April 28, 2006
LOCAL INTELLIGENCE AND IRAQI TROOPS FIGHTING AND DYING--GOOD/GOOD:
Local al-Qaida in Iraq leader killed (THOMAS WAGNER, April 28, 2006, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
U.S. forces killed a local al-Qaida in Iraq leader and two other insurgents in a raid north of Baghdad on Friday, and roadside bombs killed an American soldier and an Iraqi policeman, officials said.Posted by Orrin Judd at April 28, 2006 11:05 AMSeparately, the death toll in two days of fighting in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, climbed to 58, including seven Iraqi soldiers, Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Awad said.
U.S. forces, acting on Iraqi intelligence, raided a house where Hamid al-Takhi, the local al-Qaida in Iraq leader, and the two other insurgents were hiding just outside Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.
Al-Takhi, known as the "emir" of Samarra, was gunned down while fleeing the house, and the other two militants were killed while trying to defend it with grenades, the U.S. military said. After they were killed, the U.S. troops found a car parked nearby containing a grenade launcher, rockets, AK-47s, grenades and a shotgun, the U.S. military said.
Mr. al-Takhi is just lucky he wasn't captured and sent to the Guantanamo gulag, or worse, to Abu Ghraib to be taunted mercilessly. However, the ACLU does want to know if we read al-Takhi his Miranda rights before gunning him down, and will be filing a FOIA request to see if we used Israeli bullets, which would definitely be a violation of his civil rights.
Posted by: HT at April 28, 2006 11:19 AMHT: My reaction was a little different. My first thought was that they've learned from Saddam and all the nonsense over rendition/Gitmo/torture, etc., and that more and more AQists are going to be killed while trying to escape.
Posted by: David Cohen at April 28, 2006 12:00 PM'local Al-Qaida in Iraq leader' This is a very odd phrase. When did this one start? Did I miss the memo?
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at April 28, 2006 12:06 PMThe thread from the different stories in the past 1-2 months seem to indicate that we've crushed the Sunni insurgency in the west, and that the Baghdad environs are again the theatre of operations. If we're able to impose order there, this may be the end game although it's too early to tell.
The refusal of the Shi'ites to be goaded into civil war may have been the last decisive point of the war.
While mistakes have been made in Iraq, the great error of war critics was to assume that Al-Qaeda/Insurgents had an invulnerable morale and would never give up. Instead, we have seen great defeats been inflicted on them, not just in military losses, but the continued progress in constituting a new Iraqi government. Each milestone in that process was a defeat for them.
It's one thing to die gloriously for victory, another to waste your life in a futile defeat. How much more of this can go on before their morale breaks? I assume everyone saw that picture of Z-Man recently. He did not look triumphant, but exhausted and defeated.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at April 28, 2006 12:33 PM