At the end of last month, the Department of Defense reported two battalions from the 82nd Airborne Division will deploy to Iraq to provide additional security for the upcoming elections. Less than three weeks after the announcement, the 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment of the 82nd appears in action at Tal Afar. Stryker Brigade News has the details:
In successful combat operations Soldiers from 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment detained 57 individuals suspected of terrorist activity during two operations in Tal Afar. Soldiers from 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment detained 15 individuals suspected of terrorist activity during a cordon and search operation in Tal Afar. Soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment detained four individuals suspected of terrorist activity during a cordon and search operation in Tal Afar. Soldiers from 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment also detained two individuals suspected of terrorist activity while patrolling. Suspects are in custody with no MNF injuries reported.
Yesterday’s arrest count was revised to ninety-four suspected insurgents. The whereabouts of the 2/325 is now known. There is another battalion from the 82nd out there, and its mission, like that of the 2/325, is likely a bit more involved than simply extra boots for policing voting stations.
9 Comments
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050913/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_militant_hunt_2
Its too early to be sure, but I think we are witnessing something remarkable in Western Iraq. The tempo and lethality of the coalition It is too early to be sure, but I think we are witnessing something remarkable in Western Iraq. The tempo and lethality of the coalition attacks and other actions is reaching a crescendo. 10 airstrikes in Karabila today. Simultaneous actions are going on in Tal Afar, Rutbah and Haditha and Gumruk. My take is that a rout of Al Qaeda is in progress. I suspect that many Sunnis are fed up with intimidation by Al Qaeda and want to clear the way for an unobstructed vote on the new constitution
Let me try that again.
It is too early to be sure, but I think we are witnessing something remarkable in Western Iraq. The tempo and lethality of the coalition attacks and other actions is reaching a crescendo. 10 airstrikes in Karabila today. Simultaneous actions are going on in Tal Afar, Rutbah and Haditha and Gumruk. My take is that a rout of Al Qaeda is in progress. I suspect that many Sunnis are fed up with intimidation by Al Qaeda and want to clear the way for an unobstructed vote on the new constitution (which I suspect many believe is acceptable but cannot openly admit for fear of reprisal).
Cruiser,
I said four months ago that the Sunnis would not take kindly to being killed by Zarqawi because they want to vote. When it was the Shia and Kurds who wanted to vote and Zarqawi was killing them it was fine. But, killing Sunni tribal and religious leaders as Zarqawi has been doing who want to join the political process amounts to waging war on the Sunni community.
That is why I predicted that Sunni tribal leaders would simply walk up to US army bases and tell were al-Qaeda safe houses are.
If a watershed event is taking place due to the Talafar operation and the upcoming 10/15 referendum, which by all evidence is taking place, then please rest assured that the MSM will take another 3 months to figure it out and report a distorted whiff of it to the general public. When is the New York Times going to report the shaking news that the urban guerrila “resistance” is losing support and disintegrating?
Even IED attacks are down, which indicates that the townfolks are not letting the terrorists plant and lay in waiting. Yesterday the US forces shot and killed two terrorists planting an IED.
That bastard Jonathan Finer of WaPo had an article yesterday accusing the Iraqi and US forces of arbitrarily identifying terrorists from captured suspects. This despite a cooperating terrorist positively identifying an Islamist beheader of at least 10 heads among the suspects.
This embedded 5th column pro-Islamist reporter should be identified for “material assistance to the terrorists” and dispatched with a Koran to Abu Ghraib, or better still, Guantanamo.
http://www.nnuu.org/
Believe it or not, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda has its own website and this is it. There is also a Yahoo email address on the site.
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2005/september/09_14_1.html
Looks like Aleppo is the city to fly into in Syria for aspiring jihadis before entering Iraq.
al-Qaeda chemcial weapons plan revealed
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WASHINGTON — A U.S. Army commander asserted Tuesday that extremist fighters in northern Iraq committed atrocities against civilians, including beheadings, torture and the booby-trapping of a murdered child’s body. “The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine _ in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child’s body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents; beheadings and so forth,” McMaster said in an interview from Tal Afar with reporters at the Pentagon.
His comments came two days after the al-Qaida leader in Iraq, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, purportedly accused American forces of using poison gas in the Tal Afar fighting, a charge that U.S. officials have denied. The accusation was made in an audiotape posted on the Internet on Sunday and attributed to al-Zarqawi.
McMaster alluded to that accusation and said he believed the insurgents had planned to detonate chemicals in a building in a residential area and then claim that U.S. forces had employed poison gas against civilians. “In one of these buildings the enemy had big barrels of chemicals that had explosives implanted in the chemicals, wires running around them. The whole house was rigged for demolition,” he said.
When U.S. troops went into the house, “immediately their eyes began burning, their throats began burning. So they withdrew out of the house immediately and then we conducted reconnaissance with some chemical protective gear, with a remote reconnaissance capability, into the house. And we could tell that the thing was rigged with chemicals.”
McMaster also said U.S. troops found manuals that described how to make “these kind of chemical dirty bombs and so forth.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/13/AR2005091301331.html
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I knew Z-Man was up to something when he came out a few days ago and claimed US forces had attacked Tal Afar with chemical weapons.
The Falcons of the 82nd are in the game! Let the a$$kicking begin……..
Let’s also give credit where credit is due, there are also men of the 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment of the 82nd on the job with the 325th.