Posted on 03/22/2006 2:31:36 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
By VANESSA ARRINGTON, Associated Press Writer 22 minutes ago
Insurgents emboldened by a successful raid and jailbreak laid siege to another prison facility Wednesday, but police said U.S. troops and a special Iraqi unit overwhelmed the gunmen and captured 50 of them at the detention center south of Baghdad.
The pre-dawn attack came a day after 100 Sunni gunmen freed 33 prisoners and wrecked the jail, police station and courthouse in the town of Muqdadiyah northeast of the capital and about an hour's drive from the Iranian border.
Although Wednesday's raid failed, the insurgents' ability to put together such large and well-armed bands of fighters underlined concerns about the ability of Iraqi police and military to take over the fight from U.S. troops. Sixty militants participated in the second assault, which aimed to free more jailed insurgent fighters, police said.
The attack on the prison in Madain, 15 miles southeast of Baghdad, began with insurgents firing 10 mortar rounds. They then stormed the facility, which is run by the Interior Ministry, a predominantly Shiite organization and heavily infiltrated by members of various Shiite militias.
Four police officers — including the commander of the special unit — died in a two-hour gunbattle, which was subdued only after American forces arrived. Among the 50 captured, police said, was one Syrian.
The U.S. military did not respond to a request for comment about its role in the counterattack.
Madain is at the northern tip of Iraq's Sunni-dominated "Triangle of Death," a farming region rife with sectarian violence — retaliatory kidnappings and killings in the underground conflict between Sunnis and Shiites.
Police have discovered hundreds of corpses in the past four weeks, victims of religious militants on a rampage of revenge killing. At least 21 more bodies were found Wednesday, including those of 16 Shiite pilgrims discovered on a Baghdad highway, police said. Millions were returning home Wednesday at the conclusion of an important Shiite commemoration in the holy city of Karbala this week.
In the northern town of Beiji, meanwhile, a mortar fell on a government facility that Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi was visiting Wednesday, an aide said. Chalabi was not harmed and later returned to Baghdad, the aide said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. Chalabi, who is also the interim oil minister, was believed to have been visiting the refinery in Beiji, the nation's largest.
As U.S. officials step up pressure on Iraqi leaders to form a national unity government quickly, the United States' top military commander said he had underestimated the extent of Iraqi reluctance to come together.
"I think that I certainly did not understand the depth of fear that was generated by the decades of Saddam's rule," said Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I think a lot of Iraqis have been in the wait-and-see mode longer than I thought they would."
Pace said one solution was for the Iraqis to do a better job of recruiting more Sunnis into the army and for police forces to balance Shiite domination.
"A unit that has all (sects of) Iraqis embedded in it is better able to handle whatever kind of strife comes along," the general said.
The Bush administration views formation of a broad-based government as a first step in quelling violence and allowing the start of an American troop withdrawal this summer.
While the U.S. military has touted its progress in training the Iraqi army and police, a top expert on Iraq said the forces remained poorly matched against the insurgency and al-Qaida.
"The police have almost no protected vehicles, few heavy weapons similar to those of insurgents, are often located in extremely vulnerable buildings, and have weak communications. Corruption is a major issue," Anthony H. Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a position paper released this week.
___
Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Iraq, and Lolita Baldor in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.
This tells me that the bad guys are they running out of jihadists. Why else would they risk so much to free a few of their buddies? That's one weird recruitment plan.
I am starting to lean on minimizing any Sunni involvement until they clean up their own act.
and we don't here about bombs going off in the midst of recruits lined up to join the police or army.
Sunnis are perpetrating these attacks: would it have made sense for the U.S. to have tried to recruit Germans into our army during WWII?
************************************************AN EXCERPT************************************
The Madian assault, at first glance appears to be a similarly organized operation. While no group has yet to claim responsibility for the Madain attack, there are indications this may have been another al-Qaeda operation. First, al-Qaeda tends to conducted high-profile strikes within the same timeframe to magnify the propaganda effects. Both assaults struck at identical targets, consisted of a massed strike force and used similar tactics (coordinated attack; opening salvos with RPGs, mortars and small arms fire).
al-Qaeda has attempted two large scale assaults such is this in the past; the attacks on Camp Gannon in Husaybah and on Abu Ghraib prison in the spring of 2005. Both of these attacks were fended off by U.S. forces with heavy casualties inflicted on the assault force. But the two latest attacks did not involve suicide car bombs, which is certainly an interesting development. With the successful attack in Miqdadniyah and the failure in Madain, al-Qaeda overall success rate is 1 for 4 from a military standpoint, but the propaganda value of these strikes are incalculable. It should be noted that after the al-Qaeda failures at Camp Gannon and Abu Ghraib, al-Qaeda halted large scale assaults on armed compounds. While these operations may have produced good propaganda, it is likely the operations took a toll on resources, morale and manpower. It has taken almost one year for al-Qaeda to reinitiate such operations.
I look forward to the American press in Iraq doing an up close and personal with the victorious fighters.
I didn't see any losses by the insurgents mentioned, just that 50 were captured. I would have preferred it if it had been 50 dead.
The insurgents took a staggering 83% attrition rate during the strike in Madain.
See #11, dead would be better though.
They gave up.
They're ex-Baathists, unemployed ex-regime security agents, etc.
Too coordinated to be jihadis. They gave up because they know they won't be harmed. Gaming our charity.
IMO.
Gee, the report I saw earlier on either CNN or MSNBC kinda left that part out.
This sentence is nothing but pure AP BS propaganda.
I am very puzzled, why don't the Iraqi's execute these guys on the spot or after interrogating them. Is there something here that I don't get?
"I am very puzzled, why don't the Iraqi's execute these guys on the spot or after interrogating them."
Because our media would report it and our Generals will not let them.
W
What the dominant left wing media don`t tell you is that
terrorists like these have been placed on trial and have
been promptly executed.
You`ll get your wish.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.