Innovative Tactics Scoring Against Insurgents North of Baghdad

[steve2470]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBT5OG2O0E.html


BAQOUBA, Iraq (AP) - When U.S. civilian authorities were rooting out Saddam Hussein loyalists, Col. Dana J.H. Pittard recruited 41 of them as advisers and encouraged them to stay in contact with the very insurgents who were fighting his men.

Discovering that a respected Muslim cleric had been in prison for 10 months, Pittard and a small contingent helicoptered 300 miles to the lockup in full battle gear, and confronted military police guards, demanding that they free him. "We made it very clear we wouldn't leave without him," Pittard said. Otherwise, he added jokingly: "I think we would have kidnapped him."

Pittard, commander of an American infantry brigade in the once insurgency-rife province of Diyala, is outspoken and his tactics don't always follow the textbook. But he believes they have produced a "recipe for success" at Baghdad's vital northern gateway.

It includes everything from driving wedges between rebel factions to forbidding his troops to be rude to Arabs.
<snip>

[54anickel]

1. Good to see there are some people using their heads over there. This

is most likely against anything Rummy's been promoting. See, there is a bit of good news to report from over there, but Shrub's not gonna let this part of the story get spread:

snip>

A Harvard-educated military aide to former President Clinton, the colonel from El Paso, Texas, also believes that contrary to what some military analysts think, a conventional U.S. Army unit with the right training, tactics and mind-set can defeat the rebellion.

snip>

Pittard says his staff studies counterinsurgencies going back to the 1899-1902 Philippine Insurrection and holds regular "free-thinking" sessions during which anyone, regardless of rank, can come up with ideas.

Crucial, he says, were the nine months the brigade spent as peacekeepers in Kosovo not long before coming to Iraq in March.

"I think we got to know how important it was to relate to people, and how to separate the bad guys from the population," he says. "We have not scooped up people in a big net to find the rotten fish."

[Larkspur]

4. The best way to defeat the rebellion is to treat Iraqis as human beings

and help them, not our stooges, the exiles, to get their government working for them, not US corporations.

This colonel has the right idea, but by himself, those tactics won't stop the rebellion because Bush & Co. plan on continue looting Iraq.

[PoiBoy]

2. Pres. Kerry should put this Col. in charge..

..over there... good to see someone's doing it right...

[teryang]

3. Victory is right around the corner

The John Paul Vann of the Iraq war perhaps?