Posted on 06/28/2003 5:30:10 PM PDT by Pokey78
The bodies of two missing American soldiers were found yesterday as news emerged that a growing campaign of Iraqi resistance to coalition occupation may have been planned before the war began. Allied officials now believe that a document recently found in Iraq detailing an 'emergency plan' for looting and sabotage in the wake of an invasion is probably authentic. It was prepared by the Iraqi intelligence service in January and marked 'top secret'. It outlined 11 kinds of sabotage, including burning government offices, cutting power and communication lines and attacking water purification plants.
What gives the document particular credence is that it appears to match exactly the growing chaos and large number of guerrilla attacks on coalition soldiers, oil facilities and power plants.
At least 61 US troops have died in Iraq since major combat was declared to be over on 1 May, including at least 23 in attacks. The latest death came on Friday when a soldier was killed in an ambush, and another shot in the neck and critically injured. Grenades were thrown at a US convoy as it passed through the Thawra area, a poor, mainly Shia Muslim part of the capital that had been largely free of anti-American violence.
US officials dismiss their casualties as 'militarily insignificant' and point out that there are 55,000 US troops in Baghdad. But the repeated attacks damage the forces' image of invulnerability and lead to harsher security measures that risk alienating swaths of the population.
A series of major operations involving hundreds of arrests have apparently failed to quell the unrest, much of which is believed to be committed by criminals hired by wealthy former Baath Party officials. Some attacks are also sponsored, security offi cials believe, by hardline religious groups.
It is not known who was behind Friday's attack although the prime suspects are Sunni Muslims from the west of Baghdad, where resistance to the US has so far been strongest. It is possible that they chose to attack Americans in a Shia Muslim area to bolster the impression that Iraq's majority Shia population, who have hitherto been relatively supportive of the occupying forces, are joining the fight against the coalition.
The spiral of violence has also hit British troops after six military policeman were killed and eight other soldiers injured in the southern Iraqi town of Majar Kabir. Yesterday UK troops returned to the village where the men were killed after dropping leaflets promising that there would be no 'mass punishment'.
Military officials insisted they were not offering an amnesty to those who were responsible for the killings. 'The priority is to win back the hearts and minds of the people,' an Army spokesman said. 'But by doing that one of the benefits will be that hope fully we will be able to catch the people responsible. There is certainly no amnesty.'
There is still no explanation of why the RMP detachment was not assisted by the substantial British forces near by when it was surrounded by an angry mob. Sources within the RMP in the UK told The Observer they suspected that the detachment may have been short of ammunition. One soldier recently returned from Iraq said that a shortage had led to ammunition being taken from military policemen to give to frontline units.
'When I was in Kosovo we had to borrow ammo and grenades off the Para Regiment to feel as though we were suitably armed when isolated. Apparently we were "policemen not soldiers", so we weren't issued it,' one source said. 'I know from friends in the Gulf that they had had a lot of ammo withdrawn because of this attitude. It cost them their lives.'
British military officials dismissed the claims last night. 'The idea that we send anyone out without enough ammunition is simply rubbish,' one said.
Balancing force security against operational needs is never easy, and if we clam up over there, looting and rioting will increase to far more dangerous levels than we are now seeing.
This "scorched earth" guerrilla campaign by Saddam's minions is by no means a big surprise. Saddam himself repeatedly and openly referred to it many times before his disappearance. He knew we would win militarily, but he is banking on the possibility that we will pull out before the job is done, giving him and his thugs the ultimate victory.
A weaker (read "Demorat") U.S. leadership might fall into this trap, but I doubt Bush will. In some ways, the most important battle will be fought in the U.S., as Demorats increase their cries of "quagmire" to an ever more shrill crescendo, and seek to undercut our president and our troops. Make no mistake: the best ally the Saddamites have is the DNC.
We will almost certainly lose more troops during the "peace" part of our campaign than the "war" phase, but it is vital that they hold the country together long enough for new liberated Iraqi authorities to get on their feet and take over.
Spending the lives of our troops for missions like this is a heartbreaking choice, but the benefits we will reap from having Iraq as our ally in the future are worth the price in blood we are paying now.
And we should never forget the consequences of not liberating Iraq, although now they are merely things that might have been, instead of harsh reality.
I don't think the public's view on things is helped when the media describes it as such. "Large number of attacks"? "Growing chaos"? This is a subjective play on numbers. That's like the trick environmental groups use to describe deforestation. If I have a million acres of rain forest and I deforest 1 acre this year and 10 the next the headlines will read "Rain forest deforestation increases 10 fold!" It's still 10 acres though.
The American public should continue to expect casualties. Not only in Iraq but in Afghanistan, in Kosovo. Even in Germany and at home on our own bases. The military is a dangerous occupation even during peace. As long as our soldiers are conducting operations in Iraq we should expect casualties to come from that theater.
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