Video: Special Forces raid in Sadr City

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Obama's "Strike Force"

Another one of Obama's many faces emerged last week when pressed for his plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq. In his answer, he stated that of course we would leave forces behind to protect our diplomatic assets, but he also referred to a strike force that may be in Iraq or nearby.

In the same answer, he disengenously brings up Sen. McCain's 100-year remarks, without noting the fact that his plan would be essentially the same thing.

The Weekly Standard looks into Obama's strike force and finds it even more at odds with his campaign rhetoric, see the article here.

A key adviser to Senator Obama’s campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

The paper, obtained by The New York Sun, was written by Colin Kahl for the center-left Center for a New American Security. In “Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement,” Mr. Kahl writes that through negotiations with the Iraqi government “the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000–80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 (although the specific timelines should be the byproduct of negotiations and conditions on the ground).”

Mr. Kahl is the day-to-day coordinator of the Obama campaign’s working group on Iraq.

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Outside the Wire

Finally, a film about the war in Iraq that looks promising.



The site.

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The Alleys

James Glanz writes of his time spent with Sadr's Milita in the alleys of Sadr City. He quotes a leader of the Mahdi Army:

“We can’t face the armored tanks of the Americans face to face, because all we have is light guns,” he said. “So we just wait for a chance to attack something.”

But they have some tactical advantages also:

Either way, before dismissing the ragtag Mahdi fighters, it would be well to remember that — partly because the alleys of the neighborhoods they control are too narrow for the Iraqi Army’s armored vehicles — Mahdi units like Riadh’s have been fighting Iraq’s federal forces to a standstill in Basra, the country’s southern port city, for nearly a week now.

Alleys: they are dangerous only when used by those who grew up in them. That is the basic reason Mr. Sadr and his fighters simply will not go away in this war.

Check out the whole story in the New York Times.

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Who is the enemy?

I'm just going to cut and paste the whole thing. From James Taranto's Best of the Web:

"Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable 'emboldenment effect' on insurgents there," United Press International reports:

Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinion on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq, according to a study by Radha Iyengar, a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in health policy research at Harvard and Jonathan Monten of the Belfer Center at the university's Kennedy School of Government.

The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled "Is There an 'Emboldenment' Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency in Iraq." . . .

In Iraqi provinces that were broadly comparable in social and economic terms, attacks increased between 7 percent and 10 percent following what the researchers call "high-mention weeks," like the two just before the November 2006 election.

The study is here. One possible objection is the way the study counts "emboldening" statements (see pp. 9-10):

We construct an automated mentions count of potentially "emboldening" statements reported in major U.S. news outlets, which we define as the number of times top Bush administration officials--the President, Vice-President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Press Secretary, and the U.S. commander [in] Iraq--refer to statements or actions by other U.S. political figures that might encourage violent extremist groups in Iraq. This strategy provides an objective mechanism to classify what constitutes an emboldening or resolve-undermining statement or action.

This is probably the best the authors could do. There is no way to count "emboldening" statements directly; the definition invariably would be subjective and the count incomplete. But by relying on characterizations of Bush administration officials (and the commander in Iraq), they leave open the possibility that it is those characterizations, rather than the statements being characterized, that embolden terrorists in Iraq. In addition to "emboldening" statements, the authors also find a correlation between the release of major U.S. opinion polls about Iraq and violence there.

On a related note, the New York Times reports that the media aren't paying as much attention to Iraq as they used to:

Media attention on Iraq began to wane after the first months of fighting, but as recently as the middle of last year, it was still the most-covered topic. Since then, Iraq coverage by major American news sources has plummeted, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The drop in coverage parallels--and may be explained by--a decline in public interest. Surveys by the Pew Research Center show that more than 50 percent of Americans said they followed events in Iraq "very closely" in the months just before and after the war began, but that slid to an average of 40 percent in 2006, and has been running below 30 percent since last fall.

"May be explained by"? What about "may explain"? The Web notwithstanding, most people are still fairly passive consumers of news and are likely to follow stories less closely if there's less news about them.

But here's another possible explanation: News organizations, by and large, are biased against American success in Iraq, as illustrated by this crass bit of editorializing from the Associated Press:

Fresh off his eighth Iraq visit, Sen. John McCain declared Monday that "we are succeeding" and said he wouldn't change course--even as the U.S. death toll rose to 4,000 and the war entered its sixth year.

That "even as" clause is the reporter's opinion, not McCain's. Yet while this sort of thing still goes on, journalists have paid less attention to Iraq over the past year as the "surge" has succeeded in reducing violence. If the Harvard study is right, we may be looking at a virtuous circle: Less violence means less media coverage, which in turn means less violence.

Perhaps one day we'll wake up to discover that America won the war in Iraq months earlier, but no one noticed because the reporters were all busy with other things.

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Required Reading

Michael Yon.

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New Iraqi Law Places Waiting Period on Suicide Vests

In The Know: New Iraqi Law Requires Waiting Period For Suicide Vest Purchases

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US Soldiers Must Tread Lightly In Iraq

It is more important than ever that Coalition Forces not push Iraqis, especially the youth, back into the hands of the Musliim fanatics. A New York Times story clearly illustrates how much Iraq's future depends on the way those who call it their home are treated.

After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.

"I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us," said Sara, a high school student in Basra. "Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don't deserve to be rulers."

Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: "The religion men are liars. Young people don't believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore."

The shift in Iraq runs counter to trends of rising religious practice among young people across much of the Middle East, where religion has replaced nationalism as a unifying ideology.

While religious extremists are admired by a number of young people in other parts of the Arab world, Iraq offers a test case of what could happen when extremist theories are applied. Fingers caught in the act of smoking were broken. Long hair was cut and force-fed to its wearer. In that laboratory, disillusionment with Islamic leaders took hold.

The article is amazing in its departure from the NYTime's typical treatment of the war effort, even calling our work there "the American liberation."

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"Baghdad's New Normal"

From US News & World Report

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Al Qaeda is on the Run

NRO lays out the facts and they're looking very good:

Terrorism is collapsing across Iraq. In February 2007, when President Bush ordered 30,000 additional troops into Iraq — as Senator John McCain cheered and Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama jeered — only 8 percent of Baghdad’s neighborhoods were rated secure. That number is now 75 percent. In 2006, coalition troops defused 2,662 terrorist weapons caches. In 2007, they neutralized 6,956. Since June, attacks on U.S. soldiers have slid 60 percent. Meanwhile, sectarian violence fell 90 percent from January to December 2007, sparing Iraqi and U.S. lives alike.

This is one article that is worth reading in full. I especially love the quotes from the recently captured terrorist document, in which the AlQ leader whines that his forces have dwindled from 600 to 20.

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Angelina vs. Barack

Just back from her visit to Iraq, Angelina Jolie bucks the trend among hollywood elites and writes a Washington Post editorial insisting that U.S. security interests as well as basic morality dictate that we remain in Iraq. Unlike the Democratic presidential front-runner, Obama, who earlier made a statement to the effect that we should pull out ASAP even if it meant genocide in Iraq once we leave.

Jolie:

My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis.

Today's humanitarian crisis in Iraq--and the potential consequences for our national security--are great. Can the United States afford to gamble that 4 million or more poor and displaced people, in the heart of Middle East, won't explode in violent desperation, sending the whole region into further disorder? . . .

As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.

It seems to me that now is the moment to address the humanitarian side of this situation. Without the right support, we could miss an opportunity to do some of the good we always stated we intended to do.

(H/T Taranto)

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Pew Poll: We Can Win

Fuck Yes! The American public has our back:

Majority now believe U.S. effort in Iraq will succeed, 53-39

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Can't Deploy Soon Enough

Due to Operations Security (OpSec) I can't say when or where our unit is deploying, but I can say that after hearing about the latest mass murders in a market this week, it can't be soon enough. I hope I have an opportunity to send these monsters to hell.

The first reports stated that the two bombers were women, well, they were, but they also had Down's Syndrome; the explosives were detonated remotely after the women were directed to walk into the crowds. Absolutely horrendous.

From NRO:

Friday, February 1, 2008

BAGHDAD - Remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally retarded women detonated in a coordinated attack on Baghdad pet bazaars Friday, Iraqi officials said, killing at least 73 people in the deadliest day since the U.S. sent 30,000 extra troops to the capital last spring.

The chief Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, said the female bombers had Down syndrome and that the explosives were detonated by remote control - indicating they may not having been willing attackers in what could be a new method by suspected Sunni insurgents to subvert stepped up security measures.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the use of mentally retarded women as suicide bombers proves al-Qaida is "the most brutal and bankrupt of movements" and will strengthen Iraqi resolve to reject terrorism.

The first attack Friday occurred at about 10:20 a.m. in the central al-Ghazl market. The weekly bazaar has been bombed several times since the war started but recently had re-emerged as a popular place to shop and stroll as Baghdad security improved and a Friday ban on driving was lifted.

Four police and hospital officials said at least 46 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Firefighters scooped up debris scattered among pools of blood, clothing and pigeon carcasses.

About 20 minutes later, a second female suicide bomber struck a bird market in a predominantly Shiite area in southeastern Baghdad. That blast killed as many as 27 people and wounded 67, according to police and hospital officials.

One witness who declined to be identified told AP Television News that the woman said she had birds to sell, then blew herself up as people gathered around to inspect them.

The attacks were the latest in a series of violent incidents that have been chipping away at Iraqi confidence in the permanence of recent security gains.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said about 70 people were killed in both attacks, which he said were committed by terrorists motivated by revenge and "to show that they are still able to stop the march of history and of our people toward reconciliation."

According to today's news, the number of dead is up to 99.

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Comparing Venezuela and Iraq

Gateway Pundit looks at the numbers.

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MSM Reporters Admit To Downplaying Good News

Brenda Starr from CNN and Robin Wright from the Washington Post on Reliable Sources today told Howie Kurtz that, while increasing deaths in Iraq would certainly be front page news, a decrease in deaths isn't newsworthy.

"The fact is we're at the beginning of a trend -- and it's not even sure that it
is a trend yet. "

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NYTimes: Situation in Ramadi Improving but Fragile

April 29, 2007
Uneasy Alliance Is Taming One Insurgent Bastion
By KIRK SEMPLE
RAMADI, Iraq — Anbar Province, long the lawless heartland of the tenacious Sunni Arab resistance, is undergoing a surprising transformation. Violence is ebbing in many areas, shops and schools are reopening, police forces are growing and the insurgency appears to be in retreat.

“Many people are challenging the insurgents,” said the governor of Anbar, Maamoon S. Rahid, though he quickly added, “We know we haven’t eliminated the threat 100 percent.”

Many Sunni tribal leaders, once openly hostile to the American presence, have formed a united front with American and Iraqi government forces against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. With the tribal leaders’ encouragement, thousands of local residents have joined the police force. About 10,000 police officers are now in Anbar, up from several thousand a year ago. During the same period, the police force here in Ramadi, the provincial capital, has grown from fewer than 200 to about 4,500, American military officials say.

At the same time, American and Iraqi forces have been conducting sweeps of insurgent strongholds, particularly in and around Ramadi, leaving behind a network of police stations and military garrisons, a strategy that is also being used in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, as part of its new security plan.

Yet for all the indications of a heartening turnaround in Anbar, the situation, as it appeared during more than a week spent with American troops in Ramadi and Falluja in early April, is at best uneasy and fragile.

Full Story

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My 500th Post: Serve your Country

If you have ever given it the slightest thought, I urge you to join the military. The nation needs you. That is no cliche at this point in time, we have a chance to win in Iraq (read Kagen's AEI plan here [video or audio], Executive Summary posted below, that is likely to be implemented) and we need everyone to volunteer who can.

If not in the military, then please do your part here at home to convince everyone you know how important the next 16 months will be - that we come together to support the President and the plan to win, nothing is more important; not winning the White House in 2008, not showing the world that Bush was wrong to invade, not crippling the U.S. to put it in its place, all of these things pale when viewed against the prospect of the World's-Best-Hope-for-Freedom losing in Iraq. If we lose, everyone except the deranged Islamists will lose.

Call your local recruiter tomorrow morning, then go for a run (or even a brisk walk, don't start too fast. I recommend asking your recruiter for the Pocket Physical Training Guide, it will get anyone in shape).

Click below for AEI Exec Summary.

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Victory is still an option in Iraq. America, a country of 300 million people with a GDP of $12 trillion, and more than 1 million soldiers and marines can regain control of Iraq, a state the size of California with a population of 25 million and a GDP under $100 billion.
Victory in Iraq is vital to America’s security. Defeat will lead to regional conflict, humanitarian catastrophe, and increased global terrorism.

Iraq has reached a critical point. The strategy of relying on a political process to eliminate the insurgency has failed. Rising sectarian violence threatens to break America’s will to fight. This violence will destroy the Iraqi government, armed forces, and people if it is not rapidly controlled.

Victory in Iraq is still possible at an acceptable level of effort. We must adopt a new approach to the war and implement it quickly and decisively.

Three courses of action have been proposed. All will fail.

• Withdraw immediately. This approach will lead to immediate defeat. The Iraqi Security Forces are entirely dependent upon American support to survive and function. If U.S. forces withdraw now, they will collapse and Iraq will descend into total civil war that will rapidly spread throughout the region
• Engage Iraq’s neighbors. This approach will fail. The basic causes of violence and sources of manpower and resources for the warring sides come from within Iraq. Iraq’s neighbors are encouraging the violence, but they cannot stop it.
• Increase embedded trainers dramatically. This approach cannot succeed rapidly enough to prevent defeat. Removing U.S. forces from patrolling neighborhoods to embed them as trainers will lead to an immediate rise in violence. This rise in violence will destroy America’s remaining will to fight, and escalate the cycle of sectarian violence in Iraq beyond anything an Iraqi army could bring under control.

We must act now to restore security and stability to Baghdad. We and the enemy have identified it as the decisive point.

There is a way to do this.

• We must change our focus from training Iraqi soldiers to securing the Iraqi population and containing the rising violence. Securing the population has never been the primary mission of the U.S. military effort in Iraq, and now it must become the first priority.
• We must send more American combat forces into Iraq and especially into Baghdad to support this operation. A surge of seven Army brigades and Marine regiments to support clear-and-hold operations starting in the spring of 2007 is necessary, possible, and will be sufficient.
• These forces, partnered with Iraqi units, will clear critical Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shi’a neighborhoods, primarily on the west side of the city.
• After the neighborhoods have been cleared, U.S. soldiers and Marines, again partnered with Iraqis, will remain behind to maintain security.
• As security is established, reconstruction aid will help to reestablish normal life and, working through Iraqi officials, will strengthen Iraqi local government.

This approach requires a national commitment to victory in Iraq:

• The ground forces must accept longer tours for several years. National Guard units will have to accept increased deployments during this period.
• Equipment shortages must be overcome by transferring equipment from non-deploying active duty, National Guard, and reserve units to those about to deploy. Military industry must be mobilized to provide replacement equipment sets urgently.
• The president must request a dramatic increase in reconstruction aid for Iraq. Responsibility and accountability for reconstruction must be assigned to established agencies. The president must insist upon the completion of reconstruction projects. The president should also request a dramatic increase in CERP funds.
• The president must request a substantial increase in ground forces end strength. This increase is vital to sustaining the morale of the combat forces by ensuring that relief is on the way. The president must issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer to fight in the decisive conflict of this age.

Failure in Iraq today will require far greater sacrifices tomorrow in far more desperate circumstances.

Committing to victory now will demonstrate America’s strength to our friends and enemies around the world.

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VDH: Things Are Coming To A Head

Victor Hanson's latest:

What to make of this mass depression over events on the ground? Our supposed setback surely is not comparable to the destruction of the entire French army in less than eight weeks in 1940, the flight of the British from Dunkirk, followed in the next 24 months by the surrender of two British armies at Singapore and Tobruk, all of which led to consideration of a writ of censure of Winston Churchill.

Nor is our lament comparable to the hysteria that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, the loss of Wake Island, and the fall of the Philippines.

Nor is the panic comparable to the near destruction of an American army when nearly 1 million Chinese crossed the Yalu in November 1950.

And what is wrong with the American public? Are they falling prey to our defeatist press?

A media that makes Cindy Sheehan, Valerie Plame, Mark Foley’s email, or lies about flushed Korans in Guantanamo into headline stories is itself nearly lunatic.

The once quick victories in Afghanistan (8 weeks) and Iraq (3 weeks), following the easy wins over Noriega and Milosevic, unrealistically sent the message that the United States could almost simultaneously win wars without losses and continue to honor its global obligations with a vastly reduced Army and Marines.

And the problem in Iraq has not been so much the constant “mistakes” (such lapses happen in every war), as the inability of our government to articulate why we are there and how we will win.

The result is that we have almost worked ourselves into some sort of self-induced paralytic state. But on sober reflection, things in fact are hardly lost. There has been no repeat of 9/11. The U.S. military has killed thousands of jihadists. The Taliban and Saddam are gone. There are still democratic governments in Afghanistan and Iraq struggling to make it, the first in the history of the region. Our troops in the field have high morale and believe they can secure Iraq. And the world, especially in Europe, has become vigilant against Islamic fundamentalism.

We are in much better shape that during any of the crises that Churchill, Roosevelt, or Truman all weathered. And while 50 dead every month since 9/11 is a high toll in this war against jihadism, it does not compare to the 8,000 plus killed from December 1941 to August 1945, a war that similarly started out with a surprise, though less lethal attack on the United states.

Read the whole thing.

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Whom to trust?

On day after Micheal Fumento, an independent citizen-journalist reporting from Ramadi, posted a story detailing U.S. progress in that town - one of the toughest in Iraq, the Washington Post's Tom Ricks had front page story with a bleaker message. Using a leaked Marine memo, Ricks, sittting in Washington D.C. (where he's been promoting his new book, "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq") writes:

The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military's mission in Anbar province.

The Marines recently filed an updated version of that assessment that stood by its conclusions and stated that, as of mid-November, the problems in troubled Anbar province have not improved, a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday. "The fundamental questions of lack of control, growth of the insurgency and criminality" remain the same, the official said.

Perhaps the Marine memo is already dated or Ricks is leaving out some qualifiers. So it was interesting to see a third story come out in the London Times that same week, written by a reporter, like Fumento and unlike Ricks, who was also in Ramadi - it's message was also upbeat:

A power struggle has erupted: al-Qaeda’s reign of terror is being challenged. Sheikh Sittar and many of his fellow tribal leaders have cast their lot with the once-reviled US military. They are persuading hundreds of their followers to sign up for the previously defunct Iraqi police. American troops are moving into a city that was, until recently, a virtual no-go area. A battle is raging for the allegiance of Ramadi’s battered and terrified citizens and the outcome could have far-reaching consequences.

Now WaPo is joining Fumento and the London Times in sounding more positive about the battle in Ramadi. This time instead of Ricks reporting from Washington, they have someone in Radadi:

"Operation Squeeze Play" is proving easier than expected considering this 20-block section of southeastern Ramadi _ known as "Second Officer's District" because it's home to so many former leaders of Saddam Hussein's army _ was not so long ago a no-go zone for U.S. troops.

The lesson I come away with is don't read Tom Ricks (or listen to him when he's making his rounds on the Sunday talk shows, etc).

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U.S. Troops have "Carte blanche" in Iraq

Someone forgot to tell the U.S. troops in Iraq that we're supposed to be pulling out. I guess the CNN feed doesn't get out into our FOPs and of course they wouldn't have run across James Baker outside the Green Zone (thanks to my buddy Hannibal for the LaTimes link):

In pursuit of a missing soldier, U.S. and Iraqi special forces units have staged dozens of operations in Shiite Muslim neighborhoods that once were ruled off-limits by the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.

The raids into territory dominated by the Al Mahdi army, a militia loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr, risk exacerbating tensions within the government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who has shown a new willingness to confront paramilitary forces believed to take part in kidnappings and death squad operations.

"We have carte blanche at this point," said one high-ranking U.S. military commander. "Whereas before we had to tippy-toe around these areas, now we can go in there as we like to search for our missing soldier."

And there's this (something interesting to read, but perhaps something I'd rather wasn't public knowledge):

"Most times they are accompanied by the 'Dirty Iraqi Division.' This division doesn't follow the orders of the Iraqi government."

---

U.S. targeting Shiite militia strongholds
In areas where troops had been barred by the government, they now have 'carte blanche' to stage raids with Iraqis.
By Solomon Moore
Times Staff Writer

December 8, 2006

BAGHDAD — In pursuit of a missing soldier, U.S. and Iraqi special forces units have staged dozens of operations in Shiite Muslim neighborhoods that once were ruled off-limits by the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.

The raids into territory dominated by the Al Mahdi army, a militia loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada Sadr, risk exacerbating tensions within the government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who has shown a new willingness to confront paramilitary forces believed to take part in kidnappings and death squad operations.

"We have carte blanche at this point," said one high-ranking U.S. military commander. "Whereas before we had to tippy-toe around these areas, now we can go in there as we like to search for our missing soldier."

U.S. Army Reserve Spc. Ahmed Qusai Taei, 41, an Iraqi American immigrant, disappeared Oct. 23 while making an unauthorized visit to relatives in Baghdad.

U.S. military officials believe that Taei is being held in Sadr City, an Al Mahdi stronghold in the capital, and have offered a $50,000 reward for help in finding him.

Military officials say more than 2,100 U.S. troops and 1,200 Iraqis have taken part in 57 operations to look for the missing American soldier, and that in the process they have detained 49 people.

A U.S. military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said that most of those operations focused on Shiite neighborhoods.

Sadr loyalists make up one of the most powerful factions in Maliki's government. Seeking to preserve his fragile alliance with the firebrand cleric, the prime minister has at times obstructed U.S. military efforts in Al Mahdi strongholds.

Days after Taei's abduction, Maliki ordered U.S. and Iraqi forces to remove roadblocks around Sadr City that had been aimed at boxing in the soldier's kidnappers.

In August, as the U.S. military started its ambitious plan to quell sectarian violence raging in Baghdad, the prime minister demanded that American commanders clear with him any operations in Shiite neighborhoods. He also thwarted several planned military assaults.

Haidar Tarfi, a Sadr aide, said that U.S. soldiers recently increased the number of raids, including one on Tarfi's house, in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, where Al Mahdi fighters also are entrenched.

American commanders say they conduct limited strikes in Sadr City and other Al Mahdi militia strongholds, using small Iraqi and U.S. Special Forces units.

"We're trying to use the minimum amount of force necessary to accomplish the mission," said a U.S. military officer who requested anonymity while discussing U.S. Special Forces operations.

"Most of the raids take place in [central] Sadr City," said Qahtan Sudani, a Sadr representative in Baghdad. "When the raids happen, they avoid the main entrances to the neighborhood….

"Most times they are accompanied by the 'Dirty Iraqi Division.' This division doesn't follow the orders of the Iraqi government."

Nasir Saidi, a Sadr legislator, accused U.S. and Iraqi troops of using the search for the missing U.S. soldier as a pretext to strike his movement.

"They raided with fighter jets, armored vehicles and infantry," he said. "Some of them were members of the 'Dirty Iraqi Division,' who will be punished."

Little is known publicly about Iraqi special forces units, a relatively new force that has participated in operations against suspected Shiite death squad members and high-level Iraqi insurgents.

Iraqi Defense Ministry officials have given conflicting information about the force. Some say that it is not answerable to the Iraqi army command and is attached to Iraq's intelligence service. Others deny its existence.

The earliest known raid by the force occurred in March, when its members attacked a Shiite mosque that was allegedly being used to hide kidnapping victims. Iraqi special forces soldiers killed 16 Shiite gunmen, detained 17 others and recovered an Iraqi hostage, U.S. and Iraqi military officials said.

The U.S. military announced Thursday that Iraqi special forces soldiers captured six suspected insurgents in a raid this week in Yousifiya, a town south of Baghdad.

Other violence around Baghdad on Thursday left at least 22 Iraqis dead, including 19 alleged gunmen who were slain by police commandos in Madaen, a suburb south of the capital.

Authorities in Baghdad also found at least 35 bodies, many of which were in handcuffs and had been shot several times.

At least 28 Iraqis died in violence outside the capital, including eight men who were shot by Iraqi soldiers while allegedly stealing oil from a pipeline near the northern city of Kirkuk.

A U.S.-Iraqi attack Wednesday used tank rounds and "precision-guided ordnance" to kill at least 14 suspected insurgents in Ramadi, according to a U.S. military statement.

Several buildings were damaged in the attack, but military officials reported no civilian casualties.

U.S. military officials said a soldier died of his wounds Wednesday, bringing that day's American combat deaths to 11.

Five Task Force Lightning soldiers were killed by a bomb that exploded near their vehicle in Al Tamim province and six servicemen died of combat wounds in Al Anbar province: four soldiers from the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division; a Marine from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters Group; and a Marine from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Force.

A Marine assigned to Task Force Military Police, 1st Expeditionary Force, died Wednesday of non-combat-related injuries.

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Silly string in war

James Taranto points us to a cool story about U.S. troops using silly string to detect trip wires:

Which is why a New Jersey mother is organizing a drive to send cans of Silly String to Iraq.

American troops use the stuff to detect trip wires around bombs, as Marcelle Shriver learned from her son, a soldier in Iraq.

Before entering a building, troops squirt the plastic goo, which can shoot strands about 10 to 12 feet, across the room. If it falls to the ground, no trip wires. If it hangs in the air, they know they have a problem. The wires are otherwise nearly invisible.

---

By REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press Writer
Wed Dec 6, 3:14 PM ET

In an age of multimillion-dollar high-tech weapons systems, sometimes it's the simplest ideas that can save lives. Which is why a New Jersey mother is organizing a drive to send cans of Silly String to Iraq.

American troops use the stuff to detect trip wires around bombs, as Marcelle Shriver learned from her son, a soldier in Iraq.

Before entering a building, troops squirt the plastic goo, which can shoot strands about 10 to 12 feet, across the room. If it falls to the ground, no trip wires. If it hangs in the air, they know they have a problem. The wires are otherwise nearly invisible.

Now, 1,000 cans of the neon-colored plastic goop are packed into Shriver's one-car garage in this town outside Philadelphia, ready to be shipped to the Middle East thanks to two churches and a pilot who heard about the drive.

"If I turn on the TV and see a soldier with a can of this on his vest, that would make this all worth it," said Shriver, 57, an office manager.

The maker of the Silly String brand, Just for Kicks Inc. of Watertown, N.Y., has contacted the Shrivers about donating some. Other manufacturers make the stuff, too, and call their products "party string" or "crazy string."

"Everyone in the entire corporation is very pleased that we can be involved in something like this," said Rob Oram, Just for Kicks product marketing manager. He called the troops' use of Silly String innovative.

The military is reluctant to talk about the use of Silly String, saying that discussing specific tactics will tip off insurgents.

But Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said Army soldiers and Marines are not forbidden to come up with new ways to do their jobs, especially in Iraq's ever-evolving battlefield. And he said commanders are given money to buy nonstandard supplies as needed.

In other cases of battlefield improvisation in Iraq, U.S. soldiers have bolted scrap metal to Humvees in what has come to be known as "Hillybilly Armor." Medics use tampons to plug bullet holes in the wounded until they can be patched up.

Also, soldiers put condoms and rubber bands around their rifle muzzles to keep out sand. And troops have welded old bulletproof windshields to the tops of Humvees to give gunners extra protection. They have dubbed it "Pope's glass" — a reference to the barriers that protect the pontiff.

In an October call to his mother, Army Spc. Todd Shriver explained how his unit in the insurgent hotbed of Ramadi learned from Marines to use Silly String on patrol to detect boobytraps.

After sending some cans to her 28-year-old son, Shriver enlisted the help of two priests and posted notices in her church and its newsletter. From there, the effort took off, with money and Silly String flowing in. Parishioners have been dropping cans into donation baskets.

"There's so much that they can't do, and they're frustrated, but this is something they can do," said the Rev. Joseph Capella of St. Luke's Church in Stratford.

The Shrivers said they would not mind seeing the string as standard-issue equipment, but they don't blame the military for not supplying it.

"I don't think that they can think of everything," said Ronald Shriver, 59, a retired salesman. "They're taught to improvise, and this is something that they've thought of."

Marcelle Shriver said that since the string comes in an aerosol can, it is considered a hazardous material, meaning the Postal Service will not ship it by air. But a private pilot who heard about her campaign has agreed to fly the cans to Kuwait — most likely in January — where they will then be taken to Iraq.

Shriver said she will continue her campaign as long as her son is overseas and she has Silly String to send.

"I know that he's going come through this. I hope they all do," she said.

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Insurgent Ambush tests Iraqi Soldiers

Depending who you ask, it was either a victory or a failed opportunity for the ISF (Iraqi Security Forces) to prove their mettle. Solomon Moore writes for the L.A. Times, I found it in today's Chicago Tribune (Click Read more below to read the whole story):

FORWARD OPERATING BASE AL-RASHID, Iraq -- Bursts of AK-47 fire hissed past them from several directions, showering the U.S. and Iraqi soldiers with pulverized concrete and slapping spider-web fractures into their Humvees' plexiglass turret-guards.

The joint security forces, undertaking what officials described as a major counterinsurgency operation, were in pursuit of 70 "high-value targets" in Baghdad's crowded Fadhil quarter, a Sunni Arab neighborhood of multistory tenements along the east bank of the Tigris River.

Instead, the soldiers of the Iraqi army's 9th Mechanized Division and their American trainers had walked into a deadly ambush Friday.

From upper-story apartments, insurgents stopped the soldiers' advance with grenades and shoulder-fired rockets. Others launched coordinated mortar round strikes, hitting one of two nearby Iraqi field posts.

By the time the 11-hour battle was over, one Iraqi soldier had been killed and six others wounded, including one who shot himself in the foot. A U.S. soldier also was wounded and, according to American troops interviewed, additional casualties were averted only by U.S. Apache attack helicopters and U.S. Army trainers who shot their way out of the ambush.

"Fear took over" among the Iraqis, said Staff Sgt. Michael Baxter.

"They refused to move. We were yelling at them to move," he said. "I grabbed one guy and shoved him into a building. I was saying, `God get me out of this because these guys are going to get me killed.'"

The offensive, called Operation Lion Strike, initially was billed by U.S. officials in Baghdad as an Iraqi-led success and a case study in support of the Pentagon's increasing reliance on military advisers to shift security responsibilities to Iraqi soldiers.

U.S. officials say an imminent expansion of Military Transition Teams--squads of American military advisers embedded with Iraqi army units--will meet demands by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to President Bush in their meeting in Amman, Jordan, last week for more authority over his security forces.

Advisers: 2 glaring errors

But interviews at their joint Rustamiyah base, U.S. advisers and Iraqi soldiers involved in Friday's pitched battle revealed a different story. The operation was hastily prepared and badly executed, they said, and plans to let Iraqis take the lead in the battle were quickly scrapped.

"It started out that way," Baxter said. "But five minutes into it, we had to take over."

Staffed with veterans of the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s and equipped with refurbished Soviet tanks and American Humvees, the 2,000-man 9th Division is considered to be Iraq's best hope for an eventual U.S. troop withdrawal.

But confusion reigned as insurgents pummeled dismounted Iraqi troops and American advisers. American radio jammers blocked Iraqi soldiers' walkie-talkies, forcing them to use unreliable cell phone signals to stay in contact. Voice commands were lost amid the explosions and gunfire echoing off the looming walls. At one point, U.S. and Iraqi troops piled into a Humvee to escape the hail of insurgent bullets pinging off the armor cladding.

"I was pulling people in," Army Sgt. 1st Class Kent McQueen said. "We were all bunched in there together with the gunner. It was like a game of Twister."

At times, the overwhelmed Iraqi soldiers fired wildly, sweeping their machine-gun barrels across friendly and insurgent targets alike, witnesses said.

"I had to throw bullet casings at them to get their attention," said Army 1st Sgt. Agustin Mendoza, another U.S. trainer who manned a Humvee gun-turret during the battle. "They had no weapons discipline."

The number of insurgents in the area was estimated at more than 100. Soldiers said they killed 20 and detained 43 others, including three foreign insurgents.

No count was taken of the number of civilians killed in the densely populated neighborhood, but U.S. and Iraqi soldiers acknowledged significant "collateral damage."

Apache helicopters beat down on the dilapidated tenements, drilling hundreds of .50-caliber rounds into concrete walls and rooftops. At least twice they unleashed Hellfire missiles, shattering walls and rooftops with flashing thunderclaps. On the ground, Iraqi T-55 tank commanders fired their main guns down the narrow alleyways, smashing structures into an avalanche of bricks.

McQueen felt something jerk his head back violently and then pressed his finger into a bullet-sized dent in his Kevlar helmet.

At one point he noticed Iraqi soldiers in their armored Humvees pulling away in panic.

"I tried to halt the Iraqi army trucks to stop . . . to give us cover," he said. "The driver gives me this dumb look."

U.S. pushes more training

The U.S. military is ramping up its training program to add 30,000 more Iraqi troops by mid-2007 to make up for soldiers who abandoned their posts or died. The new recruits will add to the small number of Iraqi forces willing to travel away from their home bases despite dangerous travel conditions or the possibility of being ordered to fight against members of their own sect.

In Friday's battle, for example, most of the 9th Division's soldiers are Shiites, and U.S. and Iraqi officers said they doubted they would obey if ordered to fight in Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad such as Sadr City.

"In August, when we started Operation Together Forward to secure Baghdad, we called on a bunch of units to assist," said Army Col. Douglass Heckman, commander for the 9th Division Military Transition Team. "This division was the only one that moved into the operation. The others balked."

But Friday's battle suggested that even Iraq's best-trained and equipped division is far from being able to operate independently. Heckman said that attrition and liberal leave policies mean that only 68 percent of the 9th Division is on duty at any given time.

Another U.S. adviser complained that the division has only 65 percent of the weapons and other equipment allocated by the U.S.

"And it's not just my guys," said the adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "As I look across the division MITT teams, they all tell me the same thing. Some of them have 50 percent of their equipment, some have 75 percent, but it's the same thing all over Iraq."

Despite efforts to get more financial support from the Iraqi Defense Ministry, the U.S. military continues to provide most of the funds to keep the division operational, providing everything from food to batteries.

Still, the division has conducted successful joint U.S. and Iraqi operations north of Baghdad, officials say, and is well-regarded by U.S. commanders. They believed the unit was ready to conduct Operation Lion Strike with minimal U.S. ground support.

The operation was proposed by the Iraqi Defense Ministry and approved by U.S. Army Gen. George Casey, the military commander in Iraq, hours before the attack.

"We could have used two more days to plan," said Maj. Tom Boczar, who organized the strike with Iraqi commanders.

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The Divide Grows

No matter how this war ends, history will not look back kindly on the media's role in this conflict; from thier self-admitted "cheerleading" at the beginning to their defeatist propaganda thereafter. Fortunately, with the rise of the 24-hour CNN style micro-coverage of every military mistake (not to mention outright fabrication, e.g. Reuters phoney photos and AP's terrorist sources) there has been a concomitant rise of the citizen journalist, both at home and in Iraq to keep the MSM in check.

Bill Roggio is back in Iraq (hat tip Instapundit):

While waiting to manifest on the flight to Fallujah, CNN played a news segment of President Bush announcing there would be no “graceful exit” from Iraq, and that we'd stay until the mission was complete. Two sergeants in the room cheered. Loudly. They then scoffed at the reports from Baghdad, and jeered the balcony reporting.

In nearly every conversation, the soldiers, Marines and contractors expressed they were upset with the coverage of the war in Iraq in general, and the public perception of the daily situation on the ground. The felt the media was there to sensationalize the news, and several stated some reporters were only interested in “blood and guts.” They freely admitted the obstacles in front of them in Iraq. Most recognized that while we are winning the war on the battlefield, albeit with difficulties in some areas, we are losing the information war. They felt the media had abandoned them.

During each conversation, I was left in the awkward situation of having to explain that while, yes, I am wearing a press badge, I'm not 'one of them.' I used descriptions like 'independent journalist' or 'blogger' in an attempt to separate myself from the pack.

What a terrible situation to be in, having to defend yourself because of your profession. I've always said that the hardest thing about embedding (besides leaving my family) is wearing the badge that says 'PRESS.' That hasn't changed. I hide the badge whenever I can get away with it.

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Decision-makers not Giving Up

As recently as today the people who actually make the decisions are still voicing their commitment to win the war in Iraq. Here is Sen. Linsay Graham from Sunday (I like his courage and convictions when he says, "better divided as a nation in victory than united in defeat.")



And President Bush today:

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Training ISF

Gen. Abizaid wants to prioritize training Iraqi Security Forces at the expense of creating security and stability with U.S. Troops? (See my YouTube comment and Abizaid's testimony here) Ok, so how are things going in this realm? I missed this Washinton Post article until Dr. Barnett linked to the story:

In dozens of official interviews compiled by the Army for its oral history archives, officers who had been involved in training and advising Iraqis bluntly criticized almost every aspect of the effort. Some officers thought that team members were often selected poorly. Others fretted that the soldiers who prepared them had never served in Iraq and lacked understanding of the tasks of training and advising. Many said they felt insufficiently supported by the Army while in Iraq, with intermittent shipments of supplies and interpreters who often did not seem to understand English.

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Belmont Club scoops NYTimes

Belmont Club, on 20NOV06, reported on a possible large battle involving 82nd Airborne (All Americans) in Iraq. NYTimes carries the story today, three days later.

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More Troops to Iraq?

Belmont Club has reason to believe more U.S. troops are heading to Iraq. I hope he and his sources are correct.

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All About Snipers

Three links regarding snipers this morning:

• Video: "Shooting is only 10%..." Check out a short video of the international sniper competition at Ft. Benning.
• NYTimes 30OCT06 remarkable story "Tending a Fallen Marine, with Skill, Prayer and Fury"
• Another C.J. Chivers NYTimes story on enemy snipers' toll.

In conditions where killing the snipers has proved difficult, the marines have tried to find ways to limit their effectiveness. Signs inside Marine positions display an often-spoken rule: “Make yourself hard to kill.”

Many marines, on operations, do an understated dance they call “cutting squares.” It is not really a square at all.

They zig and zag as they walk, and when they stop they shift weight from foot to foot, bobbing their heads. They change the rhythm often, so that when a sniper who might be watching them thinks they are about to zig, they have zagged.

Now and then they squat, shift weight to one leg and stand up beside the place where they had just been. Maj. Sean Riordan, the battalion executive officer, described his own unpredictable jigs as “my little salsa dance.”

As they move, the marines often peer down their own scopes, looking at windows, rooftops, lines of brush. Then they might step backward, or forward, or duck, as if saying: try to shoot that.

(Hat tip JustOneMinute)

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Hitchens' Latest

We simply can't drawn down (surrender) in Iraq. Anyone who even whispers about pulling out or as the Dems call it, redeployment, just doesn't get it.

Read this.

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AEI's Kagen on Troop Levels in Iraq

PBS Newshour has been running an informative series on Iraq this week; tonight's interview with AEI's Fredrick Kagan brought some new thoughts to the conventional wisdom and raises questions about the Democrat's "plan" for Iraq, which consists solely of pulling out. Audio and transcripts up now, video will be posted very soon.

Kagen interview on Newshour

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"Iraqi Death Blossom"

Belmont Club links to an MSNBC story that prints the letter from a Marine killed by an enemy sniper. I won't snag the best quote, just go to Belmont Club to read the paragraph and head to MSNBC from there.

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CNN's Islamist Sniper report

There has been much said this week on 'blogs and in the MSM (Fox News Watch, Reliable Sources, etc.) regarding CNN's report on Jihadi snipers killing U.S. Soldiers.

As biased as I believe Michael Ware is in his reporting for CNN, this is one report that I think CNN was correct to air. I'll go further and state that as a military/insurgent tactic, this is preferable to suicide and IED bombings targeting Iraqis standing in line for jobs or merely picking through trash for rags.

We are at war, something that those of us who understand that repeatedly attempt to convey; we should expect the enemy to target our soldiers and Marines in uniform on the battlefield. We certainly have our snipers.

CNN's report can only prompt the Army to expedite whatever measures they are taking to counter this threat.

While I do believe that for some reason the U.S. public is chickenshit and weak-willed in this war, hiding the truth from them is not the answer.

Please leave a comment on this topic.

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Remember Sanctions?

Christopher Hitchens remembers the sanctions the United Nations imposed against Saddam, more accurately, against the innocent people of Iraq. He compares the figures thrown around by the anti-sanctions crowd pre-war versus the latest figures thrown around by the anti-war crowd today. They all come up suspect.

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Duelfer Report (PDF)

In case anyone cites the Duelfer report as proof of Saddam's lack of WMD and their counter-factual of "containment" instead of invasion, remind them of the Key Findings (PDF file):

Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.

• Saddam totally dominated the Regime’s strategic decision making. He initiated most of the strategic thinking upon which decisions were made, whether in matters of war and peace (such as invading Kuwait), maintaining WMD as a national strategic goal, or on how Iraq was to position itself in the international community. Loyal dissent was discouraged and constructive variations to the implementation of his wishes on strategic issues were rare. Saddam was the Regime in a strategic sense and his intent became Iraq’s strategic policy.

• Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections—to gain support for lifting sanctions—with his intention to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. Indeed, this remained the goal to the end of the Regime, as the starting of any WMD program, conspicuous or otherwise, risked undoing the progress achieved in eroding sanctions and jeopardizing a political end to the embargo and international monitoring.

• The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.

• By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999. Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s WMD capability—which was essentially destroyed in 1991—after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability—in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks—but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.

• Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of this policy. All senior level Iraqi offi cials considered Iran to be Iraq’s principal enemy in the region. The wish to balance Israel and acquire status and infl uence in the Arab world were also considerations, but secondary.

• Iraq Survey Group (ISG) judges that events in the 1980s and early 1990s shaped Saddam’s belief in the value of WMD. In Saddam’s view, WMD helped to save the Regime multiple times. He believed that during the Iran-Iraq war chemical weapons had halted Iranian ground offensives and that ballistic missile attacks on Tehran had broken its political will. Similarly, during Desert Storm, Saddam believed WMD had deterred Coalition Forces from pressing their attack beyond the goal of freeing Kuwait. WMD had even played a role in crushing the Shi’a revolt in the south following the 1991 cease-fire.

• The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifi able group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead, his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but fi rm, verbal comments and directions to them.

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Enough Soldiers?

The New York Times runs a story about Dora, a city in Iraq:

Mr. Jabouri emphasized that the American presence had made Dora safer. Like others in the area, he raved about being able to sleep again on his roof, away from the sweltering indoor heat. He said some of the families who had fled the violence seemed to be returning, and that the Iraqis and Americans who searched his home were respectful and seemed sincerely interested in improving the neighborhood.

and,

“If the Americans leave, it will go back to killing in the streets,” he said. “It will be civil war.”

finally,

The broader hope is that the political process in Iraq will accelerate and create bonds across sects and persuade militias to disarm. General Casey and other American commanders have promised that the Baghdad security operation will last months, not weeks. They have pledged to tackle every neighborhood, including Sadr City, the stronghold of the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

The question is whether the American military has enough soldiers to expand even as it tries to sustain progress in the first neighborhoods secured.

The people of Dora say they can hardly bear the thought of being abandoned.

Emphasis mine.

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OIF and future politicians

Operation Iraqi Freedom molding future U.S. political leaders: Belmont Club links to and analyses a Robert Kaplan essay dealing with an over-looked aspect of the war, what a perfect training ground Iraq has become for soldiers, Marines and officers to return home and take leadership positions in government.

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