Posted on 01/13/2007 3:32:01 PM PST by blam
'The jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans'
As 20,000 more US troops head for Iraq, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, the only correspondent reporting regularly from behind the country's sectarian battle lines, reveals how the Sunni insurgency has changed
Saturday January 13, 2007
The Guardian (UK)
An Iraqi man who was stopped by US troops while driving a car loaded with weapons in Ramadi, a Sunni-dominated area, is questioned by soldiers. Photograph: Chris Hondros/Getty Images
One morning a few weeks ago I sat in a car talking to Rami, a thick-necked former Republican Guard commando who now procures arms for his fellow Sunni insurgents. Rami was explaining how the insurgency had changed since the first heady days after the US invasion. "I used to attack the Americans when that was the jihad. Now there is no jihad. Go around and see in Adhamiya [the notorious Sunni insurgent area] - all the commanders are sitting sipping coffee; it's only the young kids that are fighting now, and they are not fighting Americans any more, they are just killing Shia. There are kids carrying two guns each and they roam the streets looking for their prey. They will kill for anything, for a gun, for a car and all can be dressed up as jihad."
Rami was no longer involved in fighting, he said, but made a tidy profit selling weapons and ammunition to men in his north Baghdad neighbourhood. Until the last few months, the insurgency got by with weapons and ammunition looted from former Iraqi army depots. But now that Sunnis were besieged in their neighbourhoods and fighting daily clashes with the better-equipped Shia ministry of interior forces, they needed new sources of weapons and money.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
So were safe now? sarc/off
Uhmm, that's ok, we'll take the jihad to them. With any luck our boys will bag the Guardian embed propagandist as well.
Wouldn't it be nice if they all killed each other instead of us and other innocent parties.
And we've been complaining about the price of 7.62 x39 here!
Sunnis aren't in the habit of making good choices, are they?
Apparently, they don't realize that there are a helluva lot more Shias than there are Americans in Iraq.
And, even if the Democrats win in '08, the Shia won't be shuffling off to Okinawa.
Islamic rule #1:
We never miss an oppurtunity to miss an oppurtunity.
Interesting.
Very interesting read.
It does give you concern about how we are going to clean up that mess. Al Qaida and Iran have screwed it up pretty good by funding/assisting the bombings and violence to the point that everyone is killing each other.
I think that perhaps the solution is to use intel to figure out where the really hot spots are, then blow the sh1t out of them. Daisy cutters on the whole neighborhood, some dead innocents, but end it.
"Find the hotspots,blow the s@@t out of them..."I concur.
The Sunnis are the arch enemy, the Shias are, the Sunnis are, the Shias are, reminds me of that The Who song about that giant pin ball machine.
Personally I think on day one we should have gathered the Sunnis, Shiite and Kurdish leaders and explain to them that the rirst side that f__ks with the US forces, we will let the other two sides finish them off. Well the insurgents were mainly Sunnis and foreign fighters. Guess what, if I were the US I would privately tell the Shiites to finish the Sunnis off.
How much is a 1200 round case these days?
Given antagonistic ethnicities, it's best to give them complementary hostages.
About middle of last year I heard on TV one of our commanders on the ground over there say something interesting.
He said that there are all these factions fighting each other, and that they viewed our troops not as "the invaders", but as just another opposing faction to shoot at. A free-for-all.
If that is true, it is good that the non-Coalition forces focus on killing "their" factions, rather than "our" factions.
We will win this war when we kill enough of the trouble makers from both sides.We shouldn't have let them slip through our fingers during the initial invasion of the country.You can't win a war without killing the enemy and taking away his will to fight.
Around $160 for a case of 1000, so a 1200 rd case would be about $192. A year ago a 1000 rd case could be had for $80.
$179 per 1000 (wolf fmj)
My idealistic sister in law was horrified by my concept. "This is the 21st Century, we shouldn't do things like that!" was her reaction. But I pointed out to her that not much as changed since the time of Rome in the third world except the technology.
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