The Iraqi government has instituted a curfew and closed the border crossing in the town of Rabiah, which is directly West of Tal Afar, the city where the Coalition has initiated an assualt. “The decree closed the border to all transportation, including the railroad, except for vehicles with special permission from the Interior Ministry.” The border is being sealed tight to prevent al Qaeda reinforcements from streaming in, as well as to close the door on any terrorists that slip the cordon around Tal Afar. This implies that U.S. or Iraqi forces are availble to actually shut the border down and enforce the curfew in the city. Couple the border closing with the berms and cordon established around the city, and checkpoints placed along the roads to Tal Afar, and the military clearly thought this operation through in advance.
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Soldier’s Dad,
I have been taking 20 day averages and here is the rate for 10 day intervals. Non-hostile and non-US casualties are excluded. Source icasualties.com
date average daily casualty rate
6/21 2.55
7/1 2.05
7/11 1.30
7/21 1.15
7/31 1.75
8/10 2.73 (event of 8/03 excluded)
8/20 1.80 (event of 8/03 excluded)
8/30 1.38
9/9 0.93
The trend is positive (declining) and hopeful – and with the IA increasingly asserting its presence, we will see Sunni fencesitters, opportunists, Baathists, nationalists, and plain criminals thinking twice before lending their support to the Islamofascists. The Islamists are being isolated by all counts, and will have to consolidate against the Sunnis before they can attack others.
Rookie, it is disgusting how the pacifists gloat over US deaths. Prof. Juan Cole, the spiritual leader of the moonbats, starts his commentary gloating over each and every US casualty and spends half his column describing details of ambushes and insurgent attacks and how they are getting better at it. Then at the end of his column he may say something grudgingly in passing about the Iraqi Constitution or Iraq political developments and reconstruction. Its pathetic how these “selective outrage” folks take pleasure in violence. Muslim on Muslim violence is completely ignored by them. Darfur ethnic cleansing and Iranian political executions do not exist as far as they are concerned. But one Iraqi collateral damage, and all hell breaks loose.
Isn’t it amazing how fast this is all going? Two years ago, we were fighting these guys, now we’re fighting beside them, and they’re donating money to our hurricane relief efforts. Can you imagine that happening with the Germans or Japanese or Vietnamese?
And when you factor in the cultural, religious, and ethnic differences between us and them, and then add tribalism, Arab nationalism, and the notoriously ruthless nature of Iraqi politics, this is a bloody miracle.
I for one am pleasantly stunned at how intelligently we’ve handled this, despite all the crapping, I mean carping, from the millions of rent-a-generals and retired “experts” putting their ugly faces on TV every three seconds.
The attack is a test of newly trained units of the Iraqi army, deploying 11 battalions of soldiers alongside three battalions of paramilitary police. The US has three battalions of troops taking part in the assault.
Saadoun Dulaimi, the Defence Minister, said that his men had killed 141 insurgents and captured 197 in the past two days. Five government soldiers had died and three were wounded. The disproportionate casualty figures suggest that, if true, most of the insurgents were killed by bombs or shells.
Mr Dulaimi implied that his men would soon launch attacks on other cities and towns where the resistance is largely in control. He said: “We say to our people in Qaim, Rawa, Samarra and Ramadi – we are coming and terrorists and criminals will not be able to hide there.” He blamed Iraq’s neighbours for allowing foreign fighters to enter Iraq.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article311781.ece
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14 Iraqi military battalions!!!!
I’m just watching TG3, they are showing some demonstration for peace in an old Italian town… Old Christian flags mixed with communist ones (hammer & sicle) and of course the infamous rainbow flag… I don’t see US bashing signs, though.
“Let’s banning the war, let’s banning the poverty”. Ok, let’s doing it, you start first by donnating your cars and your nice houses to poor people.
I bet if you put some of those people to read this reports on this site, they will dismiss them as propaganda… for them al-jazeera has the truth. MANY kids between them, really sad.
Sorry Bill, I’m new on this site – your name shows some Italian connections, but somehow I feel that little by little that beautiful country became like the others in europe… Keep the outstanding work!
On the bright side, on this news
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050911/wl_afp/iraq_050911072207;_ylt=AtqN4czgoI7uYa7HVmFZUJcUewgF;_ylu=X3oDMTA2ZGZwam4yBHNlYwNmYw–
US commander Major Robert Molinari said
“By the 15th of September we should be done. The enemy will be defeated”
Then again
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050911/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
“Many Insurgents Escape U.S.-Iraqi Sweep
TAL AFAR, Iraq – Fighting eased Sunday, the second day of a U.S. and Iraqi sweep through the militant stronghold of Tal Afar near the Syrian border, as insurgents melted into the countryside, many escaping through a tunnel network dug under an ancient northern city.”
Tunnels? Something is wrong here… Dissapointing, if true…
I agree with hamidreza idea of injecting bogus soviet artillery shells into the IED production process. I wonder if it has already begun. Hamidreza explains:
The US should manufacture a large number of soviet style artillery shells and mines, except with the difference that any attempt to open the shell to rig it to a triggering mechanism would make it detonate right in place… Once these doctored ordinance enters the terrorist manufacturing stream, it will annihilate those few terrorists who have developed expertise in manufacturing IEDs. I reckon there are just a few terrorists competent enough to rig an ordinance.
see: hamidreza’s post.
Not only would the Coalition liquidate the bomb engineers it would send a chill through the arm’s dealers network (making bomb buyers think twice about purchase of any artillery shells).