By Michael Gisick, Stars and Stripes
TIKRIT, Iraq — It was nearly midnight as four platoons of American soldiers stepped down from armored vehicles into the courtyard of a palace-turned-police station in this city where crumbling monuments mark the hometown of Saddam Hussein.
For the next six hours, as some 300 Iraqi soldiers and policemen fanned out to search the city for fighters still loyal to Saddam’s vision of a Sunni-led country, the Americans stayed at the station, monitoring the feed from a reconnaissance drone and waiting.
U.S. troops are continuing to pull away from a front-line role in security operations. But that mission last month also reflected a generally cautious approach to targeting an insurgent group that, unlike al-Qaida and its brethren, retains significant public support among Iraq’s Sunni minority. Link
