Pentagon Cites Many Successes of US Troops in Iraq

Many Successes of US Troops in Iraq
Coalition and Iraqi forces have been dealing blows to terrorism in Iraq since June, according to statistics from the Pentagon. From July 30 to Aug, 5, coalition forces have discovered and neutralized 109 explosive devices and captured 805 insurgent fighters, 493 of whom were detained. Eleven foreign fighters were either killed or captured, the Pentagon said.

Even in Mosul, one of the most violent places in Iraq, the U.S. forces are seeing reduced hostilities, according to the Associated Press, which reported this week that "there were fewer bombings and mortar attacks in July than any month since (last) October," representing a 50-percent decrease.

On July 29, U.S. forces captured al Qaeda cell leader Ammar Abu Bara, a top wanted official. Bara's predecessor, Abu Talha, had reportedly been the most-trusted operations assistant to terror kingpin Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until being captured a few weeks earlier on June 16.

U.S. Marines foiled terrorist plans to detonate a car bomb last weekend and followed up that success by discovering and neutralizing a car bomb factory in Baghdad on Aug. 8. Friday saw the U.S. forces foil another car bomb plan with the discovery of the explosive devices and the man who had allegedly set up the devices.

"There is no question our soldiers have been effective," Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, told Cybercast News Service , expressing her personal views. She acknowledged that "there is a certain amount of debate about whether we have sufficient troops to manage the requirements of that war."

Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, told Cybercast News Service sarcastically that perhaps Kennedy was right.

"If signing the Transitional Administrative Law on the 8th of March, 2004 is a quagmire, then yes, we are in quagmire," Venable said, referring to the Coalition Provisional Authority, which governed Iraq between the ouster of Saddam Hussein's regime and the establishment of Iraq's new sovereign government.

Venable continued to cite what he said were the many military and political accomplishments made by U.S. forces. If the establishment of the Iraqi interim government, the subsequent Iraqi elections and the announcement of the first sovereign Iraqi government thereafter, the official transfer of power from the coalition forces to the Iraqi government, the drafting of a new Iraqi Constitution soon to be completed, and the training of more than 178,000 Iraqi security forces are "evidence of a quagmire, then yes, we are in a quagmire," he added.

"The bottom line is that we are making considerable progress in the political process in the development of Iraqi security forces, and in the containment of the insurgency," Venable concluded. "The insurgency is essentially stagnant."