The Iraqi Mission

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A few weeks after the November 7th election it appears that the enemy inside Iraq is stepping up it’s campaign to rid them of the United States. They understand that if they can create as much bloodshed as possible the Democrats will try to run and hide as quickly as possible:

Shiite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left worship services Friday, doused them with kerosene, and burned them alive, Iraq police said. The militants then set three mosques on fire in a seemingly retaliatory move to Thursday’s triple homicide bombing targeting Shitte that killed more than 200, sources with the Ministry of Interior told FOX News.

Iraqi soldiers were nearby when the attack took place but did not intervene, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.

At least 22 died in northern Iraq after a car laden with explosives and a homicide bomber wearing with explosives hidden in a belt exploded simultaneously outside a car dealership in Tal Afar. With 26 wounded, the death toll was expected to rise, said police Brig. Khalaf al-Jubouri.

[…]On Thursday night, Iraq’s government imposed the curfew in the capital and also closed its international airport to all commercial flights. The transport ministry then took the highly unusual step of closing the airport and docks in the southern city of Basra, the country’s main outlet to the vital shipping lanes in the Gulf.

Leaders from Iraq’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities issued a televised appeal for calm. Al-Maliki also went on state TV and blamed Sunni radicals and followers of Saddam Hussein for the attacks on Sadr City.

The coordinated car bombings — three by homicide drivers and two of parked cars — billowed black smoke up into clouds hanging low over blood-smeared streets jammed with twisted and charred cars and buses in the sprawling Shiite slum, which is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of al-Sadr, a key al-Maliki backer.

You will note that at the beginning of the story they highlight the fact that police did nothing to stop one of the attacks but leave this fact:

The Sadr City slaughter occurred moments after an attack by 30 masked Sunni gunmen who tried to storm the Shiite-dominated Health Ministry, about a mile west of the Shiite slum. Seven ministry guards were wounded.

For the bottom of the story. 30 men stormed a ministry and were repelled by Iraqi troops. That would appear to me to be a success for those troops but alas, lets just gloss over it.

But either way it’s apparent the enemy understands that they have to create the impression of a complete breakdown of order inside Iraq. Did it work this time? No. The Prime Minister reacted quickly by imposing a curfew and shutting down the airport.

Meanwhile last week our troops took out up to 100 of the enemy in what appears to have been a huge battle after they discovered a military training camp in Turki:

Sunni Arab militant groups suspected of ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have established training camps east of Baghdad that are turning out well-disciplined units willing to fight American forces in set-piece battles, American military commanders said Thursday.

American soldiers fought such units in a pitched battle last week in the village of Turki, 25 miles south of this Iraqi Army base in volatile Diyala Province, near the Iranian border. At least 72 insurgents and two American officers were killed in more than 40 hours of fighting. American commanders said they called in 12 hours of airstrikes while soldiers shot their way through a reed-strewn network of canals in extremely close combat.

Officers said that in this battle, unlike the vast majority of engagements in Diyala, insurgents stood and fought, even deploying a platoon-sized unit that showed remarkable discipline and that one captain said was in “perfect military formation.” Insurgents throughout Iraq usually avoid direct confrontation with the Americans, preferring to use hit-and-run tactics and melting away at the sight of American armored vehicles.

I don’t know. They appeared to be well training but when up to 72 of the enemy is killed to 2 of ours I would say they couldn’t have been THAT well trained. They did have the balls to stand up and fight toe to toe but I doubt they will make that mistake again. How much easier would our job be if they did keep up that tactic tho?

More on the training camp:

Insurgents were apparently able to establish a training camp after American combat forces moved out of the area in the fall of 2005, Colonel Poppas said. Sunni Arab militants there belong to the fundamentalist Wahabbi strain of Islam and are believed to be led, at least in part, by a man known as Abu Abdul Rahman, an Iraqi-Canadian who moved from Canada to Iraq in 1995 after marrying a woman from Turki, the colonel said.

Abu Abdul Rahman was mentioned on some jihadist Web sites as a possible contender for the leadership of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia after the group’s founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in an American airstrike in Diyala Province last summer, said Capt. Mike Few, commander of A Troop, Fifth Squadron.

Senior commanders training Iraqi Army units here say other rural areas of eastern and central Diyala where American forces have had little oversight have been transformed into camps similar to the one at Turki. The “graduates,” many of whom belong to an umbrella group called the Sunni Council, then spread to urban areas such as Baquba, the provincial capital, said Maj. Tim Sheridan, an intelligence officer. Sectarian violence is rampant in Diyala, where Sunni Arab and Shiite militants are vying for control.

Either way you look at it the battle was a huge success.

The enemy has ramped up the violence to get us out but the appeasers apparent strategy to get Syria and Iran to help looks doomed:

Internal strife within the Baker commission, outright opposition from President George W. Bush and Tuesday’s assassination of a cabinet member in Lebanon are complicating the prospect of U.S. overtures to Syria and Iran over Iraq, informed sources say.

A source who spoke recently to a leader of the Iraq Study Group said he complained bitterly about internal dissension and partisanship among members of the supposedly bipartisan group, and was worried about reaching consensus on the key issues.

Former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, study group co-chairmen, have said they want their recommendations, due next month, to come from a consensus of the prominent Republicans and Democrats in the group.

Baker and Hamilton have made it clear they favor a U.S. dialogue with Iraq’s neighbors, particularly Iran and Syria, as one way out of the Iraq crisis. This thinking reflects hopes that Iran could use its strong influence on Iraqi Shia and Syria its control over Iraq’s most porous border to alleviate insurrection against the U.S. occupation and the fighting .between Shia and Sunnis.

Some of the president’s advisers, including incoming Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, are said to be supportive of the idea of negotiations with the two countries, though a spokesman for Negroponte said recently the intelligence chief had raised, but not endorsed, the idea in recent meetings overseas. Vice President Dick Cheney is expected to oppose any such move.

But last week the president strongly endorsed his administration’s past tough line with both countries. On Iran he said: “Our focus of this administration is to convince the Iranians to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions … And so we have made it very clear, our position regards Iran, and it hasn’t changed.”

Good for Cheney and Bush. Don’t let these guys who did nothing to help bring down the Soviet Union for over 40 years try to sell a silly plan. We got into this mess by appeasing terrorists like Saddam, Iran, and Libya while running from any serious fight.

We can’t let that happen again.

Daniel Henniger writes today about the big picture. The fact that the left and some Conservatives are now trying to run from the Bush Doctrine could have a huge impact in years to come:

But someone ought to step back and consider the cumulative political effect of what of late has turned into an unrestrained gang-stomping of the sort normally seen at Miami-Florida International football games. We are ensuring that no future president, of either party, will project military power anytime soon short of retaliation for a nuclear attack. Every potential presidential candidate, including John McCain, has to be looking at the Bush administration’s experience and concluding there is simply no political upside in doing so. We are backing the country’s political mind into the long-term parking lot of isolationism, something fervently wished for at opposite ends of the U.S. political spectrum.

The specialists in the foreign-policy community will argue that a new administration can “adjust” policy to changed events and new challenges. That sells short the power of the anti-Bush wave (itself underestimated for three years by the Bushies). This is a new force. Powerful technologies–the Web, TV and (still) newspaper front pages–combine to amplify ancient human barbarities every day from the Sunni Triangle. The opinions of mere pundits acquire exponential authority, a scary thought. Baghdad has become the blood-soaked, psychological equal of the Somme or Gettysburg. The sense grows daily among the American public that helping “them” is hopeless and “we” should pull back to our shores.

Like the Europeans, we may talk ourselves into a weariness with the world and its various, unremitting violences. No genocide will occur on American soil, but the same information tide that bathes us in Baghdad’s horrors ensure that Darfur’s genocide will come too near not to notice. Too bad for them, or any aspiring democrats under the thumb of Russia, China, Nigeria, Venezuela or Islam’s highly mobile anti-democrats. We’ve got ours. Let them get theirs.

That’s the left’s mentality. We got ours…screw the rest.

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Agreed. I find it amazing that people, supposedly smart people at that, believe that if we up and left Iraq everything would become peaceful. Amazing!

If we left too early Iraq would undoubtedly become a terrorist state. This MUST not happen.

Amazing how some a saying withdraw from Iraq and the domino effect will be peace breaking out all over. Nice sounding but where is the proof.

The Danish have all but shutdown immigrations realizing they have severe issues with non integration into their society.

The Dutch are finally smelling the roses.

British Intel seems to say they are up to their ass in alligators on the home front.

Germans are investigating possible airline attacks, like the British and also the French are removing suspect people from airport staff.

Also the French are contributing to global warming by keeping the home fires warm with almost daily carbbq’s.

Each alone is an interesting story, combined they are a more compelling one.

The terrorists know how influential the MSM is–they will use these attacks on innocent civilians to break the American people’s will; it won’t work! Vietnam is long gone–the left won’t trick people into betraying the innocent again.

The cold heartedness of those on the left–it’s staggering.

Hyscience

Iraqi Mission Update…

How ironic, we are the greatest military force on the planet, but it is our own lack of will to win that is our enemy’s ticket to our defeat….