Yet another
string of car bomb attacks targeting police and national guard recruits lined up outside of station. Another 60 dead.
Umm, why do they still do this? Why line them up outside of recruiting stations presenting such juicy targets?
The suicide bomber was standing in line with the rest of the potential recruits. Why don't they search people before they stand in line? That much explosive can't be easy to hide from the most cursory search.
Meanwhile, the GAO has issued a report about the mess in Iraq. DHinMI writes:
But the most revealing part of the report is contained in the background information. According to GAO, and contrary to the propaganda from the White House celebrating a "peaceful" election, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency told GAO that "attacks on Iraq's election day reached about 300, double the previous 1 day high of about 150 during last year's Ramadan." Furthermore, the peak months for attacks since June 2003 were August and November 2004, and January 2005. During this period, according to GAO, the attacks have grown in intensity and sophistication. (And presumably in lethality.)
Finally, GAO dismisses the notion that most of the attacks are being perpetrated by foreign fighters who've slipped into Iraq from Syria or elsewhere. Foreign fighters, they claim, "comprise a small component of the insurgency," which is made up primarily of Sunni Arabs tied to the Baathist regime, with a small group of Jihadists responsible for high profile attacks (i.e., the terrorism against Shia, which I'll write about sometime in the next few days). They also mention that Muqtada al-Sadr's forces "remain a threat to the political process" and are "re-arming, re-organizing, and training, with al-Sadr keeping his options open to employ his forces."
And if there's any doubt about the lethality of the insurgency, there's
this.
Screaming "Allahu Akbar'' to the end, the foreign fighters lay on their backs in a narrow crawl space under a house and blasted their machine guns up through the concrete floor with bullets designed to penetrate tanks. They fired at U.S. Marines, driving back wave after wave as the Americans tried to retrieve a fallen comrade.
Through Sunday night and into Monday morning, the foreign fighters battled on, their screaming voices gradually fading to just one. In the end, it took five Marine assaults, grenades, a tank firing bunker-busting artillery rounds, 500-pound bombs unleashed by an F/A-18 attack plane and a point-blank attack by a rocket launcher to quell them.
The Marines got their fallen man, suffering one more dead and at least five wounded in the process. And according to survivors of the battle, the foreign fighters near the Syrian border proved to be everything their reputation had suggested: fierce, determined and lethal to the last.
"They came here to die," said Gunnery Sgt. Chuck Hurley, commander of the team from the 1st Platoon, Lima Company, of the Marines' 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, that battled the insurgents in the one-story house in Ubaydi, about 15 miles east of the Syrian border.
"They were willing to stay in place and die with no hope," Hurley said Tuesday. "All they wanted was to take us with them.''
We need people with like determination to combat them, like the War Politicians, War Preachers, War Pundits, the 101st Fighting Keyboardists, and their loyal followers. Recruiters are eagerly (and desperately) standing by to take orders.
Update: Armando has more on the "reputation" of the insurgents.