Mosul to be "cleansed" of al Qaeda: Iraq

Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq said on Wednesday it was determined to "cleanse" its northern city of Mosul of al Qaeda fighters but its U.S. backers said a planned operation might not deal the decisive blow that Baghdad wanted.

Al Qaeda, the Sunni Islamist militants blamed for most large-scale attacks in Iraq, and other insurgents regrouped in the north after being squeezed out of their former strongholds in western Anbar province and from around Baghdad last year.

...

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has called the Mosul mission a "decisive" final push against al Qaeda but Major-General Mark Hertling, commander of U.S. troops in northern Iraq, cautioned on Tuesday against describing the joint operation in such terms.

Asked if there was disagreement between the allies, Iraqi Defence Ministry spokesman Major-General Mohammed al-Askari softened the language used by Maliki.

"The goal is not only to cleanse the city but the goal after the cleansing is how to maintain all its districts and streets as secured areas clean for all citizens," he told reporters.

"The goal is not to achieve success only but ... to keep this success."


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080130/wl_nm/iraq_dc_12

It was fascist, and arose from the left.

A better example might be Chile.

It'll take a real "surge" to get this done. All propaganda, all the time.

How to overpromise extravagantly. Mission accomplished, baby!

By the way, how many Al Qaeda folks were in Mosul in, say, 2002?

Judging from what Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, says he's not exactly champing at the bit to go into a mixed city of 2 million. "It is not going to be this climactic battle ... It's going to be probably a slow process," he says. Not the "decisive" battle al-Maliki is promising.

Probably, the fact that about a third of the population is Kurdish, or was before they were ethnically cleansed by the Sunnis, the US is reluctant to get into a mess like Mosul. The problem with Nineveh, is that it's got part of it to the north-east and ajoining areas of Diyala province that the Kurds want folded into thier autonomous region, along with Kirkuk, naturally.

Accoding to NYT article back in May of last year:

"Nineveh is Iraq's most diverse province, with a dizzying array of ethnic and religious groups woven into an area about the size of Maryland. For centuries, Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Turkmens, Yezidis and Shabaks lived side by side in these verdant hills, going to the same schools, bartering in the same markets, even intermarrying on occasion. . . But what took generations to build is starting to unravel in the shadow of the Sunni Arab insurgency, which is tapping into several wells of ethnic resentment."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A06E0D91430F933A05756C0A9619C8B63

So, it's not like AQI just showed up last week, or have chosen Mosul as the last bastion of resistance. They've been there for a while.

"We have cleansed Serbia of insurgents".
It's a frightening fact: History really repeats itself!

in the history books

follwed by the really final push, followed by the really really final push, and the really really really final push and then of course the really really really i mean it this time really really double dog really final push and then again one last really last push follwed by the...

100 year war.

Whatever "al Qaeda" is in Iraq, this euphemism is applied in order to associate it with Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This helps the U.S. government to maintain the support of the gullible, for its invasion of the Middle East.

There are a number of theories about the origin of the term itself, but all credible experts on the Middle East and Islamic terrorism say, that there is no "terrorist network" called al Qaeda.