The restive city of Ramadi takes center stage as Coalition forces consolidate gains along the Euphrates River. Ramadi has seen an uptick in fighting since September. The New York Time‘s Sabrine Tavernise writes a balanced article on the situation in Ramadi. The article tacks very closely to what we reported in Controlling Ramadi on September 29. The city is a mixed bag, where Coalition forces maintain bases and conduct patrols, but do not fully have control over the security situation. Per Ms. Tavernise’s report:
The city has long been a haven for insurgents, but it has never fallen fully into enemy hands, as Falluja did last fall, when marines could not even patrol before an invasion in November. Senior commanders here will not rule out a full invasion, but for now, the checkpoints and street patrols continue.
Because troop levels have stayed steady here, Ramadi also differs from Tal Afar, a rebel stronghold near the Syrian border, where Americans laid siege only to have to return later because they were unable to leave enough troops to secure it.
Still, more than two years after the American invasion, this city of 400,000 people is just barely within American control. The deputy governor of Anbar was shot to death on Tuesday; the day before, the governor’s car was fired on. There is no police force. A Baghdad cellphone company has refused to put up towers here. American bases are regularly pelted with rockets and mortar shells, and when troops here get out of their vehicles to patrol, they are almost always running.
The statement about “no police force” is false, as there are police in the city (see Controlling Ramadi), however they are not operating even close to full potential. Ms. Tavernise also reports there is a local government, reconstruction projects go unhindered, the number of Iraqi Army units in the city has doubled and further police recruits are currently in training. Ramadi is currently a battleground between the insurgents and the Coalition, but nowhere near the scale of Fallujah in 2004.
In The Ramadi Problem, we noted that a series of operations are occurring in the suburbs of Ramadi, much like the actions which occurred just prior to the assault on Tal Afar. Operation Mountaineers was designed to gain control of a southern bridge used by insurgents and targeted problematic neighborhoods. Yesterday, twenty two al Qaeda operatives were detained during raids within the city. The Coalition is setting the table for an assault on Ramadi if it is deemed necessary
The Coalition appears to be hedging its bets on Ramadi, hoping that a near future infusion of Iraqi Army and police forces will prevent the need to conduct an operation on the scale of Tal Afar, or worse, Fallujah. Based on the recent history in Anbar province, the citizens of Ramadi have until the end of November to assist in cleaning out the insurgents and terrorists and restore order to their city. The December 15 election for the permanent assembly is quickly approaching and the Coalition will want to secure the city by then.
57 Comments
Fron the NYTimes article:
“I see incremental progress every single day,” Captain Quinn said. “It’s working, but it’s not a three-month affair.”
I cant tell from this statement if Captain Quinn thinks it will be more than 3 months or less than 3 months.
cjr –
I’m quite sure he means it will be longer than 3 months.
He’s saying more than 3 months. But you need to put that statment into context, he is talking about the Iraqi Army. Here is the full statement:
Officers said Iraqi soldiers had vastly improved over the past year. The day of the referendum here was violent, with mortar and rocket-propelled grenade attacks raining down on many of the stations. But Iraqi soldiers stayed at their positions and returned fire when under attack, marines near the sites reported.
“I see incremental progress every single day,” Captain Quinn said. “It’s working, but it’s not a three-month affair.”
I have said this a bunch of times (including in the first post today): the IA is still in development stages and is making an impact. Wait until they mature.
Great coverage as always, thanks for making this site a must-read.
I wonder if the Sunni moderates appreciate the irony of the fact we’re fighting Sunnis to create a safe environment for Sunnis to vote, so that Sunnis will have a larger voice in their government?
“I wonder if the Sunni moderates appreciate the irony of the fact we’re fighting Sunnis to create a safe environment for Sunnis to vote, so that Sunnis will have a larger voice in their government?”
NO, Tall Dave.
In reality, there are NO MODERATES, just people who want to live and those who do not.
BILL ROGGIO over at the Fourth Rail has updates on the goings on in Ramadi.
BILL ROGGIO over at the Fourth Rail has updates on the goings on in Ramadi.
Given how closely a large segment of the people of Ramadi work with the insurgents it may very well in my view need the Fallujah treatment. But, I wouldn’t do it until after the December elections.
It would be nice if Ramadi would be the next Mosul. A large terrorist infested city that we slowly cleaned out in 2005. But, Mosul didn’t have the terrorists and the local population working anywhere nearly as close together as the reports suggest Ramadi does. I think Ramadi could be cleaned out like Mosul, it would just take longer, and time isn’t something we have a great deal of in Iraq.
When the Iraqi Defense Minister promised they were coming to help the people of Ramadi, just after Tal Afar, he was serious. He also said they would go to Samarra, and stay. They have.
Look to see the IA “flood the zone” in the very near future. My guess would be mid November, not the end, but in either case, the push will be on.
I’m not sure it could happen after the elections, as Allawi will then have many Sunni parties in his coalition that will not be able to tolerate such an attack.
This Sunni challenge must end from within. They are and will increasingly become the arbitors of their own future. Before that the Saddamites must be winnowed via our best and Iraqi brightest.
A positive report as always from Clifford May…http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/cliffordmay/2005/10/21/172328.html
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2005/20051023_3138.html
Iraq Operations Net Multiple Suspects and Several Bombs
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2005 – Coalition and Iraqi forces nabbed 31 suspects and discovered several bombs in operations across Iraq conducted between Oct. 21 and today.
During raids on safe houses, coalition forces killed two suspected terrorists in Mosul on Oct. 22, and detained 22 others near Ramadi today.
Yahoo News : The Insurgency is showing no signs of slowing down.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051023/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_insurgency_s_future_2;_ylt=AvbLVsKhlc5xRXuu1XCL_mZX6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
Yahoo is so blatantly left-wing that they make CNN appear fair and balanced.
About that Yahoo story, sorry but I’ll take Victor Hanson’s word far befor I will trust their’s. http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.p?ref=/hanson/hanson200510210831.asp
That asinine story quotes someone saying that the Shiites will take up arms with Sunnis to fight against US. Why is this manure taken seriously by anyone?
I am very close to writing a letter to the CEO of Yahoo, telling him to rein in this obvious left-wing bias.
Yahoo, unlike CNN, does not even have its website run by journalists. Some loser just writes their own titles on the front page, spun in whichever way they like…
Yet, millions of people see it daily, even if it is not an accredited news organization.
Cori Dauber over at Rantingprofs has a very interesting post on the Ramadi story in the New York Times.
How Misleading Does A Story Get to be Before We Get to Say It’s Just Flat Wrong?
Katrik write the letter.
I just read that whole AP article and if read closely it is written as if the U.S. is ALWAYS on the defensive, we are always just about to be driven from Iraq, just around the corner is total loss.
Not once, ever do we hear ANYTHING about the insurgency’s weapons caches being depleted, their numbers being pushed systematically all the way to the Syrian border, about their fragmentation.
Why is it that they are viewed in the press as this indestructable, always on offense, just around the corner from victory force?
OK. I’ll try to do it this week. I will post a copy here, along with the address and Fax number of Yahoo’s CEO’s office, in case the others want to write letters as well.
This has been a pattern I have seen at Yahoo for 2 years. Whether it is the Iraq War, the Supreme Court nominations, Hurricane Katrina, anything about making Tom Delay and Bill Frist look evil, etc., the common thread is that ‘the US is the source of all that is bad in the world’.
Kartik,
Please post there contact info on here. I email the AP quite often. [email protected] [email protected]
More AP email address
[email protected]
[email protected]
Associated Press 50 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, New York 10020
Washington bureau:
2021 K Street NW, Room 600
Washington, D.C. 20006
Here’s Yahoo.
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/address/
Street Address Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, California 94089
Phone (408) 349-3300
Fax (408) 349-3301
Office Hours 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PST
This is a list of their media relations team
http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/executives/index.html
I’m not sure it could happen after the elections, as Allawi will then have many Sunni parties in his coalition that will not be able to tolerate such an attack.
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But, a major attack before the election could give the Sunni clerics the ammo they need to push for a boycott again.
Maybe, it is best to have mini Tal Afars inside Ramadi with the US and Iraqi forces cutting off areas of the city and cleaning them out piece by piece.
Justin
If the number of Iraq troops quadrupled in Ramadi in the next 30 days, what would the out come be?
What if they just increased by a factor of from 6 to 10. Iraqi troops patroling every where, all the time.
That might make most people in Ramadi feel safe enough to vote in the December election. But, that might not help get the people of Ramadi to support the government or vote in December as long as they are listening to the cerics and insurgent leaders in the city who are telling them to boycott the vote and the kill the occupiers.
I think the most important thing is to seperate the public in Ramadi from the insurgent leaders and create a city council in Ramadi that co-opts the insurgent leaders and clerics.
Chalabi to visit US next month
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051023/pl_afp/usiraqchalabi_051023211217
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They better not trying backing this repeated loser again. I don’t trust anything from Time, the AP, Reuters, or anywhere else, but I can just feel certain people in the State Dept. and Pentagon want to politically rehabilitate the guy, because they don’t want to feel like they were wrong in backing him from the very beginning.
In fact I don’t even care that he is sleezy or an embezzler. All I care about is that he has badly hurt US efforts in Iraq. He allied himself with the Shia religious parties linked to Iran, he pushed for massive de-Baathification which gave the US presence in Iraq its anti-Sunni tint from the very beginning, and he helped convince Wolfawitz to disband the Iraqi Army.
Thus, being a sleeze is pretty far down on my list of problems with the guy compaired to him making incompetent decisions and being harmful to our efforts in the country.
The clerics are the insurgent leaders.
Duh, blert
The difference is they get to spew their death to the US hate in their mosques and not be taken down.
Guys please take the time to request that Yahoo uses this site (www.billroggio.com) as one of its reccomded blogs for Iraq/War on Terror commentary.
PLEASE reccomend it.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dir/catpg/suggest/*http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add?95985082
I still think the decision to disband the Iraqi army was the correct one. Wow, you really don’t think that would have been a total disaster? These are the people we are FIGHTING now!!!
I still think the decision to disband the Iraqi army was the correct one. Wow, you really don’t think that would have been a total disaster? These are the people we are FIGHTING now!!!
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It was by far the most damaging decision made in the war. The average guy in the army was loyal to himself they weren’t loyal to Saddam. The Baathist units that Allawi reactivated were loyal to him, because he was paying their salary.
It was the one decision that I believe beyond anything else would have cut our time in Iraq. We could also have gotten rid of the bad elements in the army and brought in Shia and Kurds. It would have been a cake walk by any means, but it would have been far better then trying to rebuild an army from scratch.
Some of the most loyal and best fighting units in Iraq today are made up mostly of the old army.
Bah, I meant to say it wouldn’t have been a cake walk by any means.
Iraqi bomb builders learn fast; exact heavy toll
OT
Now for something completely repetative: Osama Bin Laden Is Dead And Buried: Multan Newspaper
Justin,
Thomas Barnett agress with you on the disbanding of the army. Read: Blueprint for Action : A Future Worth Creating by Thomas P.M. Barnett
Saddam’s regime was the enemy, but most people in the Iraqi Army would have been just as willing to serve Allawi as they would have been Saddam as long as they were getting paid.
We would still have had alot of work to do getting the army to be an organization that represents all ethnic and religious groups. But, it would have been faster then rebuilding it completely.
Disbanding the army had problems.
Using the old army as the bulk of the new army without serious vetting/retraining also would have problems.
We _should_ have retained the army – at an increase in pay – but not in a peacekeeping/policing sort of role. Make it clear that ‘the old army’ is going to be a paycheck, three hots & a cot, _and_ that everyone will have a chance to ‘transfer’ to the ‘new army’. Then find things to keep them out of trouble. You’ve got them following orders -> you can get names, fingerprints and backgrounds (fake or not) done _internally_.
Anyway, how long does it take to create a new _American_ battalion, including officers, and bring it to the top readiness level? I can’t imagine it is fast, but I’d really like to know a good estimate on that.
There were also nationalist-patriot elements in the Baathist army who would understand that the era of Sunni rule was over and a forward looking national army (like the one in Turkey) was preferred to Islamist rag-tag rule of the mob and militia.
I guess the CIA and Chalabi did not invest too much time culturing relationships with Saddam’s army before the invasion. During the invasion and after the southern provinces fell and Saddam had fled, the US could have allowed the Iraqi army to mount a coup and then negotiate a peaceful transition and organized entry of US forces into the Sunni areas.
Another site worth checking out guys
http://www.reportingwar.com///index.shtml
This is the mother of all negative AP articles predicting the insurgency will spread to the Shia and nearby countries.
http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/newssummary/s_387183.html
I can’t believe anyone still takes the notion of “not disbanding” the old army seriously.
1) The old Iraqi Army disbanded itself during the invasion. Everyone just went home as soon as it was obvious the regime had fallen.
2) The reason it disbanded is because it was primarily made up of conscripts with IIS guns to their heads
3) To the extent any of it was a real military, those people were generally the most loyal to to the regime. That’s how Saddam stayed in power.
TallDave,
Tommy Franks told many soldiers to go home, but they could have been quickly reactivated regardless just as Allawi did by simply announcing that anyone who wants a job and to continue to be in the Army and was a member of X unit in the Iraqi Army can come back.
“Generally the most loyal to to the regime”
The Iraqi Army feared Saddam and was being paid by Saddam. But, if Saddam’s sons or one of Saddam’s generals had offered to increase the pay to the Iraqi Army in exchange for overthrowing Saddam and they felt confident they would be able to overthrow Saddam without him simply cracking down and killing them all that the Army would have been more then willing to overthrow him. The Iraqi Army served who ever was buttering their bread.
Justin and Tall Dave:
Paul Bremer said that the main reason the old Iraqi army was disbanded was because it had committed horrific atrocities against the Shia and Kurds. Bremer said that he was told by Shi’ite and Kurdish leaders that to get their cooperation, the old army had to go.
By the way, does anybody really believe that the people who are stubbornly fighting a losing battle against democracy–and killing thousands of civilians in the process–would have willingly shared power with the people they had murdered and tortured and raped for thirty years? The Ba’athists are racists. They have nothing but contempt for the Shia and Kurds. They would have waited until we had trained them up to American standards, and then they would’ve seized power again. They believe that they are entitled to rule because they’re superior.
Disbanding the army and governmental bureaucracy was the only solution. We could have left the Ba’athist infrastructure in place in order to leave more quickly, but then the entire venture would have been a waste of lives, money, and time because another repressive regime woould have emerged. The Ba’athists are proving by their actions every day that they reject democracy. They’ve been invited to share power, but they want to be in charge instead. If we had left the old army in place, it would eventually have staged a coup, as happened before in Iraq.
http://www.yahoo.com/_ylh=X3oDMTExdXJ1Y2JlBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEdGVzdAN2MzEyBHRtcGwDdjMxMi1pZQ–/s/239904
Another piece of trash doom and gloom story hyperventilating about 2000 US deaths. Pure filth and rubbish.
OT,
I’d just like to pontificate on progress a bit.
From a broad outline, OIF can be broken into 4 major phases.
OIF1 – Invasion and Occupation
OIF2 – Create transitional government
OIF3 – Transition to transitional Government
OIF4 – Support New Government
OIF3 pretty much ends in Jan 2006 from a political standpoint. A permanent parliament will be seated. On schedule.
Then the question goes to the security standpoint, the one everyone is interested in.
Stages of security transition –
S-1)Coalition Alone
S-2)Training Stage – Coalition provides majority of manpower
S-3)Sharing stage – Equal amount of manpower, coalition leadership
S-4)Transition stage – Iraqi’s provide majority of manpower – coalition leadership
S-5)Supporting Stage – Iraqi leadership and manpower with some coalition support
IMHO –
17 of the 18 Iraqi provinces are at stage S-3 or higher, AlAnbar being the exception.
At least 15 of the provinces are at S-4 or higher. AlAnbar,Salahadin and maybe Babil are exceptions.
At least 14 provinces have achieved at least partial S-5 status(Iraqi’s own a portion of battlespace) – AlAnbar,Salahadin,Tamin and Babil are the exceptions.
Tom W.
Bremer fell on the sword for Wolfawitz’s decision.
Justin,
I’m not sure why you think conscripts would come back to the Army, or who would have led them and kept discipline if they did, unless you were planning to keep the IIS thugs on the payroll too. There is an enormous difference between a military run by an NCO corps and one run by intelligence services.
The Iraqi Army served who ever was buttering their bread.
There’s certainly some truth to that, but I think you’re missing the bigger picture: Iraq was no longer a military dictatorship. A large part of the “butter” was power, power that a gov’t with any pretensions of democracy can’t parcel out to cronies of loyal generals.
The decisions were the responsibility of Mr Bush; you can delegate authority, but not responsibility. More over, Mr Bush must have been pleased with Wolf’s development & implementation of US Policy. He has sent him off to the World Bank to implement US Policy, there. The idea of keeping the IA “rank and file” on the payroll and in barracks has some merit, the idea of US using any of Saddam’s Senior Officers is analogous to US using the SS to secure Germany after WWII. Simply lunacy. There are many ways the Iraqi Campaign, with 20/20 hindsight, could have been improved. Those that believe that errors were made, tactically, can not be asured the course they wanted to follow would have succeeded. Conjecture is not fact.
My thinking is that we did not start the IA rebuilding project soon enough after taking down Saddam. But then again, I’m in the deserts of AZ not Iraq.
desert rat,
IMHO, with 20/20 hindsight. The original judgement that a large portion of Iraqi security forces could be reliable partners in the rebuilding of Iraq was an error. I am of the opinion that the judgement was in part based on disinformation fomented by Saddam. I.E. Let the US have a relatively easy initial assault, saving significant assets for the insurgency. It wasn’t an accident that the Iraqi insurgency picked up steam in a US election year.
Soldier’s Dad,
The Baathist insurgency was prepared a year ahead of time by al-Douri.
The jihadist insurgency was prepared a year ahead of time by Zarqawi.
The one thing that has always angered me is I was in Budapest Hungary during the run up to war in late 2002 and the Hungarian’s reporters interviewed Saddam’s generals who flat out told the world what they were going to do.
They said that they knew they couldn’t beat the US conventionally so that they were preparing a robust guerrilla war to meet the Americans after the conventional phase was over. And, they even went as far as to say that after a few thousand deaths America would tire and leave.
I still remember that report like it was yesterday. They highlighted exactly what was going to happen almost to the very letter.
The biggest error of the first phase was the failure to secure and destroy the super scale ammo dumps encountered as soon as possible.
I well remember an astonishing CNN report in August 2003 wherein the video reporter stepped through torn bags of cordite — kicking it off his shoes — to pan a horizon littered for 100 square miles with unsecured military ordinance. Within easy camera focus were piles of 82mm motor rounds, 122mm artillery shells — and so much more.
This staggering pile, someplace in Anbar, was patrolled by four locals; of which two had weapons. This ‘security’ was paid by the CPA.
The report was not long in being surpressed. The anchor man was gasping in astonishment right through the the live photo-interview. It was not long before CNN dropped any mention of the report from their news cycle.
(It harkened back to Gulf War I when James Dunnigan stepped to the map and sweapt his arm in an arc to the west of Q8 through the desert to predict pocketing of the invasion army. The camera was cut away in mid motion — to a fast breaking commercial. And no more interviews with Mr. Dunnigan. He nailed it of course.)
If the Baathist strategy was to win an insurgency post major conflict they made a very bad choice, there is no way they can regain their former glory via pin prick operations in a small fraction of the nation. The fruits of their efforts at best will be a Baathist sympathetic Ramadi which is impoverished and powerless.
The biggest example of media bias over the weekend was NBC Nightly News Sunday. The entire story was negative and the climax was the graph that NBC showed that the “fighting and dying is increasing” The graph showed 800 died in the first 16 months and like 900 in the second 16 months. they basically said things are getting worse despite facts that show a rapid decline in number of U.S soldiers being killed.
Frankly, with some many different ways to report, the fact that NBC reported it in such a misleading manner stirs me to anger.
We still have failures aplenty: It is essential that the economy gets going — and I don’t mean the consumer economy. Iraqis have that aspect nailed down.
Oil production and exports are astonishingly flat. This is a nation that has the second largest reserves in the world. The typical well there kicks out 1,000 bbl per day. (!) They have production expenses as low as Q8 or KSA for many of their wells. And yet there is no hurry up.
Electric production ought to be by prefabbed natural gas powered generator sets on skids. Right now most Iraqi natural gas is FLARED. (!) That’s right, they vent it into the sky, aflame, since it is a coproduct of crude production. They have never made any serious attempt to use it. ( Ditto for Iran, BTW) Instead they are using oil to fire up their thermal power plants.(!) Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Obviously even boiler grade fuel can be exported whereas natural gas is a tough export, especially for Iraq.
Even today electric production is barely creeping up.
Great point blert,
In the north the excuse that terror attacks are hampering oil production holds some truth but down south the inability of SOMO to ramp up oil production is astonishing.
Mike E,
Instapundit has a link to an article that states that Iraq oil production is currently at a high.
exhelodrvr,
Thanks for the heads up, thats good news for Iraq. I’ve been following their crude oil production numbers on the defendamerica.mil “Iraq Weekly Updates” report and it seems to have been flat. Hope the report you mentioned reflects a long term increase in oil production.
exhelodrvr
The article speaks of record REVENUE, not production. Actual production peaked years and years ago.
Production is, in fact, up. But it is not up like it should be. All of this time, there has been no exploitation of new fields. Instead, all effort has gone to trying to fix the fields that Saddam screwed up. ( He refined the crude and then pumped the viscous refinery ‘bottoms’ down into the field to maintain production. This has SEVERELY damaged the affected fields.)
What better way to help Iraqs chronic unemployment than getting its citizens involved in opening new oil fields.