Why you should be reading The Captain’s Journal
BY Herschel Smith
17 years, 3 months ago
So why should you be reading The Captain’s Journal? Quite simply, because we are finding the obscure information, connecting the dots, and giving you the analysis before it becomes analysis to other analysts. Let’s go over two cases in point.
USA Today reports on confiscated weapons piling up in Iraq.
Coalition forces have uncovered more insurgent weapons caches in the first six months of this year than the entire previous year, Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Monday.
The record number of seizures is due largely to a new U.S. strategy that has moved American forces off bases and into neighborhoods, generating more tips from civilians. Offensives have also disrupted insurgent sanctuaries, Petraeus said.Uncovering weapons caches are one of several signs of recent military progress, Petraeus said. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will travel to Washington in September to give an assessment of the new strategy in Iraq, which is backed by an additional 30,000 American troops.
“We feel as if we have momentum, tactical momentum,” Petraeus said in a telephone interview from Baghdad.
Petraeus cautioned that challenges remain and insurgent groups maintain the ability to carry out large attacks. “I don’t want to paint a rosy picture,” he said.
Uncovering the caches, which can include everything from rockets and surface-to-air missiles to assault weapons and components for roadside bombs, gets weapons out of the hands of insurgents.
It’s also a sign of how prevalent weapons and ammunition are in Iraq. The numbers of arms caches uncovered so far this year is 3,698, up from 2,726 last year, according to the military command in Iraq. “It’s staggering,” Petraeus said.
General Petraeus, not a man given to superlative or exaggeration, says the numbers are “staggering!” But we have been reporting on this and analyzing it for some time now. On April 27, 2007, we reported that the Government Accounting Office informed us as to just how important pre-war planning and post-invasion manpower was to securing weapons:
Unattended Iraqi ammunition depots provide the majority of explosives used by insurgents to attack U.S. and coalition troops with improvised explosive devices, according to a Government Accountability Office report released April 27.
“There’s an unknown number of sites that remain unsecured today,
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