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Security Forces Take Lead

Cal

Well-known member
Commentary - Iraqi Security Forces Take Lead - DefendAmerica News Article

COMMENTARY
The Wake of Success

By U.S. Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr.
Multinational Force-Iraq Commanding General
BAGHDAD, March 6, 2006 — The crisis generated by the bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarra has subsided. As I said last week, Iraq has passed a crucial test in their journey to becoming a democratic country. There is a terrorist threat here that will stop at nothing to undermine the formation of this constitutionally elected government, a government of national unity and a government that that represents all Iraqis. They tried to make the bombing of the Golden Dome mosque the straw that broke the camel’s back and it failed. Iraqis rose to the occasion. Have no doubt, there are still sectarian tensions that the Iraqis will have to work through. However, throughout this sensitive period the Multi-National Force - Iraq will continue to monitor the situation and support the government of Iraq.
The mosque incident provides insights into the changing situation in Iraq. First, we saw a return to the killing of innocent civilians as evidenced by the desperate terrorists’ attempts to subvert the government by all means. Over a three-day span in Baghdad during the unrest there were 71 deaths and 62 others injured because of a blitz of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, a suicide vest attack and an improvised explosive device. These were senseless attacks from an enemy that is desperate to stop Iraq from coming together as a nation. These attacks are in line with a trend that we continue to see, an increased amount of civilian casualties.

Second, we saw a maturing capability by the Iraqi Police and Iraqi Army to cooperate and operate effectively in providing domestic order during demonstrations and in dealing with militias around the country.


Iraqi security ministries and Iraqi Security Forces leadership directed the operations and the Coalition responded in a supporting role. The Iraqi Transitional Government reacted decisively by imposing curfews, driving bans, making public calls for calm and effectively bringing down the levels of violence countrywide.

Along with those insights, the changing nature of the conflict and the reactions by the government and its security forces provides a glimpse into the future of Iraq. The people of Iraq will not blindly follow the lead of the terrorists - they are consciously ignoring the temptation for unrest and moving toward democracy. Additionally, this incident highlights the need for the Iraqi government to deal with the militia issue in the very near future. That is a good thing. While some may have seen militias as their protectors in the past, the proven abilities of the ISF during this incident shows the reason, and time, for militias has come to an end. Ultimately, Iraq cannot succeed until the Iraqi Security Forces - the police and the military - are the only ones in Iraq with guns.

Those difficult few days in Iraq came at a sensitive time. While the danger is not completely past, the Iraqis have again risen to the occasion against the terror that is trying to deny them their future, and they won.


http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/mar2006/a030806wm1.html
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
The crisis generated by the bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarra has subsided.

I'm embarrased for Gen Casey. Here's what's going on in Bush's "free and democratic Iraq." Full article; link below; my emphasis.

"AN UNPRECEDENTED wave of unexplained execution-style killings and abductions in Iraq has heightened fears of an underground Shiite backlash against Sunni insurgents, believed to be blessed by Shiite religious leaders.

Despite constant official denials and empty promises to disband militias that operate inside - or alongside - units of the Shiite-controlled security forces, Baghdad had one of its worst days on Wednesday. Fifty people were abducted in a daylight raid on a security agency, and the city was reeling from the discovery the night before of 18 men in an abandoned minibus. Almost 50 others died violently across the country in the same 24-hour period.

In a sinister attempt to cleanse public records of the handiwork of what senior US officials now openly refer to as "death squads", staff at Baghdad's central morgue say they have been ordered to catalogue violent death only by bombings or insurgency clashes - not as execution-style shootings.

The orders are said to have been imposed by senior officials of one of the biggest Shiite religious parties, the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. They follow the flight from Iraq last week by the morgue director after he publicly revealed the extent of the gangster-like killings.

In a statement released in Baghdad, a United Nations human rights official appeared to confirm the new regime at the morgue, claiming "the acting director is under pressure by the Interior Ministry not to reveal such information and to minimise the number of casualties".

Many of the raids are carried out by masked men wearing the uniforms of the US-trained security forces, controlled by the Interior Ministry, and driving what appear to be new government-owned vehicles.

The minibus was found by US forces patrolling in Amariyah, a predominantly Sunni quarter in the west of the capital.

Gunmen who raided a security firm controlled by a relative of the Sunni Vice-President, Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, were dressed in government-issue police uniforms, but there were contradictory official responses to the attack, in which 50 guards disappeared. Three senior Interior Ministry officials told reporters no such raid had been authorised. But two others claimed it was an officially sanctioned operation by police commandos acting on a client's complaint.

A senior police official described the raid as "a terrorist operation, 100 per cent". Witnesses claimed the guards went willingly with their abductors, apparently in the belief that it was an official operation.

US and UN acceptance of Sunni allegations of Shiite militias having unfettered control over the security forces has crystallised in a demand by Washington, so far ignored in Baghdad, that the Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, should be sacked.

The minister was not in his official convoy, which was bombed on Wednesday, but two of his commando guards died and later in the day another two bodyguards died during an attack on the home of a ministry adviser, Major-General Mousa Salman.

The latest violence coincides with more claims of Shiite and Sunni families being "cleansed" from local communities where they are in the minority.

Despite an upbeat assessment of the war in Iraq in which Brigadier Paul Symon, the commander of Australian forces in the Middle East, categorised events since the bombing of the Golden Mosque at Samarra merely as an "awkward period", Americans have been warned by a White House stalwart that Iraq could be just one bomb from civil war.

Even before the events of the last days, the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, broke from the usual rhetoric to liken events since the toppling of Saddam Hussein to the US having opened a "Pandora's box" of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions that could engulf the region in all-out war.



http://smh.com.au/news/world/fifty-abducted-in-mounting-shiite-backlash/2006/03/09/1141701633527.html
 

Jinglebob

Well-known member
So what are you saying, Dis? Are you in favor of the terrorists doing these things?

Have you gone back and checked out what happened over here in 1776 and there abouts as we were establishing a free country? Maybe you ought to. Freedom doesn't come free.
 

Disagreeable

Well-known member
Jinglebob said:
So what are you saying, Dis? Are you in favor of the terrorists doing these things?

Have you gone back and checked out what happened over here in 1776 and there abouts as we were establishing a free country? Maybe you ought to. Freedom doesn't come free.

It's not terrorists doing these things. It's Iraqi Sunnis killing Iraqi Shiites. It's murder squads working out of the Iraqi Interior Ministry and private armies of some religious leaders. The Bush Bunch can defend it all they want, but this is a civil war. The top Iraqi general in the Baghdad area was murdered recently and his location was given to the murderers by someone within the Iraqi government. Many of the people in the article I posted were killed by people in official Iraqi uniforms and vehicles.

Yes, I know what happened in this country. The citizens of Iraq didn't ask the US to come in and destroy their country. George W. Bush chose to invade it. You can't force democracy on people. If they're not willing to fight for it, they don't deserve it. Most people in Iraq just want the killing to go away. Most Iraqis voted along religious and tribal lines in those elections the Bush Bunch is so proud of. It's been almost three months since the last election and there's no government in sight. In fact, they're afraid to call a session of parliment because that starts the clock on either getting a new government or having new elections and no one wants to have more elections.

BTW, have you thanked the French government lately for their help in gaining independence for the US?
 

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