General Says Mission In Baghdad Falls Short

Iraqi soldiers are treated after a Kirkuk car bombing aimed at soldiers and civilians waiting to cash paychecks at a bank. Twelve people were killed. (Associated Press)

"The enemy knows that killing innocent people and Americans will garner headlines and create a sense of frustration," he said.

Caldwell said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has adopted Operation Together Forward as "the model which he is trying to take to clear the city of the violence and extremism." But the campaign is under intense counterattack, he said, because "if you want to in fact discredit the government and show they have an inability to bring security and safety to the city, you would in fact target the focus areas. We think that's exactly why it's occurring."

Maliki, who heads a government led by Shiite Muslim religious parties, has come under criticism recently for not doing enough to curb sectarian violence, particularly reining in the Mahdi Army, the militia controlled by popular Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The force has been accused of slaughtering Sunni Arabs and forcing tens of thousand of them to flee their homes.

Caldwell also said that on Wednesday, at Maliki's behest, the U.S. military freed a Sadr official, Mazin al-Saidy, who had been detained the day before by U.S. forces in Baghdad on suspicion of being a member of the Mahdi Army and involvement in the killings of numerous Sunnis.

Caldwell said he did not know why Maliki had intervened to have Saidy released, but said it was not for the United States to "second-guess him."

"He is the prime minister of this nation, and . . . if he makes that decision, he has a lot of other information which we probably are not privy to," Caldwell said.

He said that as a condition of his release, Saidy signed a statement "promising to support the government of Iraq and disavow future acts of violence."

Washington Post correspondents in Mosul, Kirkuk and Baqubah contributed to this report.