Article

2007-08-24 Iraq

Operation Lightning Hammer disrupts al-Qaeda in Diyala

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Posted by Fred 2007-08-24 00:00|| || Front Page|| [8 views ] Top
File under: al-Qaeda in Iraq

#1 OK, 63 bad guys taken out. In 50 villages. That's a little over 1 bad guy/village. If it really takes about 10-20 bad guys to hold each village, that means over 90% got away.

What happened to them? Will they be back?

Posted by gorb 2007-08-24 02:15|| 2007-08-24 02:15|| Front Page Top

#2 Gorb - wrong set of equations. Twenty bad guys can hold from five to ten villages, moving from town to town, getting a couple of snitches in each town. There were probably no more than 150 AQ in the area, and half of those were hangers-on. We killed a little more than a third, and caused another ten to fifteen percent to take to the hills in Syria. They also lost valuable space, something that cannot be made up easily. They're most vulnerable to detection when they're moving around. It will take several YEARS to recoup what they've lost, if given a chance. The idea is to never give them a moment's rest, so there's no chance to recoup lost ground. Eventually, all of Iraq will be a Blue zone, with tiny pinpricks of red here and there, constantly shifting.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2007-08-24 15:48|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2007-08-24 15:48|| Front Page Top

#3 Thanks, OP. I hadn't thought about the rat angle. Hopefully their fellow villagers know who they are and convert them to something more useful as they see fit.

Anybody know how big these villages are?

Seems to me the usefulness of these villages lies in that they are a handy place to fall back to after half their buddies get their a$$es shot off in yet another ambush or failed engagement. It seems the only way that would be handy would be if the residents didn't snitch on them, which could only happen if there were the threat of future reprisals, which would mean there are a bunch of AQ types outside their own village who would come over and kill a bunch of them. This kind of suggests that the operation needed to make these go away would be over a broad area and basically simultaneous, and the residents would have to know if they pointed the bad guys out that nobody would come along the next day to kill them.

Posted by gorb 2007-08-24 22:06|| 2007-08-24 22:06|| Front Page Top

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