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.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Trying to get the word out on this EXCELLENT article:

Prospects of Terror: An Inquiry into Jihadi Alternatives (I)

[Cinnamon]

Daschle is deeply saddened...

[Purrcival]

"Hmmm.. Never been to Gunbattle.. Hows the weather there?"

Ummmm...it's raining bullets?

[Blue State Insurgent]

95,000? Ask them to show you these mass graves.

[rdl6989]

Yeah, the questioning is what I'm interested in.

[Axhandle]

From the article: "Madain, 14 miles southeast of Baghdad, is at the northern tip of Iraq's Sunni-dominated "Triangle of Death," a region rife with sectarian violence -- retaliatory kidnappings and killings in the underground conflict between Sunnis and Shiites."

My geography might be wrong, but I think the author has his cardinal directions confused.

[hattend]

Cool! way to go, troops!

[edsheppa]

US casualties are plummetting.

Looking at that data, recent fatalities don't seem qualitatively different from before. For example, Oct05 to Feb06 is five months. Using the actual distribution of fatalities per day from another page on that site I generated 100,000 random sequences of monthly fatalities. Of them about 17% had a sequence of five or months of decreasing fatalities.

Although one can hope, it's too early to say, from the data, that something qualitatively new is happening.

A very curious pattern is that, supposing this month continues its low fatality rate, either Feb or Mar of 04, 05 and 06 will have had unusually low numbers of fatalities. I wonder why that is.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

To Democrats, this means 50 new human rights observers, 50 new lawyers, and 50 new rooms at the Hyatt.

[ohioWfan]

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.

Might I add a hearty AMEN to that, and say THANK YOU!!

The truth of what you say is seldom said.

[Owen]

There are pilgrimmages in February, but I don't think March. I understand your having found other five month sequences of declining casualties, but I don't think I see a raw decline of this magnitude over other 5 month periods.

For just 2.5 yrs since low scale warfare began, there probably is not a large enough sample size to make any statistically significant assertion about monthly moves, but again, the sheer magnitude of reduction is very much larger than other periods. Not sure how one evaluates that with so few samples available -- and of course it's useful to recognize that the process is not random. It is purposeful.

[edsheppa]

There aren't any in the raw data. I took the daily fatality statistics from here and used them to generate 100,000 random 35-month fatality lists. Of those 100,000 lists, 17% had a sequence of five or months of decreasing casualties.

One other point. 2/06 had a slightly higher rate of fatalities than 1/06. The count was lower because there are 3 fewer days in Feb.

I just think we need to be realistic. Hopeful but realistic.

[Owen]

BTW I saw Fox cover this trend tonight. Someone is reading FR.

[Yardstick]

I heard this reported on the radio this morning a couple of times. Both times it was attached to a report on today's speech by the President. It went something like "even as the president gave an optimistic spin on events in Iraq, there was more violence around Baghdad, with four Iraqi police killed in an insurgent attack on their police station..."

At the time they weren't reporting the success of the police in repelling the attack and capturing the attackers. Maybe that info wasn't available at the time. It would interesting to know if later reports included that info.

[Axhandle]

"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?"

Over a year ago, I wrote to the guy who runs iraqbodycount.org or whatever the ridiculous site is called. We exchanged about 4 or 5 emails. He said that ALL deaths in Iraq since the invasion - whether by coalition forces or terrorists - were included in the count and blamed on us because our occupation is the catalyst for the violence.

I asked him how this can be a problem since by invading the country we prevented the further slaughter of Iraqi's by Saddam. Even by the most pessimistic and pinko standards, the two should cancel each other out. I never got another response.

Getting to the specifics of your question, I would draw your attention to two things that, in my opinion, validate your judgment that the claim is false: "letter-to-the-editor" and "anti-war group".

[neutronsgalore]

"At the time they weren't reporting the success of the police in repelling the attack and capturing the attackers. Maybe that info wasn't available at the time. It would interesting to know if later reports included that info."

It still stuns me that NONE of the scum were killed. Wouldn't the responding American force have at least 1 or 2 snipers to burst a few skulls?

[bray]

The only way this will be reported by DNBC is if the poor terrorists were to trip and scratch their knees.

Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters

[gotribe]

What I hear from the Marines and Soldiers that come back from Iraq is that the people volunteer telling them please stay we want you to stay.

Liberals have a hard time accepting that Marines and Soldiers actually like a good fight.

[Steve_Seattle]

Belated reply to Iraq body count dispute:

Another problem is that it is very difficult to determine who is a combatant and who is a civilian, and how many civilians are killed because the insurgents deliberately hide behind them in various ways. Also - and this is almost always forgotten by critics of the war - remember how during the later Clinton years there was the growing international outcry that the UN-approved SANCTIONS were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly women and children? Remember how we were told that 5,000 children were dying every month because of the sanctions? And remember how Madeline Albright nonetheless defended the sanctions because SADDAM WAS SUCH A THREAT? The Dems and the MSM and the peace activists and the anti-war protestors have ALL gone amnesiac on those points. (I raise this point not because I think the allegations about the sanctions were necessarily true, but because those were the accusations that were made at the time, repeatedly, in the mainstream press.) So even if it were true that 95,000 civiliand had died because of the war, this would represent far fewer civilian deaths than were being claimed BEFORE the war.

[TBP]

This can't be true. That would mean we'r having success in Iraq. We're not. Haven't you been listening to Johnny Murtha, the greatest patriot ever?

It's a Halliburton conspiracy!