Troops Fighting Al-Qaida in Iraq
Well, whodathunk? Iraq is a front on the War on Terror.
U.S. forces detained 17 suspected insurgents in raids targeting al-Qaida in Iraq on Saturday, the military said, a day after the Pentagon announced the capture of one of the terror network’s most senior and experienced operatives.
Elsewhere, U.S. fighter jets destroyed a truck bomb discovered in Anbar province, and an American raid south of Baghdad netted insurgent weapons apparently imported from neighboring Iran, the military said Saturday.U.S. and Iraqi officials in Baghdad declined to comment about Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, 46, who was captured last fall on his way to Iraq, where he may have been sent by top terror leaders in Pakistan to take a senior position in al-Qaida in Iraq, officials said Friday in Washington.
The insurgent group has claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest attacks in Iraq, including the bombing last year of a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra, which touched off a cycle of sectarian killings.
So if we’re fighting al-Qaida in Iraq, what will happen if we pull out? Will al-Qaida take over Iraq and the oil fields? Will Iran step in and go to war with al-Qaida for control of Iraq? Just wondering. Seems like if the Dems want to pull out, they should have some sort of answer for these questions. Somehow the Dassey “I don’t know” responses aren’t enough for me.
I’m about to leave, but before all of you liberals launch into your predictable tirades, please remember to focus on the future instead of dwelling in the past. Regardless of what you think about why and how we are in Iraq, we are there. The question now is, what are we going to do about it and what will be the consequences?
If the coalition pulls out, AQIR will further consolidate the islamists into that area, launching an all-out civil war against the Shiite militias. Once they have a safe haven to operate, they will have a base from which to launch attacks against Western interests that will make that of the Taliban’s in the Afghanistan of the late 90’s look like a Boy Scout jamboree.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 28, 2007 at 1013 hrs
Uh, once we pull out, insurgents will no longer have American troops as a common enemy. Expect Sunni and Shia to root out al Qaeda in Iraq.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 28, 2007 at 1033 hrs
The problem here is that you characterize the war against al-Qaida as being a conventional war, i.e. guns, bombs, tanks. That misses the mark, kind of like trying to roof your house with a sledge. It’s completely a spook war, all about intelligence and special-ops. Proof? Afghanistan, considered one of the finest hours in the history of the CIA and Special Forces. In two months, they, with help from pin-pointed and well directed military muscle, were able to completely decapitate the Taliban and ripped al-Qaida in the region to shreds. We would have walked away with OBL’s head on a pike had Don Rumsfeld had not dragged his feet at Tora Bora over a petty beaurocratic turf war.
And yet here we are, year five of a conventional army trying to do the job of what is ultimately closer to law-enforcement than blowing up an opposing army. Not to mention being in the crossfire of a thousand year old civil war. We just need to face facts that this isn’t working. Bring home the troops, send in the spooks. It’s going to be an absolute bloodbath for the Iraqi people (hence the reason most liberals don’t want to discuss it). Might as well get it over with.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 28, 2007 at 1046 hrs
nickm -
Absolutely. They’ll obliterate each other and take Al-Qaida with them. It will be awful, but you are fighting against 1000 years of history - almost 770 more than our country has existed.
This is the point Americans all struggle with - liberal, conservative, whatever…there are cultures that have existed much, much longer than we have with grievances that have lasted nearly as long. Settling those differences, while noble, requires a significant commitment. After all of the risk and reward analysis, are our nation building efforts worth it in the final analysis? That is the question.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 28, 2007 at 1128 hrs
Uh, once we pull out, insurgents will no longer have American troops as a common enemy. Expect Sunni and Shia to root out al Qaeda in Iraq Yeah right, and Iran will leave the country alone, al Qaeda won’t set up bases there because Afghanistan is not available to them. If you believe your blather, then I have some swamp land for sale in FL for you to buy. Some posts are right, the Sunni’s will fight Shia and that will probably bring in the Kurds who will protect their interests.
I still like the idea of dividing up the country into 3 parts. I know Turkey doesn’t like it but that’s life.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 28, 2007 at 1248 hrs
I love it. Your president screws it up and we have to fix it.
As a matter of perspective, right now foreign fighters—not all Al Qaeda—represent 5% of the combatants.
Solution? No one wants to work with Bush and Cheney. Impeach the both of them and put together a completely multi-national force.
You asked for it. The other benefits to this country will be SO worth it.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 28, 2007 at 1614 hrs
Gee, kr, that’s a really intelligent post. You must thought really hard on your few remaining brain cells to come up with that. Maybe you and the left can actually come up with a real solution rather bitch and moan and think of ways to screw the troops.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 28, 2007 at 1649 hrs
That IS the left’s real solution. Surrender to al-Qaida. Then al-Qaida will simply become satisfied that we’ve gone home and they’ll leave us alone. Just like they did before we went into Iraq. Oh, wait, that’s right, September 2001 was BEFORE March 2003. And so was the USS Cole. And Khobar Towers. And the embassy bombings. And 1993 WTC. Well, then, perhaps that’s not such a great solution after all…
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 28, 2007 at 1713 hrs
Vietnam didn’t work. We left, the North took over, lots of innocent dead but now they are our buddies. That took awhile but maybe if we didn’t involve ourselves in all the other countries in the world that have problems (and have resources we want) and worked through economic and other reforms we might not be one of the most hated countries in the world.
Just think how the world would be if we didn’t overthrow Irans government in the 50’s and installed the Shah. How things would be if we didn’t arm the Taliban when they were fighting the Russians or Iraq when they were fighting Iran.
Who ever ends up victorious in Iraq will still sell us their oil because they still need the money to fund their corrupt regimes.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 28, 2007 at 1859 hrs
Who ever ends up victorious in Iraq will still sell us their oil because they still need the money to fund their corrupt regimes.
I couldn’t give a crap if the Iraqi’s don’t sell us a drop. I’m worried about the freaking Islamofascists who want us dead. They’ll have a lot easier time of it if we aren’t over there a-killin’ ‘em first.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 28, 2007 at 2207 hrs
Well Dan and Tony, as usual you don’t know what you are talking about though you do know insults.
Well hotshots, don’t isten to me. Click here—http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/04/28/william-kristol-confronted-on-cspan-by-a-caller-liar/.
As she said, according to her husband who is serving over there the Iraqi’s just want us out.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 28, 2007 at 2252 hrs
But don’t you remember - this is all Bush’s fault. The Dems said that Al Queda wasn’t in Iraq. They were all over the world setting up their dirty little cells, but they were not in Iraq. And now they are there (came after the US occupation) because we are there. We made them come to Iraq.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 28, 2007 at 2347 hrs
kr, we can do without your childish interventions.
Adults are speaking here.
Dividing the country into three is tantamount to disaster.
It is not a real solution. We are talking about artificial borders invoked by the treaty of Versailles. Iran is persian as is half of Iraq. They are the chosen ones. Be it Shia or Sunni they are the chosen people to rule the new Persian Empire.What becomes of the interloping nomads of Saudi Arabia who by default own the richest oil fields in the world? They are seen as infidels and wasterlings, yet they rule Saudi Arabia?
Splitting the country is too smart by half.
We are killing people that require killing. The war is there and it will be until Iraq can handle it’s own problems.
Brave Men and Women are sacrificing daily to achieve this viability for the country.If anyone thinks that us leaving will help this cause they are delusional. We know what happened in Lebanon when we cut and ran (under a Republican Pres, A hero to most) it became worse. We know what happened when we cut and run in Somalia (under a Democrat Pres, a hero to most lefties), and we definitely know what happened when we cut and run in Vietnam. All retreats led to Americas weakening. One led to millions of deaths of innocent people. Your care of our standing as moral arbiters in todays world is useless. WE bring freedon wherever we go. Yea France hates us because they are of no consequence except for selling illegal arms to the enemies of the west. Germany the same. Who cares.
30 million people have the freedom to choose their future, yet you care not about that you concentrate on a poll in France or Germany. Whatever
The war is here and it is now. Learn your history about Islams quest for world dominance and how it came to be that we fight this war now and then come here and bluster your unintelligent blather. Do you even know what happened in Bosnia? Kosovo? Somalia? Sudan? Darfur?Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 29, 2007 at 0123 hrs
kr, please stop placing chosen quitters, approved by Soros or Kos on this blog. I have a son and a cousin serving in Falujah. The take of real men and women serving is relevant, your fantasy of surrender is not.
Stop it.
You bring harm to my family.
Just stop.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 29, 2007 at 0140 hrs
kr, I don’t think you’re getting the point of this thread. The idea is to discuss what will happen if we pull out of Iraq.
So far, besides linking to some lefty caller, you’ve called for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, a multinational force to go in to Iraq (as if that’s not already the case), and declared:
The other benefits to this country will be SO worth it.
Whatever that means.
You haven’t really been of much help in this discussion.
And btw, I must have missed that part where I insulted someone, as you claim I did. You know, right before you called me a “hotshot”.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 29, 2007 at 0626 hrs
Multi-national force? A couple of thousand english and a handful of others does not count as a multi-national force. If we could have a coalition like we had in the first gulf war that would be a multi-national force.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 29, 2007 at 0904 hrs
Kurt, I don’t think you’re getting the kr’s point…any MNF remaining would not include the US forces. Again, the purpose of this thread, which you are also ignoring along with kr, is to discuss what happens next if we pull out.
Plus before you wax nostalgic, keep in mind that during Gulf War I, the US represented well over 70% of the forces on the ground. Parenthetically, the number of countries in that coalition was actually less than those in the ‘coalition of the willing’ for the Iraq war.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 29, 2007 at 1059 hrs
Right now, we are not fighting a war, we are conducting an occupation. An occupation can end in only 2 ways:
1. Annexation
2 WithdrawlRemoving the vast majority of our troops by a certain, well publicized date will have two effects:
1. It will drain the supposed “moral authority” that the insurgents/so-called self-proclaimed “freedom fighters” (excluding Al Qaida) claim by proving that we don’t want to annex or permanently occupy their land
2. It will force the competing factions to form strategic alliances with other groups because they know that they will not have the U.S. to either support them or unite them in opposition. A sad consequence is that Iraq will no longer be a counterbalance to Iran, and the influence of Iran in Iraq will be significant, but unfortunately, that is a consequence of Bush’s poor planning and execution.
I think that we will have to be mobilized nearby (a la Murtha’s plan) in order to referee and mitigate some of the more egregious blodletting that will occur after we leave, but I think that being nearby will persuade the two main sides not to get too crazy with the bloodletting that will doubtless occur whether we leave today or 15 years from now
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 29, 2007 at 1446 hrs
djheru, thanks for getting the discussion back on topic.
How do you foresee US forces who are “mobilized nearby” being able to “referee”? Logistically, how do we withdraw from Iraq while simultaneously maintaining the ability to fulfill this role?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 29, 2007 at 1544 hrs
djheru, well said. I envision a “nearby” role for the US to perform damage control and directed ops. Get the troops off the streets. But Tony Turner brings up an excellent point too, one I hadn’t thought about—where would that nearby be? Will Kuwait/Qatar/Saudi Arabia allow our presence for an extended period of time? Seeing as how I haven’t heard a peep from these countries and that we haven;t seen any significant attacks against us there, I’m feeling like they’re benefiting from our presence. With a base of ops in these countries, I tend to think we can referee to a certain extent with air power.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 29, 2007 at 1751 hrs
That is where diplomacy comes in. Hopefully we could use Turkey as well to have a base from the north.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 29, 2007 at 2016 hrs
OK, so we have these bases, maybe one to the north and one to the south of Iraq. Say we have one or two Army and Marine battalions stationed at both, with naval capacity in the Gulf and the Med. We probably aren’t allowed to have SF in-country, probably just some trainers, engineers and logistics techs to help with rebuilding and maybe some security for the Green Zone.
How, exactly, do we fulfill our “referee” role when it becomes necessary? How do we engage our forces in conflicts within Iraq when it meets with criteria for rules of engagement put in place upon our withdrawal/surrender? Shall we just lob some missiles in, and hope for the best? Who do we get the targeting information from? All our humint capacity is gone. Unmanned drones?
And how long would it be before everyone realized this scenario is fruitless, and our forces come home, hunker down, and wait on the defensive for the next 9/11? Meanwhile we get used to the idea that there are no superpowers left, and that we probably should start enrolling in the nearest Arabic language and Muslim Studies classes?
Or maybe Murtha has this all worked out, I don’t know. Of course he may still be planning on having us fall back to Okinawa.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 29, 2007 at 2114 hrs
I don’t see SF getting kicked out. If they did, then yes, you’re probably on the mark, bad things happen. I envision pulling out all the highly visible conventional forces. Get the tanks and soldiers off the streets. At that point, humint actually increases for the SF and spooks—the US is no longer a visible occupying force, and that makes folks a lot more agreeable. Leave the targeting of missles and gathering of intelligence to a sneaky, furtive force that keeps an extremely low profile.
Now, to clarify here, the enemy in the above war would only be al-Qaida and anti-US terrorist groups. Trying to keep the Shia and Sunnis from killing each is a whole other ball of wax. I just don’t know that there’s a real solution to it… Conventional forces are doing dick right now, just driving around as targets for whatever insurgent wants to shoot at them, while the Iraqis execute each other anyway. Sending them back in as a “referee force” probably would result in the same.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 30, 2007 at 1038 hrs
Al-Qaida won’t quit fighting us when we bring the troops home. Al-Qaida will only quit fighting us when we are dead.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 30, 2007 at 1238 hrs
Yes, well then I think we should free up our military from Iraq and go fight them, don’t you think?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 30, 2007 at 1337 hrs
The administration says there will be bloodbath if we leave, al-Qaida will take over the country (at least the ones that don’t follow us home), and that the war will spread out and there will be a region-wide conflagration.
Why should we take any of that seriously? The administration hasn’t been right about anything, repeat, anything, regarding Iraq so far, so why is everyone taking their Doomsday scenarios to heart?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 30, 2007 at 1440 hrs
djheru, c’mon, if you want us to fight a-Q, why do you want us to leave Iraq? That’s where they are! You’ve got us pulling out and going to the north/south, etc. Why bother?
apc, I don’t think the administration has said a-Q will take over Iraq if we leave. What they have said is that it will become a base from which terrorists can successfully plan and launch strikes regionally and globally. I don’t need the administration to spell that out for me, it’s self-evident to anyone who’s been paying attention. See my #8 above.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on April 30, 2007 at 1715 hrs
Despite such scare mongering, it is highly improbable that al Qaeda could use Iraq as the kind of safe haven it enjoyed in Afghanistan. There, the organization had the protection of an entrenched, friendly government, which it will not have in Iraq. Al Qaeda also had a much larger force in Afghanistan—an estimated 18,000 fighters. Even the U.S. government concedes that there are fewer than 2,000 al Qaeda fighters in Iraq, and the Iraq Study Group put the figure at only 1,300.
Indeed, foreign fighters make up a relatively small component of the Sunni insurgency against the U.S. and British occupation forces. It strains credulity to imagine 1,300 fighters (and foreigners at that) dominating a country of 26 million people.
The challenge for al Qaeda in Iraq would be even more daunting than those raw numbers suggest. While the organization has some support among Sunni Arabs there, opinion even among that segment of the population is surprisingly negative.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=7353
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 01, 2007 at 0946 hrs
...it is highly improbable that al Qaeda could use Iraq as the kind of safe haven it enjoyed in Afghanistan.
Despite your talking points straight from the ostriches at Cato, my preference remains: no defeat, no surrender, no quarter given to the Islamists of al-Qaida. We cannot afford to embolden them the way we did under Clinton’s “leadership”. I don’t care if there are 1,300, 13,000, or 130 of them there. They must die. That way “highly improbable” becomes “impossible”.
You yourself said we should “go fight them”. How exactly do you propose we accomplish that, if not in Iraq?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 01, 2007 at 1943 hrs
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