The Turning Point

On November 12, 2003, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, U.S. Military commander in Iraq held a press conference in Baghdad. During this conference, General Sanchez stated that the US had arrived at a “turning point” in the conflict with Iraqi resistance fighters. The General also said  “..we are going to win this battle, and this war… they cannot defeat us, and they know it. I am supremely confident of this reality.”

When General Sanchez assumed command five months before his press conference, attacks on American troops and civilian personnel averaged six a day. At the time of his conference, these attacks had increased to 30 to 35 a day. The number of wounded has been reliably reported, from German but not US sources, to be more than 10,000 since the end of hostilities and the officially acknowledged number of dead is in serious question. General Sanchez strongly denied any similarity with the Vietnam quagmire but he also said he was determined to “win the hearts and minds of” 25 million Iraqis.

 This statement was a favorite of President Lyndon Johnson’s during the Vietnam debacle. Henceforth, all of our reportage of the military activities in Iraq will be under the heading of The Turning Point. 

Several hours after the General’s press conference, Iraqi partisans shelled the General’s heavily defended compound with mortars.

On November 25, Paul Bremer, American Viceroy in Iraq, following a Washington conference with the President and his staff, issued his own fiercely upbeat assessment

— Far fewer Americans have been killed in guerrilla attacks in recent days, L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator here, said Tuesday. Instead, he said, the insurgents have turned to killing other Iraqis.

"The security situation has changed," Mr. Bremer said during a news conference. "They have failed to intimidate the coalition. They have now begun a pattern of trying to intimidate innocent Iraqis."                                        

Hours later, guerrillas fired mortars or rockets toward the walled compound where he and other American occupation authorities live and work but apparently missed and hit a building and a road nearby. From: New York Times, Nov. 25, 2003.

Here we have additional proof that we have indeed turned the corner and have succeeded in decisively thwarting the terrorist attacks committed by a very small handful of Saddam loyalists against the friendly, democratic rebuilders. Mr. Bremer also is correct: casualties have indeed dropped dramatically since the Iraqis are now surging towards a peaceful, democratic government. General Chavez and Procounsel Bremer are certainly visionaries: We have indeed turned the corner. Herewith are ongoing examples of how US forces are crushing Iraqi resistance on a daily basis.

U.S. Dead: 64 in one week

And the Lord Spake Unto George Bush saying: Behold thy Handiwork

Spain pulling out of Iraq 'as soon as possible', 10 US soldiers dead
April 19,2004
AFP

Spain said it would withdraw its troops from Iraq as soon as possible, as coalition forces continued to confront Iraqi insurgents on two fronts with at least 10 US soldiers reported or confirmed killed.

The soldiers were killed in separate attacks in Iraq in 24 hours, as a mediator said he held positive talks with the US-led coalition on resolving a showdown with radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.

In Washington, White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said said putting the United Nations in charge of the Iraqi occupation would not stop the insurgency that has claimed hundreds of lives this month.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Spain, where the US-led war has been deeply unpopular, would withdraw its troops from Iraq as soon as possible.

"The Spanish troops in Iraq will be withdrawm as soon as possible and with maximum security," Zapatero said, a day after he formally took office following the March 14 win of his Socialist Party.

Immediately after his election, Zapatero had stressed the 1,300 Spanish troops would quit Iraq unless they came under UN command by June 30, when their mandate expires.

"It does not look like a UN resolution will match the content" of the Spanish demands on Iraq, the prime minister said.

US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday vowed to give the United Nations a central role in the transfer of power to the Iraqi interim government.

The move had been seen as a way to keep countries like Spain on board with the US-led coalition, despite a recent surge in violence and hostage-taking in Iraq.

Zapatero's conservative predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar, sent in the soldiers last August causing widespread demonstrations at home.

On the ground in Iraq, the latest reported casualties meant by Sunday at least 90 US soldiers and more than 700 Iraqis killed this month, according to separate coalition and Iraqi tolls.

The US military confirmed that five US marines were killed Saturday in a day-long firefight with Iraqi insurgents near the Syrian border.

It said enemy casualties were estimated to be 25 to 30 dead and an unknown number of wounded during the battle near the border town of Husaybah.

Three US soldiers and four Iraqis were also killed during clashes with supporters of Sadr near the southern city of Diwaniyah, according to the US military and a spokesman for the fugitive leader.

US military officials said another US soldier died of his wounds after a convoy was hit by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad Saturday.

British troops on Sunday traded fire with Sadr loyalists in the southern Iraqi city of Amara where residents reported mortar attacks on the governor's office and British positions.

More than 700 Americans have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March last year that ousted president Saddam Hussein.

In Baghdad, the Shiite Dawa party said its representatives held a positive meeting with the US-led coalition to revive stalled mediation for a peaceful resolution of the standoff with Sadr in the holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala.

"We met (US overseer Paul) Bremer. We feel that this contact was positive and that the coalition is prepared to resolve the crisis peacefully," said Adnan Ali al-Kazem, an aide to Dawa party chief Ibrahim Jaafari.

A spokesman for Sadr's office in Najaf, Qais al-Khazaali, said Saturday that the mediation had stalled because of obstacles put up by the US side. "We are expecting the Americans to attack Najaf any moment now," he said.

But a senior coalition spokesman in Baghdad said the coalition remained open to mediation although US troops were massed outside Najaf under orders to capture or kill Sadr.

The coalition is insisting that Sadr answer charges related to the murder of a rival cleric last year and that he disband his banned Mehdi Army militia as the coalition prepares to hand power over to an interim Iraqi government.

In Washington, White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said said putting the United Nations in charge of the Iraqi occupation would not stop the bloody insurgency that has claimed hundreds of lives this month.

"The idea that somehow if there were a UN flag instead of a coalition flag, that these thugs would not be attacking, is, frankly, I think, just a little bit naive," she told ABC television.

"The UN is not the panacea here," she said.

Hundreds of Palestinian refugees Sunday staged symbolic funerals in Baghdad for slain Hamas leader Abdelaziz Rantissi, assassinated by the Israeli military a day earlier in Gaza.

"The only response to the assassination of Rantissi is the continuation of the resistance and national unity," said one banner raised by the refugees who also declared a three-day mourning period.

New senior officers were appointed to front the new post-Saddam armed forces, following criticism of Iraqi forces during fighting between US marines and insurgents in Fallujah, and coalition troops and Shiite militants in the south.

General Babekr al-Zibari, 57, a Sunni Kurd from Mosul who organised the Kurdish peshmerga fighters and opposed Saddam Hussein for 30 years, has been given the key post of senior military advisor to a new Iraqi leadership.

General Amer al-Hashimi, 58, a Sunni Arab, will be the chief of staff responsible for recruiting and training staff. Lieutenant General Daham al-Assal, 63, a Shiite trained in both the United States and Britain, will be his deputy.

One day after the captors of a US soldier asked for a prisoner swap, Rice said the US would not negotiate with hostage-takers in Iraq.

"The president of the United States doesn't negotiate with terrorists," she said.

Three Japanese hostages returned home Sunday to criticism that they were to blame for being kidnapped and held for a week, since they traveled to an extremely-tense Iraq.

Five Marines Die in Iraq Border Ambush
April 18, 2004
by Jim Krane

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. Marines backed by helicopters battled hundreds of Iraqi insurgents Sunday near the Syrian border, where an ambush killed five Marines. At least 10 Iraqis, including the city police chief, have been killed in two days of fighting, a hospital official said.

Meanwhile, U.S. forces struggled to maintain control of Iraq's highways. The military announced new closures around Baghdad that severed long stretches of roads into the capital from the north, south and west - a reflection of the damage from a two-week guerrilla onslaught on U.S. supply lines.

Insurgent attacks and kidnappers' roadblocks have forced the military to curtail supply convoys and are part of the reason commanders have boosted ground forces by more than 20,000 U.S. troops. The military has already been tied down since April 1 on fronts in southern and central Iraq in the worst violence since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Officials have said the violence threatens to hamstring U.S. reconstruction effort and drive up prices of civilian goods, dealing a blow to a delicate economic recovery in Iraq.

More than 1,500 foreign engineers and contractors have fled Iraq for fear of being abducted or killed, Iraqi Housing Minister Bayan Baqer said Sunday.

In Baghdad, two Iraqi civilians and one American soldier were killed in multiple attacks, the U.S. military said Sunday.

The U.S. soldier was killed Saturday morning when a roadside bomb exploded near a military convoy, the military said. The soldier was from Task Force Baghdad, which is made up mostly of troops from the 1st Cavalry Division.

The death brought to 90 the number of U.S. troops in violence killed since April 1. At least 687 U.S. service members have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. Those figures don't include the reports of Marine deaths in Husaybah.

Two Iraqi civilians were killed Friday and four wounded when rockets fired by insurgents fell short of a military camp and hit a civilian area in western Iraq, the military said.

Two U.S. civilian contractors and one soldier were wounded in that attack, the military added.

The fighting in the town of Husaybah, 240 miles west of Baghdad, began when insurgents ambushed Marines on Saturday, sparking a battle with hundreds of rebel gunmen.

Fighting continued Sunday in three neighborhoods of the city, which was sealed off by U.S. forces.

Five Marines were killed in the initial ambush and nine more were wounded, an embedded journalist from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Military officials in Baghdad would not confirm the fighting and had no information on the reported Marine deaths.

Ten Iraqis were killed and 30 wounded - a mixture of insurgent fighters and civilian bystanders, said Hamid al-Alousi, a doctor at the hospital in the nearby city of al-Qaim. He was interviewed on al-Arabiyah television.

Some civilians were shot by Marine snipers as they stepped outside to use outdoor toilets behind their houses, the doctor told the Arab television station Al-Arabiyah.

Husaybah police director Imad al-Mahlawi was one of those killed by American snipers, according to a man who identified himself as al-Mahlawi's cousin, Adel Ezzeddin, Al-Arabiya reported.

According to Marine intelligence, nearly 300 Iraqi mujahedeen fighters from the Fallujah and Ramadi areas, some 150 miles to the east, launched the offensive in an outpost next to Husaybah.

They first set off a roadside bomb to lure Marines out of their base, and then fired 24 mortars as the Marines responded to the first attack, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch correspondent reported.

Marines have been battling Sunni insurgents in a siege of Fallujah, 35 miles west of the capital, and guerrilla activity has surged in nearby Ramadi, where 12 Marines were killed in an ambush on April 6.

The military announced Sunday it closed off the main highway from Baghdad to the Jordanian border, the scene of heavy fighting at the western entrance to Baghdad as well as near Fallujah and Ramadi further down the road.

For days, gunmen along the route have been attacking convoys and kidnapping foreigners - including an American soldier and civilian.

The military also shut down a stretch of the main highway north to Turkey, starting at the entrance to Baghdad extending to the town of Balad 42 miles north. Also closed was a 90-mile section of the main southern highway connecting Baghdad with Basra and Kuwait.

A military release said the closure was aimed at repairing the roads, but it warned civilians caught using the roads could be shot as enemy combatants.

Commanders suggested the routes remained vulnerable to attacks by insurgents who have been targeting U.S. military supply lines.

``We've got to fix those roads, we've also got to protect those roads,'' Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad. Kimmitt said civilians would be redirected around the closed sections.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Baghdad Thursday that the need to defend supply lines for U.S. forces was ``part of the calculations'' U.S. commanders used when they called for troop reinforcements.

In other developments Sunday:

 -U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said she would not speculate on whether the United States might consider a prisoner swap with militants who have kidnapped Americans, but added, ``I think you can be certain that negotiations with terrorists are not on this president's agenda.'' She spoke on ``Fox News Sunday.''

- Two British soldiers were injured Saturday when their convoy came under fire in the southern town of Amarah, but their injuries were not life-threatening, the British defense ministry said Sunday.

- Attackers fired several mortar rounds overnight at Spanish bases in Diwaniya and Najaf, and at a Polish base in Karbala, but no damage or casualties were reported.