"Mistaken Iraq Battle Kills 6 Fighters Allied With U.S."
"Six members of an Awakening Council, groups composed mostly of Sunni Muslims who have turned against the insurgency, were killed early Thursday after they mistakenly fired on American soldiers in the north, the Iraqi police said.
The American forces fired back, killing them and two women in nearby houses, the police said. A police commander said the group had thought that the Americans were insurgents....
The American military reported Thursday that it had killed 7 insurgents and arrested 16 in north and central Iraq.The firefight between American troops and Awakening Council members occurred near the village of Raween in Salahuddin Province, northeast of Baghdad, an area that has remained restive despite a 60 percent decrease in violence in Iraq since last summer, after the United States military increased its troop strength by 30,000 soldiers.
Also on Thursday, nine members of the same family — a couple and their seven children — were found dead, apparently executed, in their house in Auja, 70 miles south of the firefight with Awakening Council members, in the same province. Auja is the hometown of Saddam Hussein. The children ranged in age from 7 to 17 years.
Ragi Ali, 25, the brother of the slain father, Labeeb Ali Khatir, 50, said each family member had been shot with one bullet in the head and another in the stomach. He said a note was left, signed in red by Tawhid Wal Jihad, a group that is part of the Sunni insurgency. The family is distantly related to Mr. Hussein and lives next to the cemetery where he was buried after he was executed in December 2006.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up a car at midday on Thursday at a busy market in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City. Hospital officials said one person was killed, a 13-year-old boy, though the Ministry of Interior said later that as many as four had died and 33 were wounded....
So Iraq is how much better since AmeriKa invaded?
Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the United States military’s second in command in Iraq, said Thursday as he was leaving Iraq for a new job in Washington that the recent overall decline in violence was fragile and that the gains needed to be reinforced by political and economic development....
General Odierno, who has been named Army vice chief of staff, understood that “you cannot kill your way out of an insurgency.” While some critics said early in the war that General Odierno, as a brigade commander, had used overly aggressive tactics, he later encouraged the growth of the Awakening groups and a counterinsurgency strategy in which United States soldiers worked more closely with Iraqis...."
Yeah, Odierno helped pay off Iraqis so they wouldn't attack us.
Great!
