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4. [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. (New York Times)...Stephen Farrell and James Glanz
More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.
5. [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. (Washington Post)...Sudarsan Raghavan and Ernesto Londono
...The offensive, which triggered clashes across southern Iraq and in Baghdad that left about 600 people dead, unveiled the weaknesses of Maliki's U.S.-backed government and his brash style of leadership. On many levels, the offensive strengthened the anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
this was on the Earlybird section of my AKO site..Army Knowledge Online....LOL even the Army allows the truth to be posted.
17. [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. (Miami Herald)...Warren P. Strobel and Nancy A. Youssef
The Bush administration was caught off-guard by the first Iraqi-led military offensive since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a weeklong thrust in southern Iraq whose paltry results have silenced talk at the Pentagon of further troop withdrawals anytime soon.
The Iraqi's are, as the flee and quit from providing so called security. What a bunch of losers.
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Maliki wins in basra and baghdad [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.
Voice of Iraq News Baghdad, Mar 31– Some 210 gunmen were killed, 600 others wounded and 155 captured since the beginning of Operation Saulat al-Forsan (Knights’ Assault) in the province of Basra last week, the Iraqi interior ministry said on Monday. “The Iraqi security agencies killed 210 gunmen, including 42 dangerous criminals, while 600 others were wounded and 155 captured since the commencement of a military campaign in Basra,” Maj. General Abdul-Kareem Khalaf, the ministry’s National Command Center chief, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq. Basra, Iraq’s second largest city and oil hub, 590 km south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, had witnessed immense security unrest a few hours after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced a plan to impose order in the province. Fierce battles occurred between security forces and armed groups believed to belong to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militias. “Security agencies seized a large amount of weapons including developed explosive charges, and dismantled three car bombs and 80 improvised explosive devices (IEDs),” said Khalaf.
Iraqi Security Forces KILLED 210, WOUNDED 600 and CAPTURED 155.
Yep, it sure sounds like Iraqi's are a "bunch of losers".
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Baghdad, Mar 31– Some 210 gunmen were killed, 600 others wounded and 155 captured since the beginning of Operation Saulat al-Forsan (Knights’ Assault) in the province of Basra last week, the Iraqi interior ministry said on Monday.
“The Iraqi security agencies killed 210 gunmen, including 42 dangerous criminals, while 600 others were wounded and 155 captured since the commencement of a military campaign in Basra,” Maj. General Abdul-Kareem Khalaf, the ministry’s National Command Center chief, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq.
Basra, Iraq’s second largest city and oil hub, 590 km south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, had witnessed immense security unrest a few hours after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced a plan to impose order in the province.
Fierce battles occurred between security forces and armed groups believed to belong to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militias.
“Security agencies seized a large amount of weapons including developed explosive charges, and dismantled three car bombs and 80 improvised explosive devices (IEDs),” said Khalaf.
AND THIS from an IRAQI "Blog": [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.
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Wrapping Up the Basra Operation
The Iraqi bloggers continue to vet the success, failure, and coverage of Operation Fix Muqty.
Talisman Gate [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. Says "I told you so" about reporters and diplomats wetting their pants in the Green Zone during [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. . [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. Continues to strip the bark off of James Glanz (NYT) regarding his reporting of the numbers of police who defected to the Mahdi Army. Then he moves on to WaPo's Sudarsan Raghavan whom he implies has a "perversely masochistic yearning for getting all tarred and feathered". Nibras would like to see the GoI strip some visas from certain reporters: "...all of Iraq’s neighbors use visas and access as disciplinary measures against western reporters who may write things damaging to their nations’ reputations....[Iraq's] judicial system [has] yet to adapt to slapping controls on such excessive margins for libel and propaganda, so Maliki’s only option at this time may be to yank some press passes and send them packing. Talisman Gate would strongly support such a measure."
IraqPundit[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. and [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.
IP agrees with Talisman Gate, offering his own fisking of the favorable coverage Muqty is getting from the NYT and WaPo: "If Moktada wants to guarantee good turnout for his march next week, maybe he should stage it in a place like Washington’s National Press Building. He might be pleasantly surprised with the result."
Iraqi Mojo[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.
Mojo discusses the differing opinions re: Muqty among his family members.
Iraqi Security Forces KILLED 210, WOUNDED 600 and CAPTURED 155.
Yep, it sure sounds like Iraqi's are a "bunch of losers".
BAGHDAD — More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.
[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link.
BAGHDAD — More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.
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I would rather take the words of a soldier who is (or has been) there, or even Iraqi citizens rather than a socialist BS rag newspaper, who has proven to be anti-American and WANT us to LOSE the war. And what about you?
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Friday, April 04, 2008
Numbers, Sources and Assertions
Here's a riddle: Why would the New York Times cite Iraqi sources to give the number of alleged defections in the Iraqi officer corps, while an American source is used to give the overall number of defections among both officers and servicemen?
James Glanz, the author of this front-page article today, quotes numbers given to him by anonymous “Iraqi military officials” whose estimates ran from “several dozen to more than 100” officers “who refused to fight during the Basra operation”, but Glanz never explains the discrepancy in these varying estimates. Furthermore, Glanz does not get these Iraqi sources of his to give him an overall number for all officers and servicemen who refused to fight, and he doesn’t provide a breakdown for how many of these officers served in the police force and how many others served in the Iraqi Army.
For an overall number, Glanz relies on an anonymous “senior American military official” who wishy-washily says “that he understood that 1,000 to 1,500 Iraqi forces had deserted or underperformed.” Glanz then gleefully tells us that “would represent a little over 4 percent of the total” yet never tells us how many actually ‘deserted’ and how many actually ‘underperformed’.
Readers ought to be told these things, preferably backed-up by eponymous sources who aren’t so vague, because there’s a big difference between desertion and dereliction of duty or the failure to follow orders; it’s the difference between death by an execution squad and a dishonorable discharge.
And then the story does something funny by downplaying its own opening sentences:
The senior American military official said the number of officers was “less than a couple dozen at most,” but conceded that the figure could rise as the performance of senior officers was assessed.
But most of the deserters were not officers. The American military official said, “From what we understand, the bulk of these were from fairly fresh troops who had only just gotten out of basic training and were probably pushed into the fight too soon.”
“There were obviously others who elected to not fight their fellow Shia,” the official said, but added that the coalition did not see the failures as a “major issue,” especially if the Iraqi government dealt firmly with them.
What is this? Is the New York Times trying to mess with our brains?
Maliki, for his own part, is promising to deal firmly with any signs of wavering:
“Everyone who was not on the side of the security forces will go into the military courts,” Mr. Maliki said in a news briefing in the Green Zone. “Joining the army or police is not a trip or a picnic, there is something that they have to pay back to commit to the interests of the state and not the party or the sect.”
“They swore on the Koran that they would not support their sect or their party, but they were lying,” he said.
Interestingly, Ambassador Ryan Crocker back-paddled today in Glanz’spiece on what he had been quoted as saying to Michael Gordon in yesterday’s piece regarding the authorship of the Basra tribal plan. I don’t know if he did that because Talisman Gate called him out on it, but anyway here’s the accurate version:
“The tribal element [Maliki] managed himself, as far as I can see,” he said. “You may recall he had a series of meetings with different tribal leaders, three or four of them, maybe more. That was something he focused on almost from the beginning, and pressed it hard straight through and has seen it pay off. Did he have counsel to do it, I don’t know. But he is the one who did it.”
Here’s how I see it: about 550 policemen (around 50 of them officers) are up for disciplinary action across all of Iraq, not just Basra. As for the Iraqi Army, less than 250 are facing various forms of legal action or reprimands; I don’t have a reliable number for how many of those are officers though I’ve been led to believe that it is less than 20.
Overall, we’re talking about a total of 800-900 across all of Iraq, and not just Basra as the New York Times tried to obliquely portray it. That’s 800-900 out of the estimated 700,000 soldiers and policemen who now serve in Iraq’s various security and military outfits. I’m no math wizard, but I think that’s about 0.12 percent. Speaking for myself, I can live with these numbers.
But what I really want to tackle today is The Washington Post’s front-page story today by Sudarsan Raghavan and Ernesto Londono. Oh my, oh my, I can't believe that anyone would seriously write something like this up without having a perversely masochistic yearning for getting all tarred and feathered. My own theory is that the WaPo bureau in Baghdad was so envious of all the attention—more accurately described as ridicule—that Talisman Gate had focused on what Glanz and his colleagues over at the NYTimes bureau were reporting that an incensed Raghavan was determined to write something so outlandish so as to draw my notice.
Well, it worked.
About the Author:
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Nibras Kazimi Visiting Scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC. I also write a weekly column on the Middle East for the New York Sun, and a monthly column for the Prospect Magazine (UK). [LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This Truck Forum Link. Previous Posts
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BAGHDAD — More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.
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If you want to rely on the NYT which got their information from "an unidentified source" (which means they pulled those figures out of their butt)....
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For an overall number, Glanz relies on an anonymous “senior American military official” who wishy-washily says “that he understood that 1,000 to 1,500 Iraqi forces had deserted or underperformed.” Glanz then gleefully tells us that “would represent a little over 4 percent of the total” yet never tells us how many actually ‘deserted’ and how many actually ‘underperformed’.
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Overall, we’re talking about a total of 800-900 across all of Iraq, and not just Basra as the New York Times tried to obliquely portray it. That’s 800-900 out of the estimated 700,000 soldiers and policemen who now serve in Iraq’s various security and military outfits. I’m no math wizard, but I think that’s about 0.12 percent.
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04.04.2008
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