News and Open Thread

by: Open Thread

Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 02:53:17 AM EST

The U.S. military is walking a political tightrope in terms of suppressing the violence in Iraq. From the Washington Post:

Iraqi legislators thwarted Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's attempts to get approval for nominees to fill two vacant cabinet posts on Thursday, indicating deep political divisions remain despite falling sectarian violence.

And from McClatchy:

The American campaign to turn Sunni Muslims against Islamic extremists is growing so quickly that Iraq's Shiite Muslim leaders fear that it's out of control and threatens to create a potent armed force that will turn against the government one day.
The United States, which credits much of the drop in violence to the campaign, is enrolling hundreds of people daily in "concerned local citizens" groups. More than 5,000 have been sworn in in the last eight days, for a total of 77,542 as of Tuesday. As many as 10 groups were created in the past week, bringing the total number to 192, according to the American military.

The Shi'ite-run government complains when Americans don't provide security. Then, when they do, the Shi'ite-led government complains about how the Americans are doing it.

NATO is disputing yesterday's report that civilian workers were killed in an airstrike. ISAF says the target was a Taliban one.

The Army has announced a new round of deployments for units based in Europe.

Open Thread :: News and Open Thread

Tags: Iraq, Afghanistan, NATO, ISAF, (All Tags)

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News and Open Thread | 3 comments

Man I must be getting tired because all this Iraq, sunni, shia, (0.00 / 0)

nuri al-maliki, "concerned local citizens groups", want securtiy but dont like how we do it, new deployment from europe with a list as long as my arm in Army Times of groups going to Iraq is all becoming one big muddled mess in this tiny brain. Nothing about Iraq makes any sense at all or I am exhausted. Tired but back aching so bad can't sleep and took as many of my meds as I am supposed to (no narcotics) and have a lidocaine patch on back. Is this depoloyment from europe like the surge on the surge? We got so many god damn troops there that we might as well make Iraq like puerto rico or the us virgin islands and just take it over. Our troops are gonna out number the Iraqi's pretty soon. I understand the real reason for the decrease in violence is because the mahdi "army" has declared a six month truce. It is all insanity. Is any one awake to read this?

"It is illogical to put a cap on VA funding when it is impossible to put a cap on the number of those wounded and injured in service to their country." Larry Scott

by: TominMaine @ Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 02:08:32 AM CST

by: you @ soon

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Concerned Local Citizens, indeed (0.00 / 0)

Yeah, I've followed this new push to get CLC's enlisted like it's the local police department's Neighborhood Watch Program. I've no doubt that a good number of these folks are truly sick of the day-to-day sectarian, criminal and political violence in their areas, BUT...

...my distrust of Iraqis shows here (it pains me to say it, but it's true. Then again, why should they trust us?): How well have "Coalition" forces vetted these enlstees? How well CAN they vet them?

I was in charge of interpreters for my battalion, and vetting these guys was a straight pain in the ass. Too many folks out there have forged ID cards or told of working previously with Americans. I once got a "letter" from "173d Airborne" stating that so-and-so was totally respected by them as an interpreter, blah, blah, blah...and it looked as if it was typed by a, uh,....non-English speaker with little education. The name of the "LT" who typed it was certainly a creative spelling (something like Daovis, as opposed to Davis)...and this prospective interpreter had little command of English.

Needless to say, I sent him on his way.

So, while I'm glad the citizens of Baghdad and other locales are taking action, I have to wonder how many of these were the guys lighting IEDs until several weeks ago.

Yeah, it's been 3 years since I was in-country, but the CLC program makes my alarm bells ring loudly.

And as far as the USAEUR deployments...how many is this for 1st Armored units? Four, Five?

by: IrritatedVet @ Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 02:46:24 AM CST

by: you @ soon

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On the CLC (0.00 / 0)

IV, thanks for sharing first-hand insight on these guys. Yeah there's some serious concerns with them, but overall I think the program has been effective. I mean we already incorporated legit Shiite militas (Badr Corps) and Kurdish militias (Peshmerga) into the Iraqi Security Forces. These guys are mostly Sunni, so it seems like they're next in line. I think the biggest concern is that if they don't get properly legitimized by the central Iraqi Government, there's going to be some real trouble... I address some of it in my latest diary entry. As far as being ex-insurgents, yeah, I think a lot of them are, so I've heard. But it's better to pay these guys a couple hundred bucks a month to shoot Al-Qaeda instead of us don't you think? We're not giving them weapons at least, they already have em.

by: LT Nixon @ Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 06:15:38 AM CST

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News and Open Thread | 3 comments

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