| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| More on Mahmudiyah Ambush |
| 2007-05-13 |
| Sunday, May 13, 2007; Page A01 WaPo Sunday front page. Happy Mother's Day. Old news edited out. I pray for those captured. BAGHDAD, May 13 -- A massive aerial and ground manhunt involving hundreds of American and Iraqi troops was underway Saturday for U.S. soldiers missing after an organized assault on a military patrol south of Baghdad. The convoy was carrying seven U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi army interpreter, and the attack left five dead and three missing. The pre-dawn attack occurred 12 miles west of Mahmudiyah, a volatile city nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers within a rural region dubbed the Triangle of Death. It is known to be infiltrated by al-Qaeda fighters and other Sunni insurgent groups. As of early Sunday, no group had asserted responsibility for the attack, U.S. military officials said. In the hours after the assault, and stretching into the night, American combat helicopters, surveillance drones and airplanes scoured surrounding areas, U.S. military officials said. Troops secured a wide perimeter, conducting door-to-door searches and erecting checkpoints to seal off roads and streets to prevent the missing soldiers from being transported out of the area. U.S. military officials also were enlisting local leaders in the search. "Make no mistake," Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the military's top spokesman in Iraq, said in a statement, "We will never stop looking for our soldiers until their status is definitively determined, and we continue to pray for their safe return." A U.S. military source familiar with the manhunt said the two-vehicle convoy was struck with a roadside bomb, then was apparently ambushed by gunmen. Some of the soldiers had been shot. Flames consumed the vehicles, but it was unclear whether the explosion caused the fire or if it had been set later. "It was a planned, coordinated attack," the source said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. Several hours after the attack, the military had identified only one of the slain soldiers, a U.S. military official said on condition of anonymity because he was also not authorized to speak to journalists. This suggested that the corpses may have been difficult to recognize. "Something pretty horrible happened last night," the official said. The attack was the latest in a series of targeted strikes against American soldiers in recent weeks that have generated high single-day death tolls. On April 23, twin suicide truck bombings killed nine soldiers and injured 20 at a remote combat outpost in Diyala province. Last Sunday, a roadside bomb struck a convoy in Diyala, killing six soldiers and a Russian journalist, among eight U.S. soldiers killed that day. The casualties underscore the growing vulnerability of U.S. troops in Iraq as they increasingly live in and patrol hostile terrain under a new counterinsurgency plan intended to wrest control of areas from insurgents. But the offensive has also multiplied the risks for U.S. troops as their enemies use their knowledge of the land and sophisticated guerrilla tactics to target them. Not too much spin for WaPo! Saturday's attack occurred in the same region as one last June in which insurgents ambushed three soldiers manning a vehicle checkpoint near a power plant in the town of Yusufiyah. Saturday's attack on the patrol began at 4:44 a.m. "A nearby unit heard explosions and attempted to establish communications, but without success," Caldwell said. At 4:59 a.m., an unmanned surveillance aircraft relayed images of two burning vehicles. By 5:40 a.m., a U.S. quick-reaction force had arrived at the scene, secured the site and launched the hunt for the missing soldiers, Caldwell said. 56 minutes for the Quick Reaction Force? The mayor of Mahmudiyah, Muaiad Fadhil Hussein, said the attack happened near the village of Beshesha, west of the city. He described it as "one of the most dangerous areas of the city, in which Arab and Iraqi terrorists exist, and not even innocent civilians can enter it." I don't think I've ever heard a better excuse for destroying Beshesha. A curfew has been imposed on Mahmudiyah and surrounding areas, he said, adding that "we, as a mayoralty, are working to provide intelligence information and moral support" to the U.S. and Iraqi forces conducting the search. Abdullah al-Ghareri, a well-known preacher in Mahmudiyah, said the forces, backed by helicopters and "tens of tanks," were conducting search operations into the night and had made some arrests. Residents said many insurgents had fled the city as U.S. forces entered it. A senior Iraqi army official said he believed that the attack had been carried out by Sunni insurgents. "This area is really full of al-Qaeda members," the official said on condition of anonymity. Mohamad al-Janabi, a reputed al-Qaeda member in the nearby city of Salman Pak, said in a telephone interview that he was unable to contact his comrades in Mahmudiyah to determine whether they were responsible for the attack. But he added: "I can assure you that we will start pressuring Bush in a new way at the same time he is facing pressures from the Democrats and the American people. And there will be no problem to sacrifice 10 soldiers in order to abduct a single American soldier and get him on television screens begging for us to release him." Someone has his name and phone number. What are we waiting for? Special correspondent Waleed Saffar and other Washington Post staff in Iraq |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #9 Makes me sick to my stomach. Nuke the bastards, one village at a time and fly everybody out at the same time, military, contractors, everybody. As the last C-17 reaches 30k feet, nuke the field it climbed out of, declare victory and be done with it the lot. The entire place isn't worth a warm pale of camel piss. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2007-05-13 21:39 |
| #8 #6: At 4:59 a.m., an unmanned surveillance aircraft relayed images of two burning vehicles. By 5:40 a.m., a U.S. quick-reaction force had arrived at the scene "Quick" my ass, 41 minutes is 30 too long. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2007-05-13 17:50 |
| #7 Looks like we've identified our ARCLIGHT representative target. Now all we need is someone with the guts to push it through and carry it out. One demonstration may be all that's necessary, if it's a good one. If our guys are still there, they'll receive a quick death, instead of a long, drawn-out, painful one. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2007-05-13 15:18 |
| #6 At 4:59 a.m., an unmanned surveillance aircraft relayed images of two burning vehicles. By 5:40 a.m., a U.S. quick-reaction force had arrived at the scene Seems like a long a time between detection of the ambush by unmanned aircraft and the arrival of the quick reaction force. A lot of unknowns. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2007-05-13 12:21 |
| #5 This item has it all. The "sophisticated" enemy - but Rob, this one is old, and in the past used to come from the military PA folks as well. I teased one of Col. Garver's predecessors when I got there that if what I'd been reading in the US for nearly a year were correct (about the "increasingly sophisticated" enemy tactics), soon the bad guys would be using space-based laser weapons, they'd been "increasing" their sophistication so relentlessly. The idea of a phone interview with a named enemy figure is just breath-taking in several ways - all of them bad for the WaPo and the military. As Bobby asks, how could this guy (or his best friends, or military-age males of his family) be anywhere but behind wire answering questions within hours of this report being published? But to me the biggest thing here is the age-old question about why any area "infested" (hell, even "lightly sprinkled") with enemy is allowed to function normally. Why there hasn't been preventive detention of every single guy ID'd by former regime payrolls as a member of the intel services, Ba'ath structure, Rep. Guard, etc. as determined by on-the-scene judgement. Why any place that even locals acknowledge is full of AQ is not locked down and taken apart (through detention, questioning, etc). Why many of the towns in the entire area weren't subjected to massive, unrelenting, and systematic detention, isolation, and if needed relocation (it sits astride the main road to the south) when it became clear (oh, probably about a month after things started getting nasty) that it was a hotbed of enemy activity. Why, in short, life was allowed to continued much as before, except that Coalition convoys and Shi'a communities were attacked whenever the enemy felt like it. Not a single Sunni household in the area deemed relevant should have had a normal day since a few years ago when the enemy declared war on the new Iraq and us. Those inclined to switch and help our side would have done so much, much ealier - thus at much lower cost to all concerned - if the "incentives" to do so had been irresistible. Some will point to the helpful mayor in this story and wonder whether a serious approach would have produced guys like him. No matter. The calculation is probably reliable: a quickly and thoroughly subdued enemy community is better for both sides, and lowers costs. A cooperative mayor in 2007, vs. a vanquished Sunni community in 2004, with rich demonstration effects on others of like mind, and with far lower casualties (friendly Iraqi and Coalition) since. The Sunnis in the area are mostly invaders, implanted by the former fascist regime, Stalin-like, for strategic regime purposes. Their complete removal from the area should have been dangled, or test-demonstrated, from the outset (I'm sure a good JAG could come up with a Geneva-compliant rationale for such a displacement, esp. if no one else were allowed to move in when the former residents had been shipped out). It might be a question of resources, but I wonder if it hasn't always mostly been a question of ROE and strategy. The spectacle of such a massively powerful, capable, and generally competent power playing cat-and-mouse with one of the weakest, most vile enemies in history is ridiculous, infuriating, and inexcusable (I refer here not just to AQ but the Sunni chauvinists in Iraq). |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2007-05-13 12:07 |
| #4 These guys will be found gutted and mutilated like the last two. The leadership in this area ought to have more sense after the first lesson. As someone commented yesterday, recon missions in this area should be in massive force formations where ambushes would be too risky for the ragheads or would result in immediate annihilation. Another of these episodes is just what the US Army needs to inspire confidence back home. Not a good way to promote the surge principle. |
| Posted by: Woozle Elmeter2970 2007-05-13 11:18 |
| #3 Once again, Al-Qaeda praises the Democratic Party. |
| Posted by: Grunter 2007-05-13 11:09 |
| #2 sophisticated guerrilla tactics I love it when journalists opine on the "sophistication" of jihadi tactics. The average journalist has a degree no more difficult to achieve than a home-economics degree; the only books they've ever read about war, tactics, or strategy are the ones lamenting the victory in WWII and crowing about the "success" of Vietnam, and yet they feel confident in declaring a bog-standard set-piece ambush to be "sophisticated". "It was a planned, coordinated attack," the source said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. Here's an idea for a new law: if a "source" is not authorized to speak to reporters, the reporters are not authorized to quote them. If you can't name a source, then quoting that source is malpractice, and the public may sue you for libel, slander, disturbing the peace, and performing "interspecies erotica". I'm 100% for free speech. But the idiots who have somehow gotten the role of being our primary conduits for information are worthless sacks of crap who don't have the brains God gave a pile of dog crap. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2007-05-13 10:19 |
| #1 Waleed Saffar needs to be brought in and horse whipped until he rats out his AQ buddy with the phone. My God how the hell can you win when the media is plugging the bad guys and keeping you in the dark. Time to make the WaPo go KaPow! |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2007-05-13 09:11 |