US Forces Expand Push Against Insurgents


Jun 20, 1:21 PM (ET)

By STEVEN R. HURST

BAGHDAD (AP) - U.S. forces expanded their push against insurgent strongholds outside Baghdad on Wednesday as Iraqi units joined the offensive and took control of several districts in the key city of Baqouba, the military said.

The commander of U.S. ground forces, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, said the campaign seeks to uproot insurgents - including Sunni factions linked to al-Qaida - in areas north and east of Baghdad and allow Iraqi forces to take greater control over the four-month-old effort to restore control of the capital.

The offensive, launched Tuesday, "allows us to pressure" militants on the militant bases outside Baghdad, Odierno told CNN.

"More important, I'm hoping it will allow us to maintain it over a long period of time and continue to buy the time and space necessary for the Iraqi security forces to take over" in Baghdad, he said.

The U.S. military said at least 30 al-Qaida fighters were killed and several bombs and weapons caches destroyed as the soldiers fought their way through the streets of Baqouba.

The operation involves some 10,000 American soldiers in Diyala province, an al-Qaida bastion to the north and east of Baghdad. It matched in size the force that American generals sent against the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in 2004. By late Tuesday, the military had reported only one American death, a Task Force Lightning soldier killed by an explosion near his vehicle.

Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said about 5,000 Iraqi soldiers and 2,000 paramilitary police were fighting. Iraqi forces said they took control of neighborhoods in Baqouba and were greeted by cheering people.

"Our goal is to have no safe havens in Iraq and of course the Iraqi security forces play a huge role in this and we're working very closely with them to make this happen," Odierno said.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070620/D8PSM4N81.html

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most_incomptenent

Dylan06-20-2007, 03:51 PM
Ohhh......yes! The storied Lt. Gen. Rayond Odierno. My, what an incomparable, brilliantly insightful Commander! On the operational, military end, Odierno is -- indisputably -- the most monumentally incompetent sycophant in the entire Theater.

Kindly google "Raymond Odierno insurgents brought to their knees." When I'm addressing everything wrong -- and stupid -- about the conduct of this "war," Ray is the perfect poster boy. Educate yourself; sometimes the process can even result in some modicum of enlightenment.

 
   
What was West’s “crime?” Why, he fired his pistol near – not at – near the head of a captured Iraqi terrorist to get him to “talk” about an impending guerrilla attack on American troops. If West had not resorted to that expeditious tactic, many of his men might have died as a result.
JAG_lawyers
But what was “dumb-ass” Odierno concerned about? The captured prisoner’s “sensibilities,” and not the safety of our own forces. Like the serpentine Gen. Wesley Clark, Odierno “made his stars” sucking up to former President Bill “I loathe the military” Clinton. No wonder this general is trying to cashier LTC West, when he should be out catching Saddam Hussein instead.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could give the entire American forces in Iraq a much-needed morale boost by firing Odierno from his command and relieving the generals’ staff of moronic JAG advisors. They have done more damage to the war effort in Iraq than a dozen terrorist attacks could do.

Obviously Odierno wasn’t one of them. In fact, we don’t recall seeing that political sycophant anywhere in Vietnam during the years we fought there.

 
   

hackworth

Fire the perfumed princes now

By David Hackworth
© 2008 David H. Hackworth

According to a 4th Infantry Division staff weenie, battalion skipper Lt. Col. Allen B. West violated the Rules of Interrogation – designed by a platoon of legal beagles far removed from the Iraqi killing fields of the Sunni Triangle, where West and his soldiers have been slugging it out since Saddam Hussein disappeared.

West's sin was firing two pistol shots into the air and ground while questioning an Iraqi police officer who was aiding local terrorists and putting West's soldiers in their cross hairs on a regular basis.

In my outfit, West would have gotten a pat on the back and been told to press on. But even though the double-crossing turncoat spilled his guts – enabling West's unit to ambush the ambushers – West is looking at serious slammer-time if found guilty by court-martial.

From what I've discovered, this street-smart leader used the right tactics and techniques, while his commander, Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, played Political Correctness – a popular sport with our star-wearers and a major reason why the guerrillas are scoring so successfully in Iraq.

After six months of light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel propaganda from the Bush administration reinforced by sycophants like Odierno, I'm convinced few generals on the ground in Iraq understand either the nature of insurgency warfare in general or their specific terrorist enemy.

Sure, the U.S. military brilliantly won the tactical war in Iraq with "shock and awe," but no amount of spin can shift the reality that it has been losing the early innings of the occupation phase. The generals so eager to court-martial colonels for doing their jobs should be court-martialed themselves for not doing their duty and confronting SecDef Donald Rumsfeld before we invaded Iraq. Had they, we wouldn't be dealing with the aftermath of an inept war plan that provided neither enough troops nor sufficient command guidance to prevent the looting and violence that fueled the ever-expanding guerrilla conflict, a conflict that Col. West and other heroes have been stuck in since Commander in Chief Bush blithely declared the end of major combat in Iraq last May.

The conventional generals like Odierno should be replaced by mainly Special Forces leaders, both from the active and retired ranks, who comprehend the war at hand. Leaders who'd drop the silly charges against Col. West in a heartbeat so he could get on with winning his piece of this ugly war.

As for the Perfumed Princes, send them home from both Iraq and Afghanistan – another guerrilla war we're losing – and let them play Political Correctness, or perhaps the emerging Blame Game, with the chicken hawks who got us in this mess in the first place.
 


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