Bad News Out of Iraq

Lots of bad news being reported from Iraq - ambushed and kidnapped soldiers, faulty math or corruption in the oil sector, and an unconfirmed report of an increase in sectarian violence.

An undersized squad of seven soldiers and an interpreter riding in two vehicles were ambushed near Mahmudiyah, a small town south of Baghdad. Five of the eight were found dead at the site of the ambush; three were absent from the scene and suspected kidnapped. This from the Washington Post:

At 4:59 a.m., an unmanned surveillance aircraft relayed images of two burning vehicles. By 5:40 a.m., a U.S. quick-reaction force had arrived at the scene, secured the site and launched the hunt for the missing soldiers, Caldwell said.

The mayor of Mahmudiyah, Muaiad Fadhil Hussein, said the attack happened near the village of Beshesha, west of the city. He described it as "one of the most dangerous areas of the city, in which Arab and Iraqi terrorists exist, and not even innocent civilians can enter it."

A curfew has been imposed on Mahmudiyah and surrounding areas, he said, adding that "we, as a mayoralty, are working to provide intelligence information and moral support" to the U.S. and Iraqi forces conducting the search.

Abdullah al-Ghareri, a well-known preacher in Mahmudiyah, said the forces, backed by helicopters and "tens of tanks," were conducting search operations into the night and had made some arrests. Residents said many insurgents had fled the city as U.S. forces entered it.

A senior Iraqi army official said he believed that the attack had been carried out by Sunni insurgents. "This area is really full of al-Qaeda members," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Mohamad al-Janabi, a reputed al-Qaeda member in the nearby city of Salman Pak, said in a telephone interview that he was unable to contact his comrades in Mahmudiyah to determine whether they were responsible for the attack.

But he added: "I can assure you that we will start pressuring Bush in a new way at the same time he is facing pressures from the Democrats and the American people. And there will be no problem to sacrifice 10 soldiers in order to abduct a single American soldier and get him on television screens begging for us to release him."

Read the entire story here. It does seem that al Qaeda is keeping well abreast of Democratic news releases and press briefings. I wonder just how many lives will be sacrificed because of Harry Reid's "the war is lost" statement, citing four suicide bombers as his proof?

I personally think this al Qaeda member's stated goal of putting captured American soldiers on broadcast might well result in a textbook demonstration of the law of unintended consequences. It would not be a wise move.

We will have to wait for more information to percolate up on this. The rule of thumb is, the larger the element, the greater the security, and platoon size elements of 30 people have proven capabale of holding their own in response to any ambush. Where we have gotten in trouble is when we have smaller elements operating without cover. Thus, I question why such a small element was travelling detached in an area known to be infiltrated by insurgents. That seems like a gross tactical error but, without all of the facts, it is impossible to say definitively. I do not feel confident that we will see the kidnapped soldiers alive. We can only hope and pray.

The NYT published an article on a government report concluding that Iraq's oil production figures do not add up. Either the official figures are incorrect, overstating production, or their is ongoing corruption and theft on a grand scale:

Between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq’s declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft American government report.

Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report said the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily.

The report does not give a final conclusion on what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly two million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, but the findings are sure to reinforce longstanding suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country’s oil industry.

The report also covered alternative explanations for the billions of dollars worth of discrepancies, including the possibility that Iraq has been consistently overstating its oil production.

Iraq and the State Department, which reports the numbers, have been under relentless pressure to show tangible progress in Iraq by raising production levels, which have languished well below the United States goal of three million barrels a day. Virtually the entire economy of Iraq is dependent on oil revenues.

. . . But a State Department official who works on energy issues said that there were several possible explanations for the discrepancy, including the loss of oil through sabotage of pipelines and inaccurate reporting of production in southern Iraq, where engineers may not properly account for water that is pumped along with oil in the fields there.

“It could also be theft,” the official said, with suspicion falling primarily on Shiite militias in the south. “Crude oil is not as lucrative in the region as refined products, but we’re not ruling that out either.” . . .

Read the story here. Lastly, the Guardian is reporting an increase in sectarian violence.

In the first 11 days of this month, there have already been 234 bodies - men murdered by death squads - dumped around the capital, a dramatic rise from the 137 found in the same period of April. Improving security in Baghdad and reducing death-squad activity was described as one of the key aims of the US surge of 25,000 additional troops, the final units of whom are due to arrive next month.

Read the story here. I post this from the Guardian, but we need to await confirmation from other sources. The Guardian occasioanlly has significant factual problems with its reporting from Iraq. If the figures are accurate, it means the Shia death squads are picking up the pace. I will be very interested in hearing if this is coming from those Shia now acting as proxies under the pay and control of Iran.

Not a good day.

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Far From Washington & London, Professional Soldiers At Work

Michael Yon provides us with another exceptional post on his operations with British soldiers in Basara, including a detailed description of a night ambush against Iraqis (or Iranians, or Iranian-trained Iraqis), laying IED's:

The enemy lays bombs in the roads here by various methods. One method is the “pop and drop,” where one or two men can walk or drive up and lay a bomb in seconds and be gone. These are quick to lay, but usually easy to spot, and generally smaller in size. Larger bombs followed by complex attacks (i.e., after the bomb explodes, the enemy attacks with other weapons while our side is trying to rescue their friends), are more challenging to lay. One team will show up and dig the hole. At night, in Iraq, if a man is digging a hole on or near a road, he can be shot without warning. The special operations soldiers call these hole-diggers “pipe swingers.” Pipe swingers are generally just hired labor. It is important to stop pipe swingers, but they are as plentiful and easy for the enemy to replace as the frogs in this marsh.

A second team lays the actual bomb, while a third team lays out the command wire (or other firing system) and attacks us, often with follow-on rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and rifles, and mortars, and also with secondary bombs which are very effective in killing rescuers.

Crowley spoke into his headset, “Jav 1, I need to know when you’ve got a target solution if you get one on those guys who are digging by the Charlie.” Moments passed and radio calls went around, the Crowley said, “Ah roger, it’s not necessary that we identify them as digging it’s just whether we can identify the pax [passengers]. If Kilo four-four has identified them as digging and we’ve got the pax, we’ve got sufficient clearance to fire.” . . .

Read the entire post here. Why do we have to rely on Michael Yon for this type of reporting. In the New York Times, I cannot remember the last embed story of note. No, I take that back. There was an extensive article the other day. It really told the personal story . . . of suicide bombers from Jordan.

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The Washinton Post Lacks Any Journalistic Integrity

What article is the top billed story on the Washington Post website now? It is this atrocity of a WP news article titled "Afghan Civilians Killed After U.S. Marines Convoy Attacked." It is listed on the WP website as the "most viewed" article.

Before continuing, let me review the background. Afghanistan is a war zone, and the unfortunate truth of war is that, in fighting an indiscriminate enemy that uses civilians as shields in their attacks, or otherwise attacks in and from civilian areas, it is unavoidable that civilians will die. That is a reality forced on our soldiers by the actions of an amoral enemy.

But as you can gather, civilian deaths seen in that context are not why this is headline news. It is headline news because the AP found an Afghani who blamed the deaths on the Marines.

First, here are the uncontested facts. A Marine convoy was passing through a town near Jalalabad. An IED exploded next to their convoy, and that was followed up by enemy small arms fire from multiple directions -- a textbook ambush. The Marines returned fire. At some point, either from the IED explosion or the small arms fire, eight civilians died. A reporter questioned the Marine Corps about the civilian deaths. The jist of Marine Corp’s response was that they would debrief the Marines involved in the fight, conduct an investigation with the Afghani government, and then get back to the reporter.

So, explicitly, why did this becomes top line news?

The Associated Press quoted several wounded Afghans as saying that the Marines had fired indiscriminately as they fled the explosion.

They were firing everywhere, and they even opened fire on 14 to 15 vehicles passing on the highway," Tur Gul, 38, told the AP. Gul was standing on the roadside by a gas station and was shot twice in his right hand. "They opened fire on everybody, the ones inside the vehicles and the ones on foot."

So how many problems are there with this particular article and this kind of reporting:

1. Anyone with no military background reading this report will likely be left with the impression that this is just another example of our military out of control. This report, as headline news, defames our soldiers.

2. The results of the debriefing will likely be published in a report buried deeply in the bowels of the WP several days from now. The damage done to the reputation of our soldiers and the nobility of their efforts under fire and in an ambush will not be undone.

3. When the results of the debriefing are released by the Marine Corps in a few days, I have little doubt that they will not show anything other then that the Marines returned suppressing fire towards the locations from which they were being fired upon. Anyone who has been a member of the United States military knows that our troops are trained and drilled repetitively to do precisely that. Wildly spraying bullets is counterproductive. If you are not firing in the direction of an enemy, you will be exposing yourself while at the same time allowing the enemy to keep his head up. That is something untrained or poorly trained soldiers do. The U.S. military, by comparison, is the most highly trained force in the world today. That is not to say that something else might have occurred on this occasion, but it is to say that the AP and WP should be suspect of claims to the contrary until they have all of the facts. That is certainly not what the AP and WP do in this case.

4. The jist of this piece turns morality on its head. It puts moral blame on our soldiers, and completely ignores the fact that the enemy are using civilians as shields, either directly or by staging attacks in areas were civilians are sure to be caught in the fire. This is an enemy wholly lacking in any sense of morality, and the cynical loss of civilian life for them is a plus because of hit pieces like this. Yet any reader who does not analyze what is going on will again just adopt the WP/AP thesis that it is our soldiers who are out of control.

5. Who is Tur Gul, the man making the accusations against the Marines. It is reasonable to assume that if Taliban were able to set up an extensive ambush in the area, including setting up IED's, that just about every civilian in the local area had do know about it. Further, they had to be complicit in it to the extent of not warning the coalition forces. I am not saying that such makes the civilian deaths justified. My point is only that there had to be civilians loyal to the Taliban in the area for this ambush to take place. So, is Tur Gul one of those loyal to the Taliban? We know nothing about him besides his name. By naming him, the W.P. gives a paper thin veneer of reliability to its article. What most readers will not know, however, is that just because the W.P or A.P. provides a name, that alone is no indicia of reliabity. Just do a search on Michelle Malkin's website for "AP."

6. The basic thesis of this hit piece is very damaging in another regard. It incrementally moves the public, and our government, to place an ever greater burden on our ROE -- "rules of engagement" -- that govern when and how our soldiers can fire and protect themselves in hostilities. Let me give you some idea of how the ROE -- and our soldiers who, unlike the enemy, place a value on human life -- operate by quoting from this article in the Guardian from February 22, 2007. And just for the record, as you read this article, know that the Guardian is the U.K.'s leading far left newspaper and it's editorial position is vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq.

Boys on bikes cycle backwards and forwards on a footbridge over a small canal lined with houses and groves of date palms. Women in headscarves look anxiously in groups from windows. Men walk with shopping bags. A gunman, clutching an AK-47, bobs his head around the corner of an alleyway close to a school. Once. Twice. On the third occasion a child, a boy seven or eight years old, is thrust out in front of him. The gunman holds him firmly by the arm and steps out for instant into full view of the Bradley's gunner to get a proper look, then yanks the boy back and disappears.

"That is really dirty," says Specialist Chris Jankow, in the back of the Bradley, with a mixture of contempt, anger and frustration. "They know exactly what our rules of engagement are. They know we can't fire back."

A few minutes and a few hundred metres later the performance is repeated. A woman and three small children emerge uncertainly from behind a building, little more than a shack. They stare at the approaching armour. After a few seconds they retreat from view; then the process is repeated. The third time they emerge, a fighter is crouching behind them with a rocket-propelled grenade aimed at Jankow's Bradley. The group disappears.

There is a long pause, a moment of excruciating moral conflict for the soldiers and for the gunner in particular. Not to shoot would be to imperil their own lives or those of their colleagues, both American and Iraqi. To shoot would be to risk killing civilians who have been shoved in front of their guns to shield insurgent fighters.

7. This WP/AP article is one more in the mosaic of the MSM cynically and deliberately attempting to influence public opinion against our wars overseas.

8. On the very outside chance that there is a shred of truth to this story, it should be headline news -- ONLY AFTER THE MARINES HAVE BEEN DEBRIEFED AND THE MARINE CORPS IS ABLE TO RESPOND SUBSTANTIVELY TO THE ALLEGATIONS. That would hold our troops to appropriate standards and allow the newspaper to report facts, not shill for the anti-war crowd and their de facto allies, the radical muslims with whom we are at war. This AP/WP story, as headline news, is an atrocity.

9. I would urge you to complain to the Washington Post about their ethical, moral, and journalistic standards in running this piece as headline news. The Washington Post contact information is:

Newsroom: foreign@washpost.com

Main Phone: 202.334.6000
800.627.1150

Letters to the Editor: Letters to the Editor
The Washington Post
1150 15 St. NW
Washington, DC 20071

and by e-mail at: letters@washpost.com

Update: The New York Times has a similar article, though, and I never thought that I would say this, the NTY provides a much more balanced article. The NYT at least includes the following:

The United States military said the unit came under fire after a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden car near their convoy “as part of a complex ambush involving enemy small-arms fire from several directions.”

Members of the unit, on patrol near Jalalabad airfield, returned fire, and the civilians were killed and wounded in the cross-fire during the battle, according to a statement from the military press office at Bagram Air Base, 40 miles north of Kabul.

“We regret the death of innocent Afghan citizens as a result of the Taliban extremists’ cowardly act,” Lt. Col. David Accetta, a military spokesman, said in the statement. “Once again the terrorists demonstrated their blatant disregard for human life by attacking coalition forces in a populated area, knowing full well that innocent Afghans would be killed and wounded in the attack.”

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