U.S. Assault Continues Near Syria Border

This kind of fits some of what we were discussing about Vietnam. Safe Haven's in other countries. In Vietnam it was Cambodia.

American fighter jets flattened a suspected insurgent safe house near the Syrian border, the U.S. military said Friday, as hundreds of U.S. troops searched remote desert villages house by house for followers of Iraq's most wanted militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
American forces have met little resistance since the first two days of Operation Matador, aimed at clearing a region believed to be a haven for foreign fighters slipping over the border from Syria, the military said in a statement Friday. American intelligence indicates the insurgents are either in hiding or have fled the region, U.S. Capt. Jeffrey Pool said in the statement.
Villagers reached by telephone Friday said gunmen still roamed some areas and they continued to receive U.S. shelling.
The U.S. offensive "? one of the largest since militants were forces from Fallujah six months ago "? comes amid a surge of militant attacks that have killed more than 420 people in just over two weeks since Iraq's first democratically elected government was announced.
A car bomb exploded in a jammed commercial district of the capital Thursday, setting cars, shops and restaurants ablaze in the most deadly of a string of attacks that killed 21 and injured more than 90. Iraqis expressed growing fury at the relentless bloodshed, throwing stones at police and U.S. forces who responded to the bombing that killed 17 Iraqis and injured 81.
Two more blasts rocked the capital Friday, both targeting American patrols, Iraqi police said. There were no immediate reports of casualties, but Associated Press Television News footage of the blasts showed a U.S. Humvee, its hood open, consumed by flames on a highway leading to the airport.
A 30-minute gunbattle erupted in Ghazaliyah, a nearby part of western Baghdad, when insurgents fired on Iraqi soldiers who were searching the area, said police Maj. Abdul Karim. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Also in western Baghdad, snipers opened fire on the motorcade of the Interior Ministry's undersecretary Maj. Gen. Hikmat Moussa Hussein, killing one of his guards and wounding three, police Maj. Moussa Abdul Karim said. Hussein escaped unharmed.
North of the capital, a car bomb exploded Friday as an Iraqi army patrol was moving through Baqouba, killing three people and wounding six, police Col. Mudhafar Mohammed said. The dead included two soldiers and a civilian, he said.
At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated Thursday that the insurgency could last for many more years.
"This requires patience," he said at a news conference Thursday. "This is a thinking and adapting adversary ... I wouldn't look for results tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies, that they last from three, four years to nine years."
The U.S. military said information gained from a "senior terrorist" captured during the operation near the Syrian border led Marines to the safe house Thursday in Karabilah, a village about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad.
As Marines approached, at least four gunmen fired on them from the building, the military statement said. U.S. F-18 Super Hornet jets destroyed the building with a combination of bombs and rockets, the statement said.
The offensive was launched after U.S. intelligence showed large numbers of insurgents had moved into the northern Jazirah Desert following losses in Fallujah and Ramadi, further east. The area is believed to be a staging ground for foreign fighters, who receive weapons and equipment there to launch attacks in Iraq's main cities.
The U.S. military has confirmed five Marine deaths so far and says about 100 insurgents have been killed in the operation. But a Washington Post reporter embedded with U.S. forces put the American death toll Thursday at seven "? six of them from one squad.
Gunmen were taking over the homes of Iraqi citizens to evade Marines in the area, the U.S. military said Friday.
Residents reached by telephone in Saadah said American forces were periodically shelling their village Friday.
"The situation is very bad ... Most of the people have fled to the desert," said Samran Mukhlef Abed, a tribal leader. "The Americans are all around ... and medical services do not exist here. If someone is hurt, we have to take him to cities that are far way from here and that is impossible with the situation."
The U.S. military denied resident reports that some areas have been without electricity and running water since the offensive began late Saturday, but said regional hospital services were disrupted when a suicide car bomber attacked the hospital in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, on Saturday.
The U.S. military said it was receiving intelligence from local residents, fed up with the presence of foreign fighters in the region. But residents voiced equal frustration with U.S. forces, who pounded the area with airstrikes, artillery barrages and gunfire during the first days of the offensive
"They destroyed our city, killed our children, destroyed our houses. We have nothing left," one man told Associated Press Television News in Qaim on Thursday. He did not give his name and hid his face with a scarf to address the camera.
Families were fleeing in trucks packed with luggage and APTN footage showed plumes of smoke rising from the town.
On the outskirts of Qaim, where the offensive began Saturday, a group of masked gunmen armed with machine guns, remained defiant Thursday.
"We will fight whoever comes, whether they are American or Arab," one of them told APTN.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have conducted stepped up raids across the country in recent weeks. Iraq's government announced Thursday the capture of two more wanted insurgents "? one a bomb maker with links to al-Zarqawi identified as Seif-Eddine Mustafa al-Naimi, the other a financier for an insurgent group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq identified as Amar Farid Abdul-Qader Ashur al-Jibouri.
Meanwhile, Australia's top Islamic leader met with clerics in Baghdad on Thursday to appeal for the release of Australian hostage, Douglas Wood. Sheik Taj El Din al-Hilaly told reporters he had made no contact yet with Woods' captors, but said he was ready to negotiate with anyone.
There has been no word of Wood's fate since his kidnappers' deadline for Australia to start withdrawing its forces from Iraq passed Monday. More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed in April 2003. More than 30 have been killed by their captors.

My one question. It was take no prisoners, as far as countries and terrorism.
We have a War on Terrorism, why has the US not went into Syria and gotten these insurgents. The War on Terror said any country who helps or is engaged.
Evidently these insurgents are using Syria like the Vietmanese used Cambodia.
Yet we have an open door policy against any country, but still, have not went into Syria or Iran to get these insurgents.
And i think the US just was a big backer in Syria to see that the Lebanese pull out of Syria? Yet these insurgents use Syria to keep safe?

[PVVikeFan]

I don't care if we fight these people near the Syrian border, on the Syrian border, or 300 miles inside Syria. The only way to stop these fanatics is to KILL them. They should not have a safe place to hide. As I have said before, in my opinion, the entire Middle East is not worth one American life. There is no such thing as a "nice" war. If we're not IN IT TO WIN IT, WHY BE IN IT???

[imported_Union_Man]

Give em Hell boys! A few less sub-human rag head Islamic backward animals. I found this nice story on the web:

General Pershing was in charge of a U.S. garrison in the Philippines in 1911. It seems his soldiers were subjected to a series of terror attacks by Filipino Muslims. Pershing did not try to put together a "road map." Nor did he set up study groups to find out why the Muslims hated the Americans. Nor did he offer them a series of "good will gestures." Nor did he put up a giant wall to keep them out. Instead, he captured fifty of those Muslim terrorists. He then had them dig their own graves. He then tied all up to posts execution style. He then dipped fifty bullets in pig's blood. You see, Muslims murders may not have a problem with soaking their hands into Jewish blood but NO WAY do they want anything to do with the skin, blood or 'guts' of a pig. Should they be contaminated by any of these pig parts, they will go to Muslim Hell, not Muslim Paradise!

And so, on the count of three, all but one of those Paradise-seeking Islamists were shot dead! Their bodies were them wrapped in the skins of freshly-killed pigs and dropped into the giant hole. Above them were poured the entrails and other porcine remains. You may ask, "Why was one Muslim spared?" The answer is simple. This sole surviving Muslim was released and sent back to his fellow 'mujahedin' to report what he had just witnessed. For the next 42 years there was not a single Muslim attack!

Hand'em a FOOTBALL right at the last instant! [img]/LDPforum/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Bingo my friend- you can't dance with the Devil with going to Hell. As I grew up I only learned one way to fight- to win- with whatever was available and whatever I can lay my hands on. How do our politicans send our troops into combat with some of the rules of engagement that have been imposed since 1960? Seal the borders, burn it up... or down, which ever you prefer. The South Koreans sent a Divison to Viet Nam, in the same areas where our troops were being ambushed daily, the Koreans operated without fear. The first time they were ambushed, they killed half the population of the next village closest to the site. Next time , the villagers made sure they were warned. To stop it the USSR and China prompted the "Pueblo" spy ship being nabbed and the troops were recalled to South Korea. Looks like our leaders would have learned from them.