Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
April 19, 2008
Pg. 9
By Alissa J. Rubin and Stephen Farrell
BAGHDAD — An American soldier was killed Thursday afternoon when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb while he was on a combat patrol north of Baghdad, according to a statement released Friday by the military.
Also on Friday, Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, who oversees the detention system in Iraq, said that the American military was planning to release as many as 50 detainees daily in the coming months in an effort to reduce the detainee population to about one-third its current number of 24,000.
However, with significant offensive operations now under way in several areas of Iraq, including Basra, Mosul and the Sadr City neighborhood in Baghdad, more people are flowing into the system, making it unclear how much the overall population can be reduced.
The American military warned Friday that intelligence reports indicated that “numerous” members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American intelligence says has foreign leadership, “have entered the Baghdad area with the purpose of carrying out vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, or suicide-vest attacks.”
Ayman al-Zawahri, the fugitive deputy leader of Al Qaeda, released an audio message in which he mocked President Bush’s decision to delay the withdrawal of troops and said that the American record in Iraq after five years was failure and defeat, according to Agence France-Presse.
The 16-minute message was posted on Islamist Web sites, according to the agency.
April 19, 2008
Pg. 9
By Alissa J. Rubin and Stephen Farrell
BAGHDAD — An American soldier was killed Thursday afternoon when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb while he was on a combat patrol north of Baghdad, according to a statement released Friday by the military.
Also on Friday, Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, who oversees the detention system in Iraq, said that the American military was planning to release as many as 50 detainees daily in the coming months in an effort to reduce the detainee population to about one-third its current number of 24,000.
However, with significant offensive operations now under way in several areas of Iraq, including Basra, Mosul and the Sadr City neighborhood in Baghdad, more people are flowing into the system, making it unclear how much the overall population can be reduced.
The American military warned Friday that intelligence reports indicated that “numerous” members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American intelligence says has foreign leadership, “have entered the Baghdad area with the purpose of carrying out vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, or suicide-vest attacks.”
Ayman al-Zawahri, the fugitive deputy leader of Al Qaeda, released an audio message in which he mocked President Bush’s decision to delay the withdrawal of troops and said that the American record in Iraq after five years was failure and defeat, according to Agence France-Presse.
The 16-minute message was posted on Islamist Web sites, according to the agency.