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Haider Ajina, via email:
Greetings,
Largest Public Works Substation Opens in BaghdadSaturday, 28 June 2008
BAGHDAD — Iraqi Security Forces, civic leaders, local townspeople and Coalition forces gathered in the Ameriyah community in Baghdad's Mansour district June 25 for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to acknowledge the opening of the biggest public works substation in the Iraqi capital.
Public works substations provide essential services to local communities, such as trash pickup, street cleaning and other services necessary for proper community maintenance.
The opening of the Ameriyah substation marks an important milestone for residents of this area, who have not had these services in more than two years.
"These basic services used to be centralized into only one station located in the eastern Mansour district of Baghdad, creating a deficit in other parts of the city," said Army Col. Louis Fazeka, part of the provincial reconstruction team embedded with the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team in Multi-National Division- Baghdad.
"The focus of this mission has been to 'decentralize' and make substations throughout western Baghdad, making these services more readily available to those neglected parts of the city," Fazeka explained.
The colonel said that he hopes, in time, that these stations will aid in Ameriyah's security and stability by restoring the confidence of the people in their government.
"These people want these basic essential services that you and I take for granted back home," Fazeka said. "It boosts the peoples' confidence in the government."
With the help of contractors, the PRT went to work and cleaned up the area where the substation now stands, leveled the ground, fixed up the run-down house there and put concrete T-wall barriers around the lot to increase security for the workers and the equipment.
The project took 45 days to complete.
"This station has brought life back to 15,000 residents due to the reinstatement of these services," said Salwan Talal Latif, Iraqi public works assistant zone director, and a 30-year resident of Ameriyah.
"Seven months ago, we were hiding in our houses in fear for our lives," he continued. "But thanks be to God, ... all aspects of fear that we had [are] in the past, and our lives are open now, and so are our opportunities."
U.S troops transfer 1000 Humvees to Iraqi security forcesThe followng is my translation of a short article in Iraq’s Nahrain of June 28 08:Baghdad - Voices of Iraq
Friday , 27 /06 /2008
Baghdad, June27, (VOI) - Senior Iraqi and U.S force leaders celebrated the handover of 1,000 up-armoured Humvees to the Iraqi security forces, a military statement said on Friday.
Attended by Moufaq al-Rubai Iraqi national Security advisor, and David Petraeus, commander of U.S troops in Iraq, the transfer of Humvees ceremonies took place in the U.S base at Taji, 35 km north Baghdad, on Thursday. “This is just another step to enable Iraq to be self-defending and self-reliant,” the announcement cited Rubai as saying in the ceremonies. The Iraqi official added “we look forward to that day when we stand alone to fight the terrorists and join our forces with the American forces to fight the global war on terrorism”. The announcement noted Gen. Petraeus praised the Iraqi Security Forces for their advancements, highlighting “the transfer of the Humvees will help make the Iraqi soldiers and police safer, more mobile and more capable”.
This ceremony marked the first transfer of up-armoured Humvees to the Iraqi Ministry of Interior under a program that began in March 2008. The goal is to transfer 8,000 vehicles to the Iraqi security forces by the end of 2009. Since 2007, the U.S army has started supplying its troops in Iraq with vehicles resisting roadside bombing, which U.S defence experts termed as the most deadly weapon for military troops in Iraq.
The Iraqi Government sues U.N. over oil for food program.Haider's comments:Official spokesman for the Iraqi government Dr. Ali Aldabagh announced that the Iraqi government is filling law suites against individuals and companies involved in corruption and bribery in the “oil for food” program. This program has suffered large scandalous corruption and mismanagement. Many have collaborated with the Sadam regime by inflating pieces of goods and selling expired medication etc…., bribery schemes and supplying sub standard material in return for large bribes and pay backs.
The surge has provided the needed breathing room for the Iraqis to focus on development and getting their house in order. Going after the wrong doers in the ‘oil for food’ program is a long awaited action. The Iraqis will quickly find out who their real friend are. The scandal will be reopened and much will come out over the improprieties of those countries, individuals, U.N. and others, and companies taking advantage of suffering Iraqis under the Baathist regime.
Anbar province is in the midst of being handed over to the Iraqis. The ceremony will take place as soon as the current large sand storms settle down. Once this is done then ten out of 18 provinces will be under Iraqi control, just five years after the claps of the Baathist regime in Iraq.
Regards
Haider Ajina
McKinleyville CA
(Inspired by the same theme with a different application.)
Once upon a time a long time ago everyone with a guitar knew this one.
Politically incorrect update: In light of this:
Reporter: I'd like to direct this question to messrs. Lennon and McCartney. In a recent article, Time magazine put down pop music. And they referred to "Day Tripper" as being about a prostitute......I hearby dedicate this song to all the gals being forced to leave Iraq before their tours are over - just because of who they are.
Paul: Oh yeah.
Reporter: ...and "Norwegian Wood" as being about a lesbian.
Paul: Oh yeah.
Reporter: I just wanted to know what your intent was when you wrote it, and what your feeling is about the Time magazine criticism of the music that is being written today.
Paul: We were just trying to write songs about prostitutes and lesbians, that's all.
Previous entry here.
America entered World War Two December 07, 1941. Nearly every patriotic American man and woman rushed to join the military. At 16 years of age I was one of that group but was too young and not accepted.Years later he wrote four books about his experiences in WWII: Currahee!: A Screaming Eagle at NormandyWorked on road construction and as a carpenter for the next two years. I joined the army paratroops on my 18th birthday, April 5th, 1943 in Detroit, Michigan. Through an error in military records I was sent to Fort Riley, Kansas and took my basic training in the last active horse cavalry unit in the US, Troop E, 2nd Rgt., 1st Horse Cavalry. On completing basic training I affected a transfer to the Army Paratroops in Fort Benning, Ga. where I completed my paratrooper training. I joined the 101st Airborne Division in Aldbourne, England the last week of February 1944. I was assigned to A (Able) Company, 506 PIR. 101st Abn. Div. Able Company billeted nearly one year in the High Town Stables in Aldbourne, England prior to and following the Normandy Invasion.
I fought in four major campaigns including Normandy, Holland, Bastogne, and Germany ending in Austria. I was wounded three separate times. World War Two ended after we had occupied Hitler’s home in Berchtesgaden, Germany. Discharged December 31, 1945 in Camp Atterbury, Indiana, at age 20. I returned home January 01, 1946 to Detroit, Michigan. I could not vote, buy a car on contract or buy a beer. At age twenty I was not legally old enough. I became 21 April 05, 1946.
, The Road to Arnhem: A Screaming Eagle in Holland
, Seven Roads to Hell: A Screaming Eagle at Bastogne
, and Beyond the Rhine: A Screaming Eagle in Germany
.
And because Greyhawk is always searching for bargains for Citizens of Mudville, if you buy all four at Amazon you get 'em for the price of three.
I'd like to introduce you to three incredible Americans.
Melissa Stockwell, Scott Winkler and Carlos Leon served in Iraq and suffered serious injuries. Since then, they have overcome incredible obstacles to earn the right to represent the US at the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing, China. IAVA will be sponsoring their journey from now until the games begin in September. We are hoping to raise $20,000 to help Melissa, Scott and Carlos pursue their dreams of gold.Can you make a tax-deductible contribution to help us reach our goal? Take a minute to watch a short video about their incredible journeys.
Melissa Stockwell was the first female amputee from the Iraq war. Less than a year after losing her leg, she ran the New York City Marathon. She had never swum competitively before losing her leg, and recently became the first Iraq war veteran to qualify for the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing.
Carlos Leon managed to survive an entire year in Iraq as a Marine in the Sunni triangle, only to tragically break his neck in a swimming accident just weeks after returning home. After attending a Paralympic Military Sports Camp, Leon discovered a hidden talent and passion for throwing the discus. Carlos is headed to Beijing as the best in the world in the discus.
Scott Winkler was unloading an ammunition truck near Tikrit while under fire when he fell and became paralyzed from the chest down. He was introduced to sports during a Paralympic Sports Clinic. At the clinic, he tried throwing the shot put for the first time, and less than a year later he broke the world record. He is expected to dominate his field in Beijing.
Together these athletes carry the hopes and dreams of 30,000 other injured soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are role models for turning adversity into opportunity.
Along the road, Melissa, Carlos and Scott will be updating us on their progress. You can follow their journeys at www.iava.org/warrior-champions.
We're honored to be helping these three veterans represent our country at the Paralympics. Can you help them get to Beijing?
Thanks for your generous support.
Sincerely,
Paul Rieckhoff
Iraq Veteran
Executive Director
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America
92-6.
And oh by the way, funds for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, too.
Next: to the White House.
We've been tracking this one for a while now...
UPDATE: Law!
An 8-hour pro-troop web-a-thon. This broadcast is to support the push to send the largest single shipment of care packages to U.S. troops in history. "From the Front Lines" will be co-hosted by MAF's Melanie Morgan and HotAir.com's Michelle Malkin and feature some of the biggest patriotic leaders of our time.
Goes live on Ustream.TV at 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific.
I’ll be in beautiful Mountain View, CA all day today for “From the Frontlines,” our ground-breaking web-a-thon for the troops. Move America Forward’s Melanie Morgan and I will go live on Ustream.TV and right here at MichelleMalkin.com (as well as at HotAir.com) at 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific. (Just hit the play button on the embedded video player above when showtime arrives; if you’d like to join the live chatroom, make sure to register at UStream beforehand!) I’ll be updating this post all day as I liveblog the event from UStream’s studios. Thanks to all our fellow bloggers who’ve helped spread the word!
We’ve got a star-studded line-up of troops, military charities, celebs, and talk radio stars — from Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin to Dr. Laura and Laura Ingraham to musician John Ondrasik and “Lone Survivor” author and Navy SEAL hero Marcus Luttrell — who’ll be joining us in our eight-hour marathon fund-raising drive to help send the largest number of care packages in history to our men and women in uniform serving overseas.
<...> You can sponsor a care package right here, with items ranging from $15.99 to $899.99. Let me know what you picked out (leave it in in comments or e-mail me) so I can keep a running tally.
Video messages can be sent to Danny Gonzalez, Communications Director at Move America Forward. Contact Danny at: danny@moveamericaforward.org
Complete information on "From the Front Lines" can be found at: http://www.MoveAmericaForward.org
And - get those video messages emailed to Danny Gonzalez ASAP!
danny@moveamericaforward.org
(Previous entry here)
Artifacts and other Facts
Sometimes you find indicators of progress in Iraq in odd places. This story contains a hidden gem - see if you notice it (Hint: I subtly highlighted it in bold) :
Jordan returns stolen antiquities to Iraq(Comprehensive coverage of this and other recoveries - and future hopes - is available via Lebanon's Daily Star)AMMAN (AFP) — Jordan on Sunday returned to Iraq some 2,466 artefacts, including gold coins, jewellery and Islamic and ancient manuscripts, that were stolen after the 2003 US-led invasion of its neighbour.
"Now that stability is restored in Iraq, Jordan decided to return these antiquities to where they belong, to Iraq, the cradle of civilisation," Jordanian Tourism Minister Maha Khatib told a news conference.
But did you notice the part where the Jordanian government official declared that stability is restored in Iraq? Crazy, huh? Probably just an artifact of translation, but to be safe someone had better get her a gift subscription to the New York Times - quick.
Of course, that illustrious paper covered the story too - one paragraph, sans the "stability" comment, but with this:
Thousands of pieces were looted after the 2003 invasion, and Iraqi officials have blamed the pilfering on smugglers and occupying troops.In fact, that "blame" was a major feature of their April 2003 front page banner headline story:
The National Museum of Iraq recorded a history of civilizations that began to flourish in the fertile plains of Mesopotamia more than 7,000 years ago. But once American troops entered Baghdad in sufficient force to topple Saddam Hussein's government this week, it took only 48 hours for the museum to be destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts carried away by looters.Two days later a Times op/ed would clarify:
<...>
Officials with crumpled spirits fought back tears and anger at American troops, as they ran down an inventory of the most storied items that they said had been carried away by the thousands of looters who poured into the museum after daybreak on Thursday and remained until dusk on Friday, with only one intervention by American forces, lasting about half an hour, at lunchtime on Thursday.
<...>
Mr. Muhammad spoke with deep bitterness toward the Americans, as have many Iraqis who have watched looting that began with attacks on government agencies and the palaces and villas of Mr. Hussein, his family and his inner circle broaden into a tidal wave of looting that struck just about every government institution, even ministries dealing with issues like higher education, trade and agriculture, and hospitals.
The looting of Iraq's national museum in Baghdad could have been prevented. The American and British forces are clearly to blame for the destruction and displacement of its cultural treasures.The story would never have been told if "museum officials" hadn't risked their own lives to bring reporters to the scene:
As fires in a dozen government ministries and agencies began to burn out, and as looters tired of pillaging in the 90-degree heat, museum officials reached the hotels where foreign journalists were staying along the eastern bank of the Tigris River. They brought word of what is likely to be reckoned as one of the greatest cultural disasters in recent Middle Eastern history.It was quite a story - though reality was quite different. You can read early indications of just how wrong it was here and here, and a comprehensive review of subsequent events here:
<...>
What was beyond contest today was that the 28 galleries of the museum and vaults with huge steel doors guarding storage chambers that descend floor after floor into unlighted darkness had been completely ransacked.
And on July 3, 2003, the Iraq National Museum was reopened to diplomats and the news media, to show how most of the antiquities, recently feared lost forever, had been recovered or miraculously accounted for.Tragically, Private First Class Edward J. “Jim” Herrgott was killed by a sniper while guarding the museum that night:
"He was outside the national museum in his Bradley tank and he was doing his watch as guard duty. He had slid up into the gunner's seat -- the gunner's hatch -- and a sniper got him in the neck. From reports that we heard, he was rushed to the hospital but they wren unable to keep him alive," Ken Kewatt said.
Marine Colonel Matthew Bogdanos (a Marine Reservist whose civilian job was DA in Manhattan) who had witnessed the 9/11 up close and was recalled to active duty for a tour in Afghanistan would take on the task of investigating the museum looting in April, 2003. He published his account in the book Thieves of Baghdad
Col Bogdanos originally had a different mission in Iraq, but...
On April 15, I was again in Basra when a journalist approached me with rage in her eyes, screaming, "You macho assholes are down here looking for missiles and money, and the finest museum in the world in Baghdad has just been looted."He checked the headlines, including the one over the New York Times story above, and the AP's "Museum treasures now war booty" ("The Americans knew that the museum was at risk and could have protected it, said Patty Gerstenblith, a professor at DePaul School of Law in Chicago") and the Independent's U.S. blamed for failure to stop sacking of museum ("THE UNITED States was fiercely criticised around the world yesterday for its failure to protect Baghdad's Iraq National Museum where, under the noses of US troops, looters stole or destroyed priceless artefacts up to 7,000 years old.") and realized his efforts would need re-focusing.
Read the book for the full story of Bogdanos' incredible efforts over the subsequent six months, detailing the recovery of all but a few artifacts from the various locations where the museum officials had hidden them for safekeeping.
But consider also that for those crucial first six months in Baghdad Bogdanos and his team were kept from what would have been their primary mission.
"I had been called to the Pentagon on September 10, 2003, to give the Department of Defense's final briefing on the investigation... CENTCOM had given me six months of virtually unlimited authority, resources, and funding. They had allowed me to divert significant assets from our assigned counterterrorism mission to hunt down some pieces of rock with funny writing on them."But that's all ancient history now. And what difference could counterterror operations have made in those months anyhow?
"Now that stability is restored in Iraq..."
More to follow...
Welcome to the official blog site for the 2008 MilBlog Conference. Okay, we're off to a late start this year, but the ball is finally rolling..... All news and information about the conference will be posted here. We'll be sprucing the blog up a bit over the next few days but for now, we're just concentrating on getting information out.As most of you know by now, the MilBlog Conference joined forces with Blog World Expo this year. The 2008 MilBlog Conference will be held in Las Vegas on September 20.
Panel topics/times are below:
Date: SEPTEMBER 20, 2008
Location: Blog World Expo, Las Vegas
Thanks Andi
UPDATES:
Registration for the MilBlog Community Track June 24, 2008 • AndiThe MilBlog Registration Package includes admittance into the full MilBlog Conference Track (all panels) and the exhibit hall. This package will be free of charge for milblog attendees. The BWE staff is extending the MilBlog Registration Package to milbloggers, milblog supporters, members of the military community or those who work in the troop support, non-profit community, but you must plan to attend the MilBlog Community Track in order to take advantage of this offering. We'd like to thank BWE for putting this package together for our attendees. If you want to register for additional events at Blog World Expo, you'll need to pay the associated costs.
To Register:
BWE will assign individual registration codes for MilBlog Track Attendees. Attendees (excluding panelists, speakers or moderators) will receive a registration code and should send an email with "Request Code" in the subject line. You need to meet the criteria laid out above to receive a code. Once your request has been received and a registration code assigned, you'll receive your registration code via email, and you can proceed with registration. If you're bringing a spouse, significant other, etc. you will need to request two codes. Each code is unique and can only be used once. You cannot share your code with someone else. Please request a code only if you plan to attend the MilBlog Track. All other registrations will need to be submitted through the BWE registration page.
If you're requesting a code, but but plan to attend another event (party, workshop, etc.) in addition to the MilBlog Track, after you receive your registration code, you'll need to send an email to Kathy at BWE, tell her you are attending the milblog track and want to pay to attend another portion of the Expo and she will take care of your request.
It may take a couple of days or so for you receive your code. Please don't send follow-up email or worry about it unless it's been more than seven days and you've received no response.
If you're a panelist, speaker or moderator, you will register as a speaker and will not need a registration code. Information on how to register will be emailed soon to all speakers.
On 9 June, I went to the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok to apply for a visa, but when the government worker behind the glass learned I was American, he nearly slammed the window shut.
(Part one here.)
Here's a snaphot of Iraq today, from Reuters:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military will transfer control of security in Iraq's Anbar province to Iraqi forces this week, a remarkable turnaround given the vast western region was considered lost to insurgents less than two years ago.(Hat tip to Long War Journal's DJ Elliott for comment here.)Anbar will be the 10th of Iraq's 18 provinces returned to Iraqi security control since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, but it will be the first Sunni Arab region handed back.
Mamun Sami Rasheed, Anbar's governor, said the handover ceremony would take place on Saturday.
"We have been dreaming of this event since 2003," he said.
I've been running an ongoing series here detailing how this happened.
For more recent details, here's the DoD's June, 2008 report to congress, Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq:
Assessment of the Security Environment—Western IraqFrom the same report, a bit of an explanation of what Provincial Iraqi Control means:Security in Anbar Province continued to improve this reporting period... In Anbar, the average number of security incidents remained at five incidents per day over a 90-day period, accounting for less than 4% of the attacks in all of Iraq. This represents a ten-fold reduction compared to the summer of 2006 and is half of the rate of the last few months of 2007. The combined efforts of SoIs [greyhawk: Sons of Iraq] and Iraqi and Coalition forces continue to hinder AQI’s [gh: al Qaeda in Iraq] ability to obtain resources or operate effectively in population centers, forcing AQI to operate and conduct attacks from remote locations in the province. Despite these setbacks, AQI continues efforts to regain footholds in the Euphrates River Valley.
The Iraqi Army has handed over security responsibilities in most of Anbar’s population centers to the Iraqi Police, allowing the Army to concentrate its efforts on driving AQI from hideouts in remote locations. The Sahawa al-Iraq (SAI) tribal movement has survived AQI attacks against its key leaders, and instead is successfully using the attacks to embolden local tribes and strengthen its own influence. SAI recently registered as a political party and intends to compete in the upcoming fall provincial elections and the subsequent nation elections, although the GoI [gh: government of Iraq] has yet to act on SAIs request to become a national political party. The movement continues to position itself as an alternative to existing provincial political leaders, deriving much of its credibility from its fight against AQI and the resulting security gains. For several months, SAI leaders have reached out to prominent Shi’a figures in other provinces to promote reconciliation and unity under the theme of “One Iraq.”
Transferring Security ResponsibilityCurrently, half of Iraq’s 18 provinces are under Provincial Iraqi Control (PIC). In support of the U.S. Government strategic objective to strengthen the Iraqi forces and transition primary security responsibility to the GoI, Anbar and Qadisiyah Provinces are scheduled to transition to PIC in June and July 2008, respectively. This will bring the total number of provinces for which the GoI has lead security responsibility to 11 of 18 provinces.
In PIC provinces, Iraqi forces demonstrate varying abilities to maintain domestic order and prevent a resurgence of terrorism. Examples of this are the recent ISF-led operations in Basrah. On short notice and with little Coalition planning support, the ISF were able to rapidly deploy forces to the city to engage rogue militias. Once operations were underway, the ISF required Coalition Military and Police Transition Teams and Coalition staff assistance to obtain and move logistics assets to support its forces in the field. The Transition Teams proved particularly helpful in their ability to increase Iraqi and Coalition forces’ situational awareness and facilitate employment of additional Coalition enablers. As operations progressed, many Iraqi forces grew increasingly competent and were able to restore security in much of the Basrah area within one week.
Other graphs from the report include this one - the first I've seen that acknowledges the Ramadan spikes I wrote about some time ago. (See also my Ramadan, 2007 report from Baghdad here, or my Ramadan, 2004 report from Baghdad here).
More:
Some recent photos from markets in Basra, Iraq:
The two above are from the London Times, and are captioned "Now the tide of fundamentalism which swept in when the Shia militias enforced their brand of Islam appears to have been turned back. Citizens report that music stores are reopening, fashionable clothes are being worn again, and people are holding parties."
But this one is from the New York Times:
Its caption reads "A young boy slept on his mother`s shoulder as she shopped in the Jaezeri market in downtown Basra. The government`s success in Basra may not have been so much a victory as heavy fighting followed by a truce that allowed militias to melt away with their weapons."
You can tell by the grim looks and by the photographer's use of black and white that such must be the case.
Its from a park, not a market, but here's another baby photo from Basra
This one came from the Washington Post. "Families picnic on the weekend at a small neighborhood amusement park in Basra." The caption reads. "The park was closed for weeks in April amid violence in Basra."
Someone had best get them a subscription to the New York Times soon - then they could see dark and grainy photos like this one:
"Iraqi soldiers," the caption reads, "inside a warehouse compound, repelled several attacks by the Mahdi Army, the militia of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, on the site."
Is that good news, or bad?
The answer depends on you. Point your camera in another direction, switch to color, and you'll capture images of Iraqi soldiers like this one from the Washington Post:
Here's a close up, along with a similar photo from the London Times
There's something for everyone in Basra (and Baghdad, London, Detroit and DC, too). You can get photos that show stark reality, and others that are suitable for viewing by readers of the NY Times. Gloomy grim and black and white or in vibrant living color - unless you're actually there how you see Iraq depends on lenses and filters. Not necessarily those used by photographers - some are selected for you by helpful editors or political leaders - while others might be of your own choosing.
"...a doomsayer is a person with a serious point of view, someone who is to be respected. And ...a doomslayer is a crackpot who needs to be taken down a peg.(More here.)In the end, it isn't just the optimists who need to be taken down a peg, it is all of humanity.
I attempted to explain that in a different context myself, from Baghdad last year.
I suppose there could be another sub-genre of science fiction: the bleak future that didn't happen. Watch almost any pre-Star Wars sci-fi films of the 70's - Silent Running, Soylent Green, Logan's Run, et al - and you'll see examples what I mean.I don't know if anyone caught on, but I was actually talking about Iraq there - not any of those other things. I mean, I was in Baghdad, after all - during a month with one of the highest death tolls of the war. Perhaps my optimism amidst all that would earn me scorn from New York Times readers (if they ever sought news from other sources) - but if so, they would at least have understood what I meant.Of course, one can't consign such stories into that category ahead of time, right?
And anyhow, perhaps the authors were just off by a few years in timing. We still have a future in which any number of things can happen.
For instance, did you know the Earth was getting hotter?
<...>
No matter how many works of science fiction prove faulty at predicting a disastrous future, people will eagerly consume the next pronouncement of doom. There's a market for such things. There are people who thrive on imagining a future hell.In the 70's it was nuclear war, overpopulation, pollution, and numerous other threats to all mankind that distracted our attention from that which was truly important. By the early 90's it was the economy, stupid, that was going to bring us down.
But surely this is cause for hope: "The New York Times has made a startling discovery: things are much improved in Iraq."
Just ignore the photos above. And Frank Rich's New York Times opinion piece:
THE Iraq war’s defenders like to bash the press for pushing the bad news and ignoring the good. Maybe they’ll be happy to hear that the bad news doesn’t rate anymore. When a bomb killed at least 51 Iraqis at a Baghdad market on Tuesday, ending an extended run of relative calm, only one of the three network newscasts (NBC’s) even bothered to mention it.But - paradoxically - Frank knows. He's wrong on many counts, but right as rain on this one:
The G.O.P.’s badgering of Mr. Obama about the war is also backfiring. In sync with Mr. McCain, the Republican National Committee unveiled an online clock — “Track How Long Since Obama Was in Iraq!” — only to have Mr. Obama call the bluff by announcing that he will go to both Afghanistan and Iraq before the election. Unless he takes along his own Lieberman-like Jiminy Cricket to whisper factual corrections into his ear, this trip is likely to enhance his stature as a potential commander in chief.Demanding Obama go to Iraq was the dumbest political move thus far of the as yet early silly season. Why? Look at the photos above - Obama will most assuredly see Iraq in black and white.
"What I hope we don’t hear from General Petraeus next week is any glorification of what has just happened in Basra..."
Nancy Pelosi fires a warning shot at General David Petraeus, April 3, 2008
She could perhaps be excused if she only gets her news from American sources. Media outlets in countries that aren't having presidential elections this year continued to cover the Basra story long after her declaration of failure.
But then Nancy Pelosi went to Iraq.
BAGHDAD (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a top Democratic critic of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, expressed confidence during a visit to Iraq Saturday that expected provincial elections will promote national reconciliation.Hooray! She saw it in person, and can't deny The Progress! Then, once back in America:Pelosi, who led a bipartisan congressional delegation to Baghdad, spoke after the group met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq.
She welcomed Iraq's progress in passing a budget as well as oil legislation and a bill paving the way for provincial elections in the fall that are expected to more equitably redistribute power among local officials.
She said the visit was to "pay our respects to our troops and at the same time learn more about what the situation is on the ground here."
Pelosi also was hopeful about the upcoming elections after meeting with Iraq's Sunni parliamentary speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani.
"We're assured sure the elections will happen here, they will be transparent, they will be inclusive and they will take Iraq closer to the reconciliation we all want it to have," she said.
In an interview yesterday with the San Francisco Chronicle, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi claimed the U.S. troop surge failed to accomplish its goal. She then partially credited the success of the troop surge to “the goodwill of the Iranians,” claiming that they were responsible for ending violence in the southern city of Basra.(More here)Asked if she saw any evidence of the surge’s positive impact on her May 17 trip to Iraq she responded:
Well, the purpose of the surge was to provide a secure space, a time for the political change to occur to accomplish the reconciliation. That didn’t happen. Whatever the military success, and progress that may have been made, the surge didn’t accomplish its goal. And some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians-they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians.
Then, last week, as the House passed a bill funding the war in Iraq (268-155, 19 not voting), Pelosi voted against it, and declared:
Mr. Speaker, I’m sorry I cannot fully participate in all of the camaraderie that is accompanying this legislation because of the huge amount of money that is in this bill to fund the war in Iraq without any conditions, without any limitation on time spent there.Now no one's going to call Speaker Pelosi for that bit of hypocrisy, anymore than they'll point out she's wrong about how long we were in World War II (hint: not just 3 years) or how many Americans have been killed in battle in Iraq (3,340 as of June 20, not 4,100).
<...>
President Bush started a war based on a false premise. He sent our troops into a situation that he didn’t know what he was getting into. The philosopher Hannah Arendt once observed that nations are driven by the endless flywheel of violence believing that one last, one final violent gesture will bring peace. But, each time they sow the seeds for more violence. Five years later we are still engaged in the war in Iraq. Two years longer than we were in World War II. And that has come at a very great cost. The costs are clear, of course, and we all mourn: 4,100 of our troops have lost their lives in battle; tens of thousands of our troops injured, many of them permanently.
Because Nancy went to Iraq, and came back:
“Over Memorial Day, I visited our troops in Iraq with some of our colleagues and it was my sixth trip into the theatre. And what they asked me was what they always asked: ‘What’s going to happen to us when we go home?’ And for a long time on those visits, I didn’t have an answer that I could be pleased to tell them....and sees it all in black and white.
And Barack Hussein Obama says he's going to follow in her footsteps.
Taguba and his investigators sifted and probed and assessed the blame as high as they were permitted to go. Taguba believed — no, he KNEW — that the responsibility for this outrage went much higher. He knew it reached to the office of then Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and likely beyond to the lawyers who served President George W. Bush and perhaps even to the president himself.And here's what Taguba honestly told congress in his sworn testimony regarding his Abu Ghraib investigation in 2004:But the brass, military and civilian, wanted Taguba and those who ran 16 other Army investigations of the Abu Ghraib scandal only to get to the bottom of the situation, not to the top.
A female Army Reserve military police brigadier general was reprimanded but criminal charges and courts martial were limited to five enlisted men and women, none ranking any higher than staff sergeant.
For his honesty in both the investigation and in sworn testimony before congressional committees Tony Taguba became persona non grata in the halls of the Pentagon. The career of one of the Army's more talented and honorable officers ended with an untimely retirement.
"We did not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition and I believe that they collaborated with several MI (military intelligence) interrogators at the lower level," Tugaba said.And here's the Taguba Report (thoughtfully archived by NPR) which concludes:
Several US Army Soldiers have committed egregious acts and grave breaches of international law at Abu Ghraib/BCCF and Camp Bucca, Iraq. Furthermore, key senior leaders in both the 800th MP Brigade and the 205th MI Brigade failed to comply with established regulations, policies, and command directives in preventing detainee abuses at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) and at Camp Bucca during the period August 2003 to February 2004.Taguba noted that
Had the findings and recommendations contained within their own investigations been analyzed and actually implemented by BG Karpinski, many of the subsequent escapes, accountability lapses, and cases of abuse may have been preventedand
While clearly the 800th MP Brigade and its commanders were not tasked to set conditions for detainees for subsequent MI interrogations, it is obvious from a review of comprehensive CID interviews of suspects and witnesses that this was done at lower levels.Taguba wasn't the only one who knew that. For a second opinion, here's former army Sgt Joseph Darby, the soldier from Abu Ghraib who turned Charles Graner's home made porn collection over to the Army investigators:
Everybody thinks there was an order from high up, or that somebody in command must have known. Everybody is wrong. Nobody in command knew about the abuse, because nobody in command cared enough to find out. That was the real problem. The entire command structure was oblivious, living in their own little worlds. So it wasn’t a conspiracy—it was negligence, plain and simple. They were all fucking clueless.Unlike Taguba, Darby actually did suffer for his actions:
...but not at the hands of the US Army.There is one group he hasn't forgiven: " I still have a lot of bad feelings toward the press."
Want actual facts on Abu Ghraib?
A combination of blurring and smearing (Part 1)
A combination of blurring and smearing (Part 2)
Want to meet the "female Army Reserve military police brigadier general " whose career Taguba rightfully destroyed?
Abu Ghraib: The View from the Top
Part of a series that began here. Previous installment here.
Our latest email from Haider Ajina:
Greetings,Haider adds the following comments:The following is my translation of an article from Iraq’s Buratha news on 6-19-08
Iraqi Refugee minister declares 400 doctors and 19 thousand Iraqi return.Iraqi refugee minister Abdul-Samad Rahman Sultan announce that over 19,800 families have returned to their residences through out Iraq and another 6,100 families have returned to Baghdad, out of which 5,200 have been covered under the Prime Minster’s assistance plan. The minister added, ‘the relative calm and improvement of security is becoming very obvious, hence the return of over 400 doctors to Baghdad’s Kargh area alone’. He also denied the existence of any forced repatriation, saying ‘all who return are returning voluntarily. The migration or exodus of families has stopped since late November of last year; however, the numbers being reported since then are due to delays in reporting or registering with the ministry due to the then security situation’. Sultan continues, “When the ministry started dolling out assistance money for the displaced, many families started registering at the different offices of the ministry”. The number of registered displace families in Dialah, Nainawah, and Anbar provinces reached 220,000, with Dialah province having the largest number registered. This is due to the opening of new ministerial offices in Dialah province. This recent increase in registrations is not an indicator of continued violence; in fact it is a result of former violence. Recent security operations in Mousul and Basrah have improved security in Iraq, allowing people to register.’
Sultan talked about the need for more funding to support the repatriation program, implemented by the ministry. The funding will compensate families for damages. The 195 million dollars allocated to the ministry will cover the repatriation but not compensation for damages.
Regards
Haider Ajina
McKinleyville CA
To catch up on this story begin here.
An ongoing series. Part one is here, previous installment here.
"This place is not a town, it's a cemetery. It is the lowest of the low in Iraq. It needs to be cleaned out."
-- Najim Abdullah Jabouri, in an interview the day before the September, 2005 battle for the town began.
But this is how 2005 would end in Tal Afar: Iraqis in former rebel stronghold now cheer American soldiers.
The story might have surprised any Americans who happened to read it, but it appeared in the London Telegraph, and it's not likely that many did. After a brief mention of the "largest military operation of 2005" and acknowledgement of reconstruction efforts ("new sewers have been dug and the fronts of shops, destroyed in the US assault, were replaced within weeks. Sunni police have been hired and 2,000 goats were even distributed to farmers") the author declares "...there is no doubt that something has been achieved."
"More remarkably, the approach of an American military convoy brings people out to wave and even clap."
The 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment had arrived in northern Iraq in the Spring of 2005. They would be in the Tall Afar area throughout that long hot summer before moving into the town in force in September.
When the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment moved into northwest Iraq last May, it faced a mess. Just as Fallujah had become a major staging point for attacks into Baghdad, Tall Afar was being used as a base to send suicide bombers and other attackers 40 miles east into Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq.We've already seen the American media coverage of that preparation as it was ongoing - little beyond the death toll, and reports of atrocities inflicted on the citizens of the town by "foreign allies" of certain local insurgents. But...
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McMaster had his unit bolster the security operation along the Syrian border, in an effort to cut off support and reinforcements coming into Iraq. He also sought to eliminate havens in the desert, beginning in June with a move against the remote desert town of Biaj, which had become a way station and training and outfitting post for fighters infiltrating from Syria. As he made the move, he brought Iraqi troops with him.
In late summer, McMaster started receiving greater cooperation from Sunni leaders who had been sympathetic to the insurgency. One reason, according to U.S. military intelligence analysts, was that some insurgents were unhappy with foreign allies who seemed determined to start a civil war.There were reasons for that "unhappiness". As the Telegraph story had noted, "The insurgents who used to control this city of 170,000 were amongst the most barbaric in Iraq. They beheaded, executed and shot locals who questioned their brand of fundamentalist Islam."
"With the insurgency's support infrastructure weakened in outlying areas" the Washington Post would report after the battle, "McMaster moved on the city."
But even then he didn't attack it. First, following the suggestion of his Iraqi allies, he ringed the city with dirt berm nine feet high and 12 miles long, leaving checkpoints from which all movement could be observed. This was a nod to the counterinsurgency principle of being able to control and follow the movement of the population.The Post's Jonathan Finer accompanied the unit into combat. His outstanding coverage could be found buried in the back pages of the newspaper throughout the battle.Building on that idea, U.S. military intelligence had traced the kinship lines of different tribes, enabling the unit to track fighters traveling to likely destinations just outside the city. About 120 fighters were then rounded up from among those fleeing the impending attack.
Next, McMaster and his subordinates recalled, civilians were pressured to leave the city for a camp prepared for them just to the south. Some more insurgents were caught trying to sneak out with them.
In September, after four months of preparatory moves, McMaster launched the attack.
5,000 U.S. And Iraqi Troops Sweep Into City Of Tall AfarUrban Assault Is Largest Since Last Year
TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept. 2 -- It was a clear and quiet dusk, with only the call to prayer echoing from minarets across this city, when a roadside bomb blasted an M1-A1 Abrams tank, shaking nearby buildings and filling the indigo sky with a plume of black smoke.
Crackling small-arms fire clanged off the damaged vehicle from an adjacent house. U.S. soldiers answered with increasingly violent volleys -- .50-caliber machine gun bursts, tank rounds and a TOW missile -- but the shots from inside the house kept coming. Finally, an ear-splitting succession of five rounds from the tank's big gun reduced the building to flaming rubble and lit the empty streets with white sparks from exploding power transformers.
In the largest urban assault since the siege of Fallujah last November, more than 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops entered this northern city before dawn Friday. But the 45-minute firefight at day's end suggested that the insurgents who have controlled much of Tall Afar for almost a year would not relinquish it easily.
"We knew they were going to fight," said Pfc. Johnny Lara, a machine gunner from Blue Platoon, Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, who watched the clash with a reporter from a rooftop about 100 yards away. "Now it's a fight."
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Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry, said Tall Afar's complex demographics would make it difficult to pacify. As many as 75 percent of residents are Sunni Turkmens, many of whom held prominent political and military positions when Iraq was ruled by Hussein. Increasingly threatened by the rise of the country's Shiite-led government, they have clashed with local Shiite Turkmen tribes and with the mostly Shiite and Kurdish security forces deployed to Tall Afar.
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"The city is basically a microcosm of all the problems, all the divisions that exist in Iraq, in one place," McMaster said.
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In recent meetings, McMaster said, tribal leaders implored the Americans to invade Tall Afar again, but this time not to leave so quickly.
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"I don't want to kill this city, I want to bring it back to life," McMaster said. "We are taking steps to minimize destruction. I want to do it right."
After spending the night in abandoned homes, the more than 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops who had swept into the northern city of Tall Afar awoke Saturday morning to broadcasts from mosques calling residents to fight the invasion.As with most newspapers without enough reporters in Iraq to cover the story, the Los Angeles Times had to rely on military spokesmen and "special correspondents" for news of the battle:But the troops met little resistance as they continued raiding houses Saturday to gather information about the insurgents who have controlled large parts of the city for nearly a year.
In one of the few pockets of fighting, insurgents fired seven rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. tanks from adjacent buildings in the western neighborhood of Qadisiyah. A U.S. jet destroyed much of the block with a 500-pound satellite-guided bomb, commanders said. Soldiers also destroyed at least half a dozen roadside bombs and discovered a large cache of artillery rounds hidden in one of the many lush valleys that divide the city.
For the second consecutive day, U.S. forces reported no casualties.
"We expected them to fight back more than they did today, especially given some of the neighborhoods we were moving through," said Capt. Alan Blackburn, 30, of Mooresville, Ind., commander of Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is leading the assault.
Blackburn said the estimated 300 to 500 insurgents believed to be operating in Tall Afar appeared to be massing in the restive neighborhood of Sarai, east of downtown, where U.S. patrols are frequently attacked.
Meanwhile, in the northern city of Tall Afar, Iraqi and U.S. forces remained locked in an intense battle with insurgents.More from Jonathan Finer, in the Washington Post:
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In Tall Afar, U.S. and Iraqi government forces continued to bombard suspected insurgent positions in an intense campaign that has largely shut down the city west of Mosul.Witnesses said U.S. planes carried out hours of bombing raids over the city Friday night, and Iraqi national guard and U.S. troops blocked streets and shut down access to the city.
"The situation in Tall Afar is moving from bad to worse," said Sheik Salim Ibrahim, a tribal leader who complained that efforts by the Mosul governor to enlist the help of local sheiks to reestablish calm were failing.
The director of the Tall Afar Hospital said it had received the bodies of three people killed by shrapnel. A U.S. military spokeswoman said only that American soldiers were engaged in operations against insurgents in an effort to secure the city for the October elections.
U.S. Troops Cordon Part Of Iraqi Town To Trap InsurgentsSeptember 5, 2005TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept. 4 -- Under the cover of a moonless night, U.S. soldiers on Sunday strung nearly a mile of razor-sharp concertina wire across the northern edge of a neighborhood dominated by insurgents to prevent them from fleeing without a showdown.
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"The idea is to trap them in Sarai or force them toward our checkpoints to the south," said Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, referring to the neighborhood that U.S. forces believe has served as a launching point for many attacks in the city. "We don't want them to slip out."
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About 500 people attempted to leave the city this weekend through the U.S.-manned checkpoints. At least one man suspected of kidnapping and beheading several residents in recent weeks was apprehended when he tried to leave the city with a group of children, McMaster said. When soldiers interviewed the children, they said they did not know the man but went with him because they had been threatened.A cacophony of gunfire and explosions filled the air around Tall Afar on Sunday, the heaviest day of fighting since the invasion began. Soldiers continued methodically searching homes and questioning residents, frequently coming under small-arms fire that whistled overhead as they passed from house to house or leapt across gaps between rooftops.
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Elsewhere Sunday in Tall Afar, an Iraqi army unit freed 35 hostages held in a house south of downtown, according to Maj. Gen. Khorsheed Salim, commander of the army's 3rd Division, which is heavily involved in the operation.Soldiers in the western part of the city found a laboratory rigged with explosives, McMaster said. The lab also contained a chemical that burned the troops' throats and eyes when they entered. The Army is trying to identify the substance.
In Tall Afar, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers entered the fourth day of an offensive against insurgents who have controlled large sections of the city for nearly a year. On Monday night, soldiers dropped leaflets from helicopters in the eastern neighborhood of Sarai, where commanders believe insurgents are entrenched, warning noncombatants to evacuate the area.September 6, 2005:About 5,000 soldiers from the Army's 3rd Armored Reconnaissance Regiment and the Iraqi army's 3rd Division continued advancing toward Sarai from all directions, searching homes, confiscating weapons and interrogating residents.
Early Monday morning, six members of an elite U.S. special operations unit were wounded in what was to have been a raid on the home of a suspected insurgent leader, according to U.S. commanders. Members of the unit, which is charged with searching for high-level insurgents, and the Army in Tall Afar would not provide details.
With Death At Their Door, Few Leave Iraqi CitySeptember 8, 2005:Civilians Urged to Flee Before U.S. Assault
"Steps are being taken to ensure that this is done with the least possible amount of harm done to civilians," McMaster said.
But several Sarai residents said they had been warned that Shiite residents or policemen, who are concentrated in southern Tall Afar, would attack if they left in that direction.
"I would rather die from American bombs in my home with my family than walk south," a man in a gray dishdasha , or robe, and white head scarf explained to soldiers. "People are saying the Shiites will kill you or kidnap you. That is a disgrace."
The evacuation of Sarai, the oldest section of Tall Afar and a web of narrow streets where fighting is expected to be difficult, was supposed to help prevent civilians from being hurt or killed during the offensive's final phase. The military strung nearly a mile of concertina wire along Bel Air, on the northern edge of the neighborhood, on Sunday to encourage people to migrate south, where it had established checkpoints to prevent insurgents from fleeing undetected. Among 200 people who followed instructions and fled south Tuesday, soldiers discovered a man suspected of being an insurgent who was dressed as a woman, complete with prosthetic breasts.
For the military, problems began at 8 a.m. Tuesday when soldiers who had spent the night in an abandoned house awoke to about 300 Sarai residents who had picked their way across the wire and were sitting in the street outside the house, asking how they could get out of Tall Afar.
The soldiers escorted the crowd back to the other side of the wire but found that at least 500 other people were waiting to come across. To block them, they placed tanks and Bradleys along Bel Air and sent soldiers with rifles to the roofs overlooking the street.
Men who identified themselves as tribal leaders of the people attempting to flee would periodically walk across the street -- which is pockmarked with dozens of craters caused by explosions -- stepping gingerly over the wire to negotiate with soldiers. Some residents said that their relatives were too sick or frail to travel south of the city or that their tribe was located in the north so they needed to go in that direction. Others said they actually lived outside Sarai but had spent the night in the neighborhood and were trapped by the concertina wire. The soldiers refused to let them pass.
"I am sure 99 percent of you are good people who are telling us the truth," Capt. Alan Blackburn, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment's Eagle Troop, 2nd Squadron, which was policing the area around Bel Air, told one of the men who wanted to go north. "But I am sure that there are a few people in that crowd who are not good people. And we don't have the facilities here to check them. You have to go south."
"I am not going unless you drive me in a tank," the man said. "There are no bad people in Sarai. If you come with me, I will take you to all the houses and you can see. The bad people are the Shiites in the south."
Late in the afternoon, the soldiers relented and offered a compromise. They told the residents they could exit to the north if they agreed to board military trucks bound for a base just outside the city where they could be processed and then released if they proved not to have ties to the insurgency.
"It sounds like a trick to take us south to the Shiites," one man said.
"We will go only if we can drive our own vehicles," another countered.
About 3 p.m., Lt. Col. Christopher Hickey, the Squadron commander, arrived to make a final plea. "I am trying to help you to get out of a very dangerous situation. You are going to be in danger if you stay here, I am telling you," he said. "Please, this is your last chance."
As he turned away from the crowd, one family emerged, with nine adults carrying baggage and eight children in tow. "Anyone else?" Hickey asked, beckoning. "Okay, then we will save these people," he said, and walked away.
The U.S. soldiers sensed something wasn't quite right when an ambulance carrying two dead bodies arrived Thursday morning at a checkpoint for people evacuating this city under siege.September 10, 2005Hanging off the sides of the vehicle were three young men who said they were escorting the remains of family members killed in the previous night's bombardment to a local hospital. But when an Iraqi policeman looked them over, he pointed to a man who wore white sweatpants and a white shirt and appeared to be in his early twenties. "I know him. He must be detained," the officer said. "He murdered a policeman."
The interrogation by American soldiers initially went nowhere. The man insisted he spoke Turkish, not Arabic, and therefore could not communicate with the Americans' interpreters. Asked his name, he kept alternating between "Habib" and "Faris." At one point, he rolled on the floor making retching noises as if he were going to throw up. But everything changed when exasperated soldiers said they had no choice but to turn him over to the Iraqis, who were anxious to take him into custody.
"Yes, I am a terrorist, yes," the man said in perfect Arabic, his ailment apparently forgotten. "I would rather you shoot me in the head than give me to them."
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"Please no," he repeated several times. Once soldiers realized they had a lever to extract information, they called for Iraqi policemen to sit in on the questioning. The officers said the man was involved in a gruesome killing of a local policeman who was beheaded, his corpse placed on the street with a bomb lodged inside of it that exploded when a dog began sniffing at the body.When the policemen first entered the room, the man turned to face the corner, refusing to look at them. After a series of increasingly pointed questions shouted at him, he became defiant.
"No matter what you say, I am a holy warrior. I am going to paradise," he told the interrogators, referring to the belief cited by many insurgent fighters that those who die for their cause have a special place in the afterlife. "The rest of you are infidels who will go to hell."
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Heavy bombing continued Thursday evening, as U.S. jets dropped 500-pound J-DAM precision bombs and other munitions into the insurgent-controlled neighborhood of Sarai, while playing messages over loudspeakers that called on residents to evacuate. Nearly 1,000 people left the city through U.S. checkpoints Thursday, and commanders said intelligence showed that insurgent leaders were attempting to vacate the city.Iraqi policemen and soldiers are fully integrated into nearly every aspect of the Tall Afar operation, often attached to units from the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is leading the assault, or advised by small groups of U.S. Special Forces soldiers. Among the units here are several battalions of the Iraqi army's 3rd Division, which is based in northwestern Iraq, and a battalion of Kurdish soldiers assigned to Tall Afar for this operation. Hundreds of regular Iraqi policemen and police commandos are also being brought to the city to man stations that U.S. forces have said they will establish once the fighting wanes.
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"When we started with them, whenever they would receive a little fire they would either run or do what we called the 'death blossom' -- basically spraying in all directions, which was dangerous for us and dangerous for the town," said Lt. Col. Christopher Hickey, who leads the 3rd Armored Cavalry's Sabre Squadron and works closely with Iraqi commanders. "Through leadership and experience, they have become more disciplined."
U.S. Troops Sweep Into Empty Insurgent Haven In IraqSeptember 11, 2005Rebels Apparently Fled City as Word Of Invasion Spread
The moment the Iraqi troops launched their attack just after 7 a.m. Saturday, the bullets began to fly. Gunfire echoed off centuries-old stone buildings in the insurgent-controlled neighborhood of Sarai: machine-gun bursts, booming tank rounds and an incessant crackle of AK-47s that lasted for most of an hour.
But the shooting spree was only going in one direction.
"So far, Iraqi army reporting no enemy contact," came the word over the radio, 45 minutes after the first shots were fired, to U.S. troops waiting to join the assault.
By the time the Americans entered Sarai -- in a rare supporting role to an Iraqi battalion comprising mostly the Kurdish pesh merga militiamen, who led the charge -- the labyrinthine warren of close-packed structures and streets too narrow for armored vehicles was eerily deserted.
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Commanders proclaimed the relative lack of resistance a sign of the success of the operation, in which at least 550 suspected insurgents have been killed or captured, the vast majority of them Iraqi, including six of the 10 top targets the U.S. military had identified here. One U.S. soldier and five Iraqi troops also have been killed.
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In recent days, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers operating throughout the city had converged on Sarai, where fighting was expected to be fiercest. One U.S. squadron of just over 1,000 soldiers had planned for roughly 10 casualties per day during the assault. The night before the attack, commanders pored over aerial photographs of the neighborhood, which is so densely constructed that buildings were all but indistinguishable, making it difficult to plot a route for the attack."It's pretty much the worst urban terrain for fighting imaginable," said Capt. Alan Blackburn, commander of the Eagle Troop of the 3rd Armored Cavalry's 2nd Squadron, as he peppered his platoon commanders with questions about how to deal with wounded soldiers or large numbers of dead civilians.
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The soldiers walked quickly along both sides of a wide avenue, into what could have passed for a Hollywood version of a war zone: buildings missing roofs destroyed by explosions; blackened vehicles, some still smoking; shattered glass littering the road. They stepped over shell casings of all shapes and sizes.It was impossible to determine how much of the destruction was recent and how much had been left unrepaired for months, or years.
The soldiers gathered material they considered suspicious, labeled it with permanent markers and placed it into garbage bags: in one house, military handbooks with diagrams showing how to conduct ambushes and make explosives; in another, three molotov cocktails; in a mosque, which had three large holes in its ceiling and shrapnel from a Hellfire missile among the rubble of its floor, grenades in a side room.
They confiscated computer disks and video controllers with the wiring removed, which can help trigger roadside bombs, and poked long sticks into water drums and baskets of grain to search for weapons.
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McMaster said the reconstruction of Tall Afar would begin soon after offensive operations were complete and insisted the city would not fall under insurgent control again. Already, $2.4 million in U.S. money has been allocated for infrastructure projects, but because of the violence, the military had been unable to persuade contractors to work here."They want this city to fail. They want Iraq to fail," McMaster said of the insurgents. "But the No. 1 priority is being met by this operation, which is to defeat the terrorists so they can no longer prevent reconstruction from happening."
As Offensive In Iraq Continues, Troops Find Unexpected QuietBy Jonathan Finer, Washington Post Foreign Service
For the second day, U.S. and Iraqi forces mounting a large-scale offensive in this northwestern city had little contact with insurgents Sunday, as troops conducted house-to-house searches through largely abandoned neighborhoods and detained a handful of young men.
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Hundreds of insurgents have been captured in the offensive. The military reported that 156 insurgents had been killed in the fighting so far, revising downward an earlier estimate of more than 200."The shaping operations that we conducted before crossing into Sarai are the reason why we haven't seen the resistance we expected," said Maj. Chris Kennedy, executive officer for the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is leading the assault.
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For the second consecutive day, U.S. forces followed several hundred Iraqi soldiers, from a unit made up mostly of troops from the Kurdish pesh merga militia, into a section of Sarai, where most residents are Sunni Muslim Turkmens, ethnic relatives of Turks.With no one to fight and few suspects to detain, the troops treated the neighborhood as a large crime scene, gathering items they found suspicious from the dozens of homes they entered and searched over several hours. The only sounds of battle were occasional sporadic gunfire and resounding booms -- the controlled detonations of roadside bombs that were discovered throughout the day.
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A group linked to the insurgent organization al Qaeda in Iraq published a statement on a Web site used by such groups saying it would retaliate against Iraqi security forces in Baghdad for the operation in Tall Afar, according to the Associated Press."The Taifa al-Mansoura Army has decided to . . . strike at strategic and other targets of importance for the occupation and the infidels in Baghdad by using chemical and unconventional weapons developed by the mujaheddin, unless the military operations in Tall Afar stop within 24 hours," the statement said.
They didn't. And if the "insurgents" thought they could move back in right away they can be forgiven for that miscalculation. To this point the story of Tall Afar, 2005 sounded exactly like that of Tall Afar 2004 - right down to the "weaker than expected" resistance. But as with so many other places in Iraq, once the shooting stopped, the battle began.
Here's how it was lost in 2004:
The U.S. military launched a major pre-dawn assault Sunday to wrest the northern city of Tall Afar from insurgents but encountered almost no resistance, leaving uncertain the whereabouts of fighters who have battled U.S.-led forces for months.But there's where the similarities between the two campaigns end. The 2004 strategy was to turn over control to Iraqis within days of the conclusion of the operation (a microcosm of the broader situation in Iraq since April, 2003) and American commanders were under intense political and media pressure to execute that pre-planned strategy.
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Ham said U.S. commanders concluded that some of the insurgents had probably fled in anticipation of the attack.
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"Having us stay there is exactly the wrong thing," Ham said. "First of all, we don't have enough forces to stay in the city. But it also sends a message to those that oppose us. It lets them say, 'See, we told you, they really are occupiers. They've taken over a city.' "
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On Monday, U.S. troops pulled back to a forward operating base on the outskirts of Tall Afar and were no longer operating continuously inside the city, Army Maj. Thomas Osteen said.
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"As you know, this is a very important time for Tall Afar," responded Lt. Col. Kevin Hyneman, the deputy commanding officer for the 2nd Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade. "I don't want to rebuild it like an American would. I want to rebuild it based on your own priorities.""But the most important thing is security," Hyneman said. "We don't want to have to go and do all of this again months from now or a year from now."
In 2005 the goal was the same - but the timelines were more realistic:
McMaster had a clear plan in hand for his next step. He also knew how he wanted to measure his success: Would Iraqis -- especially Sunni Arabs -- be willing to join the local police force? Would they "participate in their own security," as he put it?The first step in this phase was to establish 29 patrol bases across the city. That, along with steady patrolling, gave the American military and its Iraqi allies a view of every major stretch of road in the compact city, which measures about three square miles. And that amount of observation made it extremely difficult for insurgents to plant bombs.
"It gives us great agility," said Lt. Col. Chris Hickey, a 1982 graduate of Chantilly High School in Virginia, who commands the U.S. troop contingent in the city. Hickey said that he can order an attack to come from two or three of the patrol bases instead of predictably rolling out the front gate of his base.
Hickey also has spent months living in the city, perched in the Ottoman-era ramparts that dominate it. He slept at the base only rarely. From his position downtown, he said, "I hear every gunshot in the city." His conclusion: "Living among the people works, if you treat them with respect." When the electricity goes out for Iraqis, he noted, it does for him too, even though he has a generator for military communications.
Hickey also moved a U.S. firing range out of earshot of the city. "I like quiet," he said.
Ultimately, 1,400 police officers were recruited, about 60 percent of whom were Sunni Arabs, many of them from elsewhere in Iraq. In addition, the city has about 2,000 Iraqi troops, and a working city council and an activist mayor. A few feet from where the city council meets is a new Joint Operations Center, set up to collect intelligence tips and act on them. The Army officer running the center, Lt. Saythala Phonexayphoua, said he has been surprised by the amount of "actionable intelligence" troops receive.
Phonexayphoua noted: "We get cell phone calls -- 'There's an insurgent planting an IED.' "
Last summer, there were about six insurgent attacks in the area each day. Now there is about one, according to U.S. military intelligence.
By December, 2005: Iraqis in former rebel stronghold now cheer American soldiers
As noted previously, the 3d ACR was a vanguard for a "new" strategy whereby "units' readiness for war should be judged not only by traditional standards, such as how well they fire their tanks, but by the number of foreign speakers in their ranks, their awareness of the local culture where they will fight, and their ability to train and equip local security forces."
It worked. But:
The biggest problem U.S. troops in Iraq face is Baghdad, a city about 30 times the size of Tall Afar. With the current number of American troops in Iraq, it would be impossible to copy the approach used here, with outposts every few blocks.A solid opinion that echoed one already expressed - and explained - in the British press at the close of 2005:"Baghdad is a much tougher nut to crack than this," said Maj. Jack McLaughlin, Hickey's plans officer, who attended Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Va. Standing in the castle overlooking the city, he said, "It's a matter of scale -- you'd need a huge number of troops to replicate what we've done here."
But the success in Tal Afar only highlights the problems of replicating it elsewhere.A dew days later (on Western calendars) 2006 began.The strategy will require more troops, which is politically unacceptable right now in America, given growing public doubts about the war.
More to follow...
With apologies to the Allman Brothers...
anna one, hanna, two....
The story behind these videos: I had a couple hours to spare one weekend prior to deploying last year, so I sat down in front of the old computer and recorded myself playing some songs I enjoy playing. Cheap camera, cheap mic, one take. All flubs intact. I didn't have a lot of time for the project. Just wanted to quickly capture myself for posterity, you know, just in case.
I rediscoverd those videos a couple weeks ago, and thought I'd share them here. Something different for a weekend at Mudville.
Previously:
Nautical Wheelers
I've always Loved You
And though it's not part of that series, here's the song I wrote in Iraq and recorded when I got back.
Bonus: I'd almost forgotten this song, the first I ever uploaded here. It's been on the left sidebar for a while - but here's a (slightly) new version.
I wrote that one about 25 years ago, so it's a "classic". ;)