Jul 10 2007
Iraqis Fighting al-Qaeda
To understand the sea change washing over Iraq one only needs to look at al-Qaeda’s latest attempt to gain a base of operations. Early on al-Qaeda would come into regions of Iraq and find allies. But the word is out about what al-Qaeda does to Muslims when it comes to town, and now al-Qaeda finds villagers willing to fight to the death to keep al-Qaeda out and avoid coming under their blood soaked jackboots:
unni extremists attacked an isolated village northwest of Baghdad in a fierce battle with residents that reportedly left dozens dead, the deputy governor of Iraq‘s Diyala province said Tuesday.
…
resident of the town of Dali Abbas, neighboring Sherween, told AP “the area has come under attack since yesterday, and the people of the village are the only ones defending it.” He spoke on condition his name not be used for fear of reprisals.
Sherween — a village of about 7,000 people, about equally divided between Shiites and Sunnis — lies about 35 miles northwest of Baqouba, where U.S. troops have been fighting a three-week-old offensive to uproot Sunni extremists who use the area to launch attacks in nearby Baghdad.
If al-Qaeda is going to have to fight the locals to gain bases of operation they are in for a world of hurt. While they may, for a time, control this village the fact is al-Qaeda will find its forces decimated and bleeding in the desert just to gain a temporary haven – until they are eradicated by the superior Iraqi-US forces in the area. This will cause not only massive attrition of al-Qaeda’s fighters, but will begin to spread the uprising in the Muslim street against it’s fascist ways. We are at the tipping point in the region and we cannot lose all this momentum and progress we are seeing.
In addition, new regional alliances are cropping up which are also aligned against al-Qaeda:
An Iraqi delegation headed to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss how the two countries can coordinate in fighting the al-Qaida terror network, a senior Iraqi official said.
“There is no doubt that the majority of the suicide bombers and those who drive the vehicles to blow up our innocent civilians, Iraqis, are Saudis,” said Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, who heads the delegation. “We need to stop the flow of suicide bombers, we need to stop the fatwas (religious edicts) coming from Saudis to justify the killings of innocent Iraqis.”
“We need to coordinate our work and get into common understanding with the Saudis, the Saudi brothers, to stop this,” he said.
Saudi Arabia and Iraq allied in the fight against terror and al-Qaeda. Who would have predicted that after 9-11? We need to finish the job we started.
Aj:
I don’t know if you ever read Jules Crittenden but he does a lot of war blogging and he has this interesting post up on what Bush is planning and how the NYT is full of it. It is worth a read. He points out that Bush has said for some time that he wants to try and bring troops home next year.
Iraq is a big country and it takes time to build from scratch and Army and a police force.
Right now the numbers created plus our surge troops are able to take and hold areas instead of just playing wack a mole.
Yes if some bad guy seep out before you get there (try to bring thousands of troops into a province without spies and others getting a clue) they will pop up in other areas of perceived weakness with all the down side that goes along with that.
But once you clear and hold you can then take a majority of those troops and use them to hit the next spot leaving enough in the old place to control security there rather than totally walking away.
Also as time goes on you are training even more local recruits to stack the odds against the bad guys even more.
When the surge is done and we start to draw down our numbers, they will be left with additional local troops on a 2 or 3 to one ratio for each guy we are withdrawing.
Cleared and held areas will require much less manning to hold and keep clean than areas totally not addressed due to insufficient combined manning levels.
After all the violence the local town people will be much more likely to provide intel on new bad guys in town because they don’t want to go back to terrorists in their midst.
You must remember that there really is no “surge” per se. What we had was some units already there having their tours extended at the tail end while other units that were already scheduled to deploy had their tours extended at the front end. What we really have is an “overlap” and not a “surge”. Once the tours of the extended units begins to expire and they are rotated home, the numbers will drop back to pre-overlap levels.
AJ, Pres. Bush should hire you as a press secretary. You have been far more effective in explaining these enormous stakes than anyone in the administration has. The vast majority of the public has no idea about these kind of developments.
What is sick is how the Democrats are harping about the Iraqi government producing nothing or almost nothing; yet, at the same time, what have they accomplished since January other than an increase in minimum wage, naming of a few new post office buildings, and a fight over the emergency defense bill????
Crosspatch, your description makes good sense as far as troop reduction by next spring.
What is sick is how the Democrats are harping about the Iraqi government producing nothing or almost nothing; yet, at the same time, what have they accomplished since January other than an increase in minimum wage, naming of a few new post office buildings, and a fight over the emergency defense bill?
What’s up with that????
Crosspatch, your description makes good sense as far as troop reduction by next spring.
With “friends” like this, who needs enemies?
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/al-qaeda-cell-i.html#comments
The Blotter has (once again) tipped off terrorists in the US that we might be onto them. If we ever manage to arrest a terrorist after an attack and it is learned that they succeeded by something the media published to tip them off, I hope every single individual member of every family involved sues the media outlet for all they can get. And the individual reporters too.
Anyone have some crow they can spare? Murtha’s hungry:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288879,00.html