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85 Militants Killed in U.S. Raid in Iraq

45 minutes ago Top Stories - AP


By QASIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces raided a suspected guerrilla training camp and killed 85 fighters, the single biggest one-day death toll for militants in months and the latest in a series of blows to the insurgency, Iraqi officials said Wednesday.


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Reuters
Slideshow: Iraq

U.S., Iraqi Forces Kill 80 Rebels in Raid
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Latest headlines:
· Iraq Says 85 Militants Killed at Rebel Base
Reuters - 6 minutes ago
· 85 Militants Killed in U.S. Raid in Iraq
AP - 45 minutes ago
· Iraqi forces say 80 insurgents killed in raid on training camp
AFP - 2 hours, 52 minutes ago
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Politicians helping shape a postelection government expected within days said negotiators are considering a Sunni Arab as defense minister in a move aimed at bringing them into the political process — and perhaps deflate the insurgency they lead.


The U.S. military announced late Tuesday that its air and ground forces backed Iraqi commandos during a noontime raid on the suspected training camp near Lake Tharthar in central Iraq (news - web sites). Seven commandos died in fighting, the U.S. military said. It did not give a death toll for the militants.


Iraqi officials said Wednesday 85 insurgents died in the clash — the largest number killed in a single battle since the U.S. Marine-led November attack on the former militant stronghold of Fallujah left more than 1,000 dead. On Sunday, U.S. forces killed 26 attackers after an ambush south of Baghdad.


Also Wednesday, a mortar shell or rocket struck an elementary school in western Baghdad, killing at least one child and injuring three others, according to a police official who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution by attackers.


Children fled the schoolhouse, abandoning backpacks and books on desks littered with glass shards. One teacher wept outside as parents rushed to the scene.


Hours later, a policeman trying to defuse a roadside bomb in Baghdad died and another officer was wounded when the device exploded, police Capt. Talib Thamir said.


On the political front, Abbas Hassan Mousa al-Bayati, a top member of the United Iraqi Alliance, said negotiators from his Shiite-dominated bloc and a Kurdish coalition could tap a Sunni Arab to head the ministry of defense, which oversees the Iraqi army battling the insurgency.


"The Defense Ministry will go to a Sunni Arab because we do not want Arab Sunnis to feel that they are marginalized," al-Bayati told The Associated Press. "They will be given one of the four major posts because we want them to feel that they are part of the political formula."


Sunni Arabs, dominant under ousted dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), largely stayed away from the Jan. 30 balloting amid calls for them to boycott and threats against voters by the Sunni-led insurgency.


Political leaders have in the past announced plans on filling Cabinet positions, only to reverse themselves later.


Al-Bayati said his group and the Kurdish coalition, which together won 215 seats in the new 275-seat National Assembly, were expected to name a president Saturday, the next step toward forming a new government. Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani is expected to fill the post.


Fuad Masoum, a member of the Kurdish negotiating team, said no definitive decisions on the 32-member Cabinet have been made. He declined to confirm that a Sunni Arab will be named defense minister but said that was one option under consideration.


Handing the post to a Sunni Arab could help undermine support for the insurgency, while assuaging Sunni fears that the Shiites will dominate all aspect's of the country's upcoming government.


The army chief of staff could be a Shiite, al-Bayati said.


He added that his bloc was pressing for a Shiite to head the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police — Iraq's other main security force — and that a Kurd could become foreign minister.


Amid the political wrangling, top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani had been scheduled to talk with Talabani on Wednesday. But the meeting was canceled due to "security concerns," said Meithemn Faisal, an official from al-Sistani's office.





Kurds are thought to number between 15 percent and 20 percent of Iraq's 25 million people, with Sunni Arabs roughly equivalent. Shiite Arabs make up 60 percent of the population.





http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...e_mi_ea/iraq_2

__________________
"They want to test our feelings.They want to know whether Muslims are extremists or not. Death to them and their newspapers."

Protester

dalem

Is it just me, or are the body counts going up in our favor?

If true, that tells me that we're using more firepower, and if that's true, might that be because we are more confident about who are Bad Guys and who are Good guys? And if that's true doesn't it lend weight to the idea that the insurgents/terrorists are losing what popular support they once had?

A lot of "if"s, I know.

-dale

troung

Well hopefully the BC was done Korean style, but good news either way...

Bluesman

We're getting better intel.

And that's all I want to say 'bout DAT.

Hey, y'all 'member when I said that the tide could be said to have definitely turned when the local big shots and village poobahs were willing to peach on the foreign fighters and to narc on the bad apples, the jihadis, the dead-ender Ba'athists? Just wonderin' if y'all 'member that...

Terror has a finite reach. If the people aren't afraid of you enough to knuckle under...you've had it. If they LAUGH at you for kidnapping dolls, or for claiming to have shot down airplanes that really just crashed, or you promised 'em that if they did something you'd kill 'em for, and they LIVED...it's not cool to join up with a clown act in a circus, if it'll just get you killed.

The young men in Iraq now see that being a bad-ass in the moodje won't get you any street cred or respect. It'll get you scorn, ridicule and KILLED. You want to be looked up to as a man, as a warrior? Try to get on with the police or Iraqi commandos, bubba, because they don't take half-steppers, and they're not the Keystone Kops that drop their guns and run away anymore.

The terrorists are now like the Mafia in a decent, non-Italian neighborhood in the heartland of America: not respected, not feared, and unable to thumb their nose at the law, like in the old days back in the neighborhood. They have to hide who they are and what they do from their neighbors.

BUT...that doesn't mean they're all done, and it doesn't mean we can forget about 'em. Just like the Mafia HERE, they will probably always be THERE.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

dalem

Excellent. I like it when a plan comes together.

-dale

smilingassassin

I don't know how many times these insurgents can get the short end of the stick and still fail to see that they are dead eders. They should have gotten the point in their last ambush planned for U.S. forces that turned sour for the "bad guys", they should be getting the point when "everyday" shop merchants shoot back at em, yet even after this recent Iraqi led operation I'm sure we will see more meatheads thining the resessive gene pool and unfortunately taking decent people with them.