Posted on 07/12/2004 3:30:20 AM PDT by kattracks
BAGHDAD -- In the two weeks since they took back control of their country, Iraqi security forces are showing their mettle.Last week, on the capital's busiest shopping street in Karada, an alert cop spotted a car bomb packed with 1,500 pounds of explosives that could have killed dozens.
Farther north, a platoon of Iraqi National Guard killed a pair of suicide bombers and dragged the explosives from the vehicle before they detonated.
Hundreds of Iraqi soldiers now patrol the streets, and dozens have been killed or injured in the past week in firefights with insurgents who seem to be training their sights on Iraqi forces.
This is what Iraqi control looks like so far.
In Iraq's first full week as a sovereign nation following the June 28 handover, its security forces -- fighting in the shadow of 160,000 foreign troops, most of them American -- have registered a striking, if limited, early record. The isolated but impressive successes offer a glimpse of a future in which Iraqis will set the tone for internal security, especially in areas where the interim prime minister chooses to evoke his newly adopted powers of martial law.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
bttt
It's going to be up to the Iraqi's to determine if this thing is going to be a success or not.
Eventually, the general populace is going to have to get so sick of the violence that they themsleves rise up against the terrorists, and slaughter them.
Put Saddam back in charge for a while, to clean up the mess and remind that iraki garbage of the alternative. I suggest a "rent-a-dictator" program. Noreiga, Saddam and Slobbo are just wasted resources when all these third world countries are festering with lawlessness.
I predict it will be a success. They seem to have the seriousness and determination it will take.
Thank you STUPID REPORTER... it would be impossible to figure out who MAJOR GENERAL TARIQ is!!
''Aha, Kirkuk was very calm and quiet -- only three assassinations!"
Major General Hikmet Musa Salman, the deputy interior minister in charge of Iraq's police forces, said that last week alone his officers had thwarted a suicide bomb in Baqubah on a resident's tip and caught a cell of Iranian and Iraqi bomb makers in Baghdad.
''These crimes, with these catastrophic numbers, are very simple to solve compared to the catastrophic tyranny of Saddam from which Iraq just escaped," Tariq said.
The good ones understand. And it will take time to vet the entire force and clean out the bad ones... but they will make progress, and it will get better.
I like some aspects of this article, but I don't like the fact that the media has IGNORED all the good things the Coalition has been doing all these months. The Coalition also prevented numerous bombings and other attacks, but all we ever hear about are the successful attacks.
Like GWB said early on, regarding the prevention of terrorist attacks: We have to be right 100% of the time. They only have to be right once.
The Coalition wasn't right 100% of the time, but they were right a WHOLE BUNCH OF TIMES that we never heard about. Shame on the media.
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