As a former M1A1 crewman, I have no idea how anyone survived this. My guess is it was the tank commander (who was probably standing in the turret and blown free) and the driver.
How?
by John Cole| 9 Comments
This post is in: War
by John Cole| 9 Comments
This post is in: War
As a former M1A1 crewman, I have no idea how anyone survived this. My guess is it was the tank commander (who was probably standing in the turret and blown free) and the driver.
This post is in: War
The noose tightens:
Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam Hussein’s top lieutenant, has probably been captured or killed in a raid by US forces, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC)said on Tuesday.
Mouwafak al-Rubai, a Shiite member of the IGC, told Reuters that US troops had conducted a major operation on a suspicious target in the northern city of Kirkuk, and al-Douri might have been killed or caught, Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV channel reported.
A US military spokesman could not confirm the report at the moment, but said the US-led coalition authority will give details about the incident later.
The US military has blamed al-Douri for passing money for or even coordinating a number of anti-coalition attacks, and offered a reward of 10 million dollars for anyone who provides information leading to his capture of killing.
US forces last month destroyed one of his houses near Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit and detained in Samarra his wife and daughter and a son of his physician, all of whom US officials said might help them to know about al-Douri’s whereabout.
Al-Douri, number six on the most wanted 55 list, was the vice chairman of the former Revolutionary Command Council and remained the highest ranking official at large other than Saddam himself.
I am sure this will be spun as bad news somewhere…
They didn’t catch him. Damn.
US troops that encircled the town of Hawijah for 12 hours on Tuesday in a swoop for Saddam Hussein’s deputy Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri as part of a massive manhunt across north-central Iraq failed to find the wanted fugitive, a US spokesperson said.
“Al-Duri was not captured in this raid,” said Major Doug Vincent, spokesman for the 173rd Airborne Division, which mounted the huge search operation, told reporters who accompanied the 1 200 troops involved.
The principal target of the search in this town of 80 000 people, 45km west of Iraq’s northern oil centre of Kirkuk, was someone who had a “close relation with al-Duri,” another US officer told reporters.
As Donald Sensing frequently notes, ‘First reports are always wrong.’
by John Cole| 10 Comments
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From Reuters (via Drudge):
U.S. soldiers killed 46 Iraqis and captured eight trying to carry out a series of attempted ambushes on U.S. convoys in the central Iraqi city of Samarra on Sunday, a U.S. military spokesman said.
“The fourth infantry division repelled multiple ambush attacks,” Lieutenant Colonel William MacDonald told reporters.At least 18 attackers, five U.S. soldiers and a civilian traveling with the troops were wounded during the ambushes.
“The attacks were coordinated in locations very close to each other,” he said, adding that the ambushes were made on separate U.S. convoys using mortars, grenades and small arms fire. Three buildings, from whose roofs the attackers fired, were destroyed.
“The attackers attempted to block one of the convoy’s way with a makeshift barricade,” MacDonald said, citing three main attack points around Samarra, north of Baghdad.
“In all of the clashes coalition firepower overwhelmed the attackers resulting in significant enemy losses,” he said. “If you attempt to attack one of our convoys we’re going to use our firepower to stop that attack.”
Some of the attackers wore the attire of Fedayeen, a militia formed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before U.S.-led forces toppled him earlier this year.
Quagmire.
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by John Cole| 31 Comments
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More than a dozen rockets fired from donkey carts slammed into Iraq’s Oil Ministry and two hotels Friday — attacks dismissed by a U.S. general as “militarily insignificant” but which also exposed weaknesses in gathering intelligence on insurgents.
The brazen, coordinated strikes at some of Baghdad’s most heavily protected civilian sites defied a U.S. crackdown.
Two other donkeys — one pulling a rocket launcher and another rigged to a bomb — were found within hours, one 30 yards from the Italian Embassy. U.S. officials said the targets were the headquarters of a Kurdish political party and a law school.
A civilian contractor was seriously injured at the Palestine Hotel, where many foreign journalists and U.S. workers are staying. No other casualties were reported at the Palestine or at the Sheraton Hotel across the street, and police said no one was hurt at the ministry.
“They’re trying to break our will. They’re trying to seize the headlines … but they’re militarily insignificant,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military deputy director for operations, said at a news conference.
But he conceded that the insurgents were playing off American weaknesses, specifically in terms of gathering intelligence that could have prevented the attacks.
Am I the only one who sees this as a sign of weakness of the enemy? Their only option is to have a few jackasses strap a rocket to a jackass and then attack soft targets? This is spun as a sign that we are losing? I don’t get it.
Meanwhile, Matt Yglesias recycles a few lies and in the process finds the real enemy in Iraq- James Lileks:
First we were assured that the Iraqi people would welcome us in every way and western war opponents were castigated for being insufficiently attentive to the needs of Iraqis. Now Iraqis face condemnation for being insufficiently supportive of our policies.
A.) No one stated the Iraqi people would welcome us in every way- this is more nonsense from the quagmire crowd. You can almost hear Yglesias itching to say ‘cakewalk.’
B.) No one is condemning Iraqis for being insufficiently supportive- Lileks was responding to a rather obnoxious, short-sighted, petulant, and assinine letter from Salam Pax:
To tell you the truth, I am glad that someone is doing the cleaning up, and thank you for getting rid of that scary guy with the hideous moustache that we had for president. But I have to say that the advertisements you were dropping from your B52s before the bombs fell promised a much more efficient and speedy service. We are a bit disappointed. So would you please, pretty please, with sugar on top, get your act together and stop telling people you have Iraq all figured out when you are giving us the trial-and-error approach?
Then again- that does sound like something from the DNC, so I understand why Matt is endorsing it. At any rate, has Matt apologized for this out and out lie yet?
*** Update ***
Baldilocks asks a question. The answer, Baldilocks, is because some people are idiots.
by John Cole| 15 Comments
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David Brooks, in a moment of real clarity, points out who the enemy is in Iraq:
Um Haydar was a 25-year-old Iraqi woman whose husband displeased Saddam Hussein’s government. After he fled the country in 2000, some members of the Fedayeen Saddam grabbed her from her home and brought her out on the street. There, in front of her children and mother-in-law, two men grabbed her arms while another pulled her head back and beheaded her. Baath Party officials watched the murder, put her head in a plastic bag and took away her children.
Try to put yourself in the mind of the killer, or of the guy with the plastic bag. You are part of Saddam’s vast apparatus of rape squads, torture teams and mass-grave fillers. Every time you walk down the street, people tremble in fear. Everything else in society is arbitrary, but you are absolute. When you kill, your craving for power and significance is sated. You are infused with the joy of domination.
These are the people we are still fighting in Iraq. These are the people who blow up Red Cross headquarters and U.N. buildings and fight against democracy and freedom. They are the scum of the earth. And they are being joined in their lairs by the flotsam and jetsam of the terrorist world.
Their scumminess is our great advantage. People like this will never lead a popular insurgency. They have nothing positive to offer normal, decent people. They survive only by cruelty and the power of intimidation.
Meanwhile, in a display of the shallow fecklessness typical of those on the far left or those whose only concern is attacking this administration so that Democrats may have electoral success in 2004, Josh Marshall is concerned only with the language used to describe the enemy:
We
by John Cole| 11 Comments
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I can’t wait for the villifciation of this guy as nothing more than a right wing hack:
Auxiliary Bishop Andraos Abouna of Baghdad said he believed media were running a propaganda campaign to discredit the American-led coalition that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and now runs Iraq.
Bishop Abouna, a Chaldean Catholic, told the Catholic Herald in London that the situation in Iraq is steadily improving rather than descending into a morass resembling the Vietnam War, as often depicted by media outlets.
“It’s getting better but still there are many problems,” Bishop Abouna said. “The first problem is that they need security, then they need water and electricity — and all these things are getting better.”
“The media are exaggerating a lot of things. They should be realistic about the situation in Iraq. Newspapers and television are saying a lot of things that aren’t true. When they go there they can see everything (is changing),” he said.
Liar- it is a quagmire! The left and RW Apple said so! Bush is a warmongerer! We are losing! Vote Dean!