Monday, November 21, 2005

Is that an AK-47 under your burqua, or are you just happy to Sunni?

Interesting report on National Review Online today about U.S. and Iraqi forces’ counter-insurgency sweep in Iraq’s Al Anbar Province, which includes this tidbit:

In more than one instance — and to the delight of American and Iraqi troops — insurgents have been caught attempting to flee the battlefield dressed as women: Considered a particularly disgraceful act among Iraqis.

“They’ve proven to be cowards,” says Kerr [Capt. Patrick Kerr, a spokesman for the 2nd Marine Division in Ramadi]. “We found a number of them skulking among a flock of sheep trying to escape in Ubaydi, and there have been several instances of insurgents dressing up as women trying to escape.”

In one instance, Iraqi soldiers discovered three foreign fighters dressed as women trying to enter an Iraqi displacement camp. “The Iraqi soldiers wound up killing them after the insurgents revealed their identity and tried to engage the Iraqi soldiers with AK-47s hidden under their dresses,” says Kerr.

U.S. forces claim that they are killing many upper-tier insurgency leaders (I read this recently but can’t recall the link). This plus the fact that one of the suicide bombers in the Jordan hotel bombings was one of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi’s top guys (husband of the woman whose bomb vest failed to detonate) gives me hope that (a) the insurgency is being “decapitated” by the elimination of its leadership and (b) Zarqawi is having a hard time attracting new recruits, otherwise why would he sacrifice one of his top men in a suicide operation?

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