Jan 10 2008
Applying Some Whoop-A$$ To al-Qaeda
al-Qaeda has promised a come back in Iraq. They have put the call out to try and turn the tide against their impending defeat. Sadly for them they did not contemplate the impact if the US and Iraqis ALSO unleashed a forceful push on them. Well now they can contemplate it – on their journey to meet Allah:
American warplanes rained bombs on a rural area just south of Baghdad on Thursday, destroying in a 10-minute blitz what the US military said were “safe havens” of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The massive air raid, one of the biggest in Iraq in recent months, unleashed 40,000 pounds (18,000 kilos) of explosives on Arab Jabour village just south of the capital, a US military statement said.
The attack by B-1 bombers and F-16 fighter-bombers was part of a nationwide operation against Al-Qaeda codenamed Phantom Phoenix, launched by US and Iraqi forces on Tuesday, the statement said.
“Thirty-eight bombs were dropped within the first 10 minutes, with a total tonnage of 40,000 pounds,” it said.
“More than 40 targets were hit after precision air strikes destroyed reported Al-Qaeda safe havens in Arab Jabour.”
US and Iraqi forces have been methodically herding the terrorists into isolated kill zones for the final blow. I doubt this is the only attack currently on the drawing table. Everyone knows the success to date needs to be built upon. We need to crush al-Qaeda completely. Too bad for the Surrendercrats – their hopes of losing Iraq and surrendering to Bin Laden continue to disappear as each week passes by.
Worth a read today is a piece in the WSJ by John McCain and Joe Lieberman who note how the Surge and Awakening have really worked in Iraq. And there is no reason to believe we are all out of success stories as of yet.
The geographic significance of both Iraq and Afghanistan seems to have missed the war detractors—-not surprising with today’s school systems focus on making kids feel good as opposed to learning. From the beginning it was clear that we picked both places (more so with Iraq) to take the fight back to the jihadis — why wait for them over here to kill civilians, give them a crack at our soldiers in their own backyard where it is more convenient for them to face our side and then die. Much better than sitting on our hands at home, feeling good about ourselves while waiting for the next attack—me, I’ve been sleeping real well night at night thanks to what our troops are doing half a world away.
KauaBoy, you seem misinformed. The people carrying out violence in Iraq are, almost exclusively, native Iraqis. They are not part of Bin Laden’s organization, they will not “follow us home,†and in fact Iraq is their country, not ours.
I know why Mr. Strata celebrates the airstrike, since pretending that everyone we kill in Iraq is “Al-Qaeda†is a small price to pay for the real joy of being in Iraq: massive bombing and killing of Iraqis. That’s the point. Still, let’s get it straight about who we’re fighting: we are fighting Iraqis, walling them off from other Iraqis, and Strata is glad because we just killed a bunch of Iraqis. And all this means, of course, that there’s “good news†from Iraq.
As for the McCain-Lieberman op-ed, apart from their ignorance of what the stated goals of the surge were (all of which have failed except reduction of violence to horrific 2005 civil war levels) and their ignorance of who runs war policy (it ain’t General Petraeus, and if he wants to continue the war, tough luck – he works for America, not America for him), they basically advocate that Americans kill and be killed in Iraq for no reason than to help McCain’s campaign. McCain knows it’s in America’s interest to leave Iraq, but he’d rather see hundreds more Americans die than lose an election. As Spencer Ackerman says, McCain knows that the surge has made “victory” no more likely, but he wants people to die “for a debater’s point.â€