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BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 11 - The story told by the two Iraqi guerrillas cut to the heart of the war that Iraqi and American officials now believe is raging inside the Iraqi insurgency. In October, the two insurgents said in interviews, a group of local fighters from the Islamic Army gathered for an open-air meeting on a street corner in Taji, a city north of Baghdad. Across from the Iraqis stood the men from Al Qaeda, mostly Arabs from outside Iraq. Some of them wore suicide belts. The men from the Islamic Army accused the Qaeda fighters of murdering their...

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - A car bomb killed eight Marines outside Fallujah on Saturday, the deadliest attack against the U.S. military in nearly six months. The Marines later reported a ninth combat death Saturday but did not say whether it was in the car bombing or another action. The Marines died after a car bomb went off next to a truck southwest of Baghdad, said Maj. Clark Watson of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. Nine other Marines were wounded in the attack in western Anbar province, which includes Fallujah and other insurgent strongholds, the military said. It was the biggest...

BAGHDAD, May 24 (KUNA) -- Government security forces arrested a key figure in the terrorist "Liwa Al-Noman battalion" in the town of Al-Ramadhi in western Iraq and captured Kamil Al-Aswadi, a close aide to Abu Musaab Al-Zarqawi, chief of another terrorist group, in the southern city of Samara', according to an official statement issued on Tuesday. The statement said Al-Ramadhi arrest was based on intelligence sources who helped to capture Mohammed Daham Hamadi during a raid attack by security forces in Baghdad yesterday. "Mohammed Daham was involved in expiatory acts and was leading the terrorist battalion of "Liwa Al-Noman" which...

Sunday, May 01, 2005 The Battle For Mosul The Deuce-Four Fighting for Mosul Mosul, Northern Iraq As the new map of Iraq unfolds, a picture of progress emerges. The Iraqis who want freedom and democracy are gaining ground. From what I hear about the news back home, this might sound unreal. Nightly tallies of roadside IEDs and suicide car bombers driving headlong into crowds, like the Vietnam body counts on the Huntley-Brinkley Report, are the main summary of events, while most of this country is peaceful. There are seventeen provinces in Iraq, and more than ten are quiet. They are...

“It’s Our Duty” Iraqis bravely vote By W. Thomas Smith Jr. When most Americans think of U.S. Marines, they think of things like courage and unflappable resolve. But today, when Marines in Iraq consider similar values, the image of an elderly grandmother walking slowly to her designated polling station — braving the threat of death and dismemberment — comes to mind. The Iraqi people did not just participate in national elections on Sunday. They humbled people the world over, and won for themselves both another step toward democracy and a newfound reputation as being among history's bravest of the brave....

During the Battle of Fredricksburg, Robert E. Lee, surveying the battlefield covered with thousands of the dead and wounded, remarked to his staff that "It is a good thing war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it." William Tecumseh Sherman, having been criticized for the widespread destruction his army caused in the Shenandoah and Georgia, responded "War is hell." What if war were not hell, but conducted as a sterile, antiseptic, non-invasive procedure to eliminate the "bad guys" without causing harm to "innocent civilians" and property? The hazards of this type of warfare are manifold and introduce...

November 29, 2004, 8:22 a.m. Collapsing the Triangle of DeathBurning out the bad guys below Baghdad By W. Thomas Smith Jr. "We're starting to suffocate them, and they're panicking"— Col. Ron Johnson, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, on the reaction of enemy forces in Iraq's Triangle of Death In an isolated region of the Iraqi backcountry, said to be "the worst place in the world," thousands of Coalition troops are systematically wresting control of weapons caches and staging areas from insurgent forces falling back from recent defeats in Fallujah and elsewhere in the Sunni Triangle. The operation, code-named...

John Kerry and most of the major media tried to make President Bush's handling of Iraq the issue this election year. They lost big. Despite the dicey security situation there and a constant drumbeat of bad news, American voters showed steadier nerves and more common sense than critics who tried to portray every setback as evidence of "criminal incompetence."... We can hardly expect to win the counterinsurgency so long as Iraqis have more reason to fear the consequences of working with us than those of working against us. To their credit, both President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi...

...The first of the troublesome cities to return to Iraqi government control was Samarra.... Most important, allied forces seem poised finally to take control of Fallujah, which has been a no-go zone since the end-of-April deal that turned the town over to ex-Baathists called the Fallujah Brigade. That decision was easily the biggest mistake of the war, since it caused both friend and foe to question American resolve and gave the thugs a safe haven from which to stage car bombings and other attacks. ...[T]he Marines have established a cordon around the city and the Iraqi government is negotiating with...

Baghdad, Sep 28. (AP):Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi warned that a "decisive military solution" could befall the rebel stronghold of Fallujah and pledged that even residents of violence-plagued cities would be able to vote in general elections. "If a political solution won't succeed in Fallujah, there will be a military solution soon, a decisive and comprehensive (solution), that will be carried out by the Iraqi security apparatus. I think we waited more than enough for Fallujah," the Iraqi leader said in an interview aired yesterday on the Arab television network Al-Arabiya. Fallujah is part of the Sunni triangle, that includes...

My latest analysis of the situation in Iraq. Moderately long. Click on the Major to get there, or on the link. Be Seeing You, Chris

You say Fallujah, I say Rambo! Kathleen Parker April 3, 2004 I suppose it would be considered lacking in nuance to nuke the Sunni Triangle. But so goes the unanimous vote around my household - and I'm betting millions of others - in the aftermath of what forevermore will be remembered simply as "Fallujah." Wouldn't it be lovely were justice so available and so simple? If we were but creatures like those zoo animals we witnessed gleefully jumping up and down after stomping, dragging, dismembering and hanging the charred remains of American civilians whose only crime was to try to...

NEWS RELEASEHEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND7115 South Boundary BoulevardMacDill AFB, Fla. 33621-5101Phone: (813) 827-5894; FAX: (813) 827-2211; DSN 651-5894 March 16, 2004Release Number: 04-03-40 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 1ID AND TASK FORCE DANGER OPERATIONS TIKRIT, Iraq -1st Infantry Division and Task Force Danger conducted 15 patrols Monday and Tuesday as the transfer of authority with Task Force Ironhorse began. Six of the patrols were joint operations conducted with the Iraqi police, Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and the Department of Border Enforcement. Weapons and equipment confiscated in raids and patrols throughout the Task Force Ironhorse area of operations include 100 antipersonnel...

SUNNI TRIANGLE — Just over the Euphrates River near Ramadi lies Camp Hurricane, a low-slung expanse of Hasco barriers, concertina wire, and camouflaged observation posts, occupied by the First Infantry Division. It's not a popular place. "Can't wait to get out of here," drawls an infantryman, squinting at the surrounding desertscape. "This may not be Vietnam, but the action can get real hot." A sergeant nods, describing the occasional mortar rounds that Hurricane and other U.S. bases in the Sunni Triangle receive. "Poorly aimed, but annoying." More worrisome are Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) — bombs planted by the roadside and...

Explosion hits Iraqi security patrol north of Baghdad, witnesses say fear many casualties (Reuters)

<p>WASHINGTON — U.S. forces in Iraq believe they may be facing an Al Qaeda cell in Fallujah after a man with suspected ties to the terror network was captured last week, sources told Fox News Friday.</p> <p>The man said to have been arrested was Husam al-Yemeni, said to be part of the leadership structure of Ansar al-Islam (search), the Al Qaeda-associated terrorist group based in Iraqi Kurdistan. Some U.S. officials described al-Yemeni as the first Al Qaeda operative captured in Iraq.</p>

BAQUBA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. forces arrested a former top officer in Saddam Hussein's once-feared security services suspected of directing anti-American attacks north of Baghdad, U.S. officers said on Monday. The man, a major-general in the former intelligence department, was detained during overnight searches in the town of Baquba, 40 miles north of the capital, they said. Dozens of people were arrested in similar raids on towns in mainly Sunni Muslim central Iraq, the scene of the fiercest armed resistance to U.S. occupation and where Saddam still enjoys wide support. Hundreds of Iraqis suspected of ties to the insurgents have...

This is something about a soldier that fascinates and attracts. I think it has to do with the soldier’s commitment and the fact that he puts his life on the line for a cause. Of course, not just any soldier fits the bill. It is the combat soldier that really attracts attention and sparks great interest. As I got on the plane for a short commuter flight into Baltimore, I could not help but notice the man in the sandy camouflage uniform going down the aisle. I thought about how interesting it would be to talk to him since he...

<p>Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- U.S.-trained Iraqi police may have taken part in some of the attacks on U.S. and Iraqi targets, the Associated Press reported, citing U.S. Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez.</p> <p>Attacks on U.S. troops and others in northern Iraq have increased in the past month. Last week, Major General David Petraeus, the 101st Airborne's commander, said Iraqi resistance was increasing. Guerrillas have launched more than 150 attacks on Iraqi civilian and police targets, the AP said, citing Sanchez.</p>

Will Bush exit – or escalate? Posted: November 19, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. "Watch what we do, not what we say," was the retort of Attorney General John Mitchell to reporters questioning Nixon's commitment to desegregation. Though mocked for cynicism, Mitchell was right. Even as Nixon's men were railing at the radical idiocy of forced busing for racial balance, they were desegregating six times as many schools as LBJ. Bush's tough talk, too, about staying the course – "We're not leaving until the job is done, pure and simple" – may not be a smokescreen...