Al Qaeda Defeated In Rashid By Hubris And Annihilation of Leadership, But Mostly Annihilation of Leadership

Col. Gibbs breaks one of General Petraeus' rules and does do a victory dance. He's either a bit unguarded here or else he's really, seriously kicked these bastards' asses unholy.

Baghdad's Rashid district has long been one of the city's most violent quarters [link omitted], but from my conversation this morning with Col. Ricky Gibbs, Commander, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, it's clear that the Army has made tremendous progress in this particular area of operations.

...

Gibbs said "things have been going, and continue to be going, very very well." His command had only seen one casualty in the last three months. They'd gone two and half months without out a single casualty he said, but just in the last two weeks he'd had one soldier killed in action and another suffer wounds from and IED blast. He described the incident as an "unfortunate, but lucky, stray round that killed one of our soldiers."

The decline in violence was attributed to a number of factors, but primarily the fact that, as Gibbs said, "we have defeated al Qaeda in Rashid, and what little that are here, are low level soldiers that are without leadership or supply." He said they'd "taken out all of those leaders," and that he's "not worried about al Qaeda anymore."

He does allow that he continues to be worried about Shia extremist militias, though.

posted by Ace at 09:10 PM

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