Article

2007-05-13 Iraq

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Bobby 2007-05-13 06:13|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 Waleed Saffar needs to be brought in and horse whipped until he rats out his AQ buddy with the phone. My God how the hell can you win when the media is plugging the bad guys and keeping you in the dark. Time to make the WaPo go KaPow!

Posted by Jack is Back!">Jack is Back! 2007-05-13 09:11|| 2007-05-13 09:11|| Front Page Top

#2 sophisticated guerrilla tactics

I love it when journalists opine on the "sophistication" of jihadi tactics. The average journalist has a degree no more difficult to achieve than a home-economics degree; the only books they've ever read about war, tactics, or strategy are the ones lamenting the victory in WWII and crowing about the "success" of Vietnam, and yet they feel confident in declaring a bog-standard set-piece ambush to be "sophisticated".

"It was a planned, coordinated attack," the source said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

Here's an idea for a new law: if a "source" is not authorized to speak to reporters, the reporters are not authorized to quote them. If you can't name a source, then quoting that source is malpractice, and the public may sue you for libel, slander, disturbing the peace, and performing "interspecies erotica".

I'm 100% for free speech. But the idiots who have somehow gotten the role of being our primary conduits for information are worthless sacks of crap who don't have the brains God gave a pile of dog crap.

Posted by Rob Crawford">Rob Crawford 2007-05-13 10:19|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2007-05-13 10:19|| Front Page Top

#3 Once again, Al-Qaeda praises the Democratic Party.

Posted by Grunter 2007-05-13 11:09|| 2007-05-13 11:09|| Front Page Top

#4 These guys will be found gutted and mutilated like the last two. The leadership in this area ought to have more sense after the first lesson. As someone commented yesterday, recon missions in this area should be in massive force formations where ambushes would be too risky for the ragheads or would result in immediate annihilation. Another of these episodes is just what the US Army needs to inspire confidence back home. Not a good way to promote the surge principle.

Posted by Woozle Elmeter2970 2007-05-13 11:18|| 2007-05-13 11:18|| Front Page Top

#5 This item has it all.

The "sophisticated" enemy - but Rob, this one is old, and in the past used to come from the military PA folks as well. I teased one of Col. Garver's predecessors when I got there that if what I'd been reading in the US for nearly a year were correct (about the "increasingly sophisticated" enemy tactics), soon the bad guys would be using space-based laser weapons, they'd been "increasing" their sophistication so relentlessly.

The idea of a phone interview with a named enemy figure is just breath-taking in several ways - all of them bad for the WaPo and the military. As Bobby asks, how could this guy (or his best friends, or military-age males of his family) be anywhere but behind wire answering questions within hours of this report being published?

But to me the biggest thing here is the age-old question about why any area "infested" (hell, even "lightly sprinkled") with enemy is allowed to function normally. Why there hasn't been preventive detention of every single guy ID'd by former regime payrolls as a member of the intel services, Ba'ath structure, Rep. Guard, etc. as determined by on-the-scene judgement. Why any place that even locals acknowledge is full of AQ is not locked down and taken apart (through detention, questioning, etc). Why many of the towns in the entire area weren't subjected to massive, unrelenting, and systematic detention, isolation, and if needed relocation (it sits astride the main road to the south) when it became clear (oh, probably about a month after things started getting nasty) that it was a hotbed of enemy activity. Why, in short, life was allowed to continued much as before, except that Coalition convoys and Shi'a communities were attacked whenever the enemy felt like it.

Not a single Sunni household in the area deemed relevant should have had a normal day since a few years ago when the enemy declared war on the new Iraq and us. Those inclined to switch and help our side would have done so much, much ealier - thus at much lower cost to all concerned - if the "incentives" to do so had been irresistible.

Some will point to the helpful mayor in this story and wonder whether a serious approach would have produced guys like him. No matter. The calculation is probably reliable: a quickly and thoroughly subdued enemy community is better for both sides, and lowers costs. A cooperative mayor in 2007, vs. a vanquished Sunni community in 2004, with rich demonstration effects on others of like mind, and with far lower casualties (friendly Iraqi and Coalition) since.

The Sunnis in the area are mostly invaders, implanted by the former fascist regime, Stalin-like, for strategic regime purposes. Their complete removal from the area should have been dangled, or test-demonstrated, from the outset (I'm sure a good JAG could come up with a Geneva-compliant rationale for such a displacement, esp. if no one else were allowed to move in when the former residents had been shipped out).

It might be a question of resources, but I wonder if it hasn't always mostly been a question of ROE and strategy. The spectacle of such a massively powerful, capable, and generally competent power playing cat-and-mouse with one of the weakest, most vile enemies in history is ridiculous, infuriating, and inexcusable (I refer here not just to AQ but the Sunni chauvinists in Iraq).

Posted by Verlaine 2007-05-13 12:07|| 2007-05-13 12:07|| Front Page Top

#6 At 4:59 a.m., an unmanned surveillance aircraft relayed images of two burning vehicles. By 5:40 a.m., a U.S. quick-reaction force had arrived at the scene

Seems like a long a time between detection of the ambush by unmanned aircraft and the arrival of the quick reaction force. A lot of unknowns.

Posted by JohnQC 2007-05-13 12:21|| 2007-05-13 12:21|| Front Page Top

#7 Looks like we've identified our ARCLIGHT representative target. Now all we need is someone with the guts to push it through and carry it out. One demonstration may be all that's necessary, if it's a good one. If our guys are still there, they'll receive a quick death, instead of a long, drawn-out, painful one.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2007-05-13 15:18|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2007-05-13 15:18|| Front Page Top

#8 #6: At 4:59 a.m., an unmanned surveillance aircraft relayed images of two burning vehicles. By 5:40 a.m., a U.S. quick-reaction force had arrived at the scene

"Quick" my ass, 41 minutes is 30 too long.

Posted by Redneck Jim 2007-05-13 17:50|| 2007-05-13 17:50|| Front Page Top

#9 Makes me sick to my stomach. Nuke the bastards, one village at a time and fly everybody out at the same time, military, contractors, everybody. As the last C-17 reaches 30k feet, nuke the field it climbed out of, declare victory and be done with it the lot. The entire place isn't worth a warm pale of camel piss.

Posted by Besoeker 2007-05-13 21:39|| 2007-05-13 21:39|| Front Page Top

23:58 OldSpook
23:58 OldSpook
23:57 OldSpook
23:56 OldSpook
23:40 trailing wife
23:37 trailing wife
23:37 trailing wife
23:34 trailing wife
23:26 trailing wife
23:15 DepotGuy
23:05 DepotGuy
23:03 bigjim-ky
22:49 trailing wife
22:48 Redneck Jim
22:48 trailing wife
22:47 bigjim-ky
22:45 49 Pan
22:42 49 Pan
22:42 Jules
22:41 anymouse
22:39 anymouse
22:38 Jules
22:28 Redneck Jim
22:26 Mike N.