Death Before Dishonor
March 22, 2007: In late 2006, there were 1,300 terrorist attacks a week
recorded in Iraq. Most of these were minor stuff, a few gunshots, or a
bomb going off harmlessly (most roadside bomb attacks fail). By January,
this was down to 1,000 a week, and that continues to drop. The "surge"
is calming things down. It's become more dangerous for civilians to
appear on the streets with guns. Iraqi civilians continue to be the
primary victims of the violence, accounting for over 90 percent of the
deaths. However, this includes dead terrorists, and more of them are
getting killed as their safe houses and bomb factories are found and
raided. American intelligence estimates that about half the terrorist
operations have been shut down inside Baghdad. Terrorists who have
survived the raids, have fled to the suburbs, or Western Iraq. The
suburbs have become a major battleground, as many of these towns have
long been all-Sunni.


In Western Iraq, the tribes continue to turn on al Qaeda and other Sunni
terrorist organizations. Four years ago, the tribes bought into the idea
that Sunni Arabs could use terror to regain control of Iraq. The
terrorists brought in money, and kept the Americans and government
security forces out. It all seemed like it would work. But then the
Americans started coming in. Fallujah fell to an assault by American
marines. The majority of Iraqis elected a Shia dominated government.
Some of the tribal leaders began to have second thoughts. The more hard
core Sunni terrorists responded to this with death threats, and death,
for tribal leaders who were working with the government. This produced a
growing backlash from the Sunni Arab tribes that dominate western Iraq.
For the last year, that war has spread to Baghdads suburbs, where many
of Saddams most loyal (and generously rewarded) supporters lived. The
suburban Sunnis have been the most determined terrorists, because they
went from being the most favored, to least favored, Iraqis overnight,
once Saddam fell. Many of these suburban towns are solidly behind the
terrorists. That is, a majority, or large minority of the population
actively supports the terror campaign.



But now more police and security forces are moving into these towns, and
battles are breaking out every day. The government has the troops for
this, with security force strength now at 320,000. It was 232,000 a year
ago, up from 120,000 in 2004. A major change has been the development of
experienced police and army leaders. That takes time, and the time has
passed. While it's still easier to send in American troops to quickly
take care of armed resistance, the Iraqi troops now know how to search
and clear a neighborhood of weapons and terrorist tools. The basic
strategy of the U.S. troop "surge" is to put these Iraqi security forces
in pro-terrorist neighborhoods, and back them up over a long period.
Since Iraq now has ten million phone owners (most of them cell phones),
once people fell free from constant terrorist surveillance, and
retaliation, they begin phoning in tips about who the bad guys are and
where they hang out. The terrorist groups contain a lot of professionals
from Saddams secret police and Republican Guard, people who know how to
organize an attack on less experienced security forces (containing
mostly Shia and Kurds). But with enough American troops there as backup,
these attacks never gain any momentum, and result in a lot of dead Sunni
Arabs.



The Sunnis Arabs still cannot deal with American troops. Even though the
majority of terrorist attacks continue to be against U.S., the majority
of victims in these attacks are Iraqi civilians. Moreover, terrorists
lose over ten of their own for each American solider they kill. All
those civilian casualties have turned the civilian population against
the terrorists. Despite energetic efforts to put the blame on American
troops, too many Iraqis have witnessed these attacks, and seen how the
terrorists slaughter civilians during futile attempts to inflict
casualties on the Americans. Even Sunni Iraqi civilians are often
victims of the terrorist attacks, and have had enough.



Unfortunately, the enemy is willing to die fighting. Many of the Sunni
terrorist leaders are Saddams henchmen, with lots of blood on their
hands. They have seen many of their associates put on trial, and hanged.
Many more have been killed by Shia death squads. These killers take
particular care to go after Sunni Arabs who participated in the 1980s
war with Iran. To this end, Iran has been training some of the death
squad members to be more efficient killers. Iran still holds a grudge
for the 1980 Iraqi invasion of Iran, and eight years of war that
followed. In Iran, thousands of maimed (by shells, bombs and poison gas)
veterans of that war are still around, as a reminder. In Iraq, most of
those Sunni Arabs who supported Saddam in the 1980s have fled the
country, been jailed, or been killed. Those that remain don't expect to
survive unless they can regain control of the country. That's impossible
now, but the coalition of religious fanatics and Sunni Arab supremacists
that lead the terror campaign seem determined to fight to the death. The
rest of Iraq wants accommodate them.

thanks for the update, keep them coming.

did you ever say where you were at? if so i think i missed it.



stay up,

doc

Does that mean we're actually WINNING this war? Heh. I honestly didn't
believe it could be done. Not that I believed the war couldn't be won. I
just didn't believe this administration could get their heads out of
each others' backsides long enough to do it.


Of course, soon, the democrats will take office and this entire war
will have been for nought. How sad.

Give em some credit.

Whatever they say to get in office will go out the window once they are
there and get the briefings they are not getting now.

Perhaps they should be getting a Reagan style QUICKLOOK?

Maybe. But name any unpopular war where they DIDN'T immediately jump
ship once the administration changed.

Whoever wrote the opening posting in this thread must not be listening
to what Gen'l Petraeus is saying! The death rate has climbed since
Bush's last escalation; Diyala Province, has turned into an
anti-occupation stronghold; the US military is building walls inside
Baghdad to isolate communities so as better to control them; the largest
attacks on the Green Zone have occurred, killing one Iraqi legislator;
and the insugents continue to improve their fighting capabilities (the
latest: a tank-piercing explosive); the Iraqi police desertion rate is
rising again; SecDef Gates took a trip to tell our Iraqi stand-ins that
the US military was going to pull further back into safe bases and cut
back on street patrolling; US military units are pulling back into safe
areas (with some success in Anbar Province, it must be said); and US
military tours have been extended 25%, from 12 to 15 months, with
anticipated harm to the troops' training, families and job prospects, to
say nothing of the death and maiming of our own troops.

No, whoever thinks this is getting better needs a reality check.
Unfortunately.

Bring 'em home, folks. We've done our best. Our troops deserve better
respect than they way they are being treated by this administration, and
by some of their own leadership (e.g. Generals Odierno and Pace)

Oceans

oceans-

two of the people who are in this thread have been or are still in Iraq.
I will take first hand accounts over whats going onthere before some
others who have their own agenda's.
Gen P. was my commanding gen at ft. campbell (101st airborne) the
escilations that you refer to are much like "black on black" crime
except its iraqi on iraqi, however some of the traditional (if you can
say that) troubled spots in iraq have seen a greater decline.

doc ..... (and yeah ive been there, seen it, KNOW without any doubt that
we are in fact doing great things over there and are indeed SIR winning
this war- thank you)
but thats a big difference between reading about something and doing
something.

Oceans I beg to differ.

Even the liberal news sources are starting to back away from the we are
losing stance.

And the General you mentiond was quoted on one news service just this
afternoon stating mostly exactly what was said in the OP.

He also asked the interogator that was attempting to flay him how anyone
could say we were loosing when IN EVERY ENGAGEMENT WITH AN ARMED FORCE
IN IRAQ THE US MILITARY HAS COME OUT A CLEAR WINNER.

Soldier, I am going to guess that Gen'l Petraeus knows a LOT more about
how things are going in Iraq than you. He is pretty damn smart, too. I
grant you that you know things at a street combat level, and maybe a bit
about CAP activities, but it is the larger picture that controls what
happens, not the personal experiences of a single troop.

I wish you the best of luck, soldier. US medics, for the most part, are
the good guys. But stay safe and don't get too ****ey with the hoo-wah
stuff.

And don't make too many assumptions about who knows what and what our
experiences have been. Makes you sound kinda silly. There are a lot of
things that you are not privy to.