U.S., Iraqi Forces Capture 50 Insurgents in Gunbattle

www.foxnews.com ^ | March 22, 2006 | AP

[Btrp113Cav]

U.S., Iraqi Forces Capture 50 Insurgents in Gunbattle

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. and Iraqi forces responded to an insurgent attack on a police station Wednesday, fighting a two-hour gunbattle that ended with the capture and detention of 50 of the gunmen.

[Semper Paratus]

US casualties are plummetting.

The media is using Vietnam's 'TET' template. Back then the VC destroyed themselves in a series of suicide attacks that caused the US media to have a cow and talk about withdrawing from an unwinnable war.

This time we have a President who isn't backing out.

[Recovering Ex-hippie]

Is it asking too much to hope that Christine Amanapour would be interviewing (ie adoring) Assad just as the MOAB was dropped?

Oh, Please! Pretty Please!!!!

[el_texicano]

"Is it asking too much to hope that Christine Amanapour would be interviewing (ie adoring) Assad just as the MOAB was dropped?"

Oh, that would be beyond cool.

[elfman2]

"The other day, there was a letter-to-the-editor in my local paper claiming that 79% of the civilian casualties in Iraq - claimed by some anti-war group as about 95,000 - have been caused by US/Coalition forces. That figure strikes me as intuitively false; does anyone have any info on this?"

It’s from the Lancet Report, about a year and a half ago. That total number of civilian war dead is something like 4 times the latest UN report released this month. The methodology is also crap. They apparently identified 33 “random” clusters, some in Fallujah, and asked residents how many people in their family died and by whom. Here’s an interesting critique:

“When asked about the methodological soundness of using a self-report survey of a population that believes Yassar Arafat is a hero, Jews control the world, the US is in Iraq to steal oil, beheading videos are sexier than porn, and that whenever Abu Musab al-Zarqawi kills a hostage 'it's the Yankee imperialist's fault', the authors responded by saying, "Timmy." ”

[bnelson44]

I watch this site closely. I know I shouldn't but I can't help myself. Anyway, March is normally a low month for US casulties as the Baathists and al-Qaeda concentrate on the Shiite pilgrams. Let's see what April brings.

[Owen]

>>
I watch this site closely. I know I shouldn't but I can't help myself. Anyway, March is normally a low month for US casulties as the Baathists and al-Qaeda concentrate on the Shiite pilgrams. Let's see what April brings.
>>

No. Let's see what November 2005 brought. And December 2005. And January 2006. And February 2006.

It's not just March. The plummet is from October.

The left KNOWS if Bush wins this he is transformed into one of the icons of greatness. As this numerical reality emerges and the Bush resolve starts to become legendary, their futures blacken and dissolve. They know this. They can't help but know this.

Bush is winning. Nothing worse could possibly happen to the Democratic party.

[bnelson44]

I hope your right.

[American Quilter]

US casualties have been sinking steadily since Oct 2005.

Excellent! Kudos to our courageous warriors and the emerging Iraqi warriors.

We FReepers may complain about some of President Bush's policies, but by golly he's had a backbone of steel in conducting the war on terror. Bravo Zulu, Mr. President!

[Cheburashka]

On yesterday's thread about the first attack I wrote:

They've run this play once.
Let's hope they keep running it until we stop them.
Let's hope the second time they run this play we stop them hard.

Good job, guys.

[SevenMinusOne]

The left KNOWS if Bush wins this he is transformed into one of the icons of greatness. As this numerical reality emerges and the Bush resolve starts to become legendary, their futures blacken and dissolve. They know this. They can't help but know this.

Exactly right -

[Homer_J_Simpson]

I watch this site closely. I know I shouldn't but I can't help myself.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[righttackle44]

"The Iraqis are taking over their own security and bleeding for themselves."

I think this is one of the most important statements made on FR about this war. It is the "bleeding for themselves" that will eventually create an Iraqi armed force to be reckoned with and victorious. The professional training our guys are giving the Iraqis is helping to create that armed force. And we have to note with some pride that it was the Iraqi army and armed forces that did not dissolve into factions during the period when the MSM was screaming "civil war." These guys stayed loyal to one another and are fighting on.

[Steve_Seattle]

Thanks very much for this information; yes, it was in reference to the Lancet report.

[Steve_Seattle]

"The left KNOWS if Bush wins this he is transformed into one of the icons of greatness."

True. They simply cannot, will not, accept that "Shrub" is anything but a dopey, incompetent frat brat, motivated totally by naked self-interest. They will not give him any credit even if - in five or ten years - Iraq is a thriving, secure, free country. They will say anything to deny him credit, e.g., they might say that democracy would have happened sooner without the invasion, or some such fairy tale.

[PISANO]

Ideally they should kill these bastards!!!

This business of arresting terrorists only serves to bolster the notion that they are a criminal problem and that we are NOT really at WAR.

[TRY ONE]

This will make page 34 of the NYT...........

[PISANO]

I pray for the continued monthly drop in troop KIA's!

However I must state that going into the FOURTH YEAR of WAR we have to date 1823 KIA's. The words that come to mind are UNBELIEVABLE & REMARKABLE and by any standard of warfare a very, very small number!!

It is a tribute to our men and women, their TRAINING and the outstanding LEADERSHIP they exhibit and receive.

[jveritas]

Excellent news.

[Libloather]

Iraqi Insurgents' Raid on Jail Thwarted
By VANESSA ARRINGTON, Associated Press Writer
1 minute ago

A U.S soldier stands near an Iraqi soldier during the hand over ceremony of the U.S. controlled base back to the Iraqis at the Victory base complex in Baghdad March 2, 2006. Senate Republicans unveiled a 2007 U.S. budget blueprint on Wednesday that would spend at least $90 billion on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and tries to resurrect a plan to drill for oil and gas in the Alaskan wildlife refuge. REUTERS/Ali Jasim

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents emboldened by a successful raid and jailbreak laid siege to another prison facility Wednesday, but police said U.S. troops and a special Iraqi unit overwhelmed the gunmen and captured 50 of them at the detention center south of Baghdad.

The pre-dawn attack came a day after 100 Sunni gunmen freed 33 prisoners and wrecked the jail, police station and courthouse in the town of Muqdadiyah northeast of the capital and about an hour's drive from the Iranian border.

Although Wednesday's raid failed, the insurgents' ability to put together such large and well-armed bands of fighters underlined concerns about the ability of Iraqi police and military to take over the fight from U.S. troops. Sixty militants participated in the second assault, which aimed to free more jailed insurgent fighters, police said.

The attack on the prison in Madain, 15 miles southeast of Baghdad, began with insurgents firing 10 mortar rounds. They then stormed the facility, which is run by the Interior Ministry, a predominantly Shiite organization and heavily infiltrated by members of various Shiite militias.

Four police officers — including the commander of the special unit — died in a two-hour gunbattle, which was subdued only after American forces arrived. Among the 50 captured, police said, was one Syrian.

The U.S. military did not respond to a request for comment about its role in the counterattack.

Madain is at the northern tip of Iraq's Sunni-dominated "Triangle of Death," a farming region rife with sectarian violence — retaliatory kidnappings and killings in the underground conflict between Sunnis and Shiites.

Police have discovered hundreds of corpses in the past four weeks, victims of religious militants on a rampage of revenge killing. At least 21 more bodies were found Wednesday, including those of 16 Shiite pilgrims discovered on a Baghdad highway, police said. Millions were returning home Wednesday at the conclusion of an important Shiite commemoration in the holy city of Karbala this week.

In the northern town of Beiji, meanwhile, a mortar fell on a government facility that Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi was visiting Wednesday, an aide said. Chalabi was not harmed and later returned to Baghdad, the aide said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. Chalabi, who is also the interim oil minister, was believed to have been visiting the refinery in Beiji, the nation's largest.

As U.S. officials step up pressure on Iraqi leaders to form a national unity government quickly, the United States' top military commander said he had underestimated the extent of Iraqi reluctance to come together.

"I think that I certainly did not understand the depth of fear that was generated by the decades of Saddam's rule," said Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I think a lot of Iraqis have been in the wait-and-see mode longer than I thought they would."

Pace said one solution was for the Iraqis to do a better job of recruiting more Sunnis into the army and for police forces to balance Shiite domination.

"A unit that has all (sects of) Iraqis embedded in it is better able to handle whatever kind of strife comes along," the general said.

The Bush administration views formation of a broad-based government as a first step in quelling violence and allowing the start of an American troop withdrawal this summer.

While the U.S. military has touted its progress in training the Iraqi army and police, a top expert on Iraq said the forces remained poorly matched against the insurgency and al-Qaida.

"The police have almost no protected vehicles, few heavy weapons similar to those of insurgents, are often located in extremely vulnerable buildings, and have weak communications. Corruption is a major issue," Anthony H. Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a position paper released this week.

___

Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Iraq, and Lolita Baldor in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.

An Iraqi boy studies under an oil lamp, in Baghdad, Iraq, March 2, 2006. Electricity output has dipped to its lowest point in three years in Iraq, as the desert sun rises toward another broiling summer and U.S. engineers wind down their rebuilding of the crippled power grid. At present the overstreched network is producing less than half the electricity. (AP Photo/ Mohammed Hato)

In this photo released by the U.S. Navy, SSgt. Dave Fitzgerald performs perimeter security during a reconnaissance patrol by the 66th Armor Battalion, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division in an area where a recent insurgent attack took place on an Iraqi oil pipeline near Taji, Iraq on March 1, 2006. (AP Photo / U.S. Navy, Michael Larson, HO)

An Iraqi policeman looks at unexploded artillery shells found at the scene of car bomb attack in Kirkuk about 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad March 13, 2006. Two policemen were killed and four wounded when two car bombs exploded in separate attacks on a police patrol in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police said. REUTERS/Slahaldeen Rasheed

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

AP Report:

Iraqi Insurgents' Raid on Jail Thwarted ~ Heavy losses by the raiders....