad. As many as 2,000 additional soldiers eventually may be added to the capital district, officials say.

American troops will move into flashpoint neighborhoods _ often with Iraqi troops _ in hopes of intimidating the gunmen and winning the confidence of residents who don't trust Iraqi forces to protect them regardless of their sect.

If all goes to plan, the next stage will be to fan out to religiously mixed areas around Baghdad to prevent Sunni and Shiite extremists from infiltrating the capital.

At the same time, Iraqi officials say they plan to retrain the 26 national police battalions _ the Interior Ministry's paramilitary units _ and weed out those suspected of ties to sectarian militias and criminal gangs.

But to succeed, the plan must overcome the same obstacles that have plagued the U.S. effort in Iraq since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime more than three years ago.

The most serious are a lack of enough troops to secure the country, weaknesses in an Iraqi security force rebuilt from scratch after the U.S. disbanded the Iraqi army in 2003 and rivalries among Iraqi religious and ethnic groups.

To reinforce Baghdad, the military is pulling troops out of areas that had been identified as major infiltration routes for foreign fighters entering Iraq from Syria. And northern cities such as Mosul and Tal Afar _ now relatively quiet _ could flare up again if the U.S. presence is diminished.

Reinforcing Baghdad inevitably means weakening U.S. and Iraqi abilities elsewhere, warns former Pentagon analyst Anthony Cordesman.

The fact that the United States feels it must is a "grim warning of just how serious the situation in Iraq has become," he said.

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Robert H. Reid is AP correspondent at large and has reported frequently from Iraq since 2003.