At least 10 killed in Qaeda clash in Baghdad: police

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Al Qaeda militants killed at least eight members of a neighborhood police patrol in southern Baghdad on Thursday after shooting two Iraqi soldiers and stealing their vehicle, police said.

The al Qaeda fighters drove up to the police patrol in the stolen Iraqi army vehicle before opening fire in an attack in the Hawr Rajab area of southern Baghdad's Doura district, a predominantly Sunni Arab area and al Qaeda stronghold.

An Interior Ministry official confirmed that eight "Awakening Council" members had been killed. He said three Iraqi soldiers were also killed and another three were wounded.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSRYA23395720071125?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

[Eugene]

1. But the generals keep telling us how Baghdad has improved.

Otherwise, I might suspect that Baghdad was falling back into the same old pattern.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

2. Remarkable how its just known it was AQ. If it's such a certainty than the attack should have been

anticipated and probably thwarted.

The intelligence gathering and instant identification of the attackers seems to occur immediately after one of these horrific incidents. MKJ

[AlertLurker]

3. Hasn't Al Qaeda been defeated in Iraq?

That's what I heard from the generals, anyway...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/14/AR2007101401245.html?hpid=topnews

"They are less and less coordinated, more and more fragmented," Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, said recently. Describing frayed support structures and supply lines, Odierno estimated that the group's capabilities have been "degraded" by 60 to 70 percent since the beginning of the year.

Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, head of the Joint Special Operations Command's operations in Iraq, is the chief promoter of a victory declaration and believes that AQI has been all but eliminated, the military intelligence official said.

:crazy:


Maybe they should have listened to General Sanchez:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/washington/12cnd-general.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1192471220-x+0c7W8Z4x8+qSip5dYRVw&oref=slogin

“After more than fours years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” Mr. Sanchez said, at a gathering here of military reporters and editors.


“There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

:o

[jimshoes]

4. What is an Al Qaeda stronghold

doing in southern Baghdad? We've been there for 5 years now. We won World War II in less time. Are they just blowing smoke up our asses when they say things are really better over there now? How long after a Dem President is sworn in next January will the Iraq war turn into a failed policy? My guess is about 5 minutes.