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[SyriaComment.com] US Establishes First Base on Syrian-Iraq Border: John Hendren of the LA Times reports that "The U.S. military hopes its first long-term presence near Iraq's border with Syria will help stem the flow of suicide bombers." The Base is at Rawah north of the Euphrates River along the strategic route that connects the Syrian border to roads leading north toward Mosul and southeast to Baghdad. It is high time the US and Iraq forces developed a permanent presence near the border.
[Chrenkoff] Good news from Iraq, part 32: also continues to be trained: "Almost 200 cadets became full-fledged Iraqi police officers in a graduation ceremony July 23 - the last such class to be trained by Task Force Liberty. The new officers spent over two weeks at the 4th Iraqi Army Training Academy here and learned a variety of things, to include hand-to-hand combat, urban tactics, arrest procedures, search techniques, traffic control points, in addition to rifle and pistol training." Says Cadet Unis Hamid Salman Almujami: "I want security for Iraq, for my family, my children’s family, and even visitors from outside Iraq, because this is a free country...
[Billroggio.com] The Fourth Rail: The Breaks: Two years of killing Iraqis has shamed an increasing number of Arabs into admitting that this is an Arab problem, not the fault of the United States (who, in the most popular delusion, should have waved a magic wand and made all problems in Iraq disappear.) Even the Sunni Arab media are in awe of the Iraqi Shia and Kurds, for not slaughtering large numbers of Sunni Arabs in response to the terrorism, or simply as revenge for centuries of torment at the hands of Sunni Arabs.
[Meneltarma] Unconfirmed rumor: DUBAI, January 4 (Itar-Tass) - Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, whom the US occupation authorities declared to be the "target number one" in Iraq, has been arrested in the city of Baakuba, the Emirate newspaper al-Bayane reported on Tuesday referring to Kurdish sources. Al-Zarqawi, leader of the terrorist group Al-Tawhid Wa'al-Jihad, was recently appointed the director of the Al-Qaeda organization in Iraq.
[Iraqnow.blogspot.com] COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us: The clearest example of “quickly and quietly” in Krepinevich is when he says that, oil-spot strategy notwithstanding, US and Iraqi armed forces should also continue with sweeps beyond secured territory to keep insurgents from enjoying the leisure to organize themselves. Since his thesis statement is that “Winning will require a new approach to counterinsurgency, one that focuses on providing security to Iraqis rather than hunting down insurgents,” and he argues that hunting down insurgents has been distracting the US from providing loyalty-winning development to secured areas, this seems like a cheat.
[Counterterror.typepad.com] The Counterterrorism Blog: June 20, 2005 - June 26, 2005: three Islamic militant factions in Iraq--including the Islamic Army of Iraq (IAI), the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, and the Mujahideen Army--have issued a purported statement announcing the start of joint military operations "hand in hand to attack the infidels and their assistants with an iron fist until we break the infidels... so that [we] can teach the infidels and their assistants that continuing their war will only make us stronger, more harmonious, and more unified."
[Matrixmasters.com] America's War on Iraq: I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive.
[Vikingphoenix.com] Iraq War Blog - Iraqi Freedom: the photocopy of Volume I of the Jihad Encyclopedia was found in a training center operated by Ansar al-Islam — Kurdish officials and Ansar al-Islam defectors have said that Ansar al-Islam leaders met with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001.
Reflected tags on Technorati: Blog, Iraq, Iraq Reviews