Top Targets Fled Before U.S. Push, Commander Says

[Hissyspit]

Source: New York Times

Top Targets Fled Before U.S. Push, Commander Says

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: June 23, 2007
BAGHDAD, June 22 — The operational commander of troops battling to drive fighters with Al Qaeda from Baquba said Friday that 80 percent of the top Qaeda leaders in the city fled before the American-led offensive began earlier this week. He compared their flight with the escape of Qaeda leaders from Falluja ahead of an American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004.

In an otherwise upbeat assessment, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, told reporters that leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia had been alerted to the Baquba offensive by widespread public discussion of the American plan to clear the city before the attack began. He portrayed the Qaeda leaders’ escape as cowardice, saying that “when the fight comes, they leave,” abandoning “midlevel” Qaeda leaders and fighters to face the might of American troops — just, he said, as they did in Falluja.

Some American officers in Baquba have placed blame for the Qaeda leaders’ flight on public remarks about the offensive in the days before it began by top American commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, the overall commander in Iraq. But General Odierno cast the issue in broader terms, saying Qaeda leaders were bound to know an attack was coming in light of President Bush’s decision to pour nearly 30,000 additional troops into the fight in a bid to secure Baghdad and areas around the capital that have been insurgent strongholds. That included Baquba, which lies 40 miles north.

“Frankly, I think they knew an operation was coming in Baquba,” General Odierno said in a teleconference briefing with Pentagon reporters from the American military headquarters in Baghdad. “They watched the news. They understood we had a surge. They understood Baquba was designated as a problem area. So they knew we were going to come sooner or later.” Still, he implied American commanders may have played a part by flagging the offensive in advance. “I think they were tipped off by us talking about the surge, the fact that we have a problem in Diyala Province,” he said.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/world/middleeast/23iraq.html?hp

[wtmusic]

1. And we know they are al Qaeda because....?

The word "Qaeda" appears seven times in two paragraphs. You think they're trying to make a point?

[arewenotdemo]

16. And journalists aren't calling them on it. They're regurgitating this

lie just like the ones that helped make Bush's case for the war.

They're effectively reinventing the Iraq/Al Qaeda connection.

[babylonsister]

2. Whack-a-mole redux? Where will they pop up? What's being accomplished? nt

[frogcycle]

3. well of COURSE all thoes Al Qaeda leaders fled!

just like those pesky WMDs

:sarcasm:

[Skip Intro]

4. Where have I heard this before?

osama supposedly fled at the last moment, same with mullah omar - same lies, over and over again....



are there people still falling for this shit?

[Cobalt-60]

5. Its dual purpose,

meant to fool us and goad Al-Q into attacking.
Except we and they are both too smart to fall for it.

[babylonsister]

6. KICK! nt

[maddezmom]

7. where do they get these stats? 80% fled?

:shrug:

[Speaker]

8. They are already setting up excuses for failure.

That tells us they know they are going to fail.

[Orsino]

9. They didn't have the decency to wait for our forces to show up?

This is exactly why a solely military response to insurgency/terrorism is doomed to failure.

[Grandrose]

10. It's like De Ja Vous.....

All over again and again...they think we are stupid!:eyes: :kick:

[Hissyspit]

11. .

[DavidDvorkin]

12. Why don't they stand up and fight us like men?

The way our people do -- with air support, and satellite observation, and electronic communcations, and immense firepower! Instead, they shoot from cover and then melt away, like the American revolutionaries and all those other cowardly guerilla fighters throughout history. Disgusting!

And apparently utterly unpredictable.

[tabasco]

14. Yep. British imperial military commanders called us cowards and barbarians

for hiding behind trees and shooting at them and then running away.

Now we are the empire. How sad.

[DavidDvorkin]

15. It's probably the standard progression

The first to resist are probably always angry young men who grab weapons and attack the imperial forces in the open and get slaughtered. The survivors or onlookers learn from that.

Probably happened in just about every guerilla war against an empire in history.

[Barrett808]

13. Understand that this is all intended to be political cover for the 2008 elections

Iraq has always been about US domestic politics. "Success" is irrelevant -- all that matters is convincing imagery can be conjured for duping the public, starting in September 2007.

But the Bush mafia has already played that card, in Fallujah, and in Operations Lightning and Together Forward; I don't think it's going to work any better this time that previously.