Posted on 05/09/2005 5:47:12 PM PDT by blam
US in border battle to curb Iraq insurgency
By Oliver Poole, Iraq Correspondent
(Filed: 10/05/2005)
American forces were engaged in fierce battles near the Syrian border last night in an attempt to stop infiltration by foreigners who are increasingly seen by the US military as forming the backbone of the insurgency.
US intelligence has noted a rise in the number of fighters coming into the country and believes that they have taken the lead from Ba'athists loyal to Saddam Hussein.
The US operation was the largest since the battle for Fallujah
Supported by jets and attack helicopters, a 1,000-strong force of US marines and other troops yesterday launched an operation against a suspected militant camp near the Syrian border said to be a staging point for foreign fighters to enter the country. Some 75 insurgents based around the city of Obedi are said to have been killed.
A US senior military officer said it was essential to stop "foreign insurgent elements" at a time when the coalition leadership maintains the growing strength of Iraqi security forces has demoralised many former Ba'athists. The operation is one of the largest involving US troops since the battle to retake the city of Fallujah from insurgents last November.
Evidence of a growing jihadist presence is seen in the increase of suicide car bombings. The number rose from 16 in February to more than 65 last month.
The Iraqi authorities claim that all suicide bombers are foreigners and say there is no documented case of an Iraqi suicide bomber.
US authorities largely attribute the believed rise in jihadist influence to their success in killing and capturing Ba'athist leaders.
The Ansar al Sunna Army - responsible for two recent suicide bombs in Kurdistan - used to be entirely Iraqi but now is believed to have foreigners in its leadership.
According to an American intelligence officer a number of messages have recently been detected being passed between Ba'athist groups and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qa'eda leader in Iraq. Contact between the groups was almost non-existent a year ago, he said.
Though the military stresses that evidence is still fragmentary, it is being interpreted as indicating that the traditionally secular Ba'athists are now having to look to outsiders for help.
They say that this has led to an alliance in which Iraqis operate the safe houses, provide explosives and arrange support and the foreign fighter drives the suicide car.
For the ordinary Iraqi the effect appears to be not only violence, but a dramatic rise in enforcement of the strictest forms of Islamic observance. This is most clearly shown in a campaign of violence against barbers.
Since the start of the year 41 have been murdered in the capital, all believed to have been killed for their willingness to cut off a man's beard, in a clear sign that the insurgency is taking a more fundamentalist edge, a shift that is believed to reflect the growing influence of foreign jihadists.
Mohammed Karim, a barber in Baghdad, arrived at his shop last week to find an envelope stuck in the entrance shutter. Inside was a bullet and a note telling him to stop providing shaves and cutting people's hair in the "French style", an Iraqi term for Western cuts.
"I opened the shop and put a sign in the window in very clear writing saying, 'We apologise for the shaving of beards and will not do so any more'," the 34-year-old said. In Baghdad's Dora district, a hot spot of insurgent activity, three barbers were shot in one day last month.
Vengeance has to follow these fools beyond the grave. Whatever is left of them should be buried in a box with the remains of a pig and the world should know it. Again, if you really wanted to be serious about the whole thing, you could put what is left of the asshole in a barrel with a pig and drop the barrel on the guy's mosque or madrassa, or maybe even on that big green monstrosity in Mecca with the guys name written on the barrel both in English and Arabic so that Allah would KNOW who had caused his holy site to be profaned.
Also at the very least we should ensure that nobodys family profits from a suicide bombing or is better off after such a thing than they were before it. In feudal Japan an act of arson or other terrorism was punished by the extermination of the perpetrator's entire family, all members, all generations.
I think maybe taking their money supply away from them might be the answer. This means taking the oil fields. All of them.
If that doesn't work, kill them all like the Romans did. And salt the earth.Destroy Mecca.
Just to give you freepers a flavor of how the war is going and not reported by the MSM. A number of insurgents safe houses were raided and amongst the items captured were commercial GPS devices. In these device memory chips were the pathway the foreign fighters took to get into Iraq. Many of the insurgent assembly bases (and GPS coordinates) near the Syrian border were still in the captured devices. This information is used by our intel boys to recon and survey the enemy bases to confirm the info. Once sufficient enemy fighters congregate at these assembly points, we swoop in and destroy them from ground and air. After the battle, more laptops, GPS devices, cellphones are captured and more information is gleaned from them. The cycle will repeat itself. This is why we will win this war, and the lack of sophistication and precision is why the Soviets lost in Afghanistan.
Now that's a story you don't hear in the MSM.
God bless our troops
I had suspected and hoped that such 'hi-tech' things were going on
I am very proud of our military but I wish we had our troops on our own borders defending us from the criminals coming in from south of the border and the potential terrorist that come in from Canada.
The sooner we close our borders the more secure the United States of America will be.
Good thing the MSM don't report this too.
Unfortunately, I think it will take 'the' coming large event for us to get serious about our borders.
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