Insurgents and foreign fighters continue to take a beating on the border. Yesterday, a senior al Qaeda fighter in the region was targeted with precision air strikes while conducting a meeting with other local commanders. Abu Mahmud is described as a Saudi commanding multiple terror cells in Husaybah, with connections to other facilitators in Qaim, Karabilah, and Husaybah. “Mahmud directed, planned and executed a large amount of the foreign fighter attacks on Iraqi security and Coalition forces, to include most SVBIED and IED attacks. He was also personally active in direct attacks against Iraqi and Coalition forces.” Two other safe houses were destroyed in the strikes.
Today, based on tips from citizens in Husaybah, ten foreign fighters were killed after Coalition forces conducted raids on suspected safe houses. CENTCOM describes the series of raids in Husaybah.
While Coalition Forces were leaving the area, they were alerted to another suspected terrorist house with fortified fighting positions. After further investigation, Coalition Forces called in an air strike, destroying the terrorist stronghold with precision guided munitions.
Note how multiple targets were struck simultaneously, and the last safe house was engaged even though the target was not known prior to the operation. This indicates the intelligence was solid, and the final strike on the unknown safe house was discovered after either the insurgents engaged Coalition forces as they were conducting operations, or further tips from citizens exposed the terrorist’s location.
The Marines fighting on the border clearly have solid intelligence sources and a measure of local support, and the resources to conduct sustained operations in the region. And the Iraqi troops haven’t even made their presence felt in this area.
34 Comments
This is very good news. The flypaper *is* working. If we don’t kill them in Iraq they will come back to haunt us — check out this report by the rumor mongers over at Debka:
DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that a group identifying itself as Coalition for Militant Action in the Niger Delta (COMA) has claimed the crash on Oct. 23. The plane bound for Abuja came down at Lissa village minutes after takeoff from Lagos airport. Aboard were senior Nigerian officials who have never been identified by the authorities. Before disappearing from the airport radar, the pilot sent a distress signal.
COMA threatens more attacks on “Nigerian agents and infrastructure”
Why are there so many US casualties in October? We may be conducting very intense operations on multiple fronts, but the Iraqi army is also bigger and more capable than before, and if we are conducting this many operations, the terrorists should be routed soon.
Something’s gotta give…..
“Something’s gotta give…..”
Yes. The thugs are losing their experienced leadership. To sustain their efforts, they will need to import experienced operatives from nearby governments. These operatives may “enlist” into existing non-state groups in order to provide deniability to their leadership.
A historical analogy was the efforts in 1968-69 to replenish with NVA regulars the VietCong units, decimated by the Tet ’68 offensive. The NVA dressed as VC, but were identifiable as NVA.
So, regardless of whether or not it was originally envisioned as such, the “flypaper” does work, and it attracts not only the non-state actors, but offers the state actors (think Syria and Iran) a “raise or fold” proposal , and neither of them are appealing.
So what will give? Syria first, then Zaqawri’s murderous thugs, then the infiltration across the Iranian border, then Al-Sadr, then (hopefully) Iran.
We’ll see in the next five years…
— MG
Kartik,
“Why are there so many US casualties in October?”
Ramadan…the Jihadi’s get extra points for dying during Ramadan
Referendum…The purpose of the insurgency is to stop the democratic process
Rotation – The most dangerous period for US soldiers is the first 2 weeks of rotation, when they are learning to operate in an unfamiliar area and the last 2 weeks, when they are thinking about going home.
5 brigades were rotating in and 5 brigades were rotating out in October. 30% of Forces in a single month.
you want facts of life in Iraq?
Here is one:
Governmental and Humanitarian Reports Disclose Violations of the Rights of Iraqi Female Detainees at Iraqi Interior Ministry Stations.
Baghdad – Reports prepared by nongovernmental organizations have disclosed that female detainees have been exposed to disgraceful violations at interior ministry stations, including rape on behalf of investigators and obtaining confessions under threat and force, in addition to physical and psychological torture.
http://www.almendhar.com/english_7298/news.aspx
Soldier’s Dad,
OK. All those are temporary circumstances. But what if the trendline is indeed trending higher? What if 120 deaths per month becomes the norm during 2006?
How sure are we that that will not happen?
They have found the perfect weapon to mass murder our soldiers with very little harm to themselves. Of course it has been foreign governments like Iran and Syria who have helped them continually advance their IED technology.
We need to find a way to transfer authority of patrolling Iraq to the Iraqi Army ASAP even if it means giving them our humvees if we want to win this war. There is going to be an uprising in Congress very soon over the war to cut funding for it if we can’t get the US body count down.
And, there is really nothing we can do to get the US body count down as long as we send so much time driving around Iraq in humvees.
Governmental and Humanitarian Reports Disclose Violations of the Rights of Iraqi Female Detainees at Iraqi Interior Ministry Stations.
This is terriable if true. Thank God that Iraq now has a free press where such allegations can be made and prompt an investigation. In Saddams day these sort of things were the state sanctioned MO.
kartik,
The 4 week moving average trend line peaked last week at 21(deaths), 1 less than the August peak of 22. The June peak was 24.75.
It should also be noted that ISF deaths peaked in July and have been steadily trending downward and Iraqi civilian casualties peaked in August and have been steadily trending downward.
The enemy in Afghanistan has also gotten the new IED technologies from Iraq, which is why the US death count in Afghanistan for the year is by far the worst ever.
The US death count in both Iraq and Afghanistan will continue to rise unless we change what we are doing and stop patrolling the roads of both countries.
Both insurgencies could last for 5 or even 10 more years, which is why we have to change what we are doing to create a death count that will allow the US to politically be able to support operations in both countries for several years to come.
The fact is the insurgents in Iraq could easily make next year far more deadly then this year as they keep making better and better IEDs and there is no way to beat them other then going around them and allowing the Iraqi Army to do the vast majority of the patrols.
Baghdad – Reports prepared by nongovernmental organizations have disclosed that female detainees have been exposed to disgraceful violations at interior ministry stations, including rape on behalf of investigators and obtaining confessions under threat and force, in addition to physical and psychological torture.
Terriable if true. Thank God Iraq now has a free press to make such allegations and prompt an investigation. If the charges are true those responsible should be punished. In Husseins day rape was the government sanctioned MO
Justin,
One doesn’t “murder” combatants in war. One kills them. Whether the killer is a lawful or unlawful combatant is another question entirely — and one whose rules are Western products, not indigenous to Mesopotamia.
If you look at the Anbar campaign as an ongoing movie, and not as a single frame from that movie, you will see that the Coalition (including Iraqi security forces) are conducting themselves based on military and political effectiveness, not on political expediency.
You present a sincerely-felt, but I believe mistaken belief that Congress will panic and slash funding for our operations there.
Not….gonna…..happen. Have you noticed that Ted “miserable failure” Kennedy has stopped his slander of our actions in Iraq? The worst of the storm over the policy is past. The leftist twits in Congress (like Kerry, for example) will start proposing troop reductions in 2006. Those are likely already on the way (subject to the specifics of events in theater), so these twits will appear to be influential leaders, rather than merely scrambling to get in front of events that occur independently of them.
Ah, well. Such is politics.
MG
Another item for readers:
Justin proposes that IEDs are a perfect weapon. I disagree, as they are susceptible to countermeasures, and they represent profound weakness on the part of the thugs.
But for argument, let’s propose that Justin is correct. How would one characterize our precision guided munitions, intelligence networks, and hyperspectral imaging capabilities? They allow us to track changes to terrain, follow thugs, and drop unstoppable munitions on them. And OUR capabilities are constantly improving. Doesn’t that suggest the thugs need to get out of Iraq NOW, before we “murder” them with our perfect weapons systems?
Goose, gander, etc.
–MG
MG,
You need to pick and chose your battles and I am not one of them. I want us to win as badly as anyone.
The president is going to try his best to stave off a major rebellion in Congress over Iraq that many fear is coming this spring, but he needs help in the way of a lower US death rate in the country.
We are never going to get the US death count in Iraq to the 30 or less level a month with I consider the politically tenable level for the US public as long as we can’t beat the IEDs.
And, for all of our advancements in fighting IEDs, Syria and Iran help the insurgents find a way around them. Thus, we have to find a way to make all advancements worthless and the best way to do that is allow the Iraq Army to do the vast majority of patrolling.
And, yes when some guy places an IED on the side of the road for 100$ I consider it murder. None of the so called insurgents which I consider all criminal gangs have any legitimicy as combatants in my view. You can view it differently and the US government can view it differently, but I consider them all criminal gangs.
Justin,
Picking battles? I am not picking a battle with you. You are entitled to your opinion, and to express it. I am entitled to examine it, critique it, and offer thought experiments to help clarify my thinking, and possible the thinking you or other readers.
You consider 30 deaths / month to be politically sustainable. That’s fine! I believe you are sincere. I am certainly not going to say that your assessment is wrong, as it is rather difficult to say one way or the other.
I happen to believe somewhat differently about the question of politically sustainable casualty rates. The context in which the deaths of American service-members die is at least as important than the death rate. Successful December elections, the strengthening of Iraqi security forces, and the reconnection of Sunni tribes to Iraqi politics all increase the sustainable rate. Nonstop emphasis on the costs of war without a balanced evaluation of the benefits will decrease the sustainable rate. The Bush Administration has done a very poor job of strategic communications, and has surrendered the context-making to his political opponents.
You can label someone who is killing an American soldier in a combat zone a murderer if you wish. I am not going to try to stop you. I’ll offer my own view. My view may (or may not) have history, legal precedent, or endorsement by the National Football League behind it. Even if it does have that support, that doesn’t make it wise to accept that “received wisdom”.
In closing — my desire is conversation and exchange of views. I already live in a town where disagreement over opinions seems to equate to a personal attack. I hope that this blog’s comments are not an equivalent place.
— MG
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051029/ap_on_re_mi_ea/terror_dark_vision_i_1
This is another disgusting piece on terrorists caught in Jordan. Sure, they were trying to kill as many innocent people as possible but….they were really harmless guys because they didnt know the proper ratio chemicals to have to make the biggest explosion possible and people really shouldn’t worry. Their sources to interview? The defense lawyers of these terrorists and then some “experts”. Is crap like this out there as an attempt to delegitimize the war on terror? Try to convince us that there is no big threat or danger out there and we are all worried for nothing?
It also says that if al Qaeda fails to hit us with WMD’s it will be because of their own dumb luck not because of anything we may do. This is written as a NEWS piece by the way.
ikez78,
I’ve been one subway stop away from a subway car filled with Sarin gas.
If some terrorists can manage to produce Sarin Gas and get it onto a subway train in Tokyo, under the watchful eye of the very efficient Japanese police, they can produce it anywhere and release it anywhere.
Syria accuses U.S. of crossing border into their country.
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/30/wsyria30.xml
Russia, EU, UN and US demand Syria to stop shelterning Islamic Jihad http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/051029/2005102903.html
Soldiers dad, I have a question for you. Do you know where I could get a breakdown on the education level, financial breakdown on average of those in the U.S. military? I have an activist liberal teacher I am taking in some of my additional courses who insists only poor blacks are being sent to Iraq and I was wondering if you knew any articles or documentation I can bring in to refute her. Thanks, Bill told me to ask you by the way.
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/30/wsyria30.xml
Same story, Syria thinks they might wind up in a full scale war with the U.S. over all the confrontation on the border.
When the US talks about empowering the Iraqi military to take on the insurgency, who do you suppose this will be? Do you expect that Sunni’s will join the Iraqi army outfits to patrol Tal Afar and Fallujah? Do you expect that legitimacy will come to this army once the US decides to bail? Who will this army’s moral authority report to? If you say the “Iraqi people”, I am having difficulty understanding who this might be.
I think that Bush is trying to talk about the importance of the war, MSM hardly covers his speeches.
ikez,
Here is breakdown of casualties by race :
http://icasualties.org/oif/ETHNICITY.aspx
Only 10.65% are black, or less than the percentage of the general population (13%) that is black.
However, rule #1 about Activist liberals – they have no interest in facts. You could lock one in a room for two weeks and show them mountains upon mountains of evidence, and they will not change their opinion. It is wired in their DNA.
They are genetically preprogrammed to oppose things that ensure even their own safety (like the Patriot Act, etc.), as nature has chosen them to weed themselves out of the gene pool. The evolutionary process and natural selection generates genetic waste matter, which is discarded in the form of self-destructive individuals (liberals, Islamists, etc.) and their anti-evolutionary, anti-life actions (abortion, suicide bombing, genital mutilation, gay marriage).
Sorry, my name is not ikez78.
I am just curiuos if that was Soldiers Dad that did the response with my name, if so it showed up as ikez78, also I was looking for a general breakdown of the whole military based on race, education, financial class stuff if possible. Thanks.
Great stuff from Securitywatchtower.com
Journalists seek to deflect Iraq coverage blame
A panel of journalists at the Associated Press Managing Editors conference spoke about difficulties in Iraq, in what amounted to a blame the administration and the failure to provide security for their one-sided portrayals of Iraq. The AP article by Michael Warren makes it sound like journalists are the victims, and they are chomping at the bit to cover good news and progress, but security has prevented them.
I would concede that security in some areas may limit media access, but let’s keep in mind that the primary purpose of this conflict is not to accomodate the media, and plenty of damage has been done in the newsrooms across America, not in Baghdad. Seymour Hersh, who never met an uncollaborated story he didn’t like, was also part of the panel. One might recall Hersh’s inflammatory article last year that insisted U.S. special forces were operating in Iran. Just reading his comments one can’t help but be left with the impression that Mr. Hersh wishes the media had better access so they could actually cover the news beyond the car bomb and IED.
Hersh described a “perfect trifecta” of problems as the conflict unfolds — an Iran-friendly Shia regime in the south that is hostile to Sunni-led Arab governments in nearby countries, an independence-minded Kurd region in the north that may go to war with Turkey, and a war of attrition in the center of Iraq. “The exit plan is really simple, folks — you’re going to see fewer troops and more bombs,” Hersh said. “We don’t control anything outside the Green Zone,” the fortified district of Baghdad where most non-Iraqis stay. Hersh also predicted that the new Iraqi constitution practically guarantees civil war.
Hersh also blamed the administration for secrecy and for failing to provide security for the media’s inability to get at those positive stories they’ve been trying so hard to obtain. So once again, the media won’t accept accountability for their largely one-sided reporting over the last two and a half years and instead even seek to blame that problem on Bush too. Where is the sanity? This wasn’t a problem solving panel, it was a skirt accountability panel.
Unreal, MSNBC thinks they have “proven” there were no links between al Qaeda and Iraq. I still don’t how they think they can possibly “prove” something like that but here the two liberal rags Isikoff and his buddy arguing that Saddam didn’t know about Zarqawi etc. Why the hell are they so insecure about this ? Why are they so addamant about distorting and denying the links?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9831216/site/newsweek/
#19 Ikez78:
I cant help you with a specific reference, however, it remindes me of an amusing story that occurred about 2 years ago. Congressman Rangle (D-NY) proposed a bill reintroducting the draft because “only the poor and uneducated were being killed in Iraq”. After his staffers looking into it, Rangle quietly withdrew his bill. His staffers found out that the average US army solidier had above average education, came from families with above average income and performed above average on aptitude tests. Reintroducing the draft would actually result in more poor and uneducated being in the Army.
Opps. Got it a little wrong. The bill actually did come to a vote. It was defeated 402 – 2. Even Rangle voted against his own bill.
Smuggling routes from Iran, regulated by Revolutionary Guards?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/30/wiran130.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/10/30/ixnewstop.html
Reading between the lines
The matter-of-fact language of these press release masks the gritty life and death encounters in these western Iraqi towns close to the Syrian border.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/whispers/archive/october2005.htm
Rice to warn Syria on inciting terrorism
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, yesterday to urge him to crack down on and try to disarm Palestinian terrorist groups. She has done so before. But the conversation apparently took an unexpected turn when Abbas voiced concern that Syria, a longtime backer of some anti-Israeli terrorist groups, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, would encourage them to launch attacks-presumably in Israel or the West Bank, says a senior State Department official. Abbas wanted to alert the Americans and others; the U.S. official says the administration, too, is concerned that Syria will use the groups for a violent, “hard-wired” response. “Everyone is concerned about the Syrians, as they come under international pressure, lashing out,” the official tells our Thomas Omestad. That is a reference to U.N. Security Council action expected next week. The likely resolution should ramp up pressure on Syria to cooperate fully with a probe of the car-bomb killings in February of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 20 other people. U.N. investigators have implicated senior Syrian and Lebanese intelligence officials in the plot. Rice, says the official, has decided to convene a conference call today of the so-called Quartet-the United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia, plus the United Nations-to discuss the risk of Syrian-inspired violence by proxy groups to encourage all to exert pressure on Syria to avoid such a reaction. Diplomats are also working on a joint statement to be released today. The wording is unknown, but the message, however explicit, is expected to convey a warning to Syria not to cross this line.
ikez78,
On a DOD socio-econmic rating scale(1-85) of families of recruits, the vast majority of recruits are in the 20-50 category. Recruits are under-represented in the lowest 2 socio-economic categories as well as the highest half of categories. Basicall,the lowest 1/5th and the highest 2/5’s are underrepresented.
As usual, the middle class carries the nations burdens.
http://www.defenselink.mil/prhome/poprep97/html/7-index_scores.html
http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/Demographics.asp