The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places. Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. . . . [F]rom our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Andrew Bacevich


Monday, July 9, 2007

Security Incidents for Monday, July 09, 2007


(1) MNF-Iraq is reporting the death of a Multi-National Division - Baghdad soldier when a suicide car bomb detonated near his patrol west of Baghdad on Sunday, July 8th. Three other soldiers were wounded in the attack.

(2) The British Ministry of Defense is also announcing the death of a soldier who was badly wounded in the same operation in Basra in which Lance Corporal Ryan Francis was killed. The soldier, a member of 3 Regiment Royal Military Police, died on Sunday, July 8th.

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Baghdad:
#1: Two roadside bombs went off minutes apart near Baghdad's main bus terminal on Monday, killing four people and injuring 21, police said. According to Reuters, they said one policeman was among those killed by the bombs in the Nahda area of central Baghdad

#2: Insurgents killed two policemen and two Iraqi soldiers in an ambush as they responded to a bomb tip-off in the Sunni district of Adhamiya, police said.

#3: One person was killed and two others wounded by gunmen who stormed a house in the mainly Sunni west Baghdad neighbourhood of Jamia on Sunday, police said.

#4: One civilian was killed by a roadside bomb in the central Shi'ite district of Karrada and four other people were wounded, police said.

#5: A roadside bomb exploded in the central Nahda district in the morning, killing a passer-by and wounding three others. Several hours later, an explosive-wired car detonated in the same area, killing two people and wounding six, a police official said.

#6: In southern Baghdad, a suicide bomber set off an explosives-packed car into a joint Iraqi army-police patrol, killing four passers-by and a soldier in the violence-torn district of Dora, police said.

#7: Around dawn, police discovered gunmen trying to plant bombs near the security wall surrounding the Sunni district of Azamiyah. In a gunbattle that followed, two soldiers and two policemen were killed, police said. There were no immediate reports about the casualties among the gunmen.

#8: Three Iraqi policemen were killed and another injured when their patrol came under attack in northern Baghdad, Iraqi security sources said on Monday. "The policemen were killed by gunmen with machine guns near al-Nidaa mosque in al-Qahira neighborhood, northern Baghdad," an Iraqi police source, who asked not to be named, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq

#9: Three civilians were killed and another was wounded by U.S. fire in southern Baghdad, an Iraqi police source said on Monday. "A U.S. patrol vehicle opened fire randomly on civilians while it was crossing the Diala Bridge, linking Baghdad with southern Iraqi provinces, to make room for the patrol, killing three civilians and injuring another," the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq


Diyala Prv:
Miqdadiya:
#1: A criminal investigation judge from al-Miqdadiya Court was killed in an armed attack in the centre of al-Miqdadiya, an Iraqi police source said on Monday. "A group of armed men intercepted the car of Haqqy Ismail, a criminal investigation judge from al-Miqdadiya Court, 45 km northeast of Baaquba," the source, who requested his name not be mentioned, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). According to the source, the armed men blocked the judge's way and opened fire on him, killing him on the spot, and escaped.


Najaf:
#1: Director of Najaf's Center for Human Rights and Support of Democracy survived an assassination attempt in the north of the city, while his driver was killed and two bodyguards wounded, a security source said on Monday. "Director of the center for human rights in Najaf, lawyer Ali al-Shibani, survived an attempt on his life in al-Gherri neighborhood, northern Najaf, when unidentified armed men driving a civilian vehicle intercepted his convoy," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq


Ja'arah:
#1: Gunmen shot dead 12 workers after kidnapping them in southern Baghdad late on Sunday, an Interior Ministry source said on Monday. "Gunmen set up a faked checkpoint in southern Baghdad and stopped a mini-van carrying laborers working for a soft drink factory, kidnapping 20 workers," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Three of them were released immediately at the scene and five others freed later, the source said. On Monday, the police found 12 bodies in execution style near the village of Ja'arah, 30 km south of Baghdad, he said.


Balad:
#1: A roadside bomb killed nine Iraqi soldiers and wounded 20 others in northern Iraq on Monday, police said. They said the bomb exploded as the soldiers were passing by in a truck near the town of Balad in Salahuddin province.


Kirkuk:
#1: Police found the body of one man with torture marks in the northern city of Kirkuk on Sunday, police said.



Afghanistan:
#1: U.S.-led coalition and Afghan troops conducting a nighttime raid killed a Taliban leader today but also two children caught in the crossfire, a U.S. spokesman said. During the raid of the home in eastern Paktia province, suspected militants fired guns and rocket-propelled grenades at the coalition and Afghan troops, forcing troops to return fire. Two children were killed in the exchange, said Maj. Donald Korpi, a U.S. coalition spokesman.

#2: insurgents fired mortars at a village in eastern Afghanistan, killing a boy and wounding eight other people, including five NATO soldiers, a NATO statement said today. The 10-year-old boy died after two mortar rounds hit a village in the Nari district of Kunar province on Saturday, the statement said. The attack also left five alliance soldiers and three Afghan civilians wounded, it said. NATO did not release the nationalities of the wounded soldiers, but most of the troops in that region are American

#3: An exchange of small arms fire at an army base in Afghanistan's western city of Herat on Monday killed four Afghan soldiers, a spokeswoman for the provincial governor said. Farzana Ahmadi said authorities had arrested one soldier and suspected he had links with guerrillas fighting the government and foreign troops stationed in Afghanistan. Two provincial officials said the exchange was sparked due to a "personal dispute" between two Afghan soldiers. They said 10 Afghan soldiers and two U.S. soldiers were wounded.

#4: Suspected Islamic militants Sunday shot dead three Chinese men in northwest Pakistan which security sources said could be a revenge attack over the siege of a radical mosque in Islamabad. A fourth Chinese man was critically wounded in the assault at their home on the outskirts of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan. Witnesses said a number of bearded men came to the house in three jeeps and barged into the place where the Chinese also had set up a small factory to manufacture three-wheel auto-rickshaws.

#5: Australian soldiers were working in the restive southern province of Oruzgan when they came under attack from rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire yesterday afternoon. No soldiers were injured in the firefight.

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