Iraqi army frees 8 kidnapped sheiks

CNN:

...

Also Monday, the Iraqi army freed eight of 10 kidnapped Iraqi tribal sheiks in a raid, Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said.

Two other sheiks who were abducted Sunday remained missing, said al-Askari, and the Iraqi army continues to work toward their release.

Four kidnappers were killed in the raid, which took place in Baghdad's Rusafa district on the Tigris River, the spokesman said.

The U.S. military has blamed a former Mehdi Army militia brigade commander for the sheikhs' abductions.

The commander, Arkan Hasnawi, is responsible for the kidnappings, the military said, citing intelligence sources.

The military said Hasnawi "has joined forces with Iranian-supported special groups that are rejecting [Mehdi Army leader] Muqtada al-Sadr's direction to embrace fellow Iraqis."

...

The story also indicates that U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Dorko, injured when an IED exploded near his vehicle. Dorko took command of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Gulf Region Division in Baghdad on October 10. He has been medivaced to Germany so his injuries were apparently serious.

The Story on the kidnapping of the Sheiks was big news all weekend, but unfortunately the rescue of most of them by the Iraqi army got buried in the story about a wounded general who had been in country a few weeks. For a media that has been whining about the reconciliation process, you would think that the rescue of some sheiks who were participating in it by the Iraqi army would be more significant.

Bill Roggio has more on the freeing of the sheiks and the identity of the people behind the kidnapping.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more