Category: War on Terror

Perhaps the action is a reaction spurred by the recent rash of bombings. Perhaps it is a movement of opportunity based on only-recently acquired data. Probably it’s both — some new information that allowed a movement against a porous border region at a time when the insurgents are greatly in need of another beating. Either way, the coalition forces are back on the offensive, this time pressing the issue and bloodying the enemy near the Syrian border.

American forces have killed at least 100 insurgents and foreign fighters in an offensive near Iraq’s border with Syria, U.S. military officials said Monday.

The offensive, which began Saturday, involves more than 1,000 U.S. troops in an attempt to crack down on the network headed by terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the military said.

Three Marines from the 2nd Marine Division have died in the fighting, two on Sunday and one Monday, the military said.

Officials said much of the fighting has been in the Al Jazirah Desert north of Qaim, a city along the Euphrates River in Anbar province on the Syrian border.

The area has “basically [been] a sanctuary” for insurgents, said Col. Bob Chase, a Marine operations officer based at Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi.

A military press release said the region was known as a smuggling route. Insurgents have been using “known points of entry and ‘rat lines,’ as we call them, to bring in weapons illegally,” Chase said.

Based on their “equipment and dress,” Chase said most of the insurgents are believed to be foreign fighters, not Iraqis.

The offensive involves forces from the U.S. Army, Navy and Marines, the military said. Aircraft include Marine Corps jets, Chase said.

Casualties have been “extremely light on the coalition side,” Chase said, “and conversely there have been a lot of enemy casualties.”

Many of the fighters “are starting to flee, and we are continuing to press the attack.”

Chase said the operation began after Iraqis provided information on the whereabouts of the insurgents.

“The people are starting to be frustrated with these insurgents and with these foreign fighters,” he told CNN.

“The offensive started based on some significant intelligence received from some very brave folks who live in that part of the country.”

Meanwhile, Zarqawi’s group calls the report of devastating casualties lies.

The Al-Qaeda group of Iraq’s most-wanted militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi denied a US report on Monday that 75 insurgents had been killed in a sweep near the Syrian border.

‘The adorers of the cross claim to have killed 75 Muslims at Al-Qaim. Once more, they are lying, because lying is their religion,’ said the statement on an Islamist website, the authenticity of which could not be verified.

Of course they’re lies, Mr. Terrorist. Oh, and by the way, how’s that inpenetrable defense of Fallujah treating y’all these days?

Attacks in Iraq have been on the uptick of late, over-shadowing the formation of the country’s first government derived by the will of the people. Bombins and attacks have dramatically increased, but does this portend a new phase in the theater or an unsustainable play for attention? The U.S. believes it’s the latter.

Insurgents in Iraq are drawing on dozens of stockpiled, bomb-rigged cars and groups of foreign fighters smuggled into the country in recent weeks to carry out most of the suicide attacks that have killed about 300 people in past 10 days, senior American officers and intelligence officials say.

The insurgents exploded 135 car bombs in April, up from 69 in March, and more than in any other month in the two-year American occupation. For the first time last month, more than 50 percent of the car-bombings were suicide attacks, some remotely detonated, suggesting that Iraqis, who typically do not use that tactic, are being forced or duped into driving those missions, one top American general said.

That’s an interesting note about the increase in suicide car-bombings. Team that note with this story of a blackmailed would-be bomber and one has to take special note of the tactical change. Simply put, it reeks of desperate motives.

Why the desperation? The Iraqi populace and time are not on the side of the terrorists. Momentum for the forward-moving nation has to be stopped before progress can be reversed. The bad guys have failed to bring about a sufficiently bloody moment to force the U.S. to cut and run, as had been the plans of all opposing the U.S. since Mogadishu in 1993. A sustained effort did not stop January’s momentous elections. Tactics had to change and risks had to be taken.

Senior American officers predict that the insurgents, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant whose network has claimed responsibility for the deadliest suicide bombings, will not be able to sustain the level of attacks much longer. And the attacks have not yet dented recruiting for the American-trained Iraqi security forces.

But these officers acknowledged that the heightened suicide bombings over the last two weeks, while probably a last-ditch effort, have won the militants important propaganda victories by gaining worldwide news coverage, increasing insurgent morale that flagged after the Jan. 30 elections, and depicting the new Iraqi government as incapable of protecting its citizenry.

“When he cranks up the propaganda campaign, it means we’ve probably hurt him,” Brigadier General John DeFreitas 3rd, the senior military intelligence officer in Iraq, said of Zarqawi. “It’s a tool in his arsenal and he has used it effectively.”

Yes, propaganda is a tool that Zarqawi and his terrrorist cohorts are rather adept at utilizing. Why is that tool so valuable and how does it fit in with their desperation? Several, including myself and others, have written that they are trying to manipulate a seemingly-willing media to create another Tet, another defeat generated from victory. And that, dear readers, is something that haunts the American military.

In interviews with a dozen senior military officers in Iraq or with experience there, as well as with other American officials, varying assessments emerged, underscoring the military’s opaque understanding of exactly how the disparate strands of the insurgency operate and coordinate with each other.

One senior officer said the recent violence was a predictable “attempt by the enemy to show that they are still a factor, still relevant and still capable.”

The bombings, this officer said, “grabbed the headlines, drowned out the good news of a newly formed government, attacked the credibility and legitimacy of the new government.”

Another top officer with extensive experience in Iraq said it would not matter if the suicide car-bombings subsided if the insurgents “feel that they achieved their information-operation objectives.”

A third officer, a general with extensive command experience in Iraq, said that he was not sure yet what the rash of suicide car-bombings meant: “More foreign fighters? More religious extremists? An indicator of insurgent desperation? Iraqis as suicide attackers?”

My answer is C, an indicator of insurgent desperation.

Attacks against allied forces had dropped to about 40 a day in March and early April, and now they stand at 55 a day, well below the 130 a day in the days before the Jan. 30 elections, but roughly the same as last fall.

Attacks against power stations, pipelines and other infrastructure have declined sharply in the past three weeks as insurgents shifted their attacks to Iraqi security forces, U.S. officers said.

An assault last month against the Abu Ghraib prison, which wounded 44 Americans and 13 Iraqi prisoners, as well as smaller strikes almost daily since then against the prison that became the center of the prisoner-abuse scandal, have been ineffective militarily but successful as a means of propaganda, DeFreitas said.

“Abu Ghraib is a huge symbol for the insurgents,” he said.

Attacks against U.S. forces are indeed off sharply. April 2005 came in as ninth of the previous twelve in terms of American casualties and eleventh of twelve for American deaths (source). No, this uptick in attacks is against two targets — the Iraqi people and symbols such as Abu Ghraib — and have only one goal in mind — headlines.

Top commanders said they expected spikes and lulls in the violence through at least early next year.

“It takes everything they’ve got to muster attacks,” Major General Stephen Johnson, the Marine commander in Iraq, said. “Unless the insurgents get involved in the political process, I think we’ll continue to see this.”

Yes, it’s far from over and we will continue to see times such as this. Especially when CNN.com is willing to give top billing to the death of three Americans over the capture of the mastermind who was behind most of the attacks discussed in this article, just because those three drove total U.S. casualty figures to the easily-reported round number of 1,600.