| From the NYT. As much as we dislike 'em, they do have reporters on the scene and they are telling us what is happening on the ground. I snipped all the 'analysis' from the story and present the facts as 'fair use.' |
BAGHDAD -- Sunni militants consolidated and extended their control over northern Iraq on Wednesday, seizing Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, threatening the strategic oil refining town of Baiji and pushing south toward Baghdad, their ultimate target, Iraqi sources said.
As the dimensions of the assault began to become clear, it was evident that a number of militant groups had joined forces, including Baathist military commanders from the Hussein era, whose goal is to rout the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. One of the Baathists, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was a top military commander and a vice president in the Hussein government and one of the few prominent Baathists to evade capture by the Americans throughout the occupation.
| It's that 'strong horse' thing again... |
"These groups were unified by the same goal, which is getting rid of this sectarian government, ending this corrupt army and negotiating to form the Sunni Region," said Abu Karam, a senior Baathist leader and a former high-ranking army officer, who said planning for the offensive had begun two years ago. "The decisive battle will be in northern Baghdad. These groups will not stop in Tikrit and will keep moving toward Baghdad."
| They need to topple the government, each for their own reasons. Each thinks that their group will end up top dog, or at least one of the big dogs. Each thinks that this is best for the people they claim to represent. And they're all united in thinking that democracy is bad -- at least for them... |
The sudden successes of the militant forces sent hundreds of thousands of people running, some literally, from the new outbursts of violence, panicked leaders in Turkey and Syria and revived memories of bloody American struggles to wrest the same places â Mosul and Tikrit â from jihadist fighters a decade ago.
By late Wednesday, the Sunni militants, many aligned with the radical Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, were battling loyalist forces at the northern entrance to the city of Samarra, about 70 miles north of Baghdad. The city is known for a sacred Shiite shrine that was bombed in 2006, during the height of the American-led occupation, touching off a sectarian civil war between the Sunni minority and Shiite majority.
Militant commanders were reportedly threatening to destroy the shrine if its defenders refused to lay down their arms, while hundreds of Shiite fighters were said to be heading north from Baghdad to confront the attackers.
| That's about where the line will be drawn. The Shi'a aren't going to allow Sunni terrorists into the land that traditionally has been theirs. The government may not fight but the Shi'a militias will. |
As Iraqi government forces crumbled in disarray before the assault, there was speculation that they may have been ordered by their superiors to give up without a fight. One local commander in Salahuddin Province, where Tikrit is located, said in an interview Wednesday: "We received phone calls from high-ranking commanders asking us to give up. I questioned them on this, and they said, 'This is an order.' "
Residents of Tikrit reported remarkable displays of soldiers handing over their weapons and uniforms peacefully to militants who ordinarily would have been expected to kill government soldiers on the spot.
Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, himself suggested the possibility of a disloyal military in his exhortations on Tuesday for citizens to take up arms against the Sunni insurgents.
As the central government declared a 10 p.m. curfew in the capital and surrounding towns, an influential Iraqi Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, called for the formation of a special force to defend religious sites in Iraq. The authorities in neighboring Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, canceled all visas and flights for pilgrims to Baghdad and intensified security on the Iran-Iraq border, Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Shiite militia leaders said that at least four brigades, each with 2,500 to 3,000 fighters, had been hastily assembled and equipped in recent weeks by the Shiite political parties to protect Baghdad and the political process in Iraq. They identified the outfits as the Kataibe Brigade, the Assaib Brigade, the Imam al-Sadr Brigade and the armed wing of the Badr Organization.
| There you go. I'm only surprised that these militias had to be "hastily" reassembled -- I would have thought they would have been assembled and just laying low, keeping their powder dry... |
Residents of Baiji, a city of 200,000 about 110 miles south of Mosul, awoke Wednesday to find that government checkpoints had been abandoned and that insurgents, arriving in a column of 60 vehicles, were taking control of parts of the city without firing a shot, the security officials said. Peter Bouckaert, the emergency services director for Human Rights Watch, said in a post on Twitter that the militants had seized the Baiji power station, which supplies electricity to Baghdad, Kirkuk and Salahuddin Province.
In Tikrit, residents said the militants attacked in the afternoon from three directions: east, west and north. They said there were brief exchanges of gunfire, and then police officers and soldiers shed their uniforms, put on civilian clothing and fled through residential areas to avoid the militants.
"They did not kill the soldiers or policemen who handed over their weapons, uniform and their military ID," a security official in Tikrit, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Wednesday. "They just took these things and asked them to leave."
On Wednesday, the insurgents claimed to have taken control of the entire province of Nineveh, Agence France-Presse reported, and there were reports of militants executing government soldiers in the Kirkuk region. Atheel al-Nujaifi, the governor of the province, criticized the Iraqi army commanders in Mosul, saying they had misled the government about the situation in the city. |
[Telegraph] Saddam Hussein's former deputy has resurfaced making a call for an anti-Iranian crusade a year after he was supposedly killed in Iraq.
[Phaze Zero] Today marks the beginning of what I hope will be many opportunities to introduce true practitioners in the world of spying and killing to Phase Zero readers. Our first guest is Malcolm Nance, a 34-year veteran intelligence officer who has worked the Iraq mission since 1987, fighting in all of our Middle East wars since 1983. He has lived in and out of Iraq since 2003. 
[Asharq al-Aswat] A senior member of the outlawed Iraqi Baathist party, Mohamed al-Dulaimi, informed Asharq Al-Awsat that efforts to unify the two wings of the Baathist party, the 
A former aide to Saddam Hussein said in an audio tape aired on Tuesday that Israel would not have dared to launch its current attack on Gaza if the Iraqi leader was still in power. 
Baghdad (AKI) - The leader of Iraq's banned Baath party,