US Troops Pull out of Major Centers as Iraqi Security
Forces and Interim Government Buckle
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
April 10, 2004, 12:43 PM
(GMT+02:00)
Friday, April 9 - Day Six of the Shiite radical uprising
The tide turned in the Iraq war. US-led forces in Iraq were thrown
back to the point they had reached exactly one year ago when Saddam
Hussein's colossal statue was toppled by joyous Iraqis.
They were faced, according to DEBKAfile's exclusive military and
intelligence sources, with a row of devastating setbacks:
* Third minister has quit the provisional Iraqi Governing Council
set up to hold the fort of government until the handover of
sovereignty on June 30. A fourth threatens to do so. Council
demands US halt military offensive.
* Large parts of the New Iraqi Army, police, border guard,
protective units for oil installations and intelligence, trained
and financed by Washington, were breaking down.
Some Iraqi units were handing their weapons and surrendering to the
nearest insurgent militias, whether the rebellions radical Shiite
Mehdi Army or other guerrilla groups, including al Qaeda.
The third element follows the first two: US troops were ordered to
de-escalate military action and pull back from the major fronts of
Baghdad's sprawling northern Shiite slum known as Sadr City, the
northern oil city of Mosul and Ar Ramadi at the western tip of the
Sunni Triangle. They were told that further coalition troop
advances were bound to cause an unacceptable level of civilian and
troop casualties.
This was the real background to the unilateral US suspension of
hostilities on April 9 in the hotbed town of Falllujah, scene of
the brutal lynching of four American contractors on March 31.
Saturday, April 10
US Brig-Gen Kimmit called on Iraqi insurgents in Fallujahto join
the ceasefire declared unilaterally by US forces and negotiate a
way out of the crisis.
The call went unheeded as guerrillas continued to attack.
Most surprisingly, American and allied forces were stopped in their
tracks not by a popular Iraqi revolution or a mighty army, but by
the spotty "strike and scoot" tactics of a radical militia, the
ragtag Mehdi Army led by a fringe Shiite leader, 31-year old
Moqtada Sadr.
His tactics, meticulously plotted by masterminds in Iran and the
Hizballah, proved capable of breaking up the military, political
and economic edifice the Bush administration had created at great
cost on the road to a future democracy.
The impact of the Iraqi reverses on US standing in the world and
the Middle East and George W. Bush's re-election prospects will not
be long in coming. America's allies in the region are aghast.
Their leaders are witnessing a stage in the Iraq war in which
US-led forces are falling back against the combined strength of
terrorists and their sponsors, Iran, Hizballah, Syria, al Qaeda and
Iraqi Shiite radicals.
The thought has occurred to Jerusalem that this anti-American
coalition may well decide to sidestep a direct military
confrontation with the American army and follow up its Iraq
successes with a newly invigorated military-terrorist offensive
against Israel.
This sharpened threat looms at the very moment that Israeli prime
minister Ariel Sharon is working against all odds to sell President
Bush and his own Likud Party a plan for Israel's unilateral
disengagement from the Palestinians and renunciation of all Gaza
and a handful of West bank settlements.
This plan would render Jewish state extremely vulnerable to enemy
action, a fact that will not be lost on the winning coalition in
Iraq which also sustains the extremist Hamas, or on the Palestinian
terrorist movement as a whole.
Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip would be a gift to Hamas,
delivering into the hands of the terrorists threatening to overrun
Iraq the further gain of an open enclave, haven and base, on the
Mediterranean, that would hem Israel in from the south.
They would acquire this asset on top of the Lebanese and Syrian
bases on its northern border where the terrorists and their Iranian
backers are already poised to strike.
To be cont'd...
