Free Republic

BAGHDAD - The abandoned apartment block known as the Pepsi building vanished in seconds, leaving a 30-foot-deep blast crater and a ring of destruction for a quarter mile in every direction through a shanty district in Mosul. Then on Thursday — even before the final death count was tallied — came more bloodshed: A suicide bomber killed a police chief and two other officers as they toured the devastation from the previous day. Residents with insurgent sympathies taunted the chief moments before the attack. Two deadly days have underscored what some U.S. military commanders fear is ahead for the northern...

The U.S. military tries to keep its distance from the enemy, which is why there is a lot of emphasis now on robots that can disable roadside bombs from a distance. While we know insurgents are everywhere in Iraq, we don't tend to think of soldiers encountering them head on. But they do, as this fascinating Army Times story about a soldier who survived being knifed in the forehead by an insurgent. Doctors estimate that at least four inches of the knife was plunged into his head. The attack occurred at a cordoned-off blast site. What saved him was medical...

News FuzeArticle Launched:KABUL, Afghanistan—A joint U.S. coalition and Afghan operation has left 120 insurgents dead over the past 20 days in central Ghazni province, the Interior Ministry said Monday. Last month, the Afghan army dropped leaflets warning of impending military action in Ghazni—the province where the recent South Korean hostage crisis played out—though the army said the operation had been long-planned and was not linked to the kidnappings.

The United States “is not good at counter insurgency and never has been”, according to George Friedman, Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Forecasting. He also calls for an end to the limitedly successful Surge in order to redeploy troops to Kuwait or the uninhabited south west of Iraq, so that they might “flank” any expansive Iranian moves toward Saudi Arabia (for example). First and foremost, the lessons of 2003 to 2006 in Iraq show Iraqi and foreign resistance/insurgency is inversely proportional to the size of the U.S. or U.K. footprint. Dr. Friedman’s analysis calls for a reversal of successful policies...

Saif Abdallah says his inventions have helped kill or maim scores, possibly hundreds, of Americans. For more than four years, he has been developing remote-control devices that Sunni insurgents use to detonate improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the roadside bombs that are the No. 1 killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The only time he ever felt a pang of regret was in the spring of 2006, when he heard that the Pentagon, in a bid to fight the growing IED menace, had roped in a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Abdallah, an electronics engineer by training,...

BAGHDAD, June 6 -- A Sunni insurgent group that waged a deadly street battle last week against the rival group al-Qaeda in Iraq in a Sunni neighborhood of west Baghdad announced Wednesday that the two forces had declared a cease-fire. The Islamic Army of Iraq, a more moderate and secular Sunni group, said it had reached the cease-fire with al-Qaeda in Iraq because the groups did not want to spill Muslim blood or damage "the project of jihad." Last week, the two groups fought for several days in the Sunni neighborhood of Amiriyah, leaving about 30 of their fighters dead....

How to Kill a Car

U.S. Military Foils Insurgent Attack Published: 3/27/07, 4:05 PM EDT BAGHDAD (AP) - U.S. soldiers foiled two suicide truck bombings against their base in a small town west of Baghdad and killed as many as 15 attackers, the U.S. military reported Tuesday. The attacks began when a water truck tried to drive into the base just north of Karmah, a town not far from the city of Fallujah, at about 2 p.m. Monday. A soldier opened fire and the truck bomb exploded. The military said 30 insurgents responded with small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Five minutes into the firefight,...

Ultraviolent War GameIn this war game, you get to destroy Iraqi insurgents, mutants, demons, and more, with a wide variety of weapons. Blast demons with your shotgun, take out a Japanese gunner with your grenade, toast an insurgent with your flamethrower... and watch the body parts scatter! If you like it, be sure to Digg it!

The commander of American reinforcements to Iraq, General John Keane, was in London on Wednesday to talk about the progress of the counterinsurgency campaign and its prospects. America, he said, had adopted the wrong strategy to deal with the disorders at the outset. It tried to solve the problem by conventional military methods, using force against force in an attempt to defeat the insurgency by killing those who were waging it, when what was needed was something more like police action, providing Iraqi cities with security, so that citizens could resume their normal lives with a reasonable assurance that they...

A terrorist recruitment video features “Anderson Cooper 360″ as inspiration for jihadis to join. His clip is used at nearly the halfway point. Clip was sent to Pat Dollard from SGT Welsh. Here is a summary translation from jveritas: It is a propaganda piece made the by the terrorists and begins by stating some quotes and attributing it to that American political and military leaders. These quotes say “We are losing this war and Bush is lying, the war was the great move in the wrong direction, we are in quagmire, our soldiers morals are in the abyss, etc..” Then...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military warned Thursday that insurgents are adopting new tactics in a campaign to spread panic after troops uncovered a car bomb factory with propane tanks and chlorine cylinders — possible ingredients for more chemical attacks following three explosions involving chlorine. Those blasts and a recent spate of attacks against helicopters have raised fears that insurgents are trying to develop new ways to confront U.S. and Iraqi forces. Any increase in chemical bombings could complicate the Baghdad security crackdown, now in its second week. Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the No. 2 American commander in Iraq, said...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Anti-abortion extremist James Kopp made a last attempt Wednesday to convince jurors he didn't mean to kill a doctor he shot, while a prosecutor countered there are "no do-overs" when shooting someone. The two sides presented their closing arguments in Kopp's trial on charges he violated the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act by killing Dr. Barnett Slepian with a single shot from a Russian military rifle in 1998. He could face life in prison without parole if convicted. Kopp, known as "Atomic Dog" among his peers, is already serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for a...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22, 2007 — Mimicking the hijackers who executed the Sept. 11 attacks, insurgents reportedly tied to al Qaeda in Iraq considered using student visas to slip terrorists into the United States to orchestrate a new attack on American soil. Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently testified that documents captured by coalition forces during a raid of a safe house believed to house Iraqi members of al Qaeda six months ago "revealed [AQI] was planning terrorist operations in the U.S." At the time, Maples offered little additional insight into the possible terror plot....

BAGRAM, Afghanistan - An Afghan insurgent leader operating from inside Pakistan sent some 200 ill-equipped fighters, some wearing plastic bags on their feet, into Afghanistan where most were killed in a major battle this week, a top U.S. general said Saturday. Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley said that Jalaluddin Haqqani recruited and sent unemployed and untrained men to fight in Afghanistan. U.S. forces killed about 130 fighters moving in two groups in the eastern province of Paktika late Wednesday and early Thursday, one of the largest winter battles in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. "There's Taliban leaders...

After the end of WWII, Allied forces faced guerrilla bombings and attacks in occupied Germany--Nazi loyalists tried to derail reconstruction by sabotage and killing collaborators, while Werewolves, an underground organization of die-hard SS officers, boasted of rebirth of the Party. Find out if their bark was worse than their bite in this dogged investigation into how Werewolves terrorized military and civilian targets, and the Allied attempt to purge Germany's past at denazification tribunals.

A team of Marines and civilians work an assembly line to inspect recovered Iraqi weapons before redeploying them to Iraqi Army. Photo taken by Lance Cpl. Ben Eberle. CAMP TAQADDUM -- Since March 2003, coalition forces have seized thousands of unauthorized small arms through security patrols and urban search operations. Marines and civilians with Ammunition Platoon, Supply Company, Combat Logistics Regiment 15, 1st Marine Logistics Group (Forward), are redeploying these weapon systems into the Iraqi Army, turning insurgent resources into coalition assets. “We need to arm our allies,” said Warrant Officer Robert P. Smith, officer-in-charge of Camp Taqaddum’s Ammunition Supply...

There are a few similarities between Iraq and Vietnam. First and foremost, in both cases, considerable United States military and economic resources were and are being expended on foreign soil for reasons that are not fully understood by most Americans. Vietnam and Iraq have border states who provide(d) aid and sanctuary to the insurgents. Additionally, the US news media took and has taken a decidedly negative approach to reporting the events in both conflicts. In Vietnam and now in Iraq, our government has failed to convince the American public that our commitment is worth the sacrifices in blood and treasure....

Three factories in Iran are mass-producing the sophisticated roadside bombs used to kill British soldiers over the border in Iraq, it has been claimed.The lethal bombs are being made by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps at ordnance factory sites in Teheran, according to opponents of the country's theocratic regime. Designed to penetrate heavy armour, the devices being manufactured in Iran involve the use of "explosively formed projectiles" or EFPs, also known as shaped charges, often triggered by infra-red beams.The weapons can pierce the armour of British and American tanks and armoured personnel carriers and completely destroy armoured Land Rovers, which...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11, 2006 – Afghan and coalition forces killed three al Qaeda members and detained three others during a raid today in Afghanistan’s Khowst province, U.S. military officials reported. Intelligence linked the targeted terrorists to previous remote-controlled and makeshift car bomb attacks in Khowst. Upon arrival, the assault force received small-arms fire from the targeted building. The ground force returned fire, killing the three terrorists. The other three were detained on site without incident. Numerous assault rifles with armor-piercing ammunition, along with a weapons cache of grenades and other ordnance was found in a building at the target location....