Enemy test Iraqi forces with a 13 city surge in attacks

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

NY Times:

In one of the broadest assaults on Iraq’s security forces, insurgents unleashed a wave of roadside mines and a more than a dozen car bombings across Iraq on Wednesday, killing dozens, toppling a police station in the capital and sowing chaos and confusion among the soldiers and police officers who responded.

The withering two-hour assault in 13 towns and cities, from southernmost Basra to restive Mosul in the north, was as symbolic as it was deadly, coming a week before the United States declares the end of combat operations here. Wednesday was seemingly the insurgents’ reply: Despite suggestions otherwise, they proved their ability to launch coordinated attacks virtually anywhere in Iraq, capitalizing on the government’s dysfunction and perceptions of American vulnerability.

For weeks, there had been sense of inevitability to the assaults, which killed at least 51 people, many of them police officers. From the American military to residents here, virtually everyone seemed to expect insurgents to seek to demonstrate their prowess as the United States brings its number of troops below 50,000 here. But the anticipation did little to prepare security forces for the breadth of the assault. Iraqi soldiers and police officers brawled at the site of the biggest bombing in Baghdad, and residents heckled them for their impotence in stopping a blast that cut like a scythe through the neighborhood.

“A bloody day,” Khalil Ahmed, a 30-year-old engineer, said simply, as he stared at the cranes and bulldozers trying to rescue victims buried under the police station.

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This is a bit of a PR offensive to interfere with Obama's planned message on the withdrawal of US troops and to test the Iraqi forces left behind. In terms of combat capacity the attacks are relatively insignificant. They do effect the ability of Iraqi troops to operate effectively.

They will not draw the US troops back into a combat role with this kind of attack. This was an attack aimed at getting this kind of media attention, and to that extent it worked, but they would have to repeat this kind of event on a daily basis to sustain the coverage and they have not shown the capacity to do that.

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