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Actually it is not unusual. These terrorists were probably within 12 hours of conducting an attack. Those terrorists without the vests on were the guides, back-up triggers, or handlers. The ones wearing the vests were, most likely, on their way to conduct a bombing of civilian or Iraqi Police/Defense force units (though attacking a US unit would also be high on their list, but much harder to hit).

The bottom line is this mission probably saved the lives of dozens of Iraqi civilians today. Maybe even more if the target was a market, school, or a hospital. Yet one more in a long list of stories where US/Coalition/Iraqi forces saved the lives of civilians by killing terrorists.

A safe house is also a difficult to find target with the potential for a lot of good intell. Just finding it meant that some very good Military Intell and CA folks did a great job of connecting the dots. Add to this the phenomenal work of units lead by young 2LTs and experienced NCOs and manned with this nation's finest. When it all comes together, this is the result.

"Lots of people wearing suicide vests in the raid. Very interesting. And I think unusual. "
One could take the view that these guys must have all been hard core al Qaeda, and not some affiliate Baathist/Sunni support group mix. I realize I have harped a lot over the two years about much of the insurgency being coordinated out of the Sunni Triangle which of course included the city/town/villages within the Triangle of Death area S/SW/SE of the capital, but I am still convinced, as the whole 200 mile or so rivertine area (Euphrates N or cap to Syria) has been cleaned up, those al Qaeda who could, worked their way down into the ST/TOD area, as a last stronghold.
So many of the Al Anbar population centers are now denied them, and the bomb shops, weapon caches are mostly or almost all no longer. With the canal grid work and lay of the land and the way towns are interconnected in say the Triangle of Death area, it provides al Qaeda and Saddamist an almost idea way of still maintaining weapon caches and bomb building shops for instance. And has been harped many times, the TOD area has long be known to be populated by many of the Saddamist regime.
So naturually at this point TF145 and our army and Marines are concentrating a lot of units in this area. The big cleanup is on. Remaining al Qaeda are going to find it really hard to try to relocate down south where they will not last once exposed, nor north of the capital in many areas. Their days as well as the Saddamist surely looked numbered at this point.
Meanwhile the Iraqi forces are wading into them with similiar vigor.