Shek

From the title, I guess the Guardian wants the bad guys to win. Also, the author seems to gloss over the fact that 55 Iraqi citizens called the police to report on the insurgents and their whereabouts. It doesn't sound like a whole of popular support for the insurgents.

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Iraq insurgents snatch victory from defeat
Massive police station assault alarms locals despite retreat

Rory Carroll in Baghdad
Friday June 24, 2005

Guardian

Dawn had yet to break and Baghdad's biggest police station, like the rest of the city, was quiet. About 80 officers dozed inside the fortress, leaving just a few sentries guarding the walls, razor wire and concrete barriers.
It started with mortars. A series of whooshes from north and south followed seconds later by explosions inside the perimeter. Figures emerged from the gloom and knelt in the middle of Hi al-Elam and Qatar Nada streets, pointing rocket launchers.

More figures materialised on rooftops overlooking the station to spray gunfire and lob grenades. Dozens of gunmen, guerrilla infantry, swarmed from houses and alleys. It was just after 5.30am and the station was surrounded.

The defenders heard engines rev and guessed what was next: suicide car bombers. Baghdad's biggest battle in months - and possibly the boldest yet by insurgents - had begun.

They struck on Monday but details of the assault on Baya'a, a vast police complex in the southern suburbs, emerged only yesterday when American and Iraqi officers opened the station to reporters. Bullet holes and debris testified to a synchronised and audacious strike by up to 100 rebels in what is supposed to be a locked-down capital.

The combination of heavy shelling, diversionary feints, infantry thrusts and suicide vehicles - the "precision-guided" equivalent of tanks - left parts of the district of Hi al-Elam a smoking ruin. If the objective was to overrun the station and free its prisoners the offensive failed. The attackers retreated after two hours, leaving dozens dead and captured. But if the objective was to send a message of power and determination it succeeded.

Residents said their confidence in the government and security forces was severely dented. A rash of graffiti has spread across the area: "We will be back." One taxi driver, a Shia who loathes the mostly Sunni Arab resistance, shrugged. "Yes, they will."

Republicans and Democrats, increasingly worried about Iraq, were due yesterday to quiz Pentagon top brass about a US exit strategy which hinges on building up Iraqi security forces.

On one level the assault at Baya'a was being presented as good news for Washington. "The enemy spent weeks, maybe months planning this," said Lt Col David Funk, a US infantry commander responsible for the area. "They failed spectacularly."

Not since April's attack on Abu Ghraib had there been such a concentration of force in the capital and yet the insurgents were repulsed thanks to the heroism of the beleaguered police officers, he said. But in Baghdad, the fact the insurgents had launched the attack at all was more indicative.

The sentries, pinned down by fire from the rooftops, did not respond when they heard the approaching suicide bombers. One vehicle exploded at the main entrance, killing at least four officers but without breaching the compound.

A nearby Iraqi army base was simultaneously targeted by mortars, gunfire and a suicide bomber, trapping the soldiers inside. Gunmen attacked the police station from four sides and came close to overrunning it. From bases in southern Baghdad US and Iraqi ground troops rushed for Baya'a only to confront insurgents at Derwesh Square and on the Doura highway tasked with slowing the relief force. At least three suicide car bombers had been held back for this purpose.

By 6.30am a police machine-gunner on the roof at Baya'a helped turn the tide, firing volleys which forced attackers to take cover and enabled his comrades to take better positions. Residents of the mixed Shia and Sunni neighbourhood made at least 55 phone calls informing the police of insurgent movements. Some fired on the attackers. An off-duty policeman was caught by insurgents, bundled into the boot of a car and later found beheaded.

The attackers retreated at around 7.30am. At least 10 were killed and 40 captured.

"It was our victory," said the Iraqi commander, Col Khaldoon. But residents, picking their way through rubble that had been homes and shops, disagreed.

Last month the government said Operation Lightning, a sweep of the capital by 40,000 troops, would choke the violence. A spate of explosions in the past two days killed more than 40 people but it was the spectacular but less bloody attack at Baya'a that showed the resistance was still in business.

Videos of the assault will almost certainly surface on the internet, the dramatic images of resistance intended to inspire would-be recruits and demoralise opponents.

Lt Col Funk worried about similarities to the Tet offensive, a 1968 push by North Vietnamese forces which failed militarily but whose scale and surprise gave the impression that the US and its allies were failing. "The media got Tet wrong and they're getting Iraq wrong. We are winning but people won't know that if all they are hearing about is death and violence."

Amled

I may be in error but I feel that there is a slight discrepency between the banner headline and this line in the text!

__________________
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. - Anais Nin

Confed999

Yeah, kinda hard to win durring your retreat/surrender/death.

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

dalem

That's some pretty skewed reporting. Reminds me of the BBC bastage crouched down beside the Palestinian "militant" while the "siege of Jeningrad" went on a couple of years ago.

I'm surprised the Beebster managed such a theatrical stage whisper into his recorder, what with the Palestinian's crank jammed so far down his Beeby throat.

That was when I cancelled my NPR support.

-dale

Bluesman

Yep, an absolutely stunning piece of idiocy on display here by the Beeb.

We get 'em to fight the way we WANT 'em to fight and then we predictably spank they asses...and somehow this is a demonstration of power by the insurgents.

The Japanese kamikazes must've portended the crushing defeat of the US carrier battle groups in '45 in the very same way, RIGHT, Beebs?

GREAT analysis, Rory. Ya big dork.

__________________
"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

Git yer boys to smoke some of these SOBs tonight, B-man. I got my dander up!

-dale

Bluesman

I'm on all night tonight, and I'll get the word out that the notorious dalem Dander is going through 40,000 feet in full afterburner.

That should just about make certain that we'll see the collapse of the insurgency by sun-up.

Seriously, I'm witcha. I've about had a bellyful of the attacks from in front, as well as the attacks from behind, and they feed on each other. Everytime we have a bad day, the usual suspects start talking about cutting out, or an 'exit strategy', or a withdrawl timetable, and the Bad Guys get a glimmer of hope that just a few more days in the field, a few more car bombs, and it's Saigon '75 all over again.

It seems so blatantly obvious to me that when I see the lefties enagaging in this sort of thing, I can actually believe they want us to LOSE THIS WAR.

It all comes down to willpower. We can't kill every last one of the terrorists, due to the way they hide. They can't defeat us militarily. So, it comes down to who can hang on longest. When anybody on our side (and I use that term reservedly, as I don't think the Left really IS on our side) gives them reason to think they're just around the corner from breaking our will, they are making this harder for us to win.

dalem

The extreme ones (currently being given voice by the MSM and DNC) really do.

-dale

Avenger

Yeah, except what they don't understand is that we're in this to win. The morons attacked our homeland and killed our innocent citizens, which was their last, fatal mistake. I'm a Democrat, though very much a centrist, and I'm behind our war effort 100%. I say smoke their fudging arses.

Bluesman

I appreciate the backing, my man. Hang tough and give us a reasonable amount of time, and we'll bring home the pelt for you, I promise. But the quitters...we've only been at this for two years, and even with all the progress that's been made, all they can see is the cost, never the benefit.

We'll win, if we're not sold out by the weak-kneed gutless wonders before we can lock it up.

Bluesman

I must really be lucky. I've been backed up by a well-written editorial the day after I posted on some subject or another three times in the last week.

Here's another one:

I wish I could tell what the next day's lottery numbers are going to be, too. But it's nice to have my points buttressed by writers so much more eloquent myself.

Shek

I learned two interesting factoids today. Quagmire originated in a piece written by a NYT journalist many moons agree describing President Kennedy's Vietnam policy ("Quagmire" as a military metaphor began with the book "The Making of a Quagmire" — New York Times reporter David Halberstam's highly critical account of President Kennedy's early Vietnam policy. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,160854,00.html). Kind of a "pot, this is kettle, your black" scenario. Also, of the 535 Congressional members, 265 have visited Vietnam, to include, I believe, 65 Senators. Among the Senate Armed Services Committee, only three have not visited - Sen Byrd (dude's like 95 years old, I'll give him a pass due to health reasons, Sen Dole (she already has plans to visit) and Sen Kennedy (who has no current plans to visit Iraq). So, the most vocal defeatist in the Senate has never stepped foot in Iraq.

Anon

"Git yer boys to smoke some of these SOBs tonight, B-man. I got my dander up!"

I had some of the Hog crew at my site 'get some' for me during the initial Iraqi invasion.

Check out the writing on the tips of these 2.75" rockets mounted on an A-10.

"S N I P E R"

The rockets in question were fired at Iraqi ground troops a couple hours after this pic was taken. The pilot reported back to my bud on the scene, "Tell snipe he got some".

Attached Images

A10 snipeRT.jpg (343.9 KB, 72 views)

Confed999

Too cool...