posted on June 29, 2007 03:30:47 PM new
Iraq Ambush Caps Bloodiest Months for US
Updated 5:53 PM ET June 29, 2007
By ROBERT H. REID
BAGHDAD (AP) - A huge bomb explosion followed by a hail of gunfire and grenades killed five U.S. soldiers, the military said Friday. The attack came as the Pentagon tallied up the deadliest three-month period for Americans since the war began.
Seven soldiers were wounded in the attack Thursday in the Rasheed district, a mixed Sunni-Shiite area of southern Baghdad where U.S.-led forces recently stepped up pressure on extremists. The commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad suggested the ambush could be part of an escalating backlash by Sunni insurgents.
Those deaths brought to 99 the number of U.S. troops killed this month, according to an Associated Press count. The toll for the past three months _ 329 _ made it the deadliest quarter for U.S. troops in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. That surpasses the 316 soldiers killed during November 2004 to January 2005.
Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., who heads U.S. forces in the Iraqi capital, said U.S. casualties had mounted because Sunni extremists are "starting to fight very hard" as U.S. forces press into areas of the capital where militants once had free rein.
"This is a skilled and determined enemy. He's ruthless. He's got a thirst for blood like I've never seen anywhere in my life," Fil told reporters. "And he's determined to do whatever he can."
During a teleconference with Pentagon reporters, Fil described the Thursday attack as "very violent," displaying a "level of sophistication that we have not often seen so far in this campaign."
He said a blast from a "very large" bomb buried deep in the ground triggered the attack, which was followed by volleys of small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. Four soldiers were killed in the attack and a fifth died Thursday night of his wounds, Fil said.
"As far as the assessment, we believe that we are into an area" of south Baghdad "where we're seeing a very strong al-Qaida cell," Fil said. "Those areas are now denied to them ... They are starting to fight very hard and that's what we saw yesterday."
Sunni insurgents have used similar "swarming" tactics for years, mostly in rural areas to the north and west of the capital. Militants have also been burying explosives deep in the ground, making them difficult to detect and triggering them as vehicles pass by.
Such "deep buried bombs" have been especially effective against U.S. vehicles, including Humvees, Bradley fighting vehicles and Strykers, prompting commanders in some areas to shift to foot patrols to avoid losing so many soldiers in a single blast.
U.S. casualties have been rising since President Bush ordered nearly 30,000 more troops to Iraq in a major push to pacify Baghdad and surrounding areas. The goal was to curb the violence so Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders can strike agreements to share power in this fractious country.
But progress toward agreements to share oil wealth, provide a greater political role to the Sunni minority and shore up local governments has been slow because of deep suspicions after four years of bloodshed.
In a hopeful sign, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called off a July 5 march to a bombed shrine in Samarra north of Baghdad after appeals from the government, which feared Sunni extremists would attack marchers along the way.
Sheik Asad Al-Nassiri, an aide to the cleric, told a congregation at Friday prayer services in Kufa that al-Sadr canceled the march because of "the government's inability to secure the route and many officials' appeals for a postponement."
At the same time, however, anger has been welling up among Sunni Arabs, who complain they are being marginalized in the Shiite-dominated government.
A Sunni political party said Friday that four Sunni Cabinet members will refuse to attend government meetings to protest the way Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki handled legal proceedings against the fifth Sunni minister.
Earlier this week, an arrest warrant was issued for Culture Minister Asad Kamal al-Hashimi and security forces raided his Baghdad home after allegations he masterminded an assassination attempt against a politician two years ago.
Sunni politicians considered the move politically motivated and asked al-Maliki, a Shiite, to do something to stop it. The prime minister refused, saying he would not intervene in the work of the judiciary.
"The ministers have decided to suspend their participation in government meetings because they consider the stance of the prime minister and the government unsuitable," Ayad al-Samarraie, a leading member of the Sunni bloc the Iraqi Accordance Front, told AP.
"Had this minister been a member of his (al-Maliki's) party, would he have dealt with the matter the way he did?" al-Samarraie asked.
Muhannad al-Issawi, a spokesman for Accordance Front leader Adnan al-Dulaimi, said the boycott of the 37-member Cabinet "will continue until a compromise is reached."
Al-Issawi said the Sunnis were also protesting the dismissal this month of the Sunni speaker of parliament, who was voted out by the legislators because of erratic behavior.
In April, six Cabinet ministers loyal to al-Sadr quit the government to protest his refusal to call for a timetable for American troops to leave. They have not been replaced.
The boycotts are likely to complicate efforts to enact key "benchmark" legislation that the U.S. is demanding, since the Cabinet must sign off on such proposals before they go to parliament.
Even if the other Shiite and Kurdish members give their endorsement, the absence of key constituencies from the decision-making process would raise doubts whether such legislation would contribute to the goal of national reconciliation.
Elsewhere Friday, a suicide truck bomber attacked an Iraqi army post 20 miles north of the capital Friday, killing six soldiers and wounding five others, police said. Two civilians were also killed in a barrage of gunfire that followed, they said.
The blast occurred at a railway station in Mishada, an officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Iraqi police said a bomb exploded under a pipeline south of Baghdad, spilling crude oil and sparking a huge fire. The pipeline carries oil from Iraq's southern oil fields to the Dora refinery in the capital.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
posted on June 29, 2007 04:41:44 PM new
The commanders on the ground AND our President have said over and over - things were going to get worse before they got better.
And in the places where our 'surge' troops have been placed....things ARE getting better. And the Iraqi people are also helping our soldiers out more and more with where the terrorists are hiding.
Try and see the positive for a change. Quit hoping we FAIL. Quit supporting what our enemies are calling for us to do - admit defeat and run away with our tails between our legs like the cowards want done.
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"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on June 29, 2007 05:27:53 PM new
Today: June 29, 2007 at 16:5:4 PDT
Half of Baghdad Now Under Control
By ROBERT BURNS
WASHINGTON (AP) -
0629dv-pentagon-briefing In the face of stiffening insurgent resistance, U.S. and Iraqi security forces now control about half of Baghdad, the American commander overseeing operations said Friday.
Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil, Jr., commander of Multi-National Division Baghdad, told reporters at the Pentagon that progress in securing the capital has been steady and that while he could use more U.S. troops he believes he has enough - with the recent arrival of reinforcements - to complete his mission.
"Some wonder: Are we progressing fast enough? Are we ahead? Are we on track?" he said in a video teleconference from his headquarters in Baghdad.
"This is a fight against extremists. It's a fight to put power back into the hands of the average Iraqi citizens and to give them a vote and a voice in their own future, without intimidation or fear. I see progress, a steady progress, in every neighborhood that we've cleared and then established a full-time presence."
A reinforced U.S. troop presence has been conducting stepped-up security operations since the launch in mid-February of a new campaign designed to tamp down sectarian violence in Baghdad to a degree that the Iraqi government is able to begin functioning normally and moving toward political reconciliation.
The top commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is due to present a progress report to Congress in September.
Fil said American and Iraqi security forces now control 48 percent to 49 percent of the 474 neighborhoods in Baghdad. That is up from 19 percent in April, he said. Two weeks ago his boss, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, said about 40 percent of the city was under control.
Fil defined "control" as "where we have our security forces there and we're denying that space to enemy forces."
U.S. and Iraqi forces are conducting clearing operations in 36 percent of the capital's neighborhoods - about the same percentage as in April, he said. In neighborhoods that are neither under control nor in the process of being cleared, coalition forces are "disrupting" insurgent forces, Fil said.
He declined to predict how long it would take to get the entire capital under control.
Fil said the degree of resistance by insurgents in some parts of Baghdad has been remarkable.
"This is a skilled and determined enemy," he said. "He's ruthless. He's got a thirst for blood like I've never seen anywhere in my life."
At a separate news conference later, Defense Secretary Robert Gates echoed some of Fil's remarks about the difficulty of subduing the insurgents who have chosen to fight rather than melt away.
"We're dealing with ... a smart, agile enemy who adjusts his tactics," Gates said, with Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at his side. He was referring in particular to the insurgents' ability to kill U.S. troops with enormous homemade bombs often buried in roadways or hidden nearby.
In the latest such attack, five of Fil's soldiers were killed and several wounded in an unusually complex attack Thursday in the East Rasheed area of southern Baghdad. It began with the detonation of a deeply buried roadside bomb and was followed by small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire.
"It was a more sophisticated attack in terms of the way they planned it," Gates said without elaborating. "And we're seeing some more of that" as U.S. forces press their offensive in and around Baghdad.
Fil said US forces have encountered a "very strong" cell of al-Qaida fighters in the East Rasheed and Dora areas. Those are among several sectors in the capital where insurgents have chosen to make a stand, he said, and likely will remain a focus of intensive military action.
"To be sure, the enemy is fighting back, hard, in some of these areas that we've taken away, and they continue to perpetuate violence against innocents in their efforts to keep sectarian fires fueled and undermine the efforts of the coalition and the Iraqi government," he said.
Their weapon of choice is the roadside bomb, which the military calls an improvised explosive device, or IED.
Gates said he is pressing for faster production of a new military vehicle designed to provide better protection against roadside bombs, the leading killer of US troops in Iraq.
Gates said he is demanding an accelerated effort to field a mine-resistant armored vehicle, called the MRAP, and get it to Iraq in large numbers to replace the more vulnerable Humvee utility vehicle used by soldiers and Marines. It is so urgent, he said, that the first vehicles built will be flown to Iraq.
"The way I have put it to everyone is that we have to look outside the normal bureaucratic way of doing things, and so does industry, because lives are at stake," Gates said. "For every month we delay, scores of young Americans are going to die."
On Capitol Hill, leading Democrats said they plan to continue efforts to force a change in President Bush's Iraq policy.
"People are down on government for a lot of reasons, but the big reason is the war in Iraq," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Three-fourths of those in a national CBS News survey said they think U.S. efforts in Iraq are going badly. Half said they think the American involvement in Iraq is creating more terrorists who are planning to attack the U.S., compared to one in five who think it is eliminating terrorists, said the poll released Friday.
In July, the House and Senate will each vote on a proposal written by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., that would order troop withdrawals within four months and set the goal of completing the pullout by April 2008. Under the bill, troops could remain in Iraq to target terrorists, train Iraqi security forces or protect U.S. diplomats.
"We have many arrows in our quiver, and we are sharpening them," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
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AP writer Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.
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"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
posted on June 29, 2007 05:55:20 PM new
article from www.washingtontimes.com
Lieberman: Lugar wrong about Iraq surge's failure
June 29, 2007
By S.A. Miller - Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut yesterday challenged Republican Sen. Richard G. Lugar's ballyhooed assessment that the U.S. troop surge in Iraq is doomed to fail.
"The early evidence is that [the surge] is working," said Mr. Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic vice-presidential nominee who was forced to switch party affiliation to independent last year partly because of his hawkish stance on Iraq.
"We've got a fight ahead of us. We're not deceiving ourselves," he said at a Capitol Hill press conference.
"But in the end," he said, "it's just unfair to our troops implementing the surge, to Gen. [David] Petraeus, who helped create this totally different strategy — which is working — to essentially pull the rug out from under them, to take away their reason for fighting before they even have a chance."
Mr. Lugar did not return calls seeking comment.
[my note - because they're ALL cowards]
Mr. Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said he agreed with parts of Mr. Lugar's speech Monday, which Democrats seized upon as evidence that Republicans were defecting from President Bush.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who vows to force an early end to the war, called Mr. Lugar's speech a "turning point" in the Iraq debate, which is scheduled to resume today as the Senate takes up the defense spending authorization bill.
Mr. Lieberman said that Mr. Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, observed correctly that several vital national-security interests rest on the outcome of the war, including the need to keep Iran and al Qaeda in check and stop sectarian violence from spilling across Iraq's borders.
But Mr. Lieberman strongly objected to Mr. Lugar's call to "downsize the U.S. military's role in Iraq," the portion of the speech most often cited by Democrats.
"I think it would be a tragic error to begin to withdraw from Iraq now, because the winners from that withdrawal would not be America," he said. "It would be Iran and al Qaeda. And the losers would be Iraq and all of our allies in the region."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who joined Mr. Lieberman at the press conference, said U.S. politicians were at fault, not the troops and military leaders.
"The enemy's on the run through the surge," he said. "Militarily it is working. The enemies that we face in Iraq are really being defeated and contained and being pushed, but they continue to fight."
The troop surge reached its full strength of 140,000 troops about three weeks ago, and violence has spiked as U.S. forces ferret out terrorists and insurgents in and around Baghdad.
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"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
U.S. kills 26 militants in Baghdad
Sat Jun 30, 2007 11:57AM EDT
By Mussab Al-Khairalla and Alister Bull
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops killed about 26 suspected militants in Baghdad's Sadr City on Saturday in one of the fiercest clashes in the Shi'ite stronghold since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Residents of the east Baghdad slum district, a bastion of fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia, said the fighting lasted six hours and involved helicopter-fired missile strikes.
The U.S. military said American forces staged two separate raids into Sadr City targeting militants suspected of close ties to "Iranian terror networks" and who were responsible for bringing Iranian weapons into Iraq.
"Coalition Forces killed an estimated 26 terrorists and detained 17 suspected secret cell terrorists during the two operations," a U.S. military statement said. There were no civilian casualties, the U.S. military said separately.
A witness at a Sadr City hospital said nine civilians were wounded. Other residents said several cars were burned and they insisted all the people killed in the clashes were civilians.
A Sadr aid disputed the claim of heavy casualties. Ammar al-Saadi told Reuters that fewer than 10 people had been killed, with three wounded and six detained in the raids.
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"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
Ann Coulter
[ edited by Linda_K on Jun 30, 2007 02:03 PM ]
posted on July 2, 2007 01:41:16 PM new
Helenjw
posted on January 1, 2007 03:56:17 PM
Oh, cut the crap, Mingo. Here, like at OTWA your clinging attention to Linda exacerbates the problem. If you want to continue it's certainly your prerogative to do so
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If you dont want to hear the truth....dont ask the question.
