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Baghdad, 16 March (AKI) - The US military has launched its biggest air offensive in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. A military statement said the operation involved more than 50 aircraft and 200 tactical vehicles and some 1,500 US and Iraqi forces. The operation targeted suspected insurgents operating near the town of Samarra, some 100 kilometres north of Baghdad. The focus of the raid is believed to be three villages northeast of Samarra where there are believed to be various Arab fighters as well as native Iraqi insurgents. "Iraqi army and police forces, backed by U.S. helicopters launched a pre-dawn...

50 aircraft,1500 Iraqui/ US Troops in Samra (n of baghdad) , largest air and land assult since we went in.

RUTBAH, Iraq (AP) - U.S. Marines used to patrol the streets of this city near the volatile Syrian border. Now they've penned it in with a wall of sand, leaving only three ways in or out. While causing discomfort to the townspeople, the military says it is an effective barrier to insurgents and frees up troops for use in other parts of restive Anbar province in western Iraq. The Marines ringed Rutbah with a 10.5-mile-long berm, seven feet high and 20 feet wide, in mid-January and reduced their presence to checkpoints at the three entrances that also are manned by...

The Askariya Mosque Bombing- An Inside Job ? I have read some informal estimates –full of caveats – suggesting the bombing of the Askariya Mosque – said to be one of the holiest places in the Shi’ite Muslim world – may have been an “inside job” ; and that it may well have been carried out by pro-Iranian followers of a radical Iraqi Shi’ite: Muqtada al-Sadr. - The mosque, which is located in a predominantly Sunni area of Samarra,seems unlikely to have been accessible to anyone but known Shi’ites. - The explosive charges were probably laid in a walkway, about...

You guys always said you don’t get all the news from Iraq. And I always agreed with you! I was shocked today when I read the news in the foreign newspapers. No one emphasized the marvelous cooperation and solidarity between the Shiites and the Sunnis in Iraq yesterday after the bombing of one of the most respected and visited holy sites in Islam, the Askariyah shrine, which is in Samarra city north of Baghdad. The shrine contains the remains of two 9th century Imams, Imam Ali al-Hadi and Imam Hasan Askari. They are now wrongly considered as Shiite Imams. [Just...

Iran attacks - Friday, February 24, 2006 @ 1:04:55 AM Best signals source points to the Samarra mosque bombing in Iraq as the launch operation of the Iranian counter offensive. You will recall the retreat of Ahmadinejad some weeks back, out of sight for ten days while he participated in national exercises and war planning. First indications are that the war is now launched. Rather than wait to be attacked by the US fleet and air, Iran has attacked -- using all available surrogates to damage and intimidate the US led coalition that is driving the IAEA referral recommendation to...

THE GOLDEN MOSQUE BOMBING By Michelle Malkin   ·   February 22, 2006 02:51 PM Source: Yahoo!/AP Via AP: SAMARRA, Iraq - Insurgents detonated bombs inside one of Iraq's holiest Shiite shrines Wednesday, destroying its golden dome and triggering more than 60 reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques. The president warned that extremists were pushing the country toward civil war, as many Shiites lashed out at the United States as partly to blame. As the gold dome of the 1,200-year-old Askariya shrine lay in ruins, leaders on both sides called for calm: But the string of back-and-forth attacks seemed to push the country...

SAMARRA, Iraq (AP) - Insurgents detonated bombs inside one of Iraq's holiest Shiite shrines Wednesday, destroying its golden dome and triggering more than 90 reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques. The president warned that extremists were pushing the country toward civil war. With the gleaming dome of the 1,200-year-old Askariya shrine reduced to rubble, leaders on both sides called for calm and many Shiites lashed out at the United States as partly to blame. But the string of back-and-forth attacks seemed to push Iraq closer to all-out civil war than at any point in the three years since the U.S.-led overthrow...

An explosion has ripped through a Shiite holy site in Samarra, destroying the al Askariya "Golden Mosque."

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An explosion ripped through a Shiite holy site in Samarra Wednesday, destroying the golden dome of the al Askariya mosque, a U.S. military statement and a local security official said.

Opponents of the war say the only Al Qaeda elements in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion were those in Kurdish areas not controlled by Saddam. This simply is not so, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it is. And if so, would not the U.S. – as a critical front in the global war on terror – have to invade those areas to shut down the Al Qaeda cells? Of course. And that in itself would have been a far more dangerous “limited war” with Iraq involving a direct ground confrontation with Saddam’s army anyway.

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version January 13, 2006, 8:11 a.m. The Butcher with the Terror Ties The evidence mounts. Drip, drip, drip. Drop by drop, isolated news stories and emerging documents are eroding the popular myth that Saddam Hussein had no connections to Islamofascist terrorists. These revelations undermine war critics’ efforts to whitewash Baghdad’s ancien regime — such as when Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid declared: “There was [sic] no terrorists in Iraq.” Likewise, Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) describes a “nonexistent relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.” Reid, Levin, and others who dismiss...

Saddam's Terror Training Camps What the documents captured from the former Iraqi regime reveal--and why they should all be made public. by Stephen F. Hayes 01/16/2006, Volume 011, Issue 17 THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials. The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in...

The former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists at Ramadi, Samarra and Salman-Pak over the four years immediately preceeding the U.S. invasion.

The Bush administration is preparing to release never-before-seen documents captured when U.S. forces liberated Baghdad that chronicle the extensive training of thousands of radical Islamic terrorists by Saddam Hussein's regime. "The secret training took place primarily at three camps in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak," reports the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, who adds that the operations began two years before the 9/11 attacks and were "directed by elite Iraqi military units." The existence of these documents, and the nature of what they describe, has been confirmed to the Standard by eleven U.S. government officials, Hayes says. If true, the documents...

CBN.com – TIKRIT, Iraq - Let's begin in Tikrit, the city best known as the birthplace of Saddam Hussein. We spent some time here on Forward Operating Base Danger, a sprawling compound of 68 palaces that Hussein built for his family. This island used to belong to Saddam's sons. But today, this area is a training center for new Iraqi security forces, which has graduated more than 1,500 new Iraqi soldiers and policemen. The palace is now the headquarters for the 42nd Infantry Brigade, which is comprised of 23,000 active duty, guard, and reserve soldiers from 29 states. Its commander,...

BAGHDAD, Aug. 18, 2005 (CBS/AP) A roadside bomb north of Baghdad killed four American soldiers, the U.S. military said. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the biggest Shiite party Thursday predicted a breakthrough on the constitution within the next two days, as negotiators scrambled to finish the draft by next week's deadline. The military said the roadside bomb blast occurred in the tense, religiously mixed city of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad. No further details were immediately available. Samarra is among a series of towns and cities in central and western Iraq that fell into insurgent hands last year after the...

(CBS/AP) On Sunday, the U.S. military said that two U.S. soldiers had been killed by a roadside bomb in central Samarra. The Saturday evening attack left three others injured. The military also confirmed a third weekend death of an American serving in Iraq. A Marine died yesterday in a suicide car bombing west of Baghdad. Since August first, at least 30 American service members have died in Iraq. The news came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the insurgency in Iraq is losing steam as a political force. In an article appearing on Time magazine's Web site, Rice says...

Three suicide bombers tried to attack an American military base in the Iraqi of Samarra today and wounded three US soldiers, the military said. Two suicide bombers detonated their car bombs outside a US base in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, Major Richard Goldenberg said. Three Task Force Liberty soldiers sustained non life-threatening wounds, Goldenberg added. A third militant approached the scene wearing an explosives-packed vest and was shot by soldiers but still managed to set off his bomb, killing himself but causing no other injuries or damage, Goldenberg said. US and Iraqi security forces quickly cordoned off the...

WASHINGTON, May 16, 2005 – Army leaders recognized the Iraq service and sacrifice of members of Task Force Danger at a ceremony in Kitzingen, Germany, today. Army Secretary Francis Harvey told the soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division that their service in Iraq was crucial to the success of the Iraqi elections held Jan. 30. The "Big Red One" was the center of the 22,000-member Task Force Danger, headquartered in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit -- the heart of the Sunni Triangle. The soldiers operated against "a ruthless and immoral enemy willing to employ any means necessary to achieve their...