Posted on 12/26/2004 2:46:48 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
Iraq's top general Sunday rejected U.S. President George W. Bush's criticism that some Iraqi government troops were unwilling to fight insurgents and have deserted the battlefield, saying the president had been misinformed.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Gen. Babaker Shawkat Zebari also said that the man who carried out Tuesday's attack suicide attack on a U.S. base in Mosul - in which 22 people died - was not a member of the Iraqi security forces.
He spoke as the Ansar al-Sunna Army group, which has claimed responsibility for the Mosul strike, released a video on a website showing what purported to be the suicide bomber bidding farewell to two comrades and footage of what appeared to be the actual bombing.
The bombing, which was the deadliest attack on a U.S. base in Iraq, highlighted that the anti-U.S. insurgency has not diminished even after American offensives last month. A day before the attack, following a string of deadly suicide bombings in southern Iraq, Bush made a sobering assessment and criticizing the performance of Iraqi troops.
"There have been some cases where, when the heat got on, they left the battlefield - that is unacceptable," Bush said at a Dec. 20 press conference.
Asked about Bush's comments, Zebari said: "I think the president received misleading information."
Zebari, Iraq's only four-star general, insisted none of his troops had deserted from combat. But he acknowledged that some recruits undergoing training had quit after being told they would be posted to the restive city of Fallujah, which was taken in a U.S.-led assault in November.
"Not a single soldier ran away from the battlefield (in Fallujah). It was not a difficult battle. Fallujah was cleaned and the number of our martyrs (fatalities) was only seven." Zebari said.
The U.S. military has said investigations showed the bomber at the U.S. base in Mosul may have been wearing an Iraqi uniform when he slipped into a dining tent on the base and detonated his explosives.
Zebari said that was possible, noting that such uniforms are sold in markets. "It is not difficult for a person to wear one," he said.
"Certainly (the suicide bomber) was not a member of the National Guards because all of our men stationed in the base have been accounted for," he said.
Iraqi National Guards are also posted at the American base at Marez, just south of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, 360 kilometres northwest of Baghdad.
The attack killed 18 American servicemembers and civilians and three Iraqi guardsmen and one unidentified "non-U.S. person" and wounded 69 people, prompting a wide-ranging investigation into how he had penetrated the heavily guarded area.
Also Sunday, police in the northern city of Kirkuk captured two brothers, Rasem Qara and Abdul-Baset, who allegedly confessed to having links with Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Al-Qaida in Iraq network, Iraqi Brig.-Gen. Sarhad Qader said.
In Baghdad, masked gunmen assassinated a high-ranking Iraqi police officer, Col. Yassin Ibrahim Jawad, and wounded his two bodyguards, police said.
He is responding as a good General would. His troops need to know that their leadership will defend them in the political arena.
It was on a separate note, that President Bush made oblique reference to the less than dedicated performance of some of the Iraqi troops, who through either lack of training or lack of motivation, have failed to perform combat duties to a degree that joint operations were threatened. There are very good Iraqi soldiers, with high morale and esprit de corps, and a clear definition of their mission. There needs to be about 100,000 like that, an indigenous Marine Corps, that speaks the language and would have no remorse whatsoever about rooting out the "insurgents" and exterminating them.
Now all he has to do is ensure that, in the future, his troops will prove W. wrong.
You are right, loyalty up and loyalty down.
My thoughts exactly.
has there been a single time when these iraqi forces have repeled an attack effectively, or conducted an offensive operation? or do they just know how to die, and retreat?
Good, now lead General.
Here are two references to Iraqi's offensive operations. They are not as frequent as we would like, but is the media covering them?
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=404&id=1335722004
The Scotsman
Sat 20 Nov 2004
Three dead as Iraqi forces attack Sunni mosque
TINI TRAN IN BAGHDAD
IRAQI forces, backed by US soldiers, stormed one of the major Sunni Muslim mosques in Baghdad after Friday prayers, opening fire and killing at least three people, witnesses said.
http://www.itshappening.com/showthread.php?t=66112
10-12-2004, 06:24 AM
Koz's Avatar
Iraqi forces attack Mosques in Ramadi
It's about damn time. I think the very second a Mosque is used as an armory, it ceases to become a Mosque. The missing nuclear material in this story is alarming though.
KOZ
Iraqi forces raid Ramadi mosques
IAEA: Nuclear materials, equipment missing from Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi security forces, backed by U.S. Marines and troops, Tuesday launched a series of raids on seven mosques in Ramadi, the U.S. military said.
Mosques, at times, have been used by insurgents to stage attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces.
The U.S. military Monday launched an airstrike against a mosque in the neighboring town of Hit -- about 30 miles northwest of Ramadi -- amid a battle with about 100 insurgents who had attacked U.S. Marines from inside the building.
"Our participation in these raids has been limited to supporting Iraqi Security Forces," Brig. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, the assistant division commander for the 1st Marine Division, said of the Ramadi raids.
A statement from the Combined Press Information Center said:
"The mosques are suspected of participating in a spectrum of insurgent act
Iraqi Special Forces units performed well in Fallujah.
Building an efficient army takes time. George Washington lost most of his battles during the Revolutionary War.
After the elections, the Shiites and the Kurds will have a real stake in the outcome. Most of the electoral violence will occur in Sunni controlled areas which will mean that Sunni candidates will get routed in the elections.
The Shiites and the Kurds will then have a "fly or die" choice. They will either step up and fight for their new found power against the Sunnis or bend over and resume their former position as Sunni butt-boys.
I believe that the elections will mark the beginning of the end for the Sunni insurgency.
well, I agree with you there. I had felt that the election should be delayed to allow more time for the security situation to improve. but indeed, its looks like the administration is going to force the issue, using the election to essentially trigger the civil war they feel is needed to purge the insurgency.
I only hope they are right, there is alot riding on this. not just for iraq, but for the US. If the iraq effort fails, that's the last time you will ever see the US military used in a pre-emptive offensive manner.
I like how this rag of a news source calls the terrorist an anti US organization while the terrorist are fighting to stop the freedom of the Iraqi people.They always have to make America out to be the bad guy while lending credibility to the terrorist.
Jawad was a good man, I'm sorry to hear they got him.
Yes. Our troops said the Iraqis who went into Fallujah with them were fantastic. Many of them said they did their jobs without direction from the US. One Marine said every time he thought "I should tell them I need a man on that roof" he discovered an Iraqi moving onto the roof.
perhaps those were the "elite troops", the everyday police and national guard aren't doing a very good job so far. Mosul was once a model city in this whole iraqi operation - when the insurgency moved from Fallujah to Mosul, they wiped out huge numbers of police who didn't seem to put up much of a fight.
Hopefully, this creates Iraqi unit pride and loss of honor for abandoning comrades in danger. Good.
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