Just some refreshing comments from one of our brave mass-murderers.
Judge for yourself, world.
And is it just me, or could these articles have been written yesterday?
"In Iraq's Wild West, US shifts to containment; Military seeks new tactics against agile insurgency" by Anne Barnard, Globe Staff | October 30, 2005
BAGHDAD -- After 2 1/2 years of fighting, US troops are struggling to tame the vast desert border region they call Iraq's Wild West.
American commanders say they are making progress, but acknowledge that in the sprawling, hard-to-patrol area, pushing guerrilla fighters out of one town often means they show up somewhere else, separating and joining up again like beads of mercury.
To the military officers, the problems in western Iraq illustrate the evolving goals of the US mission: They may never decisively defeat the insurgency or seal off the country's borders. Instead, they think in terms of containing the violence and smuggling at a level that Iraqi forces can someday handle, even if that is years away.
Marine Colonel Stephen W. Davis, who commands the Marines in western Anbar Province, in a telephone interview:
''I don't talk in terms of winning. Americans like finality. We like to think in terms of a football game -- identify a problem, analyze a problem, solve a problem, and go on to the next problem. That is not the reality of the Middle East. This is like a neverending rugby game."
Western Iraq is the keystone of the country's insurgency and the Sunni Arab discontent that fuels it. In the border region, the cycle of violence and mistrust between Sunnis and the US military plays out on top of a second crucial struggle as US troops try to stem the tide of arms and fighters through porous borders and along the Euphrates River.
Iraq's borders with Syria and Jordan stretch hundreds of miles through the thinly populated deserts of two of the country's most violent provinces, Anbar and Ninevah. Those regions' large, central cities, Ramadi, Fallujah, and Mosul, have long dominated news accounts of fighting in Iraq.
But in the past six months, many of the fiercest battles have been fought closer to the borders, in the smaller towns clustered near the main crossing points into Syria and surrounded by expanses of dry, undulating, and nearly empty land.
About 5,000 Marines are responsible for an area of 30,000 square miles in western Anbar. There, a string of towns along the Euphrates marks an ancient trade and smuggling route that US and Iraqi officials believe is a key pipeline for arms and fighters stretching from the Syrian border, down the river to Ramadi, and then to Baghdad and the rest of the country.
After US troops crushed and occupied the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah in November 2004, military officials say, insurgents fled to the river towns of Husaybah, Karabilah, Ana, Rawa, Haditha, Hit, and Haqlaniyah.
In Ninevah Province, another cluster of towns follows another main road into Syria, and US troops have been fighting bloody battles along that road, centered on the town of Tal Afar, in recent months.
In Anbar, Marines have been launching attacks and sweeps of the Euphrates towns since April, but it has been hard to deal a conclusive blow: Insurgents often flee when troops arrive and return when they leave.
Now, in what Davis calls an evolution of tactics, Marines are working to establish a long-term presence, along with Iraqi forces, in the river towns. Small units are staying in places such as schools and requisitioned houses.
That's liberation?
While Marines could fight a pitched battle against thousands of insurgents in Fallujah last year, they now fight on a much more spread-out landscape where fighters melt easily from town to town. They face a political battle, as well, as the fighting spreads resentment among residents caught in the crossfire.
Near the Syrian border, the towns are a jumble of low buildings and large industrial plants idled for lack of maintenance and sabotage. But farther down the river are some of the most beautiful places in Iraq.
Haditha sits at the foot of a hydroelectric dam that holds back a blue lake in a dry reddish landscape that US troops often compare to Lake Powell in the American Southwest. Below it, the towns of Barwana and Haqlaniyah sit among palm groves on either side of a stretch of river that flows clear and blue.
Those towns were relatively peaceful in the first year of the occupation, and foreign reporters could travel there safely. But kidnappings, highway robberies, and attacks on Iraqi forces increased. In a series of skirmishes this spring, insurgents fleeing from Fallujah routed the local army and police along the river.
Now, none of the towns has functioning police forces and the Iraqi army units based there are from other parts of the country, which can fuel resentment among the insular Anbar population.
Northeast and southwest of the river valley stretches desert crisscrossed by gullies and dirt tracks used mainly by Bedouin herders. Seen from a helicopter, the land varies between twisted canyons, flat plains, and low hills, dotted with the occasional tent, pickup truck, and herd of sheep.
US and Iraqi officials say the area provides a last-resort hiding place and travel route for insurgents who are being pushed out by the Marines' recent operations.
''If we can push them to the interior, to those tradition Bedouin areas, then we are well on our way" to containing the insurgency, Davis said.
But there are few instant results, he cautioned. Anbar is one of Iraq's least populous provinces, but the number of US troops killed there -- 698 as of last week, according to a Globe analysis of military figures -- is more than any other province.
Improvised explosive devices, which have caused more than half of all US combat deaths, have become larger and more sophisticated, and some of the deadliest have been used in the river valley. One device in Haditha killed 14 Marines in August in a single armored vehicle.
During operations in Haditha during a two-week period, Davis said, attacks on his forces averaged ''four dozen a day."
Davis said insurgents still wage a powerful intimidation campaign against Iraqis, often acting with impunity if US or Iraqi forces are not nearby:
''With 30,000 square miles, you can't be there all the time. Nobody owns towns in an insurgent war."
Iraqis used to obeying strongmen as a survival tactic offer little resistance when insurgent come to town, he said.
''You don't need a whole lot of people to roll into a town, beat up people, maybe kill one or two people, and people say, 'OK, we're playing by this guy's rules.' "
Isn't that what the U.S. does? What Davis' operations are?
Brigadier General Ahmed al-Khafaji, the Iraqi deputy interior minister in charge of border police, said more US and Iraqi troops should be concentrated in the west to further disrupt insurgent movement.
Too many Iraqi soldiers are concentrated in the peaceful Shi'ite Arab south, he said. ''What do we need them in Nasiriyah for? They are just eating and sleeping."
But Khafaji's men lack the basic tools for controlling the borders. His forces man watchtowers spaced about 12 miles apart along the borders, which are not fenced or marked, and are connected only by a rough dirt road. He says he needs surveillance equipment and more roads parallel to the border where patrols could watch for people heading into the country.
Along the border on either side of Husaybah, the main crossing into Syria, there is a 28-mile stretch with no Iraqi border guards, Khafaji said. Marines conducting intense operations there have waved them away, he said.
''They are more afraid for our lives than we are,"' he said. ''We are eager to go there."
A senior US military official based in Anbar, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Iraqi border posts in near Husaybah had been ''annihilated" in recent fighting. The border has been ignored by migrating tribes for generations, he said. ''It's just a line on a map."
Cultural and linguistic barriers also hamper the effort in Anbar, said a US military foreign-area officer -- a specialist in Arab culture and language -- working there. Very few Marines or interpreters can ''sit down and go back and forth on issues from sewage to trying to identify bad guys," he said.
At the Baghdad taxi stand for people heading to the river valley, many residents of the area still blame Marines more than insurgents for their troubles, saying the sweep carried out before parliamentary elections in January and the constitutional vote earlier this month felt like attacks on the towns rather than the guerrillas.
They described grating everyday difficulties: Schools, public buildings, and roads are often closed; Marines break the windows of locked cars to check for bombs; and people must use boats to cross rivers where bridges are closed by Marines or damaged in fighting.
''The Americans are only harassing the people," said Amal Jassem, 46, who traveled to the capital to pick up food rations that have not reached Haditha for months. She said she moved her family to Haditha early in the occupation to escape violence in Baghdad. But now, she said, she's thinking of moving back."
But the surge made all that better, right, readers?
I got some bridges to sell if you are interested.
Let's see if we can find more from Mr. Davis:
"U.S. Forces Try New Approach: Raid and Dig In" by Kirk Semple New York Times December 5, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 4 - Marines staked their claim to the abandoned youth center in Husayba last month with a Hellfire missile and two tank rounds that destroyed a corner of the building and part of the roof.
Weeks earlier, residents had forsaken the center to insurgents who were using it as an armory and a staging point for attacks. The fighters fled before the American assault but left evidence that their flight had been in haste, including a half-eaten bowl of fresh figs in a makeshift sniper's roost above the center's theater.
This was the last building in a five-day sweep of the town, a point at which the Americans, in the past, would usually have loaded up their armored vehicles, driven back to their desert bases and prepared for a new raid elsewhere, leaving the door open for a return of the rebels.
But this time the marines immediately began digging in, and Iraqi troops joined them.
Technicians converted the theater's stage into a command center, engineers erected a perimeter of cement barriers to guard against rocket attacks and suicide bombers, and a community relations team took over a warren of rooms near the entrance of the center to receive residents' claims for damages.
Meanwhile, American and Iraqi infantrymen turned some of the remaining space into barracks and began to conduct street patrols in a town that had not had a regular security force, American or Iraqi, in months.
For months, the military has been conducting raids in Anbar Province, the western desert region that has become a wellspring for the insurgency. But the taking of the youth center was one of the first steps in a new approach to taming the area: first sweep a town, then immediately garrison it and begin reconstruction - or what President Bush has called "clear, hold and build." Just as important, Iraqi forces are an integral component of the strategy.
And two years later, we have reconstructed hardly anything!!
Is it just me, or could this article have been written yesterday, readers?
The challenges are daunting: the quality of the Iraqi troops is still low, cooperation from local residents is scarce, and the insurgency, though damaged by the sweeps, remains strong. But by providing a continual security presence and improvements in the quality of life, the American command hopes to win support for the elected leadership and deny the insurgents the popular support they seek.
American military officials in Anbar say this has always been their plan - it has already been applied elsewhere in the country - but they never had enough troops to carry it out. Since spring, the number of Iraqi troops operating in Anbar Province has surged to the current level of about 16,000 from about 2,500 in March, said Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson, commander of Multinational Force West and Second Marine Expeditionary Force, which oversees security in Anbar. The Iraqis join about 32,000 coalition troops.
The siege of Husayba, a farming and trading town, was part of a Marine-led operation that began Nov. 5, lasted more than two weeks and cleared villages and towns on both sides of the Euphrates River near the Syrian border. Since spring, troops in Anbar have conducted at least nine major assaults and several smaller ones to disrupt insurgent networks of safe houses and smuggling routes for fighters and suicide bombers going to Iraq's interior from Syria.
According to Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, spokesman for the Second Marine Division, the plan to ensure a seamless transition from clearing to holding in Anbar was refined in earlier operations, including sweeps in October in Sadaa, Haqlaniya, Haditha and Barwana, where American and Iraqi forces now have garrisons. But the operation last month was the most ambitious application of the strategy.
Even before it ended, construction of at least seven garrisons was under way in Husayba, Karabila and Ubaydi on the south side of the Euphrates and in the Ramana region on the north. Each will be staffed by at least two platoons of American and Iraqi soldiers, officials said.
Col. Stephen W. Davis, the commander of Marine Regimental Combat Team 2:
"We bought land now. We're not leaving the towns. We're invested in them."
Immediately after the sweeps last month, American and Iraqi officials began meeting with community leaders to conjure up local political representation where, in many places, insurgents had killed the elected leadership or driven it into hiding. They began to resurrect power and electrical systems, or in some cases build them. In time, they say, they will recruit and train local police forces for each community.
I'm having a real deja-vu experience right now, readers.
General Johnson said that the only existing police force in the province was in Falluja, with 1,200 officers, and that there were "no governments to speak of," except in Ramadi, the provincial capital, and Falluja.
Beyond providing more manpower, the Iraqi security forces give greater legitimacy to the strategy, military officials insist. "The Americans can't occupy this country," said Capt. Conlon Carabine, a company commander in the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, which was involved in the Husayba and Karabila sweeps. "The Iraqi government is going to have to beat this insurgency."
Indeed, the Americans' long-range military strategy in the newly swept towns of western Anbar, as in the rest of the country, is to turn over full security control to the Iraqis. But commanders in Anbar acknowledge that the Iraqi Army still has a long way to go - in training, experience and numbers - before it is prepared to assume control from the Americans.
In an interview at his headquarters at Camp Falluja, General Johnson offered a highly cautious assessment of the Iraqi Army's battle-readiness in Anbar. Pointing to the sixfold increase in the number of Iraqi troops at his disposal this year, he said, "Even though it's a large increase in number, it's going to take time to develop."
Though some units are beginning to be able to "take the lead" on operations, he said, they still require coalition support.
"They're going pretty good out here," he added. "I just believe it's a matter of time."
Last month's operation near the Syrian border was a crucial test for the fledgling Iraqi Army in Anbar. It was the first large-scale deployment of multiple Iraqi Army battalions in combat with American forces there.
To this reporter embedded with the assault force, the Iraqis often seemed disorganized, complacent and undisciplined. On the north side of the river, where the Iraqis had a chance to take the lead because they outnumbered the Americans, house-to-house clearing operations were sloppy. The troops moved unsystematically from house to house, sometimes giving buildings nothing more than a glance or, worse, bypassing them altogether.
Some soldiers demonstrated unorthodox uses for their weapons, including two soldiers who used their Kalashnikov assault rifles to swat a ball around as if they were playing field hockey, according to American soldiers who witnessed the scene, and several who used their rifles to pry metal security doors off their hinges.
Military commanders offered modest public praise of the Iraqi performance, emphasizing, for instance, that the Iraqis demonstrated a willingness to stand their ground and fight, rather than flee, as some units had in the past. Privately, several offered much harsher assessments.
But American officials have given up any pretense of trying to create a world-class military and say their goal is to leave behind one that can competently patrol borders and police streets.
Until then, Anbar will primarily be the Americans' fight - and a bloody one at that.
Troops in Anbar have borne the brunt of combat casualties in recent months. Captain Pool, the Second Marine Division spokesman, said at least 205 American servicemen and servicewomen have died there since the division arrived on March 17. That includes the 10 marines killed last Thursday in a bomb explosion outside of Falluja.
Marine commanders describe the struggle for Anbar in primal terms.
Colonel Davis: "This is not a hearts and minds battle. This is a fight for survival. There are a lot of knuckleheads here that need to die. You're just crunching heads."
I'm just a bit disgusted by the remarks, readers.
How about you?
This guy Davis strikes me as a knucklehead.
Moments after his marines finished clearing the last house in their sector of Karabila last month, Captain Carabine stood on a rooftop overlooking the town, taking the full measure of his new mandate. After seven days of arduous house raids, during which one of his marines was killed and several others wounded, he would immediately begin building a garrison in Karabila and somehow, with the support of his Iraqi Army troops, set about trying to shore up the public services in the poor farming village and establish a sense of governmental authority.
"Allowing the people not to be controlled by insurgents and allowing them to live freely and not in the grip of fear is what will win the insurgency," he said. "This is when the real work begins."
What about fear of occupation?
Is it just me, readers, or does the AmeriKan MSM just recycle stories?
Has NOTHING CHANGED in Iraq these last two years?
WTF?!?!
These reports could be in tomorrow's paper, and who would know the difference?
