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Posted on 11/29/2003 7:11:57 AM PST by ConservativeMan55
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13 minutes ago
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By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - There is no evidence that al-Qaida terrorists have taken part in the long string of attacks on U.S. or Iraqi targets, but some U.S.-trained Iraqi police appear to have coordinated some of those assaults, the top U.S. military official in Iraq (news - web sites) said Saturday.
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U.S. military officials are concerned that some attacks on Americans have been coordinated by a few of the numerous Iraqi civilians hired by the U.S. military, who may glean intelligence on troop movements and travels of high-ranking officers, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told reporters at the Baghdad Convention Center.
"Clearly those are concerns we have. We try to do the vetting (of Iraqi employees) as close as we can," he said. "There have been instances when police were coordinating attacks against the coalition and against the people."
He said the insurgency was becoming particularly bloody for Iraqi civilians. Guerrillas launched more than 150 attacks on Iraqi civilian and police targets, killing scores during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ended last week.
Sanchez also said the United States is boosting the number of infantrymen in Iraq and moving from a force based on tanks and heavy armored vehicles to one specializing in urban raids.
A new phase in the Iraq war, known as Iraqi Freedom II, would begin as current forces are rotated out of Iraq and replaced by new units, including several thousand U.S. Marines, Sanchez said.
"We are going to change the composition of our forces," Sanchez said. "We'll have more infantry. We're moving to a more mobile force, one that has the right blend of light and heavy."
Sanchez said he saw no need for an overall increase in U.S. forces in Iraq, and the number of troops would decrease as transportation, logistics and communications personnel are sent home.
The general said some support troops are being replaced by civilian contractors, in the case of transportation and logistics. The military also is starting to use commercial sources for communications, he said, thus allowing more soldiers to depart.
Washington currently has 130,000 troops in Iraq.
The Department of Defense (news - web sites) had announced this month that the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq would drop to about 105,000 after troop rotations that start in January are completed in May. But the additional marines appear to bump up that total to 110,000.
"There's no way we're going to put this mission at risk in terms of combat power," Sanchez said, explaining the need for the marines, whose normal tasks tend toward invasions, not occupation duties.
"What we're in search of is a very mobile, very flexible, lethal force that can accomplish its mission. Those terms are dictated by the enemy."
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AP = new name for science fiction
GOOD!!!
Now, the long awaited massive attack on tha Samarra Tunnel Complexes!!!
These are just ragheads being ragheads. They are all double crossing backstabbers.
This is only the beginning. America will learn what Israel already knows.
We actually did not.
They were part of the Mujahideen who were resisting the Russian invasion back in the 80's
No they were not (although I'm not surprised you believe this, since this particular lie has been repeated so often). The Taliban was a school of Islamic religious thought (in Pakistan) at the time and weren't a significant force involved in fighting against the Soviets. They merely exploited the power vacuum that existed after the Soviets left to establish their "ideal" Islamic republic. They did not appear as a political or military force in Afghanistan until after the CIA stopped providing aid in 1992. After that time, the mujaheddin resistance continued to fight against the Khalq (Soviet backed, although the Soviets themselves had already left) regime for control of Kabul. Just as the Mujaheddin victory seemed secure (after both the Soviets and the CIA were no longer funding either side), the Taliban emerged as a political and military force and drove the mujaheddin into a small enclave in the north-eastern part of Afghanistan, where it became the Northern Alliance (the same group to whom we later gave assistance to help overthrow the Taliban; the Taliban were never able to completely eliminate them nor take control of Afghanistan completely).
Please note, however, that we DID give support to the Taliban during the Clinton administration (long after the Soviets had retreated); this was primarily bribes under the "war on drugs" to convince them to combat the farming of poppies and the opium trade.
You are confusing the Taliban with the Mujaheddin (a common mistake, and not surprising considering the very poor coverage and repeated falsehoods in the media). At this time, the Taliban was just a Islamic religious school, and didn't enter Afghanistan as a political or military force until the early 1990s (after the Soviets had already left and the CIA had stopped providing assistance). And FWIW, the CIA didn't start supporting the Mujaheddin under Reagan, it started under the Carter administration (1979).
The problem with these Iraqis is that they don't read your local paper and probably don't have access to the major international news outlets that would tell them that things are much worse in Iraq than they actually are.
Poor bastards, they have to rely on what they see with their own eyes, instead of relying on the sensational mass hallucination we call "news".
They must be bored to tears.
The Afghani Mujahidin arose mostly from the indigenous Afghani population to fight the Soviets after their invasion in the late '70s, and received U.S. support beginning under the Carter administration. Today, their remnants are usually referred to as "warlords" in the press, notable among them the loose confederation known as the Northern Alliance.
Usama bin Laden was one of thousands of foreign nationals who flocked to Afghanistan during the '80s to assist the Mujahidin in the fight against the Soviets, and used his considerable wealth and leadership skills to solicit and manage millions of dollars in foreign aid for the Mujahidin, including some from the United States. He also directed hundreds of military operations and gained a reputation as a talented and capable military strategist. Al Qaeda ("The Base") appears to have originally evolved from his Mujahidin and Wahhabist cadres.
Although he was a Saudi, many Afghanis still hail him as a hero for his work in defeating the Soviets and his largesse in helping the Afghani people with numerous public works projects (he has a degree in civil engineering) and Islamic charities. When trying to understand why so many Muslims revere Usama, it is important to remember that he was viewed by many as a sort of Islamic George Washington long before he began his murderous campaigns against the "western enemies of Allah".
The Taliban arose in the early '90s in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal as an Islamic military/political movement to transform Afghanistan into an Islamic state. A great many of its members came from Islamic religious schools (madrassas) in Pakistan, including numerous Afghani refugees as well as Pakistanis and other foreigners who nourished the movement in the interests of "fundamentalist" Islam. While I have seen nothing indicating Usama was the impetus behind the Taliban movement ("Taliban" means "students"), his Wahhabist convictions were completely in line with their objectives, and he became an important and powerful ally. I have seen nothing to indicate U.S. support for the Taliban; if there has been, it would most likely have been related to drug war programs such as opium poppy eradication efforts.
With the Taliban as both an ally and a tremendous source of recruits, Al Qaeda blossomed into an international organization, expanding its reach throughout the Islamic world and gathering dozens of disparate radical groups into its fold. During this time, in the early '90s, Al Qaeda shifted from local insurgency to international "activism", in the form of strategic fundraising, charitable activities ("zakat", or charity, is one of the five pillars of Islam) and militant activities including the support of insurgencies and Islamic state-building in Chechnya, the Balkans, Kashmir, Palestine, southeast Asia, Africa and the Phillipines. Also during this time Al Qaeda undertook a campaign of terrorism aimed at western nations in an apparent attempt to discourage them from interfering with these "Islamic jihads" and the spread of fundamentalist Islam, with successive attacks tending to increase in ferocity, sophistication and lethality.
It is specious to assert that the Mujahidin, Taliban or Al Qaeda were products of U.S. interventionism. While U.S. activities did contribute to their advent, they came into being and would have come into being on their own, regardless of American foreign policies.
What is not in dispute is that the United States will play a key role in deciding the futures of these groups.
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