2 US GIs Killed, 8 Wounded;
Turkish Air Strikes against Kurds;
Bombs in Baghdad Kill 8;
Basra Police Chief Escapes Attempt on his Life
Turkish war planes and helicopter gunships attacked Kurdish guerrillas in eastern Anatolia on Wednesday, making at least one raid into Iraq according to wire services. An Iraqi delegation is going to Ankara to try to resolve the crisis, which may eventuate in a Turkish incursion into Iraqi territory.
A bombing of the Shiite Diyala Bridge district killed 8 persons and wounded 20 in the Iraqi capital.
A day after Basra security forces clashed with the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, gunmen attempted but failed to assassinate the city's police chief. The police chief is from the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila) which is nominally in charge of the province. The party is opposed by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and by Sadrists, among others.
Muqtada al-Sadr insists that his Mahdi Army paramilitary continue the 6-month freeze on its activities.
It should be remembered that the JAM laid low in fall of 2004, as well, but eventually reemerged to engage in violence. It is a mass movement; it cannot be summarily decommissioned, and is likely to show back up eventually.
An Iraqi commission found Blackwater security guards guilty of killing 17 Iraqis in cold blood and the Iraqi government is determined to see the company expelled from the country and wants substantial reparations paid to the families of the victims.
Fred Kaplan on how the new air strike policy of dealing with Iraqi guerrillas is bad counter-insurgency and guaranteed to alienate the Iraqi population further from the US. See also my comments of yesterday.
John Judis on the way Bush's Iraq War is of a piece with the history of imperialism.
Reuters reports civil war violence in Iraq for Wednesday. Major incidents (in addition to the bombing in Baghdad mentioned above):
' BAIJI - Insurgents killed a U.S. soldier and wounded five others near the northern Iraqi town of Baiji, 180 km (112 miles), the U.S. military said. . .
TIKRIT - A U.S. soldier was killed and three others wounded when a mine exploded while they were conducting security operations in Salahuddin province, the U.S. military said. . .
BAGHDAD - Iraqi security forces found six bodies across Baghdad on Wednesday, police said. . .
BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb exploded near a police commando patrol, wounding three people, including two policemen, in the Qadissiya district of southwestern Baghdad, police said. . .
BAGHDAD - Iraqi soldiers killed five gunmen and arrested 48 others during the last 24 hours in different parts of Iraq, the Defence Ministry said.
BAGHDAD - Clashes erupted between insurgents and police in the capital Baghdad, leaving two policemen and two insurgents dead and one insurgent wounded on Tuesday, police said.
HIB HIB - Three mortar rounds killed three people and wounded 24 others when they landed on the village of Hib Hib, 8 km (5 miles) northwest of Baquba, police said. . .
DIWANIYA - Iraqi police arrested Sulaiman al-Edami, a member of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political movement, when they raided his house in a town near Diwaniya, 180 km (110 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
MOSUL - Four bodies, including a woman and a girl, were found shot in separate attacks on Tuesday in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. '
McClatcy has more. A warm congratulations to the six Iraqi women journalists of McClatchy's Baghdad bureau on their 'Courage in Journalism' award. Well deserved!
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 10/25/2007 12:37:00 AM
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4 Comments:
Concerning Fred Kaplans on the airstrikes : there is no good way for the US to occupy Iraq, whether by airstrikes or other means, they will never be able to occupy a pacified Iraq. The only sensible solution for the US is to recognize its errors and guilt, to withdraw all its troops and, last but not least, to pay due compensations to the Iraqi for all the physical damages they suffered and all the lives taken away.
If there is any justice in the world, the leaders responsible of all the carnage should be tried before an international courts for all their war crimes.
Why don't we talk about air strikes on civilian populations instead, by the U.S., and why the Pentagon always disputes the (are they?) civilian/ (or are they?) insurgent, deaths.
The U.S. brings their "Free-Fire" zone wherever they go.
From Consortiumnews
October 25, 2007
Bush's Free-Fire Zones
Frustrated by the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, George W. Bush has unleashed U.S. forces to strike at suspected enemy positions with fierce firepower, even in populated areas. Two recent cases in Iraq reveal how civilians often end up as the victims -- and how brutal lessons of Vietnam are being applied to these new wars.
In Full
OK, now let's talk assassination campaigns a la the Vietnam War's 'Operation Phoenix'... 'Tailwind' and other murderous campaigns against civilian populations that weren't publicized then, OR now.
Better get on your State Department friends professor... their bloody hands are showing.
For example, Condoleezza Rice
WRT Kaplan on airstrikes. Sure Petraeus knows better but is casualty averse. So he's gone goofy with air strikes because he cannot maintain even his diminished domestic political support in the face of high US casualties sustained in the early months of the surge,but I think there's more
I think that his force can no longer stand the stress of high intensity ground action. They've been there too long and in the numbers available cannot sustain the pace
ref : “Edward Luce of FT argues that Iraq has faded as a campaign issue in the 08 presidential election. He attributes this lower profile for the issue to a drop in US military deaths in Iraq and to the rise of Iran as an issue instead... I do not disagree with that assertion.”
Unless you had lived through it, or been a part of it, yourself ~ it's easy to forget that America did not "lose" the Vietnam War per se, rather ~ the U.S. military ceased to function as an effective or cost-efficient fighting force : “Iraq war veterans now stationed at a base here say that morale among US soldiers in the country is so poor, many are simply parking their Humvees and pretending to be ‘on patrol,’ a practice dubbed "search and avoid" missions.”
ie., lacking any other clarity of purpose, that is ~ translatable down to the level of day -to- day operations by ground troops (once fine aassault troops you must remember) reduced to 'convoy guards' and 'wander in armored neighborhood patrols until shot at' bait, then The Mission becomes survival, pure and simple...
...ironically, survival is the same Mission as their supposed enemy (the Iraqi peoples being occupied), as with no Old Glory apparent : the only metric of ‘progress’, or not, now being cited is that of attrition of our Service Men and Women...
...and the horror is that our troops now realize this, even if our elctorate does not :-/
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