Those silly Iraqis

[Mavdog]

I mean if they know where the insurgents are (as he says he does), why the heck haven't they gone after them?
Is the police training being led by Maxwell Smart?
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Iraqi Police Chief Threatens Militant Crackdown

Wed Feb 2,10:09 AM ET

By Maher al-Thanoon

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - The chief of police in the Iraqi city of Mosul has given insurgents two weeks to give up their weapons or face a crackdown by security forces emboldened after the election.

But al Qaeda militants in Iraq (news - web sites) issued a new threat to assassinate the northern city's governor.

"Hand over your weapons or we will come and get you," police chief Brigadier Mohammed Ahmed al-Jabouri said in a television address on Tuesday.

The ultimatum came two days after Iraq held successful national elections despite insurgent threats.

Jabouri said his message, aired on a provincial TV channel, was particularly aimed at insurgents hiding in towns and villages around Mosul, Iraq's third largest city.

Al Qaeda Organization in Iraq released a new video on a militant Web site vowing to assassinate Mosul's governor for denouncing the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as unIslamic.

The video showed three masked gunmen, sitting in front of a black banner, one of them reading the statement.

Jabouri said his men knew where the insurgents were and were not afraid to come after them. He said he was giving them until Feb. 15 to hand in their weapons but gave no details about how they should do this.

On Monday, police paraded seven suspected insurgents on the same TV channel after they were detained in a series of election-day raids. They are believed to be members of Zarqawi's group.

Jabouri's tough talk is an abrupt turnaround for the Mosul police -- two months ago virtually the entire police force deserted after rebels launched an offensive against them. Dozens of police stations were overrun, looted and then destroyed.

The chief of police was fired and Jabouri appointed shortly afterwards. Until Tuesday's TV spot, he had kept a low profile.

Mosul has been a focal point of insurgent activity over the past few months -- a suicide bomber killed more than 20 people in an attack on a U.S. base in December -- and there were fears of a militant onslaught on election day.

But in the event, voting went much better than expected and there were few incidents, U.S. military officers said. The degree of success appears to have bolstered local security chiefs' confidence and they are keen to build on the momentum.

In Mosul, as in the rest of Iraq, a huge security operation was put in place on election day, with an estimated 250,000 Iraqi, U.S. and other foreign troops on the streets. Civilian cars were banned, a curfew imposed and borders closed.

Iraq's interior minister said the unprecedented measures were successful in keeping election day relatively calm, even though insurgents still managed to kill at least 35 people in a series of suicide bomb and mortar attacks countrywide.

In raids throughout the country on the day, more than 200 suspected insurgents were detained, the interior minister said

[FishForLunch]

I guess poiliticans are same anywhere in the world, they are full of hot air.

[FishForLunch]

Here is another story about those silly Iraqis
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New techniques of the "resistance".
I strongly believe that terrorists are cowards but the cowardice you’re going to see in this story is just exceptional.
The suicide attack that was performed on an election center in one of Baghdad's districts (Baghdad Al-Jadeedah) last Sunday was performed using a kidnapped "Down Syndrome" patient.
Eye witnesses said (and I'm quoting one of my colleagues; a dentist who lives there) "the poor victim was so scared when ordered to walk to the searching point and began to walk back to the terrorists. In response the criminals pressed the button and blew up the poor victim almost half way between their position and the voting center's entrance".

I couldn't believe the news until I met another guy from that neighborhood who knows the family of the victim. The guy was reported missing 5 days prior to elections' day and the family were distributing posters that specified his descriptions and asking anyone who finds him to contact them.

When a relative of mine (who has a mental handicap due to an Rh conflict at birth) told me a month ago that a group of men in a car tried to kidnap him as he was standing in front of the institution he periodically visits to get medicine and support waiting for his brother; I thought that he was imagining the whole story.
He said that they tried to force him into the car telling him not to be afraid and that they're from the "mujahideen and not going to hurt him". My relative, despite his handicap was moved by his survival instinct and managed to run away.
After I heard the other story, I began to connect between the two stories and to consider my cousin's story as a true one that uncovered a new miserable war technique that can come only from the sickest minds.

What a huge difference there is between those who kidnap and use the mentally handicapped to perform their murders in cold blood and between the brave Iraqis who sacrificed their lives to protect their brethren. one story that is famous now in Iraq is about one brave Iraqi (A'adel Nasir) who saw a suspicious looking guy walking around a polling center in (Al- Hurriyah) district and soon the brave man realized that the suspicious guy was trying to commit a suicide attack; he ran towards him, wrestled him and knocked him down causing the bomb carried by the terrorist to explode, sacrificing his own life and saving the lives of the people standing in line at the gate of the voting center. It turned out later that the terrorist carried a Sudanese id.
Now, the school that hosted the voting center on the 30th carries the name of A'adel Nasir, as the Iraqi minister of education announced today.

The pathetic terrorists are breaking one world record after another in cowardice and insanity and this tells how bankrupt they're getting.

[FishForLunch]

More silly Iraqi stories
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Iraqi policeman gives his life to protect young democracy
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
BAGHDAD — Policemen guarding a polling station in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood Sunday recognized the suicide bomber immediately. The young man was wearing Chinese-made high-top tennis shoes, a leather jacket and a red head scarf — the same kind of clothes as worn by an attacker at another site that same day.

Abdul Amir al-Shuwayli, 29, appears in a photo displayed at his funeral. He died Sunday when he thwarted a suicide bomb attack.


Fourteen-year police veteran Abdul Amir al-Shuwayli, 29, acted without hesitation.

The bomber was steps away from a line of voters heading into Al-Zahour Primary School when Shuwayli moved toward him, police Capt. Firaz Mohammed Ali said. According to Ali, Shuwayli yelled, "Let me save the people. Let me save my friends."

Shuwayli threw his arms around the bomber and drove him backward about 50 feet into an intersection. The rush seemed to catch the suicide attacker by surprise. The bomber had a hand grenade but failed to throw it. A second or two passed before he detonated an explosive belt, police Lt. Col. Kadham Abbas said.

The blast shredded Shuwayli, whose body took the brunt of the explosion. It also tore the bomber apart, leaving only his face intact. Shrapnel injured three other officers and perforated walls around the intersection. Windows in nearby homes shattered.

Voters continued to line up.

"Suicide bombers are not the only ones willing to give up their lives," said Ali, one of Shuwayli's commanders. "We have some people who are ready to die as well."

On Monday, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi eulogized Shuwayli in televised remarks and declared him a young democracy's first champion. "The martyr gave his life for his country," Allawi said. "Abdul Amir is a real hero of our nation."

At the policeman's funeral Tuesday, held under a bright red tent on a street outside the home he shared with his four brothers and three sisters in southern Baghdad, family members said it was the kind of sacrifice they had long dreaded.

"We were expecting him to be killed," Shuwayli's younger sister, Amir, said softly. She wore a black head scarf and dress, her face a mask of sorrow.

She said her brother was a news junkie who followed every detail of Iraq's struggle against the militants who have killed so many civilians and police. He hated the insurgency, she said.

"He was ready to give of himself to others," Amir said as she sat in her brother's bedroom. "We knew that about him."

The family has left the room as he kept it. Abdul Amir's jacket and shirt hang neatly from a peg on his bureau. His favorite incense burns, and his water pipe sits at the foot of his bed.

Shuwayli, a Shiite Arab, had decorated the walls with religious imagery and a family tree for the prophet Mohammed.

The third of eight adult children, Abdul Amir was a single man, following an Iraqi tradition of waiting for his sisters to marry before choosing a wife. As a police officer, he earned $235 a month.

As roast lamb and rice were served under the funeral tent, and family and tribal members gathered to mourn, Iraqi police convoys kept driving up to the house so fellow officers could pay their respects.

The family's neighborhood is rife with insurgents, and the convoys would not linger. Officers fired rifles into the air to disperse traffic so the police vehicles could leave quickly before becoming targets.

"He hated the insurgents," Amir said of her brother as the truckloads of police wheeled into the neighborhood. "His main interest was in fighting them."

Police Capt. Ali, interviewed at the Mansour police headquarters where Shuwayli was stationed, said he visited the blast site minutes after the explosion Sunday. He was surveying the scene of carnage when he saw something he found remarkable.

Residents began coming out of their homes and lining up in even greater numbers after the explosion.

"They were stepping on the bits and pieces of the insurgent with their feet as they walked in to vote," Ali said.

[dude1394]

Didn't want to start a new thread but this one's pretty funny. Also Jack Kelly has become a must read.

jack kelly

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Jack Kelly: All but won
The media can't see that Iraq is close to secure

Sunday, February 27, 2005

Lt. Col. Jim Stockmoe, chief intelligence officer for the First Infantry Division, roared with laughter as he recalled the increasing missteps of the resistance in Iraq in an interview earlier this month with British journalist Toby Harnden, writing for The Spectator.

"There were three brothers down in Baghdad who had a mortar tube and were firing into the Green Zone," Stockmoe said. "They were storing the mortar rounds in the car engine compartment and the rounds got overheated. Two of these clowns dropped them in the tube and they exploded, blowing their legs off."

The surviving brother sought refuge in a nearby house, but the occupants "beat the crap out of him and turned him over to the Iraqi police," Stockmoe told Harnden, "It was like the movie 'Dumb and Dumber.' "

"The nine election day suicide bombers averaged about three victims each, a strike rate so bad that Allah might soon start rationing the virgins to show his displeasure," Harnden wrote.

Stockmoe has heard so many similar stories that he created an Iraqi version of the "Darwin Awards." Created in 1993 by a student at Stanford University, the Darwin awards commemorate those who "contribute to our gene pool by removing themselves from it in a really stupid way."
....

It will be some months before the news media recognize it, and a few months more before they acknowledge it, but the war in Iraq is all but won. The situation is roughly analogous to the battle of Iwo Jima, which took place 60 years ago this month. It took 35 days before the island was declared secure, but the outcome was clear after day five, with the capture of Mt. Suribachi.

Proof of this was provided by Sen. Hillary Clinton. Iraq is functioning quite well, she said in a press conference in Baghdad Feb. 19. The recent rash of suicide attacks is a sign the insurgency is failing, she said.

"When politicians like [Clinton] start flocking to Iraq to bask in the light of its success, then you know that the corner has been turned," a reader of his blog wrote to Bay.
....
Those who get their news from the "mainstream" media are surprised by developments in Iraq, as they were surprised by our swift victory in Afghanistan, the sudden fall of Saddam Hussein, the success of the Afghan election and the success of the Iraqi election.

Journalists demand accountability from political leaders for "quagmires" which exist chiefly in the imagination of journalists. But when will journalists be held to account for getting every major development in the war on terror wrong?