Rumor and Combat (Operation Bruins in Ramadi, Iraq)

ThreatsWatch.Org ^ | 2005 Nov 20 | Bill Roggio

[Wiz]

KUWAIT CITY: While Coalition forces press operations along the Euphrates River Valley, an interesting report emerges from the city of Mosul. During a shootout at suspected al Qaeda safe house, eight terrorists either shot each other or blew themselves up to avoid capture. Unconfirmed reports indicate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda’s commander in Iraq, may have been one of those killed. According to unnamed U.S. counterterrorism official, “[t]here are efforts under way to determine if he was killed.”

In the past we’ve looked at potential successors to Zarqawi. Since this time, three known al Qaeda in Iraq “princes” have been confirmed killed (Suleiman Khalid Darwish and Abu Azzam) or captured (Abu Talha), and Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri is believed to have died as well. The death of Zarqawi would be an important psychological victory for the Coalition and a blow to al Qaeda, but, as Col Stephen Davis commented in the past, “[t]he reality is that while one day Zarqawi will die or will be captured and nothing much will change. We will continue to fight and kill insurgents in [Western Anbar] with our focus being on dismantling the networks.”

And the dirty job of fighting the insurgency and dismantling the jihadi networks continues. In Haditha, a roadside bomb attack killed fifteen Iraqi civilians and one U.S. Marine. An ambush followed the bombing, and Iraqi Army soldiers and Marines beat off the attack and killed eight insurgents and wounded another.

Fresh on the heals of Operation Panther, a combined Coalition force of 150 Iraqi Army soldiers and 300 Marines launched Operation Bruins in northern Ramadi. Multinational Forces-West describes the operation as “part of a series of disruption operations in Ramadi and is designed to set the conditions for successful elections in December.

[Wiz]

ping

[conservativecorner]

"The Coalition is slowly and methodically strangling the insurgency and al Qaeda in northern and western Iraq, and persistent operations are denying al Qaeda safe havens in their former self-declared “Islamic Republics” on the Syrian border. The death of Zarqawi, if true, should be credited to the persistent pressure applied by Coalition forces, and the introduction of Iraqi troops into the northern and western regions of Iraq."

AMEN BUMP!!

[dblshot]

Wow! First the DemocRats shoot each other in the House Friday and now this. W must be wearing them all down.

[Wiz]

Bill Roggio is doing a great job covering operations in Iraq from his blog "Fourth Rail" and on the "ThreatsWatch.Org". It's worth to keep an eye on.

[GermanBusiness]

Let's do a mutual blog check. For real Iraq news, I read the following:

Strategypage.com
freerepublic.com
windsofchange.com
debka.com

What others should I be checking? Is Stephen den Beste up and talking about Iraq again? Belmont Club stopped dealing with Iraq it seems.

[Youngman442002]

This is the second post that says Zaqari is dead...Hmmmmm..thsi could be great news...

[Names Ash Housewares]

Michael Yons blog is excellent and highly regarded. He is an ex green beret embedded with the troops as an independant journalist. He is getting more attention now because of Bruce Willis appearing with him. He is heading aback to Iraq soon.

http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/

Also Iraq the Model

Two brothers in Baghdad tell it like it is. They are very pro democracy.

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/

[Names Ash Housewares]

Also both sites have links to other blogs that are very good.

[Wiz]

Wait a minute, did you mention Debka?! That was nice if you meant it to be a joke.

[Wiz]

I've been reading Iraq the Model for about an year. It doesn't mean it is worthless or bad, but slightly dull (or say not much news I am looking for) today with not much excitement (well, if the security is improving, there wouldn't be much excitement to expect). At good times, he provided valuable information about how the terrorists were preparing, what weapons they had, and what the organization structure was in Fallujah. That was the most exciting moment that no other news source would ever reported. I haven't heard much of that kind of news in recent months from that blog, so I became thirsty looking for other sources.

[GermanBusiness]

Yes, I once read IraqtheModel and the Yon site all the time...but that was when they were on top of the latest events. An interesting thing about the Blogosphere is that my sources change according to whom I think knows what they are talking about in a certain area.

For instance, before the French riots jumped the shark, I was always reading no-pasaran.blogspot.com to keep up on the news CNN refused to report here in Europe. It is still a great blog, but the guy doesn't have a clue what just happened in Mosul. For that, I would rely on Strategypage or Debka or Newsmax or Worldtribune or geopolitics-direct.com (?) or is that geostrategy-direct.com?

About Debka: Once again, it was Debka that warned me that a house was surrounded in the first place. They were about 4 hours ahead of Freerepublic and 16 hours ahead of CNN. The people had not yet blown themselves up when Debka was telling me the story. I am sorry, but I call that reliability, even if the Israelis might want to feed me with disinformation on other subjects.

To me, Debka is like Drudge: Unreliable maybe...but ahead of the curve on breaking news? You bet.