WP, p. 1: (Iraq) Insurgents Display New Sophistication

Insurgents Display New Sophistication
Campaign Leaves Bridges Heavily Damaged, Hampering Military's Push South
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A01


FORWARD OPERATING BASE DUKE, Iraq, April 13 -- Insurgents fighting the U.S.-led occupation force have sharply increased the sophistication, coordination and aggressiveness of their tactics over the past week, Army officers and soldiers involved in combat here said.

Most dramatically, as several thousand U.S. troops pushed south this week from the Baghdad area to this new base in central Iraq, one highway bridge on their planned route was destroyed and two others were so heavily damaged that they could not be used by heavy Army trucks and armored vehicles.

Those attacks on convoy routes, which U.S. forces were using for the first time, revealed a previously unseen degree of coordination among insurgent groups, said Army Col. Dana J.H. Pittard, the commander of a brigade-size task force now assembling for possible combat operations against the forces of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr in or near the holy city of Najaf.

"The dropping of the bridges was very interesting, because it showed a regional or even a national level of organization," Pittard said in an interview. He said insurgents appeared to be sending information southward, communicating about routes being taken by U.S. forces and then getting sufficient amounts of explosives to key bridges ahead of the convoys....

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(In another new development, the article states, "groups of fighters launched synchronized attacks Friday on several U.S. and Iraqi installations in Baqubah, a provincial capital north of Baghdad," adding that "by simultaneously striking U.S. troops at the police station, the provincial governors' office and a U.S. military office, the insurgents displayed not only a considerable amount of planning and positioning but also a level of aggressiveness far beyond the roadside bombings and firing of rocket-propelled grenades that occur daily in Iraq.")


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9532-2004Apr13_2.html

the major hostilities are over.
do you think the u.s. command has hired a new team of advertising experts yet to describe what these actions are?

said that Iraqis have a right to education.

Quick question: What country has the highest rate of PHD's per 100,000 population? Hint: It is the same country that our military & media are so mystified as to how intelligently they are fighting an insurgency.

And BTW, this high rate of PHD's was achieved under Saddam Hussein.

The cockroach in the White House should be concerning himself with education within his borders.