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TechnoratiUS Tribal Allies in Iraq Angry Over Airstrikes
BAGHDAD - U.S. forces said they had killed 25 suspected insurgents in operations targeting al Qaeda militants near the capital, but Sunni Arab tribal leaders accused them on Thursday of killing pro-U.S. fighters.
The head of a Sunni Arab tribal group that has turned against al Qaeda and joined forces with the U.S. military told Reuters U.S. aircraft had bombed his men late on Tuesday night, killing 45, as they manned checkpoints just north of Baghdad.
U.S. forces have formed alliances with Sunni Arab tribes in western Iraq and in provinces around Baghdad, offering mostly paid employment to nearly 70,000 tribal fighters and former insurgents as part of its strategy to combat al Qaeda.
The U.S. military said it launched an operation late on Tuesday targeting suspected associates of senior al Qaeda leaders in Tarmiya, which is close to Taji. Troops backed by aircraft killed 25 gunmen, it said.
"Coalition forces observed several armed men in the target area and, perceiving hostile intent, called for supporting aircraft to engage," it said in a statement.
It did not say whether the gunmen had fired on the soldiers, but U.S. military spokesman Major Winfield Danielson said troops had engaged a "hostile force" and that three weapons caches had been found in the area containing anti-aircraft weapons and surface-to-surface missiles.
The head of the Taji "Awakening Council", which is aligned to U.S. forces, Sheikh Jassem, said the weapons belonged to the Islamic Army. Elements of the nationalist Sunni insurgent group have recently begun to work alongside the U.S. military to fight al Qaeda.
"Yes there were anti-aircraft weapons, but they belonged to the Islamic Army, who have made a deal with the Americans to keep them to hit al Qaeda," Jassem said.
He said the U.S. assault on his men began late on Tuesday night in the al-Nebaei area near Taji and lasted about 12 hours.
"The Americans in Taji are our friends. If the attack was a mistake, we just want to know the reasons. If they attacked us deliberately, then we will decide what to do," Jassem said.
AIRPOWER
The U.S. military's use of airpower to attack groups of suspected militants has been under the spotlight in recent weeks after a number of incidents in which civilians were killed.
Fifteen women and children were killed in airstrikes on a suspected meeting of senior al Qaeda leaders in the Lake Thar Thar region northwest of Baghdad in October.
Militant attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere have gradually declined since deployment of an additional 30,000 U.S. soldiers to Iraq, part of a strategy to drag Iraq back from the brink of sectarian civil war, was completed in mid-June.
U.S. Major-General James Simmons told reporters in Baghdad that one sign of the improved security in Iraq was the number of roadside bombs, which had almost halved in the past seven months, a development he attributed to assurances from Iran that it would stop the flow of such bombs into Iraq.
Simmons said the number of improvised explosive device events across Iraq were 1,560 in October, compared with 3,239 in March. "Events" refers to bombs which either detonated or were found before they went off.
Car bombs have been more difficult to stop. In the northern oil-producing city of Kirkuk, a car bomb targeting a police convoy killed six people, including one policeman, police said. They said 17 people, including children on their way to school, were wounded.
While security has improved, Iraq's leaders have made little progress at the national level in healing deep divisions between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs who were dominant under Saddam Hussein.
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said on Thursday he hoped parliament would soon pass a draft law that would ease curbs on former members of Saddam's Baath party joining the civil service and military. The government said on Wednesday it had presented the bill to parliament.
(Additional reporting by Dean Yates and Missy Ryan in Baghdad; editing by Elizabeth Piper)
© 2007 Reuters
21 Comments so far
Show AllTWIT
Total War to Incite Terror.
There are times when cowardice is a virtue, and times bravery is required. The US military, given the chance, makes a high level of personal cowardice a driving factor in selection of tactics and strategies. Of course, the ultimate in personal cowardice, going home or refusing to kill (they call it "serve"), would be virtuous. But, that would hurt the military pocketbook.
I dont doubt a number of insurgents killed might mean a man and a women and there 3 kids. What about a circle or arms in creates and a huge stock pile of weaponry and amunition and boming supplies in the middle of the desert along with some food supplies and we get the f___k out of there. Let them do what they do best Kill eachother off they will find peace when they want it. We will find other contries to bomb ,blow up and occupy. Cheney will make money and all his rich cronnies, Bush will still rub twinkies with the Ben laudens and we will all pay taxes, live in our straw huts, and be as happy as if we were to stupid to know the difference. Subjective ploy ring a bell?
Yeah, we are pretty barbaric. There is so much there needs to be done to get on the right track. We have to start stopping the self-alienation that is being done with our money at our public schools.
We can't keep on manipulating the mind, profitting from the body and demonizing the spirit.
The military seems to be switching to air strikes. The US switched to air power in Vietnam too.
Our country dropped 7.5 megatons of conventional bombs on Indochina. The Pentagon discovered that they were getting almost zero casualties by dropping cluster bombs and leaf mines. They concentrated on free fire zones where they could assume that every human being was an "enemy".
The results were moon-like countries, so contaminated with agent orange that vast numbers of children were born with mutations. Heavily bombing and slaughtering poor farmers and their families didn't really change the Vietnam War's outcome.
The problem with saturation bombing is that the Pentagon killed them all and let God sort them out, when in reality God's work truly must be our own. We have to sort them out. Better to let 100 guilty people go than to punish an innocent person, says our judiciary code.
War is when people are punished for something that somebody else did.
Zephyr:
If an Iraqi who plants an IED that kills an American soldier isn't an insurgent but a freedom fighter, then what are they when the IED kills an Iraqi soldier instead?
What a legacy of hatred are our troops leaving in Iraq for their children to face someday. We're not the GI's with chocolate from WWII anymore, but have become more like the bad guys from Star Wars movies ........ and now even look way too much like them.
Remember the term, "surgical airstrikes"? Only if a surgeon used a butterknife instead of a scalpel could he create as much "collateral damage" as the U.S. Air Force. They probably couldn't care less since they're killing people they see as sub-human. What's the epithet they use? "Hajis"? Besides, the mercenaries and quislings will still support the slaughter. It's all dirty and sickening.
Where is Monica Lewinsky when you need her?
If a little fellatio in the oval office would have helped distract Bush from playing with his war toys, I would be all for it.
But I forgot that sex is more disgusting to fundamentalists than the carnage of war.
anney November 16th, 2007 9:10 am wrote:
.....It's a small point, I know, but the Iraqis fighting for their freedom are NOT "insurgents".....
Not at all "a small point".
It is THE point.
Thank you very much for making it.
(God, it's draining, isn't it, always having to clarify the obvious.)
It might make things less confusing if we tightened our definitions.
Insurgent: a person who rises in forcible opposition to lawful authority, esp. a person who engages in armed resistance to a government or to the execution of its laws; rebel.
Do Iraqis believe that US military forces have any lawful authority in Iraq? Any lawful authority to even be there? They might say instead, "They said they came in violation of international law to liberate us, but they conquered us instead to steal our valuable natural resource, oil."
Generally, Iraqis fighting American troops are fighting for their freedom and resources against an illegal invader, not a "lawful authority".
If Iraq had illegally invaded the US to conquer, kill and torture us, to confiscate, say, America's water resource, you'd better believe Americans would be fighting back. And they wouldn't be fighting a "lawful authority".
It's a small point, I know, but the Iraqis fighting for their freedom are NOT "insurgents".
That is such a mess over there one needs a score card to keep all the players straight!!!! Some of us aren't even sure who the players even are. Dumbya's version never fits other accounts of who is involved. I personally don't think he has a clue who he is fighting! So he calls them 'al Qaeda' it's easier for his small pea brain to process. So I personally don't believe his account.
suspected insurgents is probably information attained by torture. all these accidental bombings of innocent civilians comes from information obtained by torture.
They killed 25 SUSPECTS? No proof needed in Bush's world. Just attack a country, occupy it, steal its oil, etc. based on no PROOF. How does the Bush-Cheney Crime Syndicate get away with blatant war crimes??
Hey, they forgot to kill the little boy standing near the car. He could be a SUSPECTED terrorist; you never know what such a dangerous looking individual might do.
What a disgusting world this has become. Or should I have said country.
Q: How do you know they're al-Qaeda?
A: Easy. You can tell when you turn them over.
Someone enlighten me. First, the Sunni Arabs were our friends, then the Shi'ites were our favorites, now the Sunnis again? How does anyone know who to kill? or maime? or ignore? or have a drink with? We have no friends. And thats the sad part.
Grousefeather -
If our troops kill it, it's an insurgent or an al Qaeda. Just like Nam.
Apparently all those little kids killed in air and ground raids were training young, eh?
What the hell is a "suspected insurgent"? Apparenty just being a suspect is enough justification for the US military to kill, and at this point in the war the US military is just calling in air-strikes on anything that moves in order to keep our casualties down. The election is getting closer and the repugs want somethinng that looks like a victory so they can crow about it during the campaign.
The air force would seem to have a daily quota, just to keep in practice, and keep Iraq on its knees. Probably no one told them that US is pretending to have alliances, which on the face of incidents like this, have a limited life. So alliances are allowed to exist, as long as the Iraqi groups do not build up any capacity for blow back attack on the US.
This could also be plain US incompetence, and the results bureaucratic secrecy between those who make alliances and the delivery arm. The delivery people does not care, but have heaps of destructive power that they can unleash at will, and perhaps that is all they can do. The US administration does not seem to give a damn who belongs to what, or who they kill. No apologies seem to be happening, and I expect that no change in policy will occur. The general policy and attitude seems to be that Iraqi people are all Arabs and dog meat, or will become so after a suitable period of bombardment. There is no justification for the continuing civilian bombardment of Iraq, and I do not expect any from an unrestrained US military who have lost touch with all human empathy. The Daleks of the military machine exterminate again.
EVERYTHING in this article is just plain bullshit. In fact, that's the very purpose of an article like this -- to numb the reader with various pseudo-factoids and allegations, while keeping the focus carefully away from matters of real substance.
Perhaps the biggest knee-slapper in the article is "The U.S. military's use of airpower to attack groups of suspected militants has been under the spotlight in recent weeks after a number of incidents in which civilians were killed."
- Oh, "a number of incidents," eh? We've already killed over a million civilians and made another 3-4 million into refugees. That's a lot of "incidents," when you count them all up.
Note that at every turn, the article pretends that the whole issue is simply whether this or that group is "pro-US" or not. But there's no examination of what that might mean. It's just assumed that if they're "pro-US," they're "good." Where, for example, does the article mention the fact that the US is only there to gain control of the oil, & that the whole war was launched on the basis of lies about WMD? Where does the article mention that the war is a "war of aggression," in the sense of Nuremberg?
1. These aren't allies. When you offer "mostly paid employment", what you get is mercenaries of whatever capability level.
2. These aren't allies in the sense that US readers are used to. They're (at most) "allies of convenience" -- the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that. Their long-term interests are not the same as Bush's, and their short-term interests can't be trusted to coincide for very long, either.
3. But even if they were allies, why should they expect any different? For example, over the last ten years, the #1 killer of Canadian troops (real allies) is Afghanistan, but the #2 killer is the USA.
This al Qaeda business in Iraq is probably just plain bullshit..I'd say they are Sunni Faction of insurgents that refuse to Kow Tow to the American imperilists coming to occupy their territory; then control and steal the OIL!
And can you blame them, if the boot was on the other foot...all hell would break loose in America!