Posted on 04/30/2005 9:41:59 PM PDT by Cableguy
In a country of tough guys, Adnan Thabit may be the toughest of all. He was both a general and a death-row prisoner under Saddam Hussein. He favors leather jackets no matter the weather, his left index finger extends only to the knuckle (the rest was sliced off in combat) and he responds to requests from supplicants with grunts that mean ''yes'' or ''no.'' Occasionally, a humble aide approaches to spray perfume on his hands, which he wipes over his rugged face.
General Adnan, as he is known, is the leader of Iraq's most fearsome counterinsurgency force. It is called the Special Police Commandos and consists of about 5,000 troops. They have fought the insurgents in Mosul, Ramadi, Baghdad and Samarra. It was in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad in the heart of the Sunni Triangle, where, in early March, I spent a week with Adnan, himself a Sunni, and two battalions of his commandos. Samarra is Adnan's hometown, and he had come to retake it. As the offensive to drive out the insurgents got under way, the only area securely under Adnan's control was a barricaded enclave around the town hall, where he grimly presided over matters of war and peace, but mostly war, chain-smoking Royal cigarettes at a raised desk in the mayor's office. With a jowly face set in a permanent scowl, Adnan is perfectly suited to the grim realities of Iraq, and he knows it. When an admiring American colonel compared him to Marlon Brando in ''The Godfather,'' Adnan took it as a compliment and smiled.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Got a login?
yep, these are the guys Iraq will be depending on in the next weeks. Hope they have a lot of them.
I recommend that you register with NYT. It's free. Yea, it is liberal, but still has great reporters.
Yayayaya. I know, I should.
Nomination failed on a 9-7 vote in Senate committee.
Not a nice guy ...
I'll have to read this later.
I second that. This article is what finally prompted me to register, and it was well worth it. They require an email addy, but it's easy enough to set up a "mail drop" address with one of the web-based email services. BTW, for those who suggest bugmenot, it's never worked for me. The passwords it gives are always invalid.
I just used bugmenot and it worked for me.
Video Clips of Confessions from Al-Iraqiya TV's “Terrorism in the Hands of Justice”: March, 2005
http://www.memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S5&P1=65
Very interesting -- long, but interesting.
"There are far more Americans in Iraq today -- some 140,000 troops in all -- than there were in El Salvador, but U.S. soldiers and officers are increasingly moving to a Salvador-style advisory role. In the process, they are backing up local forces that, like the military in El Salvador, do not shy away from violence. It is no coincidence that this new strategy is most visible in a paramilitary unit that has Steele as its main adviser; having been a key participant in the Salvador conflict, Steele knows how to organize a counterinsurgency campaign that is led by local forces. "
It's great that US is training strong Iraqi commando units, so the Iraqis can fight the terrorists themselves. I am sure they won't get all worried about putting panties on a terrorist's head.
I went to http://www.iraqimedianet.net/tv/ where
they have a daily schedule and I don't see this show
listed. Is it supposed to be a full show or just something
like the sports portion of a newscast?
For some reason, I find it mildly amusing that http://www.iraqimedianet.net/tv/programsAZ.htm is alphabetically sorted neither by the english program title nor the arabic name.
Good read, even from the NY Slimes. Great to see we now have some home grown bad arses covering our guy's backs in Iraq. Enemy of my enemy, my friend, et all.
Thanks for posting.
Log In using boyboy35 welldone.
ping for later reading
My whole problem with the whole Abu Ghraib thing was that it was clearly out of control. Tough times call for tough measures, but leave it to the professionals, only for a specific reason, and by all means do it behind closed doors. It's not to be done for the amusement of some sadistic lowlifes. When the likes of Lyndie England and her boyfriend are doing this kind of stuff for fun, you've got a serious breakdown in the chain of command.
"The [Iraqi] commandos cultivate a vaguely menacing look. They wear camouflage uniforms, but also irregular clothing, like black leather gloves and balaclavas -- not to hide their identities but to inspire fear among the enemy. It is a look I saw among the Serbian paramilitaries who terrorized Croatia and Bosnia during the Balkan wars in the 90's, and it is the look of the paramilitaries that operated in Latin America a decade earlier."
Or any moderately sized American city's SWAT team. This is just one example of many in the article where the author seems bent on portraying our efforts as less than honorable.
btttt
Just register with bogus info. I make myself a 108-year old female CEO. Enough people do it, it makes their subscriber data look fake, which will drive down their ad rates.
It's a two-fer.
-R
More importantly, the article gives evidence that at last we are on the right track in Iraq. Perhaps this is the Times' way of getting on the record ahead of the story of our reversal of fortune in Iraq.
Nor do I think the warnings about the factionalization of indigenous counter-insurgency forces are misplaced.
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