Month: May 2005

Operation “Lightning” has supposedly been launched and the first casualties have been a 3 Iraqi guards killed by an insurgent car bomb at the Iraqi Ministry of Oil on Palestine Street in Baghdad and a British soldier killed by a roadside bomb in the Sadrist stronghold of Amara.

Oil Wars makes an interesting point about the so-called “cordon” of some 40,000 Iraqi troops backed by the Americans around Baghdad:

This is just so off the wall on so many levels. First, even if they did seal off Baghdad how exactly does that help them? There are just as many insurgents inside Baghdad as there are outside. So what is this going to accomplish – insurgent Ali in Baghdad won’t be able to visit his cousin, insurgent Omar, over in Ramadi?

Secondly, given that the U.S couldn’t even cordon off Fallujah properly and most of the insurgents there got out what makes anyone think that 40,000 Iraqi government troops can effectively cordon off Baghdad? Lets keep in mind out of any given 40,000 Iraqi troops probably at least 20,000 of them are working for the insurgents. Not to mention, if you have all these troops spread out to make a circle around Baghdad they will have to be in small isolated groups that will make easy pickings for the insurgents. Lets see how long the 40,000 saps who get assigned to this detail agree to put up with that.

Quite frankly, this shows that things in Iraq are in even worse shape than I had thought.

Pre-destruction, Fallujah was a town of 300,000 souls, 70-90% of whom were thought to have fled before the cordon went up. Baghdad is a city of 5 million. Do the math.

UPDATE: Well, things are off to a predictable start:

• Before dawn, insurgents attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in Youssifiyah, 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Baghdad, killing nine soldiers and injuring one, said Dr. Dawood Al Taaei of nearby Mahmoudiya hospital.
• Gunmen killed two police sergeants employed by the Iraqi Cabinet in a drive-by shooting Sunday in Dora, said police Capt. Firas Qaiti.
• Another two police commandos were killed and five injured in a car bomb blast at 11 a.m. (0700GMT) at Madain about 20 kilometers (14 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police Col. Selam Mehmood.
• A suicide car bomber, apparently targeting a U.S. convoy, exploded his vehicle Sunday and killed two Iraqis and injured nine others in northern Iraq, said police Brig. Sarhat Qadir.

  The attack happened near the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Tuz Khormato, south of Kirkuk, 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Baghdad, said Qadir.

John Cole is going on my blogroll for this series of posts.

John Cole
Rick Moran
John Cole

It’s a treat to read such a well argued conservative criticism of the idiotic arguments by Malkin, Hewitt and Barber. I can’t remember how I came across this, so if it was your blog, sorry for the lack of credit.

Shades of the Massad witch hunt at Columbia: This post at Lenin’s Tomb relates a situation developing at SOAS, University of London. Here’s hoping some publicity will help head off a looming disaster.

Today’s New York Times (print edition) has a full-page advertisement on page 5 from the Council for the National Interest Foundation headlined:

AIPAC’s Agenda is Not America’s

The ad is well-done and makes excellent points, including: ISRAEL, STOP SPYING ON AMERICA! I cannot remember an explicit anti-AIPAC ad ever running in a mainstream paper.

The ad is signed by two former Congressmen, Paul Findley (R-Illinois), Paul “Pete”
McCloskey (R-California), and former Senator James Abourezk (D-South Dakota).

Read the ad.

Forced shaving of prisoners and tattooing. Where have we seen this before?

Only follow this link if you’re one of the reality-based community. Otherwise, you’d best keep your illusions intact by sticking to the pure, unfiltered Chrenkoff version:

Good electricity news from Iraq

Via Jim Henley

Under the absurdly self-evident headline, “Many Iraqis See Sectarian Roots in New Killings” (duh) the NY Times, after relating how Hassan al-Nuaimi, an Iraqi Sunni cleric, was found dumped in an empty lot with a hole drilled in his head and both eyes gouged out, quotes Ghassan al-Atiyya, a secular Shiite and the director of the Iraqi Foundation for Development and Democracy, a Baghdad research institute: “The Americans, instead of strengthening liberal and secular, they are now hostage of Sciri,” he said, referring to a religious Shiite political group, “and Kurds.”

So, amid the “welter of allegations about Shiite death squads going after Sunni Arabs” what better way to foment sectarian hate and violence than to have 40,000 Kurdish peshmergas and SCIRI’s Iranian trained Badr Brigade Shiite militia backed by 10,000 Americans blockade Baghdad and carry out raids?

This assault suggests the stiletto bootprint of Rice and the hamfisted thuggishness of Rumsfeld, both of whom were recently imposed on the Iraqi “government” where they apparently pressured al-Jafaari to act more American. If the cordon and massive raids really happen, the insurgent reaction is predictable – expect Mosul to erupt into violence (and possibly Kirkuk) just as it did when the US concentrated forces to crush Fallujah. It would also be an optimum time for the newly re-emerged Muqtada al-Sadr to consolidate his hold on Basra and other Sadrist areas of southern Iraq.