Dozens of Tortured Bodies Found Across Baghdad

EDWARD WONG: Well, right now, it's still too soon to tell what might happen.

We do see some quiet returning to some of the neighborhoods they have gone through. Obviously, the big question is that whether they can do this throughout the entire city. Baghdad is a very large city. It's got seven million people. And, as I said, the Americans can't leave behind their troops as they move from neighborhood to neighborhood. They're leaving behind lots of Iraqi troops, but they're having to move American troops from place to place in Baghdad, in order to do this operation.

Like I said, a lot of Iraqis fear the day Americans leave their neighborhood, because, right now, they see the Americans as a neutral arbiter between Sunni and Shiite militias.

The other big question is the push into eastern Baghdad. So far, the Americans haven't given a date as to when they might do that. But, obviously, eastern Baghdad has some strongholds held by Shiite militias. And it will be interesting to see what happens when the Americans carry the operation in that direction.

RAY SUAREZ: By reinforcing Baghdad, did American forces have to leave other parts of the country?

EDWARD WONG: They did post some units from other parts. There was one unit that was scheduled to go to Anbar Province, for example, the troubled western province of Iraq, the heartland of the insurgency. And they had to bring that unit to Baghdad instead for the fight here.

They also pulled a unit down from the Mosul area. I think the troop strength in Mosul has probably remained the same, because another unit went in from out of the country to replace it.

EDWARD WONG: Well, the -- obviously, the big issue on the agenda was security. And we know that Maliki and Ahmadinejad discussed that behind closed doors. When they emerged, they told reporters that they had reached some sort of agreement to cooperate.

Ahmadinejad said that, basically, Iraq's security was Iran's security, and that Iran was pledging all it could to help Iraq restore its security.

RAY SUAREZ: But no further sort of meat on the bones, no further explanation of what form that aid from Iran might take?

EDWARD WONG: No. They were very opaque about that.

One theory is that Iran might tell some of the Shiite militias that it has contacts and influence with here to quiet down on some of the violence. In the last month, a lot of American commanders and the American ambassador here have been saying that Iran has been pushing some of these militias to step up attacks against the Americans, and that they have been training and equipping some of these militias, or at least elements in Iran, if not the Iranian government.

The Americans have been putting some pressure on Iran publicly over this. They have also, obviously, have been expressing their desire to the Iraqi officials to try and persuade Iran to quiet down. And this might be one avenue in which Iran could help, if it decides to do so.

EDWARD WONG: Well, that's a very controversial proposal right now.

Basically, the -- one of the more -- most powerful Shiite leaders in the country, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, is the primary sponsor of this bill, which would set up a mechanism for creating federal regions.

Now, Iraq already basically has one large federal region. That's Kurdistan. But Hakim wants to create a large southern region that would be dominated by the Shiites and that would be rich in oil. Most of Iraq's oil reserves are down near the southern port of Basra.

And -- and the common wisdom is that Hakim would probably try and become the ruler of this region. Lots of Iraqis are against this, both ordinary Iraqis, as well as politicians. The Sunni-Arabs are basically opposed to it, because any federation that would be created among the Sunni provinces would lack oil.

We have got Muqtada al-Sadr's group that's come out against it, for various reasons. One is that they -- they're generally rivals of Hakim, and they're going against anything that Hakim proposes. But they have also been ideologically opposed to splitting up Iraq.

RAY SUAREZ: Ed Wong, joining us from Baghdad, good to talk to you.

EDWARD WONG: Thanks a lot, Ray.