{"id":3450,"date":"2008-10-14T05:00:08","date_gmt":"2008-10-14T10:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3450"},"modified":"2008-10-14T05:00:08","modified_gmt":"2008-10-14T10:00:08","slug":"now-it-is-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3450","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Now It Is Safe&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The blast walls that criscrossed Baghdad to contain car bombs and other terrorist acts are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/10\/10\/world\/middleeast\/10walls.html?_r=1&#038;partner=permalink&#038;exprod=permalink&#038;oref=slogin\">starting to come down<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThey protected against car bombs and drive-by attacks,\u201d said Adnan, 39, a vegetable seller in the once violent neighborhood of Dora, who argues that the walls now block the markets and the commerce that Baghdad needs to thrive. \u201cNow it is safe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The slow dismantling of the concrete walls is the most visible sign of a fundamental change here in the Iraqi capital. The American surge strategy, which increased the number of United States troops and contributed to stability here, is drawing to a close. And a transition is under way to the almost inevitable American drawdown in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>There are now more than 148,000 United States troops in <a title=\"More news and information about Iraq.\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/news\/international\/countriesandterritories\/iraq\/index.html?inline=nyt-geo\"><font color=\"#004276\">Iraq<\/font><\/a>, down from the peak of around 170,000 a year ago, and President Bush has accepted the military\u2019s recommendation to remove 8,000 more by February.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It sure is a good thing for the Democrats that the economy tanked before <em>this <\/em>news could get out, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The blast walls that criscrossed Baghdad to contain car bombs and other terrorist acts are starting to come down: \u201cThey protected against car bombs and drive-by attacks,\u201d said Adnan, 39, a vegetable seller in the once violent neighborhood of Dora, who argues that the walls now block the markets and the commerce that Baghdad needs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-money","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}