Posted on 11/16/2006 1:11:16 PM PST by jmc1969
About 2,200 Marines are headed from their ships in the Persian Gulf to an undisclosed location in Iraq's western Anbar province to help shore up U.S. combat power in an area riddled with insurgent violence.
The move, intended as a short-term measure, is evidence of the severity of the conflict in Anbar. The insurgency is entrenched and well-organized in a province where U.S. soldiers and Marines are being killed almost daily.
Maj. Matt McLaughlin, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said Thursday that members of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit were "in the process of transitioning and moving" from their ships to a transit point for deployment to Anbar. He said he could not discuss specifics of their mission or exact destination.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
it has become more severe. courage to our bravest and brightest assigned there.
HOOAH!
Soften up the area with air strikes first.
What good is military superiority if we're too PC to use it?
Just send the B-52's and start carpet bombing the Anbar province. The sunnis have been given ample time to get in line and work out a politcal solution. Instead of losing a couple marines each day, take decisive action and solve the problem. Bush may get some bad press from CNN and the NYT, but he is going to get bad press regardless.
Need more info on the suspected insurgents here? Are they Al-Qaeda? Sunni?
Locally we recently lost a damn good Marine in Anbar. I would like nothing better than to see 0311's go in there in force and kick some serious butt. Don't bother taking names!
"Are they Al-Qaeda? Sunni?"
Anbar is the heart of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Anbar is Sunni and also an al-Qaeda area of operation.
I support our action in Iraq but at this point I think since we as a nation are clearly not ready to fight wars without tying our armed forces arms behind their back I think we should just officially relinqish our mantle of superpower and close up shop on the military. Perhaps Canada or Mexico will protect us from Iran, Pakistan, China, North Korea and Venezuela.
Why spend the money on expensive missiles and jet fuel ?
We can go back to the ships and have the Shia solve the Sunni problem for free.
Whoever is the winner will need to sell their oil to us, wether they like us or not.
Soldiers should not be fighting enemies. They might get hurt. Bring them home where they can enjoy life on base with their families. They can play checkers and shuffelboard, instead. Oh, yes, consume lots of subsidized health care, too. sarc/
Bingo. US politicians are pathologically averse to actually completing a military action. I guarantee you we will NOT finish the job in Iraq... we'll leave too soon, no matter who is in charge. We will definitely leave plenty of bad guys alive in the Sunni triangle. That will come back to haunt us.
This is a direct result of the socialist feminisation of America that started in the 1960's.
Might be some reason to be there soon..............FRegards
Folks,
If we're not willing to crush these insurgents with the brutality we did in Dresden, Tokyo and the Battle of the Bulge, we might as well not get into this war.
I say 2,200 marines are too few. We need 20,000 and we need to kill everyone of them and not spare any of their leaders the way we fecklessly did Moqtad Al Sadr in Fallujah.
William Sherman burned the city of Atlanta to the ground. Are we ready to do that if necessary ?
And one more thing, are you prepared to fight the propaganda war that's sure to come ?
I am talking about pictures taken by the usual suspects -- Reuters, BBC, CNN which will paint a picture of our brutality everyday, 24 X 7 to show the world how we're killing innocent women and children and believe you me, the insurgents and their collaborators are going to milk this for every moment they can ( see what Hizbollah did in Southern Lebanon ).
If we're not ready to be brutal and crush the life out of them and are unprepared for casualties ( including collateral damage ( yes, I'm talking innocent kids ) ), we better not do it.
JUST GIVING YOU THIS WARNING. We've been here before.
Interesting post, not relevant to this thread though.
This is a perfect opportunity to have one enemy eliminate another enemy. Getting enemies to fight each other is an optimal situation, allowing us to divide and conquer.
Alternatively we can stand in the crossfire blinking with dim comprehension of how things ended up like this. That hasn't really worked out for the last year or so though. Maybe another year will do the trick huh ?
Serious ass, about to be kicked.
BAGHDAD, Nov. 16 — A warrant was issued late Thursday for the arrest of Sheik Harith al-Dari, one of Iraq’s most prominent Sunni Arab clerics, on charges of inciting terrorism and violence, government officials said.
Mr. Dari, head of the influential Muslim Scholars Association, is an outspoken critic of the foreign military presence in Iraq and of the Shiite-dominated government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The warrant, coming against a man beloved by hard-line and disaffected Sunnis, had the potential to widen the sectarian divide in Iraq and inflame the Sunni Arab-led insurgency.
Iraq government orders arrest of top Sunni cleric
By Alastair Macdonald
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's Shi'ite-led government ordered the arrest of the country's most prominent Sunni cleric on Thursday on suspicion of "supporting terrorism," a move that could raise sectarian tensions further amid mounting violence.
An arrest warrant has been issued for Harith al-Dari, the head of the Muslim Clerics Association, a vocal defender of the once dominant Sunni minority's interests, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani, a Shi'ite, told Iraqiya state television.
Shi'ite leaders have been up in arms about Dari this month, accusing him of advocating violence in televised comments that they said appeared to justify al Qaeda attacks in Iraq.
"We are applying the existing anti-terrorism law," Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier Abdul Kareem Khalaf said.
"We are going to pursue him wherever he is."
Dari is in the Jordanian capital, Amman, his aides said.
The group's spokesman in Amman, Mohammed Bashar al-Faidhi, dismissed the warrant: "This measure ... is a reflection of the bankruptcy of this sectarian government," he told Al Jazeera.
"Decisions by this government are not worth much as this government only controls the Green Zone," he said, referring to the U.S.-defended government compound in central Baghdad.
Dari's organization, formed after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated secular regime by U.S. forces in 2003, groups many of Iraq's Sunni clerical scholars. Dari is outspoken in his criticism of the U.S. occupation and the influence in government of Shi'ite Islamists with ties to non-Arab Iran.
The move came after a day on which dozens of apparently Shi'ite bus passengers were feared kidnapped at fake security checkpoints in Sunni west Baghdad and government officials argued over whether staff seized by suspected Shi'ite militiamen from a ministry building had been tortured and killed.
Six missing minibuses were mostly taking Shi'ites across mainly Sunni west Baghdad when gunmen, some in uniform, pulled them over for bogus security checks, police sources said.
LITTLE GOVERNMENT CONTROL
Fifteen people were grabbed from a city centre cafe after dark, police said. Nine were gunned down at a bakery, some of the at least 50 reported deaths which underline how little control government and U.S. forces have over the capital.
Demands are growing in Washington to start bringing troops home, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and U.S. commanders face a race against time to build Iraqi security forces capable of stifling the sectarian strife between Sunnis and Maliki's majority Shi'ite Muslims that is pushing Iraq towards civil war.
Fissures are also opening in the six-month-old national unity government after dozens of civil servants were seized by men in police uniforms on Tuesday.
The Sunni minister whose employees were abducted is boycotting the cabinet until they are found.
"There is no effective government," Higher Education Minister Abd Dhiab told the BBC, complaining of "anarchy."
Despite repeated insistence from Maliki's government spokesman that nearly all Dhiab's staff were free and unharmed, the minister told Reuters about 70 were missing and some of the others had been tortured, and others killed.
Between 40 and 150 men were taken, depending on different official accounts.
Dhiab did not say how many hostages had died but said: "According to the people released, they were killed by torture."
"I can't believe I'm alive," one man freed told Reuters, describing the kidnappers as "very organized and taking orders."
Interior Minister Bolani said five senior police officers who had been detained may have been involved. He also told reporters he suspected an "external power" had a role -- possibly referring to Iran, which U.S. and some Iraqi leaders accuse of supporting Shi'ite militias infiltrating the police.
Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, an ethnic Kurd, warned in a television interview that Iraq was in a perilous situation and called on moderates from all camps to rally around the government. He said some in the present coalition were pursuing partisan interests at the expense of national unity and peace.
(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami, Ahmed Rasheed and Claudia Parsons in Baghdad and Firouz Sedarat in Dubai)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061116/ts_nm/iraq_kidnap_dc_4
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