Col. Brown, the Commander of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division currently based in Mosul, has an interesting firsthand take on the quality of the enemy in Iraq at the moment:
Q How is the state of the insurgency different today than when you arrived to start your mission?
COL. BROWN: There’s a significant difference from when we got here last October. Last October, we faced a foreign fighter that was very well-trained. I remember watching attacks out — we had an attack that involved about 60 foreign fighters in a pretty complex ambush. By complex I mean three or four forms of engagement. They’ll hit you with an IED, small arms, mortars — a very complex attack. We saw that regularly in November and December. We also defeated — in one of those fights, we killed 40 terrorists, and we did not lose anybody, and we defeated them every time they tried to do that against us. We really worked hard and aggressively at getting out. I mean, we conducted some 2,100 cordon and searches, and thousands of aggressive offensive operations — 18 attacks a day against the insurgents back in that time period. I remember watching an attack and seeing the insurgents move against us, and I had to look and say, gee, are those our guys or their guys because they’re moving very well around buildings. Now, that was November and December. What we saw is that that’s faded away very quickly, as we captured and killed. And we killed some 550 enemy and captured over 3,000.
And as we got to February and March, we saw a completely different foreign fighter. We’ve captured Libyans. We’ve captured Saudi, Yemenis, Algerians. And many of these — one Libyan that we captured about a month and a half ago — he was clearly brainwashed. And he was told that, you know, what was going on here and brainwashed to come and be a — what he thought was — he was going to be a foreign fighter against this crusade against the Muslim religion. He got here. He saw that was not correct. They told he was going to be a suicide martyr. He said he didn’t want to do that. When we happened to capture him, several other foreign fighters and the cell leader that was orchestrating them, he was very happy to talk to us about what he had seen and what they had done.
And very interesting that younger foreign fighter that we’re seeing now — very poorly trained. We would call them more like RPGs for hire. And we believe it’s the — we know that the leadership is severely disrupted. Again, from — about 25 percent of the attacks were very complex prior to elections, as I described. Now we’re down to five percent are complex. And we’re at the lowest number of attacks by far over the last three months. And that is — clearly the foreign network is disrupted. The leadership is severely disrupted. We captured Abu Talha, the number-two al Qaeda leader in the north of Iraq. And right after that we got Abu Bara, Madhi Musa (sp), Abu Zab (sp), the next six leaders that would step up and take over. Nobody’s taken over now. It’s not a very popular position because if they step up, they get captured or killed. And so they’re really disrupted, totally different.
The other thing — the other huge change is the population. And in a counterinsurgency, of course, the terrorists don’t have to — the people don’t have to love them; they just have to remain neutral and not turn them in. And when we got here, the people were intimidated, and they were neutral. Now they are turning them in. We’d like to call it, you know, the terrorists swim in a sea of anonymity, and that sea has been taken away from them.
And for example, when we got here, they could fire mortars, and they did that. Three hundred mortar attacks a month was the average for the six months prior to us getting here. As we got the population more and more on the side of their government and their security forces, as they saw how the terrorists offered no hope for the future and their government did, they started turning these guys in. And in the beginning, a guy would fire a mortar; in a city of 2 million, it’s pretty hard to track him down. Well, we’ve captured over 142 mortar systems, and now the average is six attacks a month in the entire province, from 300 to six.
And just a couple of weeks ago, when they did fire a mortar, the people told what they looked like, what their license plate was. In one case, they knew one of the individuals. The Iraqi army went out, tracked them right down, arrested them, and there you have it — much different from that prior to elections, when, you know, they wouldn’t say anything. It was — we didn’t see anything, and it was very hard to stop this.
How about his take on the how the Iraqi army is doing:
Q Colonel, Charlie Aldinger with Reuters. Are the Iraqi troops, the army, well enough trained yet to take over?
COL. BROWN: That’s such a great question. We have the full gamut or the spectrum of Iraqi troops. We have some that have taken over and have their own areas of operation. We still are there training with them, but they could do it independently. We have two predominantly Sunni battalions that I would put up against any battalion in Iraq. They’re absolutely fantastic. We also have battalions that, I think, are about six to eight months away from taking over their areas of operation. They’re just newer battalions. They are going through training.
One of the things that’s been, I think, a very significant change — when I first got here, we did all the training and effort with the Iraqi army. Now, there’s these military transition teams. They are fantastic, and they do a great job. There are coalition force soldiers with the Iraqis every single day teaching them about being an army in a democracy, teaching them everything from great staff work to how to become a better army, and I’ve seen a huge improvement just over the last three months since they’ve been here. And I think that’s going to get us to where we have an Iraqi army that can take over — as I said, I think up north here — six to eight months without any issues at all, and we have some that are ready to take over now and predominantly do operations in their area of operations. They do it all themselves with just our occasional advice.
Compare that to the MSM version of events. Even though the Iraqi army performed flawlessly in Tal Afar they should be considered a failure because they didn’t stop some suicide bombers. Let me see, did the British fail to stop their suicide bombers? Did the Americans fail to stop their suicide pilots? How about the Isreali’s? Philippines? Russian? I mean come on, they are getting better every day and will be able to assume control over large chunks of Iraq in less then a year but the MSM wants them to perfect or they are a failure.
Same ole’ biased MSM.
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MSM At It Again – Part VIII
Nope, No Bias In The MSM
The Hypocrisy In The MSM
The Bias In The Media, Update
MSM At It Again – Part VII
MSM At It Again – Part VI
The MSM Bias
Calling The MSM Out!
The Bias In The Media
MSM At It Again – Part V
MSM At It Again – Part IV
Traitors In The MSM
The Bias In The MSM
MSM At It Again – Part III
MSM At It Again – Part II
The MSM At It Again
The MSM Traitors
The Media & The War
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