|
50,000 Iraqi Insurgents Dead or Caught
From The Washington Times, an article by Sharon BehnU.S. and Iraqi forces have killed or arrested more than 50,000 Iraqi insurgents in the past seven months, a former top general who has headed repeated Pentagon assessment missions to Iraq said yesterday. Gen. Jack Keane, a former deputy chief of staff for the Army, also said the United States has a good picture of the leadership of the vicious insurgency but less of an idea about its mid- and lower-level ranks. Pentagon officials previously had been quoted as saying 15,000 to 16,000 Iraqis were in custody in Iraq, but spokesman Lawrence DiRita was unable to comment last night on the 50,000 figure offered by the general. .... The retired general has traveled to Iraq twice in uniform and twice as a civilian to assess progress there for the U.S. military. He did not explain how the number had been obtained. ... "There are thousands of people in jail who have a body of evidence against them -- some should be receiving death sentences, some should be in jail for life sentences," Gen. Keane said. .... He also said American commanders have found it difficult to penetrate the insurgency. Despite painstaking work undertaken to sift through thousands of interrogations and field reports, a clear picture of the midlevel structure of the insurgency was hard to see. ... Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2005-07-26 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=125041 |