4 Killed in Baghdad Bombing
Turks attack Kurds inside Iraq Again
PM Nuri al-Maliki called for widened political participation. He appears to be working on a compromise that might bring the parties of Iyad Allawi and Tariq al-Hashimi/ Adnan Dulaimi back into his government.
Ammar al-Hakim, called on the Iraqi Accord Front and the National Iraqi List to rejoin the al-Maliki government, giving al-Maliki some support.
The USG Open Source Center translates a Kurdish television report that confirms that Turkey again shelled northern Iraq. Both Turkey and the Kurds are close US allies, so their feuding puts Washington in a difficult situation.
"Turkey shells Iraqi Kurdistan Region border areas - Kurdish TV
Kurdistan Satellite TV
Friday, January 11, 2008 . . .
Document Type: OSC Translated Text
Turkey shells Iraqi Kurdistan Region border areas - Kurdish TV
Text of report by Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) satellite TV on 11 January
The correspondent of Kurdistan Satellite TV in Al-Amadiyah (Administrative District, Duhok Governorate) has said that the Turkish army has shelled the Valley of Rashava, Zilyee, Seri, Naheliya area and Nerway in Deraluk region of Al-Amadiyah this morning. He added that the shelling was continuing even while preparing the report.
(Description of Source: Salah-al-Din Kurdistan Satellite TV in Sorani Kurdish -- Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) satellite TV)"
Reuters reports other political violence for Friday in Iraq:
BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomb blew up outside a bakery in New Baghdad district in eastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding eight others, police said. [Al-Hayat is reporting that the bombing killed 4.]
BAGHDAD - Three bodies were found dumped across Baghdad on Friday, police said.
MAHMUDIYA - A roadside bomb wounded three policemen when it hit their patrol in Mahmudiya, 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Iraqi soldiers killed nine gunmen and arrested 59 others during the past 24 hours across Iraq, the Defence Ministry said.
BAGHDAD - U.S. forces killed two gunmen and detained 11 others during operations on Thursday and Friday in central and northern Iraq, the U.S. military said. (Editing by Robert Woodward)"
Mcclatchy adds: "Diyala - Friday morning , a joint forces ( American army , Iraqi army and Sahwa ( Awakening council) finishing their operation in Muqdadiya ( 36 km north east of Baquba ) in six of its villages clearing the area from Al-Qaeda arresting 20 ( ten of them are wanted while the others are suspected) and killing ten others."
Jamie Gumbrecht of McClatchy reports that the US Air Force just dropped 40,000 pounds of munitions on Arab Jubour, an area US commanders had been saying had been secured by an Awakening Council.
Sunni Arab guerrillas melted away in the face of American units in Diyala valley east of Baghdad.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/12/2008 12:30:00 AM
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Secretary of Defense Robert Gates seems quite proud of the successful bombing of Arab Jabour in the press conference statement shown on "Democracy Now" -
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/11/headlines#3
I presume that this will be the new model for how to defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq now that we are beginning to draw down the troops of the McCain/Petraeus "surge."
Maliki has been calling on the Sunnis and Sadrists to rejoin the government all along, but this time it is quite different.
There is a major realignment in the offing: Arabs vs Kurds. The Arabs' aims are:
1) Annulment the Kirkuk poll to decide on joining Kurdistan. There is a loophole left by Khalilzad. The Constitution gave the end of 2007 as a deadline, so article 140 is no longer valid.
2) Cancelling the Kurdish oil contracts, and limiting production sharing in the new law to very difficult and specualtive sites only -- virtually nothing.
3) Demanding an exit date for the American troops.
4) Ending the state of Kurdish blackmail of the government which has become at their mercy.
The Kurds have their own military; parliament; national budget; a kind of parliament; and all the trappings of an independent state. So they may decide to pull out of the federal government, with little impact in reality. But I would guess that Talabani, who is currently the president of all Iraq would not want that, and there will be a tussle between him and Barazani over that.
Am I reading this correctly? (Jamie Gumbrecht of McClatchy reports that the US Air Force just dropped 40,000 tons of munitions on Arab Jubour, an area US commanders had been saying had been secured by an Awakening Council.)
40,000 TONS OF MUNITIONS!!!
This is insane.
Jack in Bethesda
What struck me about the bombing (I'm speaking of the 48 bombs dropped in ten minutes south of Baghdad) was that supposedly it was based on intel provided by the Awakening Councils or whatever they are, the militia on our payroll, at least some of them formerly our 'enemies':
it makes me wonder how legit the targets are. Remember what happened when we paid people to catch Taliban and Al Queda in Afganistan, so we could put them in Guantanomo and 'intensively' interrogate them for vital information? What we got was, according to the reports I've seen, a bunch of people who had nothing to do with anything, and virtually no information, and a horrible world wide reputation for abuse and torture.
So I wonder what's really going on on the ground when we rely on "Awakening Councils" for bombing intel.
Errata: It's 40,000 pounds and not 40,000 tons. 40,000 pounds is about 80 500 pound bombs, which is enough to flatten about a fifth of a square mile.
(First sentence of the McClatchy article: "The U.S. military dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives southeast of Baghdad on Thursday in a series of airstrikes that underscored the tenuousness of U.S. progress against Islamic extremists in Iraq.")
Heres an interesting update on the latest Strait of Hormuz incident. The Navy Times says a well-known "heckler" may have been involved.
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/01/navy_hormuz_iran_radio_080111/
Was the Turkish attack on Kurds in Iraq reported anywhere on TeeVee here?
Or is it simply so blase that the headline quickly lost its sensationalism and is par for the course, like Palestinians getting shot by IDF in Gaza etc?
Thanks for the correct re: pounds and tons. It was late.
Dropping 80 bombs in 10 minutes is no worse than 80 bombs over a long period, from the civilian point of view.
Militarily, concentrating the hits is far more effective due to the added surprise element, and the demoralizing of the enemy. The WW-I slow and methodical 'trench warfare' strategy the Americans have used is inferior and unsuited to this conflict.
The Iraqi Awakening method has been to hit very hard very quickly over a large area but really focused on real targets, and it works. The Americans would go through few blocks of homes of ordinary people at a time, invading their privacy and scaring them, with a negative net result. Their 'sweeps' often miss the real target and nets innocent people who panicked or got angry.
When the Nazis bombed Rotterdam this way in 1940, and Guernica in 1936, it was cosidered an outrage.
Now when the Americans do such things - and routinely - we're supposed to "support our troops."
personally, i find the idea of carpet bombing a neighborhood or village into rubble, subsequently rolling an armored column into town ~ then declaring, "Victory!" or by any stretch of the imagination, "a success" ~ as bizarre : making some place un-inhabitable defeats The Mission of occupation, n'est-ce pas?
Further, how any news media could report this kind of "news from the front" without questioning the utility, i daresay ~ the sanity of such a tactic ~ which seems to depict the all -too- apparent desperation of de facto surrounded American forces to do something, anything, other than remain stuck, in defensive posture; The only metrics we (and our troops) now see being: (1) the number of their attacks against us; and, (2) the godawful drip, drip, drip KIA/WIA count of our troops' attrition rate, month after ~$12 billion bloody USD month.
personally, i interpret this kind of "operation" as symptomatic of an Occupation Army now lacking any semblance of strategic sense, whatsoever ~ perhaps unraveled to such an extent that local, mid-level commanders are now engaging their armed forces in what is, for all intents and purposes ~ non-productive "busy work" to maintain morale and discipline within their ranks (a la The Bridge on the River Kwai)...
...for the only alternative is (apparently, in the words of one British commander, "to dress up like Robo-Cops, ride into town and shoot people") those dreaded, relentless supply-line convoy duties ~ where our once fine assault troops are reduced to nothing more than moving targets security guards, betting their lives and limbs in a hideous statistical game of "is my number up this time?" or, the even more dreaded kick-down-the-door, house to house sniper & booby-trapped battle HELL, knowing all the while that nobody knows who the hell 'the enemy' is anymore, anyway ~ besides, they left yesterday ~ and all we're doing is terrifying their women and children; They, trying desperately to find food, stay warm, alive ~ god willing: one more day.
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