Iraqi Army Pulls Its Own Weight in Najaf

According to The New York Times, one of the biggest single battles in Iraq in several years occurred in Najaf – and the men doing most of the fighting against the “militants” were in the Iraqi Army. Could it be that the Iraqis are approaching the point at which their own army is ready to provide security?

January 29, 2007
250 Are Killed in Major Iraq Battle
By DAMIEN CAVE
BAGHDAD, Jan. 28 — An American helicopter was shot down and at least 250 people were killed near the city of Najaf on Sunday in what appeared to be one of Iraq’s deadliest battles in years, Iraqi officials said.

For 15 hours, Iraqi forces backed by American helicopters and tanks battled hundreds of gunmen hiding in a date palm orchard near the village of Zarqaa, about 120 miles south of Baghdad, by a river and a large grain silo that is surrounded by orchards, the officials said.

Col. Ali Numaas, a spokesman for the Iraqi security forces in Najaf, said that the fighting stopped just after 10 p.m. and that most of those killed were militants. An employee at a local morgue said at least two Iraqi policemen were among the dead.

The “militants” apparently had intended to kill as many Shiites as possible:

Asad Abu Ghalal, the governor of Najaf Province, said the fighters in the orchard were Iraqi and foreign, some wearing the brown, white and maroon regalia of Pakistani and Afghan fighters. He said they had come to assassinate Shiite clerics and attack religious convoys that were gathering in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam’s holiest cities, and other southern cities for Ashura, a Shiite holiday that starts Monday night and runs through Tuesday morning.

Also, there were some other foreigners who intended to kill Shiites:

Elsewhere in the heavily Shiite south, there were other signs of potential strikes on Ashura. Officials in Karbala said the police arrested three men on Sunday — a Saudi, an Afghan and a Moroccan — who were found on the road between Najaf and Karbala with a suicide bomb belt and explosives in their car. The officials said the vehicle had been hollowed out so it could be used as a car bomb.

As the useful idiots in the U.S.A. wring their hands over the “civil war” in Iraq and demand that we abandon Iraq, it is important to notice that our enemies among the Islamic radicals come from places other than Iraq and join in the killing with the intention of provoking the Shiites into a chaotic “civil war.”

When our enemies choose a strategy to defeat our plan to establish a democratic republic in Iraq, it is best not to play along and help them. Our enemies expect to win their first objective (getting us to withdraw in an isolationist funk from Iraq and other Islamic areas) by creating chaos in Iraq and letting the fifth column here in America persuade us it's a "civil war" in which we shouldn't be involved. Unfortunately, they are getting a lot of help from the knowing and unknowing traitors among us.