Saturday, July 14, 2007

 

US soldiers, Iraqi troops fight it out

Over on Alternet http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/guest/56812/ Oliver Willis has a nice list of all the times Bush has said “we’re making progress” in Iraq. Yeah.

The problem is, of course, is this: American politicians want to posture, either pro- or anti- Iraq War, but they just don’t want to do anything, ahh, controversial. Like actually stand up to the Bush-Cheney Junta and take the risks that go with that. Do you hear me, Ms Pelosi? Mr Reid? Mr Wyden?

In the meanwhile, it’s still the OK Corral over there. Now everybody is shooting at everybody else.


The New York Times
July 14, 2007
U.S. Troops Battle Iraqi Police in East Baghdad; Rogue Lieutenant Captured, Military Says
By STEPHEN FARRELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/14/world/middleeast/14iraq.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print

BAGHDAD, July 13 — In a rare battle between American and uniformed Iraqi forces, United States troops backed by fighter jets killed six Iraqi policemen and seven gunmen during a predawn raid in which they captured a rogue police lieutenant, the military said Friday.

***
The Iraqi police are widely thought to be infiltrated by the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias, as well as by Sunni insurgent groups, all of whom are accused of using their positions to plan and carry out widespread sectarian killings.

***

Speaking after American criticism of the Iraqi government’s progress on performance benchmarks set by Congress, Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, insisted that there were “positive developments on the political level,” citing efforts within the government to create “a front of moderate forces committed to the political process and democracy.”

Mr. Talabani also claimed progress in intensive military operations carried out by American troops around Baghdad and central Iraq in recent months. “A successful campaign is on to eliminate terrorists, and so far large areas of Diyala and Anbar have been cleared,” he said late on Thursday.

A security official in the town of Muqdadiya in Diyala Province said seven men were killed Friday when gunmen attacked a house in the nearby village of Harbitila. The Iraqi Army also confirmed that a roadside bomb had killed a senior officer, Col. Abdul-Kareem Hameed, and three of his guards near Muqdadiya.

Farther south, in Wasit Province, the police found three unidentified bodies in the Tigris River. All were wearing civilian clothes, had been shot and showed signs of torture.

In eastern Baghdad, the Interior Ministry said five guards manning towers around the ministry had been killed in an insurgent attack with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. Nine guards were wounded. The compound is near the Finance Ministry headquarters, from which five Britons were abducted two months ago by kidnappers posing as government officials and police officers.

The body of Khalid W. Hassan, an Iraqi journalist working for The New York Times, was found in the Saydia district of southwest Baghdad on Friday.

Mr. Hassan was killed in the district while driving to work. A witness in a nearby line for fuel said a car had overtaken Mr. Hassan, and a gunman inside shot and wounded him. Gunfire from a second vehicle then killed him.

Two Iraqi employees of Reuters were killed the day before. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group, says more than 191 journalists and news media assistants have been killed in Iraq since 2003.

Also in Saydia, police officials said they had found about half a dozen bodies, including those of an 11-year-old girl and two women. All had been blindfolded, bound and shot in the head. A car bomb also exploded in the area, killing two civilians.

The Iraqi police reported finding 21 unidentified bodies in Baghdad on Friday. Although the body count in such suspected sectarian killings has dropped since the start of the latest Baghdad security plan in February, in recent days the police have reported finding 20 to 30 bodies daily.

Mortar shells fired yesterday afternoon at Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government and American Embassy, killed a senior Iraqi military officer, according to Iraqi Army officials.

Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Baghdad, Diyala and Kut.

Comments:
The war is going splendidly. If your a Globalist Eugenisist. The original plan from the 80's was to break Iraq into 3 parts and start a civil war so we could build permanent bases for war with the rest of the non central bank arab countries. Like Iran and Seria.
 
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