Raymond Odierno, the 4th Infantry's top general in Tikrit, could have rejected the recommendation and ordered a court martial.
The U.S. Central Command also said Iraqi forces appeared to be regrouping in Tikrit, northwest of Baghdad, and reinforcing their positions.
For these troops here, the one's I've been interacting with at Raider base and at other bases in Tikrit, it's been a long, long trip.
In another incident in Tikrit, police detained four people wearing Iraqi police uniforms who they said had thrown stun grenades at voters outside a polling center.
The mother of Sergeant Carlos Escobales, a Miami postman who was sent to Iraq in February and is now in Tikrit, had hoped he would be home in October, but had not made a fuss.
The task force typically operates in the Tikrit area, north of Baghdad.
Nevertheless, three mortars exploded near a polling station in central Tikrit, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, Saturday morning, an official with the Interior Ministry said.
Major Tom Bryant, a spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade in nearby Tikrit, says the informants said as many as 100 insurgents, at least some of them foreign fighters, were operating in the region.
TIKRIT, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. Marines rescued seven American soldiers held by Iraqis north of Baghdad on Sunday before rushing off to join in the battle for Tikrit, according to a Canadian reporter embedded with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader toppled by the United States in 2003, was from the Tikrit region.
But in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and other Sunni cities, including the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, angry demonstrators denounced the sentence.
Lieutenant Colonel Todd Wood of Richmond Hill, Georgia, is training Iraqi forces in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
If there were heavy forces, such as the 4th Infantry Division, on the ground in the north and advancing south towards Tikrit and Baghdad, Iraqi resistance would be divided, enabling allied units moving up from the south to do so more quickly.
"We had somebody come into Tikrit, the 1st Brigade, and give us ... a tip to conduct a raid on a house south of Tikrit, which we conducted last night, " Odierno said in a video teleconference from Baghdad with reporters in Washington.
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