Tens of militants reported killed in Iraq raid

[maddezmom]

BAGHDAD, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Iraqi troops supported by U.S. aircraft killed "tens" of militants at a base just north of Baghdad early on Saturday, the Interior Ministry said.

Ministry spokesman Brigadier Abdul-Kareem Khalaf said a large Iraqi force clashed with insurgents at the base in a rural area of Mashahda at dawn. U.S. air strikes destroyed the base.

"Tens of people were killed in the operation ... We wiped out their base," Khalaf said.

Khalaf said Interior Ministry forces captured Saad Akram Khalifa, a leader of the Islamic Army in Iraq, one of Iraq's largest Sunni insurgent groups. The majority of its fighters are believed to be former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

more:http://mobile.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KHA438384.htm

and the obvious question is how many civilians?

[Ken Burch]

1. "Tens"?

This would be out of a base of several hundred THOUSAND insurgents?

[Teaser]

2. The Iraqi government is always so scrupulously honest

when reporting these numbers. I'm sure it's true.

[ohio2007]

3. ...."believed to be former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party. "....

Guess it's a case of;
Turn out the lights,

the party's over.

[jimshoes]

4. Gee, how many tens?

What ever happened to dozens? Are we going to be doing body counts again? Couldn't they be a little more vague? I mean really, why not just say 29 or 37. And how do you define militant,.... ? Is someone making a fist or holding up their shoe considered a militant. And lastly, just WTF are we trying to accomplish by continuing mass killings. It's like trying to have a picnic on top of an ant hill. You can brush away ants till you're blue in the face. But no matter what you do you are not going to convince the ants to change their nature and leave you alone.

[maddezmom]

5. not sure about this specific incident, but Maliki is reporting over 400 in the last ten days

Iraqi PM says some 400 militants killed in crackdown
http://mobile.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PAR447621.htm

[global1]

6. Guess They Want Us To Think Metric - Define Militant As An Iraqi That .....

complains they have no electricity or clean water and their are these U.S. occupiers running around with guns in my neighborhood. Looks like what we are trying to accomplish is to illustrate to all of us back here that want to bring the troops home and stop this war - that the 'surge' is working. Come on people - give it a chance. Don't want to have to leave the country in worse shape than it was then when we got there or we don't want to have to fight these people here - do we? (sarcasm)

[leftyladyfrommo]

7. Iraqi Govt. always uses the number 400.

It will turn out that some Iraqi civilian families were killed by mistake.

[acmavm]

8. Yeah, the math on this one has me confused too.