Buoyed by the capture of former Iraq leader Saddam Hussein's closest aide, the US military yesterday pressed on with its hunt for top ousted regime loyalists while Iraq readied to resume oil exports, key to its reconstruction.
With US troops patrolling Baghdad suffering losses this week to snipers and a drive-by shooting, and anger in the capital flaring over the slow return of basic services, US lawmakers have asked if the military is overstretched.
But the US commander of the division operating around Saddam's hometown of Tikrit -- believed to be where most trusted aide Abid Hamid Mahmud was arrested Monday -- insisted attacks on US forces were no great cause for concern.
"I really qualify it is as militarily insignificant. They are very small. They are very random. They are very ineffective," Major General Ray Odierno, commander of the US Army's 4th Infantry Division said.
The capture of Abid Hamid came as a much-needed fillip to US efforts to track down remaining Saddam die-hards, while Washington will be hoping the man who was seen as the president's shadow will be able to shed light on his fate.
"There is a good chance he knows quite a bit," one US defense official said in Washington.
The arrest came amid a series of US raids in the Tikrit area, north of Baghdad. Saddam and Abid Hamid hail from the same village, Aujah, just outside Tikrit itself.
The US said in April, shortly before the fall of the Iraqi regime, that it intended to put Saddam and his top advisors on trial for war crimes allegedly committed during the repressive reign of the Baath Party.
Odierno also said that a top Saddam bodyguard was captured in a raid on two farmhouses in the area that also netted millions of dollars, jewels and weapons associated with Saddam's special security services.
But he did not identify the bodyguard, saying only that senior Baathists were believed to be among the 15 to 20 people captured at the farm as well as the scores more detained in other raids in the area.
But despite the upbeat military assessment by the American military, US lawmakers on Wednesday expressed alarm at the rising number of troops killed.
"While our military did remarkable work in defeating two terrorist regimes in short order, events in Afghanistan and Iraq make it clear that we have a ways to go," said Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.
"The terrorist elements have been defeated, but they haven't been destroyed," he said.
US military officials said yesterday that a mortar attack on an Iraqi center coordinating rebuilding efforts in the country left one Iraqi dead and 12 others injured.
Wednesday's attack in Samarra, around 100km north of Baghdad, targeted the Civil Military Operations Center, charged with coordinating humanitarian aid.
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