U.S. Having Some Recent Successes in War

[Nickdfresh]

Raid on Training Camp Kills 85 guerillas
By QASIM ABDUL-ZAHRA Associated Press Writer
The Associated PressThe Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq Mar 23, 2005 — U.S. and Iraqi forces raided a suspected guerrilla training camp and killed 85 fighters, the single biggest one-day death toll for militants in months and the latest in a series of blows to the insurgency, Iraqi officials said Wednesday.

Politicians helping shape a postelection government expected within days said negotiators are considering a Sunni Arab as defense minister in a move aimed at bringing them into the political process and perhaps deflate the insurgency they lead.

The U.S. military announced late Tuesday that its air and ground forces backed Iraqi commandos during a noontime raid on the suspected training camp near Lake Tharthar in central Iraq. Seven commandos died in fighting, the U.S. military said. It did not give a death toll for the militants.

Iraqi officials said Wednesday 85 insurgents died in the clash the largest number killed in a single battle since the U.S. Marine-led November attack on the former militant stronghold of Fallujah left more than 1,000 dead. On Sunday, U.S. forces killed 26 attackers after an ambush south of Baghdad.

Also Wednesday, a mortar shell or rocket struck an elementary school in western Baghdad, killing at least one child and injuring three others, according to a police official who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution by attackers.

Children fled the schoolhouse, abandoning backpacks and books on desks littered with glass shards. One teacher wept outside as parents rushed to the scene.

Hours later, a policeman trying to defuse a roadside bomb in Baghdad died and another officer was wounded when the device exploded, police Capt. Talib Thamir said.

On the political front, Abbas Hassan Mousa al-Bayati, a top member of the United Iraqi Alliance, said negotiators from his Shiite-dominated bloc and a Kurdish coalition could tap a Sunni Arab to head the ministry of defense, which oversees the Iraqi army battling the insurgency.

"The Defense Ministry will go to a Sunni Arab because we do not want Arab Sunnis to feel that they are marginalized," al-Bayati told The Associated Press. "They will be given one of the four major posts because we want them to feel that they are part of the political formula."

Sunni Arabs, dominant under ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, largely stayed away from the Jan. 30 balloting amid calls for them to boycott and threats against voters by the Sunni-led insurgency.

Political leaders have in the past announced plans on filling Cabinet positions, only to reverse themselves later.

Al-Bayati said his group and the Kurdish coalition, which together won 215 seats in the new 275-seat National Assembly, were expected to name a president Saturday, the next step toward forming a new government. Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani is expected to fill the post.

Fuad Masoum, a member of the Kurdish negotiating team, said no definitive decisions on the 32-member Cabinet have been made. He declined to confirm that a Sunni Arab will be named defense minister but said that was one option under consideration.

Handing the post to a Sunni Arab could help undermine support for the insurgency, while assuaging Sunni fears that the Shiites will dominate all aspect's of the country's upcoming government.

The army chief of staff could be a Shiite, al-Bayati said.

He added that his bloc was pressing for a Shiite to head the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police Iraq's other main security force and that a Kurd could become foreign minister.

Amid the political wrangling, top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani had been scheduled to talk with Talabani on Wednesday. But the meeting was canceled due to "security concerns," said Meithemn Faisal, an official from al-Sistani's office.

Kurds are thought to number between 15 percent and 20 percent of Iraq's 25 million people, with Sunni Arabs roughly equivalent. Shiite Arabs make up 60 percent of the population.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=606766

[kentuckyklira]

I guess every group of 50 or more adult Iraqis are "suspected insurgents".

There´s no hint in that article that the slaughtered Iraqis were really insurgents!

US killed Iraqi = insurgent, simple math in today´s Iraq!

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by kentuckyklira
simple math in today´s Iraq!

Simple math....I seriously doubt if you understand simple math. :D

[Warham]

The Germans have a lot of room to talk, don't they?

[Sarge]

Originally posted by kentuckyklira
I guess every group of 50 or more adult Iraqis are "suspected insurgents".

There´s no hint in that article that the slaughtered Iraqis were really insurgents!

US killed Iraqi = insurgent, simple math in today´s Iraq!

Let me state what I think probably happened...I have been on a few convoys but have not been fired on.

Some insurgents fired upon a convoy. Did 50 fire on the convoy?
Probably not..
When the guys sitting in back of the 5 ton vehicles going 50 miles an hour were fired on... their natural instinct was to shoot everything they could see either out of fear for their life or from the fact that bullets were flying everywhere... some locals got hit.

Before I came here to IRAQ we did life fire convoy training at FORT Hood.
We loaded into the back of the 5 ton truck.
6 soldiers per side. 12 soldiers total
The right side naturally fires out to the right and the left side fires out to the left.
We were given 210 rounds of ammo each.

So we started driving down this dirt road about 50 plus miles an hour and a artillery simulator exploded simulating an attack.
We had targets to the left and right.

When you get attacked.. the trucks don't stop and fight back.. we are trained to forge ahead and increase our speed.

I can tell you that it was very hard to fire upon the targets with the bumpy road going 50 miles an hour. Nobody was hitting shit.. but rounds were going everywhere.
Now this practice was using onlyone truck. Think of 20 vehicles packed with soldiers.. all with ammo...

If they started drawing fire I bet there were hundreds of rounds flying out of convoy trucks striking whatever was standing there.

The enemy here has adapted over time and attacking a U.S. convoy with 50 combatants just isn't their way of doing things.
At the start of the war you could expect something like this but 50 insurgents attacking a convoy this late in the game is unheard of.

I bet just a handful.. maybe less than 10 insurgents attacked the convoy.
Who knows.. it's just speculation on my part.

[tomballin]

Great post #1, thanks!



Originally posted by Sarge
Let me state what I think probably happened...I have been on a few convoys but have not been fired on.

Some insurgents fired upon a convoy. Did 50 fire on the convoy?
Probably not..
When the guys sitting in back of the 5 ton vehicles going 50 miles an hour were fired on... their natural instinct was to shoot everything they could see either out of fear for their life or from the fact that bullets were flying everywhere... some locals got hit.

Before I came here to IRAQ we did life fire convoy training at FORT Hood.
We loaded into the back of the 5 ton truck.
6 soldiers per side. 12 soldiers total
The right side naturally fires out to the right and the left side fires out to the left.
We were given 210 rounds of ammo each.

So we started driving down this dirt road about 50 plus miles an hour and a artillery simulator exploded simulating an attack.
We had targets to the left and right.

When you get attacked.. the trucks don't stop and fight back.. we are trained to forge ahead and increase our speed.

I can tell you that it was very hard to fire upon the targets with the bumpy road going 50 miles an hour. Nobody was hitting shit.. but rounds were going everywhere.
Now this practice was using onlyone truck. Think of 20 vehicles packed with soldiers.. all with ammo...

If they started drawing fire I bet there were hundreds of rounds flying out of convoy trucks striking whatever was standing there.

The enemy here has adapted over time and attacking a U.S. convoy with 50 combatants just isn't their way of doing things.
At the start of the war you could expect something like this but 50 insurgents attacking a convoy this late in the game is unheard of.

I bet just a handful.. maybe less than 10 insurgents attacked the convoy.
Who knows.. it's just speculation on my part.

[kentuckyklira]

Originally posted by Sarge
Let me state what I think probably happened...I have been on a few convoys but have not been fired on.

Some insurgents fired upon a convoy. Did 50 fire on the convoy?
Probably not..
When the guys sitting in back of the 5 ton vehicles going 50 miles an hour were fired on... their natural instinct was to shoot everything they could see either out of fear for their life or from the fact that bullets were flying everywhere... some locals got hit.

Before I came here to IRAQ we did life fire convoy training at FORT Hood.
We loaded into the back of the 5 ton truck.
6 soldiers per side. 12 soldiers total
The right side naturally fires out to the right and the left side fires out to the left.
We were given 210 rounds of ammo each.

So we started driving down this dirt road about 50 plus miles an hour and a artillery simulator exploded simulating an attack.
We had targets to the left and right.

When you get attacked.. the trucks don't stop and fight back.. we are trained to forge ahead and increase our speed.

I can tell you that it was very hard to fire upon the targets with the bumpy road going 50 miles an hour. Nobody was hitting shit.. but rounds were going everywhere.
Now this practice was using onlyone truck. Think of 20 vehicles packed with soldiers.. all with ammo...

If they started drawing fire I bet there were hundreds of rounds flying out of convoy trucks striking whatever was standing there.

The enemy here has adapted over time and attacking a U.S. convoy with 50 combatants just isn't their way of doing things.
At the start of the war you could expect something like this but 50 insurgents attacking a convoy this late in the game is unheard of.

I bet just a handful.. maybe less than 10 insurgents attacked the convoy.
Who knows.. it's just speculation on my part. This is an excellent post and I sincerely hope certain people read and understand all of it!

[ODShowtime]

yeah, there's no way in hell 50 or 80 of them would EVER get together at the same time. Not just for a convoy anyway.

[Nickdfresh]

I don't know! I think SARGE means the battle where MP's shot up a large force of attacking insurgents, they dismouted to repel the attack and killed 26 of the attackers. The speculation was the guerillas were hoping to overwhelm the convoy to take a number of prisoners.

Anyways, be careful SARGE:


Iraq Insurgents Using Children, Corpses for Bombs

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 23, 2005 � Iraqi militants this week have suffered some of the heaviest single-day death tolls in the two-year insurgency. But ABC News has learned that a State Department document indicates the insurgency's tactics are continuing to evolve. These new techniques include using children to carry explosive devices and booby-trapping corpses with bombs.

In three days, U.S. and Iraqi troops have killed at least 128 militants nationwide, and military officials announced today that 85 insurgents died during a Tuesday raid in central Iraq.

But, according to the document, a disturbing new pattern is developing in the insurgents' use of improvised explosive devices.

According to the report, "vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices continue to be the weapon of choice for terrorists in Iraq who wish to inflict significant casualties and cause widespread damage." There have been 600 such attacks from May 2004 to January 2005, according to the U.S. Army's National Ground Intelligence Center.

In an effort to bypass standard security countermeasures, Iraqi militants are beginning to use service vehicles, such as garbage trucks, to mount attacks, and are stealing Iraqi national military vehicles to conduct kidnappings, the document says.

Iraqi militants are increasingly converting seemingly harmless objects into bombs as well.

At least five IEDs have been placed in mannequins sometimes dressed as U.S. or Iraqi military personnel, the report says. Human corpses � and even dead animals � have also been loaded with explosives and detonated when Iraqi or coalition forces attempt to remove the bodies.

Militants have also embedded explosive devices in "watermelons, trees, tree stumps, and on guard rails," the report says.

Cover and Disguise

Insurgent forces have also disguised themselves in an effort to gain access to areas frequented by U.S. and allied forces, the report says.

Iraqi extremists reportedly once posed as a soccer team and played matches adjacent to areas where they intended to conduct ambushes against multinational convoys.

Others have acted as "sheep herders to conduct surveillance activity" and "used children to carry IEDs into sensitive areas."

Technological Focus

Insurgents also "routinely seek out new and improved technologies to create more effective IEDs and defeat security equipment," the document says.

Extremists reportedly have ordered a large number of remote-controlled toys to deliver and detonate bombs and have used remote-controlled airplanes for surveillance purposes.

They also use "garage door openers, cellular and satellite telephones, car alarms, and keyless entry systems as remote-controlled detonators for IEDs," the report says.

Even more troubling, the document concludes that the terrorist tactics now used in Iraq may soon become globalized.

Close Encounter

A military convoy accompanied by an ABC News crew encountered an IED today while on Baghdad's airport road. The company commander was informed of what appeared to be an improvised explosive device 175 yards down the road � spotted by a member of the Iraqi army.

The soldiers immediately stopped traffic in both directions and called for explosives experts.

The Iraqi army was almost immediately suspicious of the object after a car pulled up to the side of the road, someone inside threw out what looked like a fire extinguisher, and the vehicle sped off.

It was, in fact, a fire extinguisher, but it was packed with plastic explosives.

About an hour after the device was found, a small robot was sent in so technicians could view the device remotely. It then dropped an explosives pack on the device so it could be destroyed in a controlled environment.

"Within the last month, we've come across approximately ten IEDs. We hit three of them and found about seven of them," said Capt. Craig Gibson of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

The soldiers considered today a success � one less roadside bomb and no injuries.

ABC News' (http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/IraqCoverage/story?id=608103&page=1) Martha Raddatz and the ABC News Investigative Unit filed this report for "World News Tonight."

[ODShowtime]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
I don't know! I think SARGE means the battle where MP's shot up a large force of attacking insurgents, they dismouted to repel the attack and killed 26 of the attackers. The speculation was the guerillas were hoping to overwhelm the convoy to take a number of prisoners.


Well, you could be right. Many of the insurgents seem to be decent tacticians, but they don't all have to be. It would be quite a coup to get some US soldiers caputured.

Uh, they need to just chill the hell out over there.

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by Sarge
Let me state what I think probably happened...I have been on a few convoys but have not been fired on.

Some insurgents fired upon a convoy. Did 50 fire on the convoy?
Probably not..
When the guys sitting in back of the 5 ton vehicles going 50 miles an hour were fired on... their natural instinct was to shoot everything they could see either out of fear for their life or from the fact that bullets were flying everywhere... some locals got hit.

Before I came here to IRAQ we did life fire convoy training at FORT Hood.
We loaded into the back of the 5 ton truck.
6 soldiers per side. 12 soldiers total
The right side naturally fires out to the right and the left side fires out to the left.
We were given 210 rounds of ammo each.

So we started driving down this dirt road about 50 plus miles an hour and a artillery simulator exploded simulating an attack.
We had targets to the left and right.

When you get attacked.. the trucks don't stop and fight back.. we are trained to forge ahead and increase our speed.

I can tell you that it was very hard to fire upon the targets with the bumpy road going 50 miles an hour. Nobody was hitting shit.. but rounds were going everywhere.
Now this practice was using onlyone truck. Think of 20 vehicles packed with soldiers.. all with ammo...

If they started drawing fire I bet there were hundreds of rounds flying out of convoy trucks striking whatever was standing there.

The enemy here has adapted over time and attacking a U.S. convoy with 50 combatants just isn't their way of doing things.
At the start of the war you could expect something like this but 50 insurgents attacking a convoy this late in the game is unheard of.

I bet just a handful.. maybe less than 10 insurgents attacked the convoy.
Who knows.. it's just speculation on my part.

NPR had a military analyst on about a week ago, a retired Army officer turned consultant. He said he was at a loss as too why the insurgents were attempting these large scale semi-conventional infantry style assaults. Desperation and the attempt to nab a large number of POW's/hostages seemed to be the only answer.

[Seshmeister]

The only answer is that it doesn't happen just like Sarge said.