Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
ABC
June 25, 2008 World News With Charles Gibson (ABC), 6:30 PM
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Overseas now to Iraq, where three more American soldiers and their interpreter have been killed. It happened in northern Iraq near the city of Mosul, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have been conducting intensive operations for weeks.
Not long ago, Mosul was too dangerous for reporters to visit. This week, ABC’s Terry McCarthy was there with U.S. troops who are cautiously claiming a victory.
TERRY MCCARTHY: We flew north to what had been the last urban holdout of al Qaeda, the city of Mosul. In May, some 25,000 Iraqi troops, aided by U.S. air power and U.S. Special Forces, moved in for Operation Lion’s Roar. Twelve hundred militants were arrested, many others fled.
We started in the west of the city, once an al Qaeda stronghold, now quiet as a graveyard. Some of the hardest fighting for Mosul took place along this road of Al Tampa (ph). You can see some of the destruction here behind me.
Closer to the city center, life is returning to normal. Hussein Ali (sp) says if we’d been standing here six months ago, we would be dead.
The overall U.S. commander for the north, Gen. Mark Hertling, told us al Qaeda in Iraq still has some followers. A car bomb in Mosul on Tuesday killed two and injured many more. But he said as an organization, it has been defeated.
GEN. MARK HERTLING [Commander, Multi-National Division-North]: Defeat means they’re not capable of major offensive operations. We don’t think al Qaeda has that anymore.
MCCARTHY: From Basra in the south to Mosul here in the north, the U.S. military and the newly confident Iraqi army have pretty much got the militias and insurgents on the run. Now the focus in Iraq is shifting to the political stage.
Gen. Riyadh Tawfiq is the Iraqi commander in Mosul. He complains that if the government does not move quickly to rebuild the economy and provide jobs, unemployed young men will filter back into the insurgency.
“It is not mainly a military problem anymore,” he says. “The main job now is to bring back services.” The government has allocated $100 million for reconstruction in Mosul, but so far little has been spent. Mosul may be quiet, but it is up to the politicians to make it peaceful.
Terry McCarthy, ABC News, Mosul.
June 25, 2008 World News With Charles Gibson (ABC), 6:30 PM
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Overseas now to Iraq, where three more American soldiers and their interpreter have been killed. It happened in northern Iraq near the city of Mosul, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have been conducting intensive operations for weeks.
Not long ago, Mosul was too dangerous for reporters to visit. This week, ABC’s Terry McCarthy was there with U.S. troops who are cautiously claiming a victory.
TERRY MCCARTHY: We flew north to what had been the last urban holdout of al Qaeda, the city of Mosul. In May, some 25,000 Iraqi troops, aided by U.S. air power and U.S. Special Forces, moved in for Operation Lion’s Roar. Twelve hundred militants were arrested, many others fled.
We started in the west of the city, once an al Qaeda stronghold, now quiet as a graveyard. Some of the hardest fighting for Mosul took place along this road of Al Tampa (ph). You can see some of the destruction here behind me.
Closer to the city center, life is returning to normal. Hussein Ali (sp) says if we’d been standing here six months ago, we would be dead.
The overall U.S. commander for the north, Gen. Mark Hertling, told us al Qaeda in Iraq still has some followers. A car bomb in Mosul on Tuesday killed two and injured many more. But he said as an organization, it has been defeated.
GEN. MARK HERTLING [Commander, Multi-National Division-North]: Defeat means they’re not capable of major offensive operations. We don’t think al Qaeda has that anymore.
MCCARTHY: From Basra in the south to Mosul here in the north, the U.S. military and the newly confident Iraqi army have pretty much got the militias and insurgents on the run. Now the focus in Iraq is shifting to the political stage.
Gen. Riyadh Tawfiq is the Iraqi commander in Mosul. He complains that if the government does not move quickly to rebuild the economy and provide jobs, unemployed young men will filter back into the insurgency.
“It is not mainly a military problem anymore,” he says. “The main job now is to bring back services.” The government has allocated $100 million for reconstruction in Mosul, but so far little has been spent. Mosul may be quiet, but it is up to the politicians to make it peaceful.
Terry McCarthy, ABC News, Mosul.