Latest Iraq thread

[Undertoad]

The war is over, and oh damn, somebody forgot to notify the media.

See, nobody is going to say "mission accomplished" this time.

Who's moving in on AQI's "last urban stronghold"? Not US forces:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080127/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

BAGHDAD - Iraqi army reinforcements moved Sunday into positions near the northern city of Mosul, ready to strike al-Qaida in Iraq targets in their last urban stronghold, a top Iraqi officer said.

Maj. Gen. Riyad Jalal, a senior officer in the Mosul region, said the additional forces were encamping in an Iraqi base near the city, and would open an offensive against al-Qaida fighters "immediately after all the added troops arrive."

[classicman]

Silence is Important

The 55 years old taxi driver start his talking with a strange sentence. He said “the only winner in this country is the bachelor”. After a while, we started talking about the old days and I asked him like twenty questions about the life during the sixties and the seventies. After tens minutes of the heated discussion, I could reach the main point.

The man lost his son who was kidnapped in one of the western neighborhoods of Baghdad more than a year ago. The kidnappers called him through his son phone saying “are you Shiite or Sunni?” the man replied “Im only Muslim and I never thought about this matter” then the kidnapper told him “don’t you care about your son’s life? You have to answer me”. The man said “why should I care? He is now your prisoner. If you want to kill him, you will hold the responsibility and if you release him, it would be your responsibility. Allah will ask you for everything you do”

[xoxoxoBruce]

I’m not going to talk about the military abilities or any other thing. I just want to raise one point. I know for sure that surprise is one of the most important factors of victory in any battle because the other side wouldn’t have the time to think or to act properly. This is a fact that everybody knows. So, why our government has been talking about the final battle with Qaida in Nineveh province for the last two weeks?

To give Qaida a chance to cut and run, thereby avoiding a lot of bloodshed and property destruction??
To give noncombatants a chance to get out of the way??

[Griff]

If Al Q, which didn't exist in Iraq before the invasion just to maintain perspective on our success, is sufficiently suppressed how long before our "allies" go back to killing shiites?

[classicman]

thats a big IF isn't it Griff?

[Griff]

Yah, we don't have a font that size.

[tw]

Originally Posted by classicman

thats a big IF isn't it Griff?

As soon as Sahdr called off his Mahdi Army (so as to reserve strength; probably to prepare for the eventual American withdrawal), then the Mahdi Army was no longer part of Al Qaeda? How do we explain that contradiction with "Al Qaeda" spin? More IFs that somehow get ignored when George Jr's "Al Qaeda" spin somehow becomes fact.

It's called an insurgency - a civil war. A war created, in part, by the power vacuum created by American and made worse when American leadership violated most every basic military principle understood even 2500 years ago. "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is the myth so that we ignore how incompetent this administration has been.

[classicman]

So, how does what you just said answer the "IF Al Q existed question" question? Question?

[TheMercenary]

February 11, 2008

Al-Qaeda leaders admit: 'We are in crisis. There is panic and fear'


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3346386.ece

[piercehawkeye45]

Not surprising, they made a huge mistake last year by turning their allies against them. They are probably done.

[classicman]

That wasn't a mistake. thats who they are!

[xoxoxoBruce]

I got this email from Michael Yon.

Greetings,
South Baghdad has truly quieted down. There is still some violence reminding us this is not over, but I walked down the street of one neighborhood the other day wearing no body armor or helmet.

I mentioned back in December that I expected US casualties likely would rise in January and February, and unfortunately this is occurring. The same is likely to happen in March. This masks the reality that much progress is being made and Iraq as a whole appears to be settling down, because it is easy to cherry pick facts that make it appear worse than it is. I believe that JAM is cooperating more than is being reported in the news.

The increased US causalities are to be expected due to the rapidly diminishing habitat for al Qaeda. Al Qaeda continues to get hammered south of Baghdad, out in Diyala, up in Salah ad Dinh, Nineveh, and other places, but of course some of them always squirt and escape.

Many al Qaeda have "escaped" to (or are being trapped in? ) Mosul. There are reports that al Qaeda has learned from their mistakes and are treating the people in Mosul better than they have treated people elsewhere; this could make it tougher to root them out of Mosul. But these reports are ambiguous: AQI typically treats people mostly well when they first move in, but the pattern is clear: eventually they go Helter Skelter and start cutting off kids' heads and so forth.

I expect fierce fighting to unfold in Mosul, and I should be there in a few days.

[classicman]

Bump - Couldn't find the thread where we were discussing the casualty counts and all so I put this here.

The study covered the period from the March 20, 2003 invasion through March 19, 2008, in which 91,358 violent deaths were recorded by Iraq Body Count.

The total number of civilian deaths in Iraq is widely disputed, but the count by the London-based group is widely considered a credible minimum.

Iraq Body Count uses figures from morgues and hospitals since the war started.

However, the authors focused on only 60,481 deaths linked to specific events, excluding Iraqis killed in prolonged episodes of violence during the U.S.-led invasion and the U.S. sieges of the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah in 2004.

The study found that 19,706 of the victims, or 33 percent, were abducted and killed execution-style, with nearly a third of those showing signs of torture such as bruises, drill holes or burns.

That compared with 16,922, or 27 percent, who died in bombings, most of them in suicide attacks.

The figures were similar to those recorded by the AP.

While the study didn't assign blame for the killings, death squads largely run by Shiite militias were believed to be behind many of the bullet-riddled bodies that turned up by the dozens on the streets of Baghdad and other cities — often stripped of any identification.

Those death squads were seeking revenge for the deaths of Shiite civilians at the hands of al-Qaida and other Sunni religious extremists in suicide bombings and other attacks.

Nor did they attempt to speculate how many missing people could be dead.

Although such killings continue, the numbers of bodies found every day have dropped to the single digits since the U.S. troop surge and a cease-fire called by the main militia leader, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, in August 2007.

The drop in violence is also due in part to the fact that many formerly mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad have been effectively segregated after the minority sect was purged by the death squads. Baghdad has since become a maze of concrete walls and checkpoints aimed at ensuring security.

Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst with the New York-based Human Rights Watch, blamed the sectarian violence and insurgency that followed the ouster of Saddam Hussein on poor postwar planning by the United States.

Only 4 percent of the Iraqi deaths included in the study, or 2,363, were a result of U.S. airstrikes, which frequently targeted suspected insurgents hiding in houses. But 46 percent of the victims whose gender could be determined were female and 39 percent were children.

The authors caution that those percentages may be inflated "because the media may tend to specifically identify female and young victims more readily than male adults among the dead."