Reply #8: "Operation Plymouth Rock": winning the hearts and minds of Sunni's [View All]

[maddezmom]

Terming it their first major post-Fallouja campaign to regain control of an insurgent-riddled area outside Baghdad, officials said they would continue a series of preplanned raids in towns and farming areas largely within a so-called "death triangle" of cities bordered by Latifiya, Mahmoudiya and Yousifiya. U.S. troops have also engaged in a series of counterattacks to quell resistance in Mosul, Baghdad and other towns in the wake of their offensive to regain control of the rebel stronghold of Fallouja.

"We are going to push the fight back out to the enemy while he's reeling," said Capt. Tad Douglas, 28, who led an elite reconnaissance platoon of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in the raids. "We've seen fighters from Fallouja filtering down here, and we're going to take the offensive while they're still licking their wounds."

The operation began in the predawn darkness less than a day after Iraqi security forces recovered 12 bodies in Latifiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, where kidnappings of highway travelers have been commonplace for months. Five of the bodies had been beheaded, and one was identified as that of an Iraqi national guardsman kidnapped from a nearby town several weeks ago.
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The largely Sunni Muslim towns and small cities in this rural region just a short drive south of Baghdad are home to an estimated 1 million people and were a stronghold of deposed President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.


http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-assault23nov23,0,5326072.story?coll=ny-homepage-big-pix