Two suicide bomb attacks on police stations in the Sunni suburbs of Baghdad left 18 dead and 30 wounded. Attacks against Iraqi police have increased markedly in Sunni Arab areas. This is because the Iraqi police are much more capable of hunting down and arresting members of the Iraqi resistance. So for the next few months, there will be a lot of violence against the Iraqi police. In response, new recruits for the police and security forces are being increased by thousands of new men each week, and US troops are increasingly active in raids against Baath Party and foreign terrorist targets. The increasing police presence is providing more tips and American troops are preferred for the raids because they have better weapons and training for that sort of thing. Iraqi police are often called in to translate and do crowd control and calming down the neighborhood after the American troops have left. Some better trained Iraqi police sometimes accompany American troops on raids. 

Current American plans call for reducing U.S. troops in Iraqi to 105,000 next year and then keep at least 100,000 there until 2006.