Jun 23 2007
Top al-Qaeda Saw Surge Coming And Left, SurrenderMedia Was Clueless
The fact that some top al-Qaeda leaders ran (again) from a fight with the US and Iraqi forces now pushing through Baqouba, Iraq in Diyala Province is causing some in the media to claim the US tipped its hand when it planned the Surge many months ago:
Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters that leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq had been alerted to the Baqouba offensive by widespread public discussion of the American plan to clear the city before the attack began. He portrayed Al Qaeda leaders’ escape as cowardice, saying that “when the fight comes, they leave,” abandoning “midlevel” Al Qaeda leaders and fighters to face the might of American troops — just, he said, as they did in Fallujah.
…
Some American officers in Baqouba have blamed Al Qaeda leaders’ flight on public remarks about the offensive in the days before it began by top U.S. commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, the overall commander in Iraq. But Odierno cast the issue in broader terms, saying that Al Qaeda leaders were bound to know an attack was coming in light of President Bush’s decision to pour nearly 30,000 additional troops into the fight in his so-called surge.
“Frankly, I think they knew an operation was coming in Baqouba,” Odierno said in a teleconference with Pentagon reporters from the American military headquarters in Baghdad. “They watched the news. They understood we had a surge. They understood Baqouba was designated as a problem area. So they knew we were going to come, sooner or later.”
Well, if anyone pushed The Surge into the news day in and day out it was the Surrendercrats who wanted to pull forces from Iraq and let al-Qaeda win and the SurrenderMedia who have always harboured an unending pessimism that Iraq will work out for the better. But beyond the pessimism I think that al-Qaeda was going to be tipped off anyway, and they can run when they want. In war the establishment of fortified positions is nothing new (except to the ever clueless SurrenderMedia), and Baquoba and the surrounding Diyala Province is where al-Qaeda has been chased from Anbar and Baghdad and where they set up their last base of operations.
The news media just missed this entire event and now want to blame the US because they were late to the party and al-Qaeda wasn’t. The difference is the military and al-Qaeda are on the battlefield and get tell, to some degree, what each other is doing when they move forces. The reporting shows a long term effort by al-Qaeda to fortify Baquoba, the latest capitol city of Bin Laden’s modern caliphate (al-Qaeda lost their first capitol city Ramadi located in Anbar Province:
IMAGINE it’s June 7, 1944, the day after the D-Day invasion. You pick up your newspaper. There’s no mention of Normandy on the front page, and only a brief reference to it in a roundup story on an inside page.
The biggest battle since the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime is under way in Iraq. It’s outcome could determine whether the war is won or lost. But our news media have paid less attention to it than to Paris Hilton’s legal troubles.
…
“They are ready for us,” said former special forces soldier Michael Yon, now a freelance journalist embedded with the U.S. troops. “Giant bombs are buried in the roads. Snipers have chiseled holes in walls so they can shoot not from roofs or windows, but from deep inside buildings, where we cannot see the flash or hear the shots – car bombs are already assembled. Suicide vests are prepared.”
Now that the media missed Iraq’s D-Day they have been running to the scene to catch up and find any marginal fault they can to show why all this will never work. But it is working:
U.S. and Iraqi troops captured two senior al-Qaida militants and seven other operatives Saturday in Diyala province, an Iraqi commander said, as an offensive to clear the volatile area of insurgents entered its fifth day.
The U.S. military also cracked down elsewhere in Iraq, saying in a statement that seven other al-Qaida fighters were killed and 10 suspects detained in raids in Tikrit, east of Fallujah, south of Baghdad and in Mosul.
Three other militants suspected of having ties to Iran also were detained in a predawn operation by U.S. forces working with Iraqi informants in Baghdad’s main Shiite district of Sadr City, the military said separately.
The Americans have accused Tehran of providing mainly Shiite militias with training and powerful roadside bombs known as explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs, that have killed hundreds of U.S. troops in recent months.
“Coalition forces are determined to counter Iranian influence in Iraq, pursuing those suspected of smuggling arms and other forms of lethal aid into Iraq,” military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said in a statement. “Disrupting the bombing network in Baghdad remains a high priority for us, and we will continue to target the cells’ leaders and members.”
We are rounding up or killing al-Qaeda. While al-Qaeda’s top leaders may have fled for now, they have left their forces surrounded and taking a pounding. The leaders will have no forces to lead, and it is doubtful new recruits will run to sign up with leaders who run from a fight and who have lost two capitol cities of the modern caliphate in less than a year.
Iran is also exposed right now as we find more and more of their agents – thanks to tips from informants. Iranians, being mostly Persians, are not going to be given the same cover as othe Muslim Arabs in Iraq. There is just too much bad blood between the two peoples. So with the Iranian agents being exposed and the local Iraqis turning on them, where are these top al-qaeda leaders going to go?
I think when al-Qaeda loses it will be quick and decisive and will be the tipping point for Iraq. And it may be coming soon, since we continue to find al-Qaeda fighters trying to sneak out of the battle zones:
Hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi troops, under cover of F-16s, fought their way into three neighborhoods of besieged Baquba yesterday to help clear Diyala Province of entrenched insurgents.
To the north of the city, American helicopters killed 17 Al Qaeda gunmen trying to sneak past a checkpoint.
As the mission of 10,000 U.S. soldiers to take back the volatile province intensified in its fourth day, so have concerns about keeping Al Qaeda on the run. The terrorist fighters and their allies already have been run out of Fallujah and Ramadi in Anbar Province, only to regroup in Baquba and surrounding districts.
Leaders in retreat, gunmen in retreat. Seems to be a trend here. And with the entire area covered with the Surge I doubt those who get away will try and stay low and rebuild. My guess is they are heading out of Iraq. As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, al-Qaeda seems to have stopped sending fighters into Iraq. Probably a wise move now that they are losing them in droves to US and Iraqi forces. al-Qaeda may give up on Iraq. But it will set its sites elsewhere.
FE
I meant stewing at him about his stand on immigration, and his repartee with you on that subject.
See your problem, retiree? You got to side with immigration
limp-wrists to promote your failed,unwinnable war. So you’re
gonna lose both the Mideast…and the Southwest.
Unless of course you change strategy in time and forfeit one to save the other.
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/06/swamp-fox-goes-.html#more
Intelligence anaylist says AlQaeda is winning! Strata wrong and
Gen.Odierno foolish in his adopted strategy.
Then gives his own reccomendations on how to fight alQaeda
in Iraq while we’re negotiating our way out.
Now if RatlantaDale could give expert counsel and analysis like this,
it would almost be worthwhile reading his ineffectually uttered histrionics.
“Intelligence anaylist says AlQaeda is winning!”
Opinions of intelligence analysts tend to run across the entire spectrum. You can always find one that shares your opinion. That doesn’t mean anything. And if the number of AQ killed and captured over the past week is an indication that they are “winning” then I will let them continue to “win” in this manner until they are all gone.
At this rate, they are going to win themselves into oblivion.
I guess you missed the parts where whack a mole was creating more home invasion enemies than reducing the net of alQaeda who were indeed escaping. But go on believing the losers who have failed to stem–not by one percent–the total insurgent strength since 2003.
CENTERISABUNGHOLE: says this:
“Intelligence anaylist says AlQaeda is winning! ”
Then he quotes…..no, wait for it……..he “quotes”…..
LARRY C. JOHNSON!
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!
LARRY C. JONSON……….Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!
A Leftist, Anti-American, Pro-Jihadi “intelligence analyst”, who rode a desk in the CIA for four years, before he flunked out!
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!
And that was 20 years ago!
Here, here, here, is Larry C. Johnson’s greatest hit:
In an editorial entitled “The Declining Terrorist Threat,” published in the New York Times on 10 July 2001, Johnson says:
Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism…. None of these beliefs are based in fact…. While terrorism is not vanquished, in a world where thousands of nuclear warheads are still aimed across the continents, terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States, and it should not be portrayed that way.
Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!
As of July 10th 2001, 2 months BEFORE 9/11, there is NOT MORE “terrorist threat” to the US!
“THECENTERISABUNGHOLE”: Ah……YEAH!……Chirp…….Chirp………Chirp!
Now, I know “THECENTERISABUNGHOLE” is going to come back, screaming and crying, urinating down his leg in frustration, saying “But, but, but, Larry Johnson is a Republican and was a supporter of Bush in 2000”!
Ah, …..YEAH!
Larry Johnson, like all Closet Leftists working around the US Government, has a very FLEXIBLE sense of Loyalty, Morals, Values, Ethics, Integrity and Honor!
Basically, whichever way the wind is blowing, he’s there!
In that regard, he’s right up there with “Bootlicker” and “THECENTERISABUNGHOLE” himself, and such Leftist “heroes” now as Cindy “Mama” Sheehag, Scott “Gotta run, gotta find my next 15 year old date in a Chat room” Ritter, Al “I’m gonna blow a valve” Gore, etc., etc.
You know, I despise Ralf Nader, he’s such a Loon, he’s simply Carteresque in his stupidity; but at least he’s been a Loon, consistently, for the past 40+ years.
But Larry Johnson, Scott Ritter et al. are the worst type of Nutbags; they actually practice “Taqiyah” (I know you’ll have to Google that “THECENTERISABUNGHOLE”, they pretend they’re on your side, suck up to you, and actually talk up your position; then, whoever sticks $10,000 in cash in their pocket, they become their new Masters, and they start stabbing you in the back!
“THECENTERISABUNGHOLE”: I agree with LE, we need YOU and “Booklicker” around for Entertainment value!
Please don’t stop posting; every time I read what you post, I start laughing so hard, I have to run off to the head and relieve myself!
AJ: PLEASE, under NO circumstances, PLEASE, do not Ban this idiot; PLEASE, let him continue to post, no matter what he says; this is toooooo rich!
Bwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/06/23/al_qaeda/index.html
Gotcha’ Strata-AJ is exposed as a for pay or not for pay Bush government agent!
Why–he has taken orders to lie about “alQaeda” being the insurgency under attack in Iraq! Actually, foreign al Qaeda are around
only 5% of those being killed…but morons like Ratlanta need to worry and cower in their doubtlessly fetid fallout shelters…
It isn’t a matter of what I “believe”. It is a matter of what is happening on the ground. Al Qaida and affiliated networks have suffered nothing but defeat after defeat and setback after setback and it isn’t only against us, it is globally. The Islamic Courts were removed from power in Somalia. Sure, they are still agitating but they no longer hold the reigns of civil power there. They have nearly been eradicated from the Southern Philippines. They have faced major recent arrests of top operators in Indonesia. In Algeria they have taken a severe beating. In Saudi Arabia they have lost hundreds of operators. In Lebanon they lost their main base of operations. They lost the reigns of government in Afghanistan. They are facing defeat and annihilation in Iraq. Thailand has sent additional forces to the South to face them there.
I can name only one single place on earth where they hold any sway and and that is their birthplace in Northwestern Pakistan and as evidenced this week, we are starting to reach out and touch them there as well.
They are absolutely failing across the globe. Anyone who might claim otherwise has a serious case of cranial rectosis.
centerisabunghole,
Unless of course you change strategy in time and forfeit one to save thei other.
the immigration thing ain’t gonna pass and we’re gonna win in Iraq. How the hell am I on the losing side.
Ratboy–
so you begrudge Larry missing 9/11 but you follow the lost war of a
man who allowed it on his watch?
maybe Larry didn’t allow for LIHOP at the time, revealed after the fact by Justin Raimondo who showed Israeli agents were hot on the heels of the jihadists in America, but allowed the attack to occur.
But following Israel’s policy of war sure has made worldwide jihad a threat now–to dismantle our oppressive Empire abroad, not to convert us at home…
http://www.amazon.com/Terror-Enigma-11-Israeli-Connection/dp/0595296823
don’t blame Johnson-blame the dual loyalistsa and their
fellow travelers now cowering in fear of a domestic attack.
come to realize it, while Bush lies about foreign alQaeda in
Iraq, his lost war helps it recruit legion more for
attacks elsewhere…including here.
FE
They’ll tweak the legislation until you’re worn down.
More importantly, unless Buchanan’s longstanding call for a
moratorium on all immigration is passed, your grandchildren
will be speaking not only Spanish, but a pig latin form of it.
revealed after the fact by Justin Raimondo who showed Israeli agents were hot on the heels of the jihadists in America, but allowed the attack to occur.
????????????????????????
The cesspool depths of your twisted, hate-filled conspiracy theory BDS-afflicted Anti-American, Pro-Jihadi, Anti-Semitic and Racist bloated sack of feces that passes as your BRAIN is an amazing thing to Behold!
It really is, truly!
How do you get up each morning, and look in the mirror?
You’re so scared of your own shadow, you must have to wear Adult Depends, so you don’t constantly wet yourself!
http://kdka.com/topstories/topstories_story_173190438.html
better get off line and check your ammo, Ratlanta. Experts say
the jihadists have escaped in Iraq and Bush’s strategy has
’em coming elsewhere in droves!
Wait, you say they’re “coming”, aren’t you just the Buffoon that has been arguing for weeks, that people like me, who’ve been telling people the Jihadis ARE coming, are “paranoid” and that the Jihadis can never come over here, and do anything and that I’m an alarmist, and all that other stuff?
I’d love to play football with you, I sure in your fantasylalalaland, the Goal posts move continuously!
Loon….
I think maybe AJ should ban someone else come to think of it. Center…sounds like Ken.
And it this thread is not really the place for the immigration thing, especially when the people who linked the story are doing their best to keep the status quo in place anyway. Kind of makes me wonder what they are bitching about. I myself would prefer to see criminals deported and or jailed, but it seems there are some folks who like things just the way they are.
And drunk driving is not something you have to be an illegal immigrant to do. We have plenty of home grown drunks and drug addicts, I am ashamed to say.
But back on the subject, it seems that the Americans and the Iraqi military are pushing hard right now to try and break the hold AlQaida has. And it sounds as if they are having success.
I remember hearing the Democrat Bob Kerrey say something that surprised me. He said that in 10 years it would be hard to find anyone who would say going into Iraq was a big mistake. I hope he is right.
Terrye, I think Bob Kerrey is going to be right. All of those Center links will be soon shifted into never never land forever.
Still chuckling over that Larry Johnson link. Hahahahaha!!
This is worth a read.
Saw it on Instapundit and went over a read the whole thing. Worth the read.
Centerof bunghole
your grandchildren
will be speaking not only Spanish, but a pig latin form of it.
Most of my grandchildren are grown and none of them speak either Spanish or pig latin. One does speak some French.
As to my view (for what its worth), I see no overwhelming need to keep the trolls.
My reasoning on this is that trolls by definition contribute nothing of substance to the debate, they just spout poorly sourced and executed stuff if anything at all. They simply detract from reasonable debate of the issues of the day and perhaps deter other more reasonable commenters from participating in a verbal food fight.
I am sure that there are plenty of venues on the web for those who want to engage in the rhetorical version of the Octagon but it is generally something I tend to shy away from.
Granted on occasion even I wrongly slipped into interaction out of shear frustration with the repeated waste of bandwidth by some here.
If they feel so sure that we are oh so wrong, why stay?
Obviously they aren’t changing any hearts and minds.
I don’t want echo chambers , but I don’t want to have to step around piles on the carpet either.
Overall anyone can make a slip into excess remarks, and some issues can be more polarizing than others, but when it’s all the time and on every issue with no real debate interaction then it reaches the threshold to be considered trollish.
Others are free to disagree.
Apache IP is still missing?