Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Examiner
August 8, 2007
Pg. 15
By Rowan Scarborough, The Examiner
WASHINGTON - Al Qaeda cells in Iraq are dispersing from big cities to rural areas as they attempt to regroup in the face of the first all-out U.S. offensive against the terrorist group. Commanders in Iraq say they have chased many cells from Ramadi in Anbar province, Baghdad and Baquba, north of the capital. Ramadi is averaging just one attack per day, down from 35 eight months ago.
All of those areas were infested with al Qaeda cells, whose chief objectives are to manufacture vehicle-borne bombs and smuggle foreign suicide bombers into Iraq to detonate them.
Military sources told The Examiner that some displaced cells have relocated to isolated parts of Anbar and Diyala province, of which Baquba is the capital.
“There are some in other various locations,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, a military analyst. “We have taken away a good number of their safe havens.”
Commanders say the six-month-old troop reinforcement marks the first time joint U.S-Iraqi forces have launched simultaneous raids across the country against al Qaeda cells in a bid to deny them escape routes and new safe havens.
Retired Army Gen. John Keane, an adviser to the Baghdad command, said intelligence officers for the first time believe that al Qaeda can be defeated in Iraq, cell by cell.
Last weekend, the command claimed another blow to al Qaeda. An airstrike killed the mastermind behind the 2006 bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra. The bombing touched off waves of Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence.
Al Qaeda runs what the U.S. military terms a franchise operation in Iraq. It sends experienced terrorists into Iraq to set up safe houses and bomb-making factories, and to organize Sunni Arabs as al Qaeda members. Al Qaeda appoints emirs to run operations in some of Iraq’s 18 provinces.
Outside Iraq, al Qaeda members recruit suicide bombers — mostly disaffected youth from North Africa and the Middle East — to enter Iraq via Syria.
“They could all be defeated if we could get Saudi cooperation,” said Maginnis, who believes a good portion of suicide bombers come from Saudi Arabia. “The Saudis turn a blind eye to their citizens taking one-way flights to Syria.”
The military says al Qaeda’s operations in Iraq are headed by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian who was a top lieutenant to Abu Musab Zarqawi. A U.S. airstrike killed Zarqawi in June 2006.
August 8, 2007
Pg. 15
By Rowan Scarborough, The Examiner
WASHINGTON - Al Qaeda cells in Iraq are dispersing from big cities to rural areas as they attempt to regroup in the face of the first all-out U.S. offensive against the terrorist group. Commanders in Iraq say they have chased many cells from Ramadi in Anbar province, Baghdad and Baquba, north of the capital. Ramadi is averaging just one attack per day, down from 35 eight months ago.
All of those areas were infested with al Qaeda cells, whose chief objectives are to manufacture vehicle-borne bombs and smuggle foreign suicide bombers into Iraq to detonate them.
Military sources told The Examiner that some displaced cells have relocated to isolated parts of Anbar and Diyala province, of which Baquba is the capital.
“There are some in other various locations,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, a military analyst. “We have taken away a good number of their safe havens.”
Commanders say the six-month-old troop reinforcement marks the first time joint U.S-Iraqi forces have launched simultaneous raids across the country against al Qaeda cells in a bid to deny them escape routes and new safe havens.
Retired Army Gen. John Keane, an adviser to the Baghdad command, said intelligence officers for the first time believe that al Qaeda can be defeated in Iraq, cell by cell.
Last weekend, the command claimed another blow to al Qaeda. An airstrike killed the mastermind behind the 2006 bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra. The bombing touched off waves of Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence.
Al Qaeda runs what the U.S. military terms a franchise operation in Iraq. It sends experienced terrorists into Iraq to set up safe houses and bomb-making factories, and to organize Sunni Arabs as al Qaeda members. Al Qaeda appoints emirs to run operations in some of Iraq’s 18 provinces.
Outside Iraq, al Qaeda members recruit suicide bombers — mostly disaffected youth from North Africa and the Middle East — to enter Iraq via Syria.
“They could all be defeated if we could get Saudi cooperation,” said Maginnis, who believes a good portion of suicide bombers come from Saudi Arabia. “The Saudis turn a blind eye to their citizens taking one-way flights to Syria.”
The military says al Qaeda’s operations in Iraq are headed by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian who was a top lieutenant to Abu Musab Zarqawi. A U.S. airstrike killed Zarqawi in June 2006.