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Posted on 10/29/2005 10:17:43 PM PDT by smoothsailing
Jack Kelly: Reservation for terror
The media missed the story on the Baghdad hotel attack
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Al-Qaida has claimed credit for a large, sophisticated attack Monday on the two hotels in Baghdad where most foreign journalists and many defense contractors stay.
The attack failed, but it was a near-run thing. The Palestine and Sheraton hotels are across a short street from each other, adjacent to Firdous Square, a traffic roundabout where the statue of Saddam Hussein was torn down on April 9, 2003.
The attack involved three suicide bombers and an unknown number of other fighters. The attack took place at dusk, over a span of four minutes. Several news organizations were tipped off in advance, and cameras were rolling.
At 5:21 p.m., the first suicide car stopped at the concrete barrier separating the side street on which the hotels are located from Firdous Square and blew up, opening a hole for the others to follow. Two minutes later, the second suicide car was engaged by Iraqi security forces and blew up, relatively harmlessly, on the far side of Firdous Square.
A minute after that, a cement truck drove through the hole the first suicide bomber had created into the side street between the hotels. But its wheels became entangled in concertina wire, and the driver was shot by a U.S. soldier inside the compound. At 5:25 p.m., the truck exploded, breaking windows in and causing damage to the front of the Palestine Hotel, but no injuries to people inside the hotel were reported.
It would have been "catastrophic" if the cement truck had reached the Palestine Hotel, said Lt. Col. Gary Luck, the security commander for the area. Twenty people -- all of them Iraqis and ...
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
I heard absolutely nothing about this.
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Plus they have revealed a tactic that we can expect and counter.
plus they're all dead
Which news organizations? And did they warn anybody else? If not the Iraqis should try them as accomplices. Anyone possing film of this should automatically be arrested as a co-conspirator.
Plus they are all dead.
They learned long ago that the only way they could touch our guys was with IEDs. A classical ambush would result in their destruction.
If we hear in coming days that some media pukes have been kicked out of Iraq, we can make a connection.
I still can't understand the strategy. What do you again by attacking your greatest ally (The antique media) or even attacking a position where they would have been a big part of the collateral casualties. This attack does not make any sense.
Terrorism doesn't make any sense, either.
Imagine the headline.
PRESS HELD HOSTAGE BY BUSH WAR
It makes good sense if you can pull it off. Media outlets all over the world cover the seige wall-to-wall. Nothing else would get through. When was the last time you saw wall-to-wall Iraq? The only time the media cares is when we reach some whole number of troops, like 1000, 1500, 2000, etc or when there's an explosion they catch on tape.
If they take hostages that are media, the get the spotlight from all over the world AND they start giving interviews to the journalists inside. Those journalists come out and in the name of unbiased reporting will tell the world how compassionate these people are and all they want is there country back from the evil U.S.
It would have been a decent strategy if they had succeeded, but I doubt they had the man-power to pull off such an operation. You would need to infiltrate the hotel's staff, learn the security perimeter, know security patrols inside, find out how many private body gaurds are employeed by the media, what weapons they have and where they are located within the hotel. You will need to preposition generators within the hotel to ensure the cameras keep rolling after the power is out. You would need to secure the roof and other access points within minutes of your attack.
I'm sure there are plenty of other items on the to-do list, but this was off the top of my head.
They want to demonstrate that they can attack anytime, anyplace and that no-one is safe. (they failed in this attempt)
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