(KUNA) -- General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed during a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday that two U.S. battalions are moving into the Baghdad area, which Pace described as "extremely important".U.S. Army General George Casey, commander of multinational forces in Iraq, is working very closely with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to ensure that the actions of coalition forces and Iraqi security forces are coordinated, and that they support the political process Maliki is striving to attain, Pace said. Pace declined to predict how big the troops increase in the Baghdad area would grow, or for how long. "Baghdad is extremely important to the Iraqi government, and their armed forces and their security forces are the proper long-term solution to that problem," Pace said. If there are Iraqi forces available to Maliki to move into the Baghdad area that are not currently engaged elsewhere in Iraq, and if Maliki is able "to move them comfortably without creating a vacuum" some place else in Iraq, "that is worth looking at as well," Pace said.
There has been an increase in the number of both Iraqi and coalition forces in Baghdad, he said, "but the impact of those increases has not been what we wanted it to be," so Casey and Maliki "are reassessing," Pace said.
Pace denied reports suggesting that the Pentagon is considering shifting U.S. Marines to Baghdad and turning the volatile Al Anbar Province over to the Iraqis. "Why would we want to forfeit any part of Iraq to the enemy?" Pace said. "We do not. We want to provide security for the Iraqi people. You want to be able to assist the Iraqi government in providing good governance and providing economic opportunity, and those three things fit together -- security, governance and economy. You are not going to have success or progress in one without success and progress in all three".
There are no "immediate thoughts" to moving all coalition forces out of Al Anbar Province and turning over "right now today" all security in Al Anbar to Iraqi security forces, Pace said, adding, "It is not on the table".
"It is not practical to expect that we can snuff out terrorism completely, but it is reasonable to strive to have an environment inside of which terrorist acts are below the level at which the Iraqi government can function, where the economy can prosper and where the Iraqi people can live their lives the way they want to," Pace said.
Asked about many who have concluded that Iraq is already in a civil war, Pace said the level of violence being inflicted by al Qaeda and the like in Iraq is specifically designed to create a civil war and "an ungovernable condition so the terrorists can then set up shop and rule those people the way they want to".
"So it is much more important that we focus on how to defeat the enemy that is trying to create the civil war than it is we spend a lot of time dancing on the head of a pin as far as what particular words we should use to describe the environment which is currently unacceptable," he said.