US says Iraqis, not foreign fighters, are behind attacks

[DoYouEverWonder]

The Independent

17 February 2004

A raid on an Iraqi police station and army base last week, in which at least 25 people died, appears to have been carried out by Iraqi guerrillas and not foreign militants, as previously reported, US occupation forces said yesterday. The admission is an indication of how powerful the Iraqi resistance has become: it can now take on American-trained Iraqi security forces head on and defeat them. The raid, in which insurgents stormed the police station, while simultaneously keeping Iraqi soldiers in a nearby base pinned down, was the most sophisticated attack yet, and has left the US occupation badly shaken.

Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, the US army's deputy chief of operations in Iraq, said it appeared that the insurgents killed or captured in the attack were all Iraqi citizens, but he added that this was not a final conclusion. A number of Iraqis are now being questioned in connection with the attacks.

The finding overshadowed recent efforts by the US to pin the blame for a series of suicide bombings and other attacks on foreign Islamic militants linked to al-Qa'ida. Last week the US released what it said was a letter from a leading militant in Iraq to al-Qa'ida leaders, asking for help in provoking a civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq. If yesterday's report is true, the US has enough to worry about from Iraq's home-grown resistance.

<snip>

The success of the raid has cast doubt over US plans to hand over security control to Iraqis by President George Bush's deadline of 30 June.



Now hold on, how many times have Bu$h and Bremmer tried to blame these attacks on foreign / al Qaeda fighters? Looks like either they lied again or it's further proof of their incompetence. Pick One.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

1. No they're not. Now change the channel back to Fox

and pick up your nearest copy of The Wall Street Journal. QUICK!

[kalian]

2. Could they PLEASE make up their friggin minds!

:mad:

[Darranar]

3. Oh, really?

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Ok this is actually worst

If, lets give the boys the benefit of the doubt, this was Al Qaida, well he attracted the bad boys to Iraq, and that woudl be bad enough

Boys and girls this means that the Resistance has graduated to phase III of Guerrilla Operations, where they can launch Platoon and up to batallion level operations.

This is NOT good news.

To a point having Al Qaida responsible was a tad better from their POV.

[Aidoneus]

5. all sorts of contradictory claims are being made

Bremer and some puppet agents are saying "foreigners", but that's what they always say--I think they're just lazy, putting on the same videotape of themselves whenever a comment is needed about some event. Other military figures that operate under Bremer and some other puppet agents contradict this claim and are saying that it could only be locals resistance fighters as being behind it, for they would have to be intimate with the terrain and neighborhood, and I would assume would have had to observe the routines in order to plan out the 2-stage operation with that many fighters.

It is obvious how shaky the position of the occupation authority is when they must resort to the same desperate claim at every step.

[Barrett808]

6. Why is anybody surprised?

There were over 400,000 military folk dumped onto the streets by Bremer. Some of them surely had the motivation and experience necessary to bring a level of professionalism to the insurgency.

[leftchick]

7. "terrists"....

That is what aWol* always calls them... :eyes:

[0007]

8. Holy Leaping Lizards - What is it with Intelligence?

They zig when the should be sagging
and sag when they should be zigging

sometimes the story is, we're pulling out of Iraq as quickly as possible
then sometimes the story is we're building military installation in Iraq

Some come back from Iraq when news everything is going smoothly
Some come back from Iraq and say that things couldn't be worse.

It appear everything is privatized these days, 'eh?
We do know that the White House is privatized
Maybe our Intelligence is privatized and Halliburton is doing the privatizing?

"Private enterprise is a free military enterprise these days"
A Three Ring Circus it is for sure,
and we know the clowns are running the show.

[htuttle]

9. That prison break was damned embarrassing, eh?

I've been trying to remember the last time that one of our military prisons was 'liberated', and I'm coming up empty.

I don't even think the Viet Cong managed to do that to any South Vietnamese prisons until long after US troops were gone.

I'm pretty sure it never happened before Viet Nam, so it's possible that this was the first time it ever happened to the US military.