In Iraq, Petraeus Hearings Barely Registered

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The congressional testimony of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker barely registered in Iraq. Several parliament members were unaware of what was said at the hearings. Many Baghdad residents had no idea they had taken place. Even on Alhurra, an American-funded Arabic satellite channel, the testimony was the 10th and final report on yesterday's evening newscast.

"The Americans have hundreds of meetings and testimonies like this, and what has it done for the Iraqi people? Nothing," a carpenter in the capital's Karrada district, Allah Sadiq, 49, said. "So why do we care? We just want all the foreigners to leave and stop causing disasters for our country."

Most Iraqis interviewed yesterday were more concerned about a day-long curfew in the capital that left most streets nearly deserted. Continued clashes between Shiite militia members and American and Iraqi troops in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood left at least 22 people dead, the Associated Press reported, including three children who were killed when apparently errant mortar shells struck houses and a funeral tent. The American military also announced the deaths of five American soldiers, bringing the troop death toll to 17 since Sunday. Four of the deaths occurred yesterday and the other on Tuesday, the military said.

Few Iraqis paid much attention to the events in Washington.

"I don't think that most politicians here are very interested in what's going on in the report by Petraeus and Crocker," a Shiite lawmaker and informal adviser to Prime Minister Maliki, Sami al Askari, said. "To be honest, no one expects anything different in the report or believes that it will have that big an impact on Iraq."

Most Iraqi lawmakers continue to support the presence of the American-led coalition as necessary to maintaining security in the country. "We prefer that the multinational forces remain in Iraq till the Iraqi armed forces finishes building its force and is able to establish security," a Kurdish legislator, Mohsen Saadoon, said.

The strongest political opposition to the presence of American troops continues to come from supporters of anti-American cleric Muqtada al Sadr, who have been involved in fierce clashes with Iraqi and American troops over the past two weeks in Basra and the capital. His followers demand an immediate pullout of all foreign troops from Iraq.