posted on June 23, 2004 03:00:02 PM new
Here's a little story you won't find on CNN or the liberal media:
Army unit claims victory over sheik
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Army's powerful 1st Armored Division is proclaiming victory over Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr's marauding militia that just a month ago seemed on the verge of conquering southern Iraq.
The Germany-based division defeated the militia with a mix of American firepower and money paid to informants. Officers today say "Operation Iron Saber" will go down in military history books as one of the most important battles in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.
"I've got to think this was a watershed operation in terms of how to do things as part of a counterinsurgency," said Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, a West Point graduate and one of two 1st Armored assistant division commanders, in an interview last week as he moved around southern Iraq. "We happened to design a campaign that did very well against this militia."
When the division got word April 8 that Sheik al-Sadr's uprising meant most 1st Armored soldiers would stay and fight, rather than going home as scheduled, it touched off a series of remarkable military maneuvers.
Soldiers, tanks and helicopters at a port in Kuwait reversed course, rushing back inside Iraq to battle the Shi'ite cleric's 10,000-strong army. Within days, a four-tank squadron was rumbling toward the eastern city of Kut. And within hours of arriving, Lt. Col. Mark Calvert and his squadron had cleared the town's government buildings of the sheik's so-called Mahdi's Army.
Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, 1st Armored commander, huddled with Gen. Hertling and other senior aides to map an overall war strategy. The division would shift from urban combat in Baghdad's streets to precision strikes amid shrines of great religious significance.
Hunting the enemy in tight city streets broadened to patrolling a region the size of Vermont.
Gen. Dempsey first needed the locations of Sheik al-Sadr's rifle-toting henchmen. Average Iraqis, fed up with the militia's kidnappings and thievery, quickly became spies, as did a few moderate clerics who publicly stayed neutral.
Once he had targets, Gen. Dempsey could then map a battle plan for entering four key cities — Karbala, Najaf, Kufa and Diwaniyah. This would be a counterinsurgency fought with 70-ton M-1 Abrams tanks and aerial gunships overhead. It would not be the lightning movements of clandestine commandos, but rather all the brute force the Army could muster, directed at narrowly defined targets.
Last week, Sheik al-Sadr surrendered. He called on what was left of his men to cease operations and said he may one day seek public office in a democratic Iraq.
Gen. Hertling said Mahdi's Army is defeated, according the Army's doctrinal definition of defeat. A few stragglers might be able to fire a rocket-propelled grenade, he said, but noted: "Do they have the capability of launching any kind of offensive operation? Absolutely not."
The division estimates it killed at least several thousand militia members.
Gen. Dempsey designed "Iron Saber" based on four pillars: massive combat power; information operations to discredit Sheik al-Sadr; rebuilding the Iraqi security forces that fled; and beginning civil affairs operations as quickly as possible, including paying Iraqis to repair damaged public buildings.
"As soon as we finished military operations, we immediately began civil-military operations," said Gen. Hertling. "We crossed over from bullets to money."
The strike into Kut was followed by an incursion into Diwaniyah. Then an 18-tank battalion entered Karbala, a holy city where precision operations were needed to spare religious shrines. Then soldiers moved into Najaf and Kufa, where Sheik al-Sadr was hiding out and where about 3,000 of his fighters occupied government buildings, mosques, amusement parks and schools.
"We were going from outside in to get this guy," Gen. Hertling said. "We had to go after them one city at a time."
posted on June 23, 2004 05:45:21 PM new
Gee, I guess the NY Times and CBS News aren't considered "liberal" press, anymore! They covered Operation Iron Sabre over the last couple of months...
____________________
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. -- John F. Kennedy
posted on June 23, 2004 09:00:05 PM new
bunni - But my question would be 'did they print this recent success?'.
I did a search on NYT with this victory in the title and didn't come up with a mention of it from them.
Maybe you have a link you'd be willing to share?
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reamond - We now have the best conventional military forces in the whole world, hands down, unchallenged.
That may very well be changing. Just finished reading an article that says we didn't do very well against India's firefighters in a 'practice run' of our air power. They were using some Soviet fighter-jets they'd purchased.
posted on June 23, 2004 09:07:42 PM new
Reamond, you're just mad that your predictions of a Shiite rebellion were wrong. I wish I could find your posts from a couple months ago. Come to think of it, everything you say is wrong. Please let me know what stocks you are buying or selling so I can do the opposite!
"I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
posted on June 23, 2004 09:46:20 PM newReamond, you're just mad that your predictions of a Shiite rebellion were wrong
Mad ? I never predicted a Shiite rebellion. I predicted that the Shiites would take over after we leave. The Shiites are the majority and are the same religious sect as Iran. I did say that it will lead to civil war, and I stand by that prediction.
Come to think of it, everything you say is wrong.
Are you and your a$$hole president declaring "mission accomplished" again in Iraq ? Just keep trying to bail out that lying little jerk president of yours. He's history come November.
posted on June 23, 2004 11:58:39 PM new
Linda, this "recent success" was well over a month ago--when all news services mentioned it. As for using the word "victory" in the title...even Fox News didn't do that...
____________________
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. -- John F. Kennedy
They were using some Soviet fighter-jets they'd purchased.