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| Iraq |
| U.S. forces in heavy clashes in Baghdad |
| 2007-04-10 |
| BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi forces backed by attack helicopters fought gunmen in Baghdad on Tuesday, witnesses said, in what appeared to be the heaviest battle in the capital since a security crackdown was launched in February. Two witnesses in Baghdad said they saw U.S. helicopters fire on buildings where gunmen had holed up in the Sunni stronghold of Fadhil. Police and witnesses said there had been casualties. The U.S. military said there was an operation in the area and that an Apache attack helicopter had been hit by small arms fire. It returned to base. Abu Omar, a local journalist and resident in Fadhil, said the operation by U.S. and Iraqi troops started before dawn. He said he saw helicopters rocket several buildings while gunmen armed with belt-fed machine guns roamed the streets. Another resident also said he saw U.S. helicopters firing at buildings. One flew off trailing smoke, he said. Both said fighting now appeared to have shifted out of Fadhil into neighboring Sheikh Omar, an industrial area, and Bab al-Muadham district. Many shops in the area had closed. I read and edit, so you don't have to. Surprising level of detail in this al Reuters report. I guess it's because it is in Baghdad and things there have been relatively controlled lately, allowing reporters to leave the bar and actually report. |
| Posted by:Snomomble Phock1641 |
| #9 Good memory, OS! 1964, was it not? |
| Posted by: Bobby 2007-04-10 17:12 |
| #8 To paraphrase Goldwater... When it comes to terrorists: Finesse in combating them is no virtue, ruthlessness in despatching them is no vice. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2007-04-10 16:40 |
| #7 US and Iraqi forces in heavy fighting. Terrorists and insurgents heavily dying. Of course, this bit of news keeps getting left out. |
| Posted by: danking_70 2007-04-10 13:45 |
| #6 Verlaine, I'd say the biggest problem about doing the non-kinetic stuff is a manpower issue. Assuming you cordon off a 2km radius area thats about 12 sq. km you gotta cover of houses and people with X number of personel. Anything larger gets really nasty in terms of surface area that needs to be covered. Mind you from my understanding is that something similar to what you suggested is already being done, just that all that info is being gathered into databases and slowly we're picking apart networks. |
| Posted by: Valentine 2007-04-10 12:37 |
| #5 One cardinal principle of situations like this is that the objective should be to kill/detain every single bad guy - absolute elimination of the particular enemy element. The operation should not end at sunset, or during the night, or at the next sunrise - it should end when we've determined that every single varmint is accounted for. And this assumes we cordon a substantial area around the action (yes, even as it shifts, if it does, from area to area, as in this case). No sleep for hajji - or anyone else in the area - until we're satisfied. I don't care if the IA units can't keep up under all circumstances, or need to take a break. The operation goes on, relentlessly. And that's just the kinetic part. The follow-up is key. Which would include detaining everybody who's even slightly suspicious in the area where it all started - uh, how exactly did these guys get there? Where did they sleep the night before? Where were there weapons stored? Who are there relatives in the area? Every one of those questions should be answered, and every household and person associated with the enemy should be dealt with (as appropriate, houses seized/razed, MAMs detained, families packed off to relatives or given access to humanitarian aid rations). Now, of course, this might actually upset some people, and lead to typical negative hit pieces from the wire services, and delay the full assumption of security duties by the Iraqi forces by 17 minutes - and, meanwhile, defeat the enemy .... decisively. I yearn to be educated by someone with the actual training and experience to explain to me why in the hell this isn't the approach taken. Anything but a decisive approach makes no sense to me - or, I think, to Iraqis who want action and results. A basic problem seems to be a failure to understand our comparative advantage here. Our comparative advantage in Iraq is our power, not our smarts. We're immeasurably more powerful than the enemy, but not much smarter, if at all. Yet we endlessly search for "smarter" ways to win, squandering our vast comparative power advantage. We'd have done future generations of Germans and Japanese, and our relations with them, no favors by being "smarter" and using more finesse in WWII. Our ruthlessness saved countless lives. In the paranoid and unworldly Arab context, we're actively undermining our current and future prospects by naively attempting to fight a war without warfare. (rant off) |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2007-04-10 11:06 |
| #4 Northeast of Baghdad, a woman suicide bomber strapped with explosives under an Islamic gown killed 17 recruits outside a police station in the town of Muqdadiya, police officials said. 1) SplodyDopess 2) BurkaBoomer 3) SheBamiIslami /G'Damn her soul, her brothers and the |
| Posted by: RD 2007-04-10 11:03 |
| #3 Industrial is better for some weapons, but then you run into the problem of creating more cover for the bad guys from the rubble. Either way, MOUT fighting sucks. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-04-10 10:21 |
| #2 Any time they come out and fight straight up is good for us. It isn't done often because even Johnny Jihadi, stupid bastard that he is, has learned that taking Americans on directly is basically committing suicide. |
| Posted by: Mac 2007-04-10 10:21 |
| #1 if the fighting is shifting from a residential area to an industrial area, that has to be good for our side, since theres less chance of collateral damage to civilians (presumably the workers have gone home) and so our guys can use heavy firepower more easily. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2007-04-10 09:50 |