In Baqouba, in Diyala Province
A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-rigged truck into a U.S. military
outpost near Baqouba on Monday, killing nine soldiers and wounding 20
in one of the deadliest single ground attacks on U.S. forces since the
start of the war in Iraq, military officials said early today.
The claim of responsibility came quickly
An al-Qaeda-linked group posted a Web statement Tuesday claiming
responsibility for a suicide truck bombing that killed nine U.S.
paratroopers and wounded 20 in the worst attack on American ground
forces in Iraq in more than a year.
Al Qaeda is killing Americans and what does Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid want to do about it? Surrender.
"What a shame that after five-and-a-half years, so many lost lives and so much treasure depleted, President Bush hasn't budged from the shoot-first, talk-never style that one national magazine described as 'cowboy diplomacy' — that got us into this mess in the first place," Reid told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
So Harry wants to talk to al Qaeda instead of killing them. I wonder what he would have done after the attacks on September 11th 2001 had he been President?
"The president has dug in his
heels in this fight, but it doesn't have to be that way. ... Democrats
are reaching out to Republicans in Congress in hopes of bipartisan
cooperation. Only the president is the odd man out, and he is making
the task even harder by demanding absolute fidelity from his party,"
Reid continued.
Senator Reid says he wants "bipartisan cooperation"? But what's the middle ground between surrender and success? What he means is he wants both parties to agree to surrender. But while Senator Reid is accusing the President of being in a state of denial, and implying that Bush is the odd man out, support for Harry Reid is eroding.
Reid's home-town paper, The Las Vegas Review-Journal has scathing words for their Senator
Thus, the Democrats' careful
strategy requires them to appear to oppose Mr. Bush's ongoing
occupation of Iraq (to please their pacifist base), without taking any
concrete, "binding" actions to change the status quo.
Enter Sen. Reid, flopping around in big red shoes like Bozo the Clown.
A few weeks ago, Sen. Reid said
on a major weekend talk show that he favored a firm deadline for
withdrawal of all forces from Iraq. When members of his own caucus
said, "What? First we've heard," the senator went into damage control
mode -- the kind that starts out with staffers explaining, "What the
senator meant to say was ..."
But last week he was back at it.
As the Democratic House voted 215-199 Thursday to uphold legislation
ordering troops out of Iraq next year, Sen. Reid appeared in public to
declare the war in Iraq is "lost."
..."The partisans who launched
attacks on my comments are the same ones who continue to support a
failed strategy that hurts our troops," Sen. Reid said.
Ah. But it doesn't "hurt our
troops" to tell them -- and the enemy -- that our Marines and G.I.s are
risking their lives in a lost cause before they even suit up and start
their engines for this morning's patrol?
National Guard soldiers from his own home state are disagreeing with his assessment
"We're not losing this war."
That's how a Las Vegas Army
Reserve sergeant and Iraq war veteran who is heading out again for
Operation Iraqi Freedom reacted Friday to Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's
assessment that the war in Iraq is "lost."
"I don't believe the war is
lost," Sgt. George Turkovich, 24, said as he stood with other soldiers
near a shipping container that had been packed for their deployment to
Kuwait.
The soldiers leave today for a
six-week training stint at Camp Atterbury, Ind., before heading
overseas to run a camp in support of the war effort. It is uncertain if
their yearlong tour will take them to Iraq.
"Unfortunately, politics has
taken a huge role in this war affecting our rules of engagement," said
Turkovich, a 2001 Palo Verde High School graduate. "This is a guerrilla
war that we're fighting, and they're going to tie our hands.
"So it does make it a lot harder for us to fight the enemy, but we're not losing this war," he said.
For the most part, the 50-plus
soldiers from a detachment of the Army Reserve's 314th Combat Service
Support Battalion expressed similar views about Reid's war-is-lost
comments this week. They respectfully disagreed with the Democrat.
Respect is more than the Majoirty Leader, or the Democratic Leadership offers the Executive Branch on this issue.
Democrat-leaning commentor David Broder has even stronger words for Reid
Speaking on XM radio, Broder said that Reid should “learn to engage
mind before mouth opens,” and suggested that Reid’s Senate allies “have
a little caucus and decide how much further they want to carry Harry
Reid” and his “bumbling performance.”
Asked if Harry Reid is “an embarrassment,” Broder said, “I think
so,” since “every six weeks or so there’s another episode where he has
to apologize for the way in which he has bungled the Democratic case.”
While Investor's Business Daily titles their Op-Ed piece D for Defeatism
Over the past six weeks, as the Baghdad security plan has been
implemented, attacks on civilians in the city have been cut roughly in
half. Civilian casualties are down almost a quarter nationwide, with
attacks on civilians off 17%. Only in north-central Iraq did violence
grow.
But leave it to Reid to look on the dark side — just as terrorists
want all of us to do — and gloat about this month's al-Qaida suicide
bombing in Baghdad's Green Zone and the car bombs slaughtering over 100
innocents last week.
Al-Mada, considered the most professional of Iraq's newspapers, last
week said "we have to be happy about" the new U.S. security plan in
Baghdad because "It is not easy anymore to place bombs in cafes,
markets, near the universities and even in the hospitals."
The paper pointed out that "scores of al-Qaida chiefs have been
arrested," fleeing families have returned and mosques reopened. "And,"
the newspaper added, "it especially made the (Iraqi) politicians
understand that they should not expect a failure of the present
government to boost their own careers."
A U.S. Army dispatch last week from the eastern city of Baqouba provided a localized example of the progress.
"We've pushed al-Qaida out of here," wrote Sgt. Matthew Benzshawel
after a three-day clearing operation earlier this month in the Buhriz
neighborhood, an al-Qaida stronghold. Forces detained a dozen
terrorists and destroyed more than 20 weapons cache....
In aiding and comforting the enemy in wartime, Reid has betrayed the
office he holds, shamed the Nevadans he represents and made the
Democratic Party he leads synonymous with surrender. There is one way
he can repair the damage he's done to the nation: step down.
Going after al Qaeda is supposed to be what Senator Reid thinks we should be doing and, in his state of denial, claims we are not doing.
Meanwhile, in Baqouba, US soldiers, with their Iraqi counterparts, continue to take ground from al Qaeda.
Soldiers with 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment continued their
systematic attack on terrorist forces in Baqouba with another clearing
operation in the city, April 10.
In this latest effort, Soldiers
of 5-20 Inf. Regt., 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry
Division, from Fort Lewis, Wash., spent three days clearing the
neighborhood of Buhriz, described by Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Bruce
Antonia as “al-Qaida’s battleground.”
When the Stryker battalion
first arrived in Baqouba in March, it encountered resistance from the
neighborhood’s insurgents in the form of roadside bombs, rocket
propelled grenade fire and small arms fire.
During the mission,
Soldiers operating alongside Iraqi security forces conducted
house-to-house searches for terrorists and weapon caches. They learned
from residents that many terrorists had fled Buhriz in the face of the
advancing battalion.
“We’ve pushed al-Qaida out of here,” said
Sgt. Matthew Benzshawel, with 2nd Platoon, Company A. “We are a pretty
lethal force. When (insurgents) see a battalion worth of Strykers
coming, (they) usually move out.”
Nonetheless, the battalion
reported that coalition forces detained about a dozen suspected
insurgents, including one man described by the unit as a “high-level”
terrorist.
The battalion also reported that it found and
destroyed more than 20 small weapon caches, which included a Dishka
machine gun, grenades, mortar rounds, rocket propelled grenade rounds,
sniper rifles, AK-47’s and ammunition.
Soldiers from the
battalion say they have managed to make the area safer for the local
people with their continuous efforts against al-Qaida in Iraq.
“We’ve denied them the terrain,” said 1st Lt. James Dobis, 2nd Platoon
leader, Company A. “They have not been fighting with anybody, they have
not attacked us … they have not attacked any civilians.”
The
assault into Buhriz served as a catalyst to secure a foothold in the
area. Iraqi security forces, along with Soldiers from Troop B, 1st
Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, which is attached to 5-20 Inf. Regt.,
plan to maintain a permanent presence within the neighborhood by
collocating troops at an Iraqi police station in Buhriz and continuing
to patrol the area.
Battalion leaders plan to continue their assault on al-Qaida in and around Baqouba.
“We
have taken their battleground,” said Antonia, after the operation. “We
are going to keep the pressure on the enemy. That is the only way to
push them out.”
Not if Senator Reid and the Democrats have anything to say about it.
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