Posted on 09/12/2005 12:09:15 PM PDT by anonymoussierra
CBS/AP) Fighting eased Sunday, the second day of a U.S. and Iraqi sweep through the militant stronghold of Tal Afar near the Syrian border, as insurgents melted into the countryside, many escaping through a tunnel network dug under an ancient northern city.
Iraqi and U.S. military officials vowed to expand the offensive.
The 8,500-strong Iraqi-U.S. force continued house-to-house searches, and military leaders said the assault would push all along the Syrian frontier and in the Euphrates River valley.
Cities and towns along the fabled river are bastions of the insurgency, a collection of foreign fighters and disaffected Sunni Muslims, many of them Saddam Hussein loyalists.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/12/iraq/main835059.shtml
And as usual, the media has under-reported this story of US and Iraqi troops cleaning out the bad guys. I guess because our side did not have a large amount of casualites it was not considered worthy. But think about it, a force of 8,500 is rather large in post war Iraq. And the battle lasted several days. I think a couple hudred insurgents were killed and something like 150 or more were captured. To me this looks like a huge successful operation.
Wooohooooo! Glad to see we're finally taking the fight to the bad guys again!
Deploy the tunnel rats and mop up - no backing off, no mercy for these killers.
tunnels?
deploy Moab
Good guys win again. Is it just me, or is there a new report every day of the Free Iraqi forces taking major roles in anti-terrorist operations? It seems like the Iraqis are starting to carry their share of the load. That is a very promising sign.
Looks like not many of the enemy fled.
Read:
A Fresh Offensive in Tal Afar
http://billroggio.com/archives/2005/09/a_fresh_offensi.php
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Hawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!
It may have something to do with a lack of 24/7 TV coverage in Iraq. Pull the cameras and we can get some stuff done.
Killing bad guys is good!
Death To all islamofascist terrorists!
Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!
Doesn't sound much like a successful a purge to me. Hopefully the tunnels have been planted with something evil, you know, like ham bones.
Wait a minute... I thought this was a PC war?? I thought we should have nuked the city??
Be strong
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"Don’t worry about reporters they are idiots; of it they know nothing. Be watchful for good news would be coming in for 3 weeks. Of it Coalition forces are on a move so is Special Forces"
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thank you all
I guess it depends on what one deems 'many,' but I'm skeptical of accounts that claim significant numbers of insurgents have escaped. The U.S. and Iraqi armies spent a couple of months building berms and cutting off potential routes of egress from Tal Afar. The best guess of killed/captured enemy fighters (200/220), combined with the initial estimates of enemy strength (350-500), even if somewhat inaccurate, would indicate that few of the fighters made it out. The city is considered about 80% secured last I heard, so there's probably more enemy still there to deal with.
thank you:}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}yes much more
It's not just you. We keep seeing these reports over and over, and have been especially seeing them in the last couple of weeks. The other really good thing is there's been a really strong drop in the number of U.S. and Iraqi casualties in the same period. For an earlier report on this action see: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1482208/posts
My view exactly. Nothing like giving our troops a little privacy to do the necessary work.
Iraqi forces late today trapped insurgents in basement hideouts.
Find, Fix, DESTROY.
thank you good friend
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