U.S. and Iraqi Forces Clash With Shiite Militia, Killing at Least 17 ~ SADR Militia

New York Times International ^ | March 27, 2006 | JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

[Marine_Uncle]

"OK, I've been very sick and away from the board. Can you catch me up on what's happening?"
Darn I was just going to be logging out as I told a few folks.
I do hope you are feeling much better. Where do I start?
OK. Searching on Iran/Iranian should provide the lastest articles on the Iranian problem. It don't look good. Members of the administration keep saying they have no plans to attack Iran. But it appears Iran is simply going to continue their games, figuring we will not attacked them. And if we where to attack, then they hope the whole muslim world will go nuts against us.
A few articles on where they are in the nuclear fuel cycle, e.g. how close they could be in obtaining enough weapon grade uranium has been discussed here. Many differing views, with all of course ultimately agreeing we got a real problem on our hands. The nuclear issue is not imaginary in any way. The issue is how long would it take them to build at least one or two atomic bombs.
There have been a number of posts on some new Islamos top dogs being killed in Iraq. Again a search on Iraq probably will show these new articles. Nothing of super significance but never the less, some important people have been taken out in the past two weeks. The now dead ones, may have been interconnected in their insurgent activities.
A new spring/summer campaign is now started in Afghanistan.
Both the Americans and the Pakis have just made some significant hits on known al Qaeda/Talaban sites on both sides of the border in the northern provinces NE of the capital. A search on Afghanistan should show these three or four articles.
Mousssari today it appears has blown his case as far as pleading for life verse the death sentence. He continued to tell his lawyers to basically shut up and took the stand himself. I am sure in the next few days we will hear more on what time frame the jury will take to decide his fate.
Lots of the generic type news one would expect.
I don't think you missed out on much that you are not fully onboard with other then perhaps the lastest high priority discussions regarding the fate of Iran. They are really pushing their luck at this point. The Russians and Chinese just may side with us in soon. They until today still supposedly to not favor a strong set of sanctions against Iran. But they as usual offer no alternative that would convince the Iranians to pledge to stop their quest for uranium enrichment. As you are aware, they could simply purchase the right fuel rods for their reactor from Russia. And if they where to agree to do that, and let the UN inspection teams closely monitor all their underground facilities as well as sites rather elusive in nature presently they could overt the whole idea of sanctions.
Stay tuned on that one.
Well McGavin, I am going to logged out at this point. Been a tough day for me, on many accounts. I do hope you are fully recovered and can enjoy the upcoming holiday if you celebrate the Easter holiday.

[Southack]

Something's up in Iraq right now. Our fatalities have gone from 1 per day last month to 4 per day this month.

The last time that we had this kind of spike was during one of our major offensives (e.g. clearing out Fallujah, Ramadi, etc.).

[Marine_Uncle]

" The last time that we had this kind of spike was during one of our major offensives (e.g. clearing out Fallujah, Ramadi, etc.)."
Hopefully the numbers shall drop drastically, once some more key cells are broken up disrupting their ability for any planed actions. It appears we have lost a few people due to IED road bombs, and a few to direct fire.