Latvian infantry withdraws from Iraq

On June 19th Latvia has finally withdrawn the infantry from Iraq as promised by the MoD, for which there is much rejoicing.

• 4 years
• 1150 soldiers
• 3 killed
• $40 million

For my opinion the last two are terribly expensive. The whole of the Iraq is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.

Iraqslogger actually posted an article. So much for even handed coverage of the coalition of the willing, this the first and only one so much as mentioning Latvian participation in the coalition entitled "Latvian Troops Head Home : Baltic State Ends MNF Deployment".

However, Latvia has not withdrawn from OIF entirely, just the infantry (TVNet).

Weekly Daily attack on Diwaniyah XII/07

The weekly attack is back.

Diwaniyah itself has been moderately hot, but most of the damage has come from Iraqi police and army fighting the Mahdi Army militia. General Othman and the 8th Iraqi Division appear to have their act together, and most remarkably are getting the previously useless police to pull some load. Their efforts have apparently kept Camp Echo unmortared for a couple weeks, until last Friday night when the post sermon hate arrived :

June 3 Iraqi army kills 4 suspected insurgents and loses one of the own near Diwaniyah (Blackanthem)
June 4 Clases between the Sadrists and US forces wound four in Diwaniyah (Reuters)
June 6 Fighting between Iraqi army and Mahdi Army leaves three dead (Iraqslogger)
June 9 Camp Echo is mortared in the evening (Lv MoD), but see below and following
June 10 Another US serviceman, Airman 1st Class Barnes, is kiled by IED attack on a convoy in/near Diwaniyah (Plain Dealer), while F-16s provide top cover for ground forces that has taken mortar fire near Diwaniyah (Air Force Link)
June 11-12 Camp Echo takes rocket fire during the night(Lv MoD)

According to the Alalam Iranian satellite TV news site on 9 June "Tens wounded in Diwaniyah clashes between Mahdi Army and a joint US-Dutch force" (Alalam). Joint US-Dutch force? Sounds like BS to me, because the Dutch have long since ended their mission in Iraq. So much for Iranian propaganda news , 'cause the Alalam site is publishing blatant crap despite their slogan being "Winning the Trust of Audience". Losers.

However, speaking of "media" and "losers" our own western MSM has completely missed the significance of Iraqi troops taking up the fight in Diwaniyah. But be reassured, they do a sterling job of reporting US casualties among other reverses in the Diwaniyah area.

Update

Did I mention the weekly daily attack on Camp Echo was back?

Perhaps because of the June 12 Askariya shrine bombing things down Diwaniyah way have gone completely pear shaped again overnight.

June 12 Camp Echo rocketed about 2200 (Lv MoD)
June 13 Camp Echo rocketed about 0400 (Lv MoD)

No attacks on Diwaniyah XI/07

I can find no reports of Echo being mortared, rocketed or shot in the last two weeks. Thats a big change. Trouble still brewing all around of course :

May 16 Fighting in Diwaniyah, 8 civilians wounded, one soldier and one policemam (Reuters)
May 17 Three civilians killed and four wounded in clashes between militia and security forces (Iraqslogger)
May 18 Three Iraqi security forces from a army-police "emergency contingent" wounded by "gunmen" (Iraqslogger)
May 19 Latvian Defence Minister Atis Slakteris visits our troops in Diwaniyah(Delfi)
May 20 Another IED attack near Diwaniyah. One US soldier killed, two wounded (BBC)
May 25 Three offduty Iraqi soldier killed in Diwaniyah (Reuters)
May 30 IED kills two and wounds two police (Telegraph)




On the one hand its now summer and just too damn hot for casual insurgents, but on the other hand the Iraqi security forces appear to have got their act together, which is a quite remarkable development. I opined it would take a fresh elite Iraqi brigade to secure the place after the US surge left, and from the reports above it appears that some kind of Iraqi force ("emergency contingent") has been put into place, and so far getting the job done. The mainstream media of course completely fails to report this, happily reporting casualties and fighting while refusing to them in any perspective.

Good news is no news, right CNN/Reuters/AP?

In other news which the MSM does report : There are reports in the Arab press that the Americans are threatening by helicopter dropped pamphlets to build a base in the center of Diwaniyah (Iraqslogger), though that whole story sounds pretty damn unlikely. It is now widely reported that opium poppies ares being grown ino the fields around Diwaniyah (The Independent among others). Iraqslogger gleefully reports that "Shi'a Rivalries Succeed Where Al-Qa'ida Fails", which gives some idea of the can of worms we opened by invading Iraq. The WaPo explains that "Iraq's Sadr Overhauls His Tactics".

Last word today to one of the neocons (that is to say one of the idiots who got us into this mess) Frederick Kagan: in this article he mentions Diwaniyah and has met the local Iraqi army commander :

On a recent trip to Iraq, I saw the human stakes in this struggle. I spoke with the commander of the 8th Iraqi Army Division in Diwaniyah, Major General Othman. He is a Shia, commanding a heavily Shia unit in an entirely Shia area. I asked him what was the most serious challenge he faced. He answered at once: Shia militias. General Othman stands strongly for an Iraq ruled by law, in which the government holds a monopoly on the use of force, and in which Sunni and Shia are treated equally. He has put his beliefs to the test of battle. When he saw that members of Moktada al-Sadr's Shia militia, the Mahdi Army, had taken control of the city of Diwaniyah, he conducted a large-scale clearing operation with the help of American forces and drove them out. General Othman now holds Diwaniyah, where the people can breathe free again, subject neither to that militia nor to any other. There is no turning back for General Othman. The Mahdi Army is determined to kill him and his family, and they will do so if we do not continue to support him. The life of this decent man is in our hands.

Good luck General Othman, you gonna need it.

Weekly attack on Diwaniyah X/07

Diwaniyah was back to something approaching normal.

4 May Iraqslogger :

A curfew was imposed on Diwaniya city on Friday night after fierce clashes between gunmen and a joint force of Iraqi and U.S. troops killing an Iraqi soldier and wounding three others, a security source said.

Order is imposed with heavy hand and voila! A Friday night curfew means no Friday night hate. So they switch to Monday.

6 May Rockets are fired at Camp Echo in the morning, no details and presumably no serious damage. (Lv MoD)

Still, that's only one attack reported in like a whole week. Pretty cool, except that the Cavalry apparently left Diwaniyah by 8 May (Blackanthem, Stars and Stripes). Were they replaced? It is not clear, but if not, then we would expect trouble to ratchet up again presto.

9 May Iraqslogger :

Unknown gunmen on Wednesday shot and killed a police officer outside his house in northern Diwaniya city, 180 km south of Baghdad, a police source said.

10 May : US Army Private first class Roy Jones of 984th Military Police Company/759th Military Police Battalion is severely wounded by small arms fire around 5 pm in Diwaniyah, he is evacuated but dies of his wounds later. Jones is 21 and came from Houston, joined the Army in March 2006 and was sent to Iraq six months later. (US DoD , Colorado Springs Gazette , Blackanthem (1), (2))

11 May Iraqslogger:

An Iraqi army soldier was killed and six policemen wounded when two explosive devices went off near two army and police patrols in Diwaniya, 180 km south of Baghdad, on Thursday night, a security source said

12 May Iraqslogger:

Unknown gunmen on Saturday shot dead a police officer in Diwaniya, 180 km south of Baghdad, a security source said.

13 May Iraqslogger

Iraqi forces detained on Sunday afternoon a leading figure from Sadr movement along with four of his brothers in the Shiite city of Diwaniya, 180 km south of Baghdad, a police source said.

13 May In the evening a Latvian patrol is fired on, no details, presumably no serious damage(Lv MoD)

Damn. At least from this armchair that sure looks like trouble ratcheting up again. Thus so much for Black Eagle, maybe because as Mr. Lind says : sweeps don't work.



Heh, at least Iraqslogger has started posting the news for weekends. It only remains for Jordan Eason's minions to spell "Diwaniyah" properly and find some sources for attribution.

Lastly, if anyone is interested, Global Terrorism Analysis (published by the Jamestown Foundation) has posted "Shiite Power Struggle Unfolds in Diwaniya" on the background of the ongoing violence in Diwaniyah.

Weekly attack on Diwaniyah IX/07

Diwaniyah seems pretty quiet, so chalk up Black Eagle as a win (for the moment). Summer is coming and Iraq heating up, 40°C daytime temperatures already.

24 April Four rockets fired at Camp Echo (Iraqslogger quoting "a security source")
30 April Several rockets fired at Camp Echo, no serious damage (Lv MoD).
02 May Explosives attack on US vehicle in Diwaniayh. Vehicle damaged, no casualties reported. (Iraqslogger quoting "a police source")

Considering Eason Jordan's risible track record, Iraqslogger is rather informative, but I have serious reservations about it. There is much material but serious omissions (which is, on second thought, very much in character).

• Iraqslogger only works workdays -the oh so characteristic Friday/Saturday post Friday sabbath sermon hate goes unmentioned.
  
• The "coalition" coverage appears to be nigh exclusively of the Brits (or withdrawals). Although the rest of the Coalition of the Willing is laughably small numerically (and dwindling), it is rather important politically, and for that reason alone demands at least token coverage.
  
• Thirdly, it is real weak on naming sources to the point of universal anonymity, hence cannot be trusted (i.e. "slogger sources report that...."). For instance, the reports on attacks on Echo in Diwaniyah match pretty poorly with the reports carefully placed on the Lv MoD homepage.
  

So anything written without proper sourcing in Iraqslogger must be taken with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, that appears to be most of it.

Wire services and news in Diwaniyah

Now Reuters is clueless, we knew that, but I begin to wonder if the MSM isn't deliberately excising coverage of the Coalition of the Willing (among other sins). Case in point : Operation Black Eagle in Diwaniyah. The first photo has had plenty of exposure on internet news stories, the second is pretty much unseen. Perhaps the composition is worse. Maybe the intended US audiences aren't too interested in foreigners anyway. But maybe left leaning media outlets want to minimise the Coalition of the Willing? Try to find examples of coalition soldiers doing much of anything in Iraq in the MSM, there is very very little except for fatalities which the MSM reports with alacrity. Now compare these two photos [1] [2] :

A U.S. military convoy drives through Diwaniyah, 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, April 6, 2007. Iraqi forces backed by American soldiers swept into a troubled, predominantly Shiite city south of Baghdad before dawn Friday, and the U.S. military said as many as six militia fighters had been killed. (AP Photo/Jalal Mudhar)

AP via Yahoo! News - Apr 06 11:09 AM

A soldier from the multi-national forces stands guard while U.S. armoured vehicles patrol a street in Diwaniya, 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, April 6, 2007. Iraqi and U.S. troops on Friday moved into the southern city of Diwaniya, a stronghold of Shi'ite militia loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in an operation to curb the militia's increasing influence. REUTERS/Imad al-Khozai (IRAQ)

Reuters via Yahoo! News - Apr 06 10:50 AM

That slippery Diwaniyah shifts 50km depending on which wire service you believe. I guess it depends how you measure it, maybe one is road miles and the other crow miles.

The multinational soldier is Latvian, again the unique Latvian digital desert cam, and see the flag on the sleeve pocket. A closer view would reveal "LATVIA" written above the flag. Photographer "Imad" obviously has trouble with reading and/or geography since he was the one who photographed the "Bolivian" soldier in Diwaniyah the following day.

Those two photographs were either taken seconds apart by one camera, or more or less simultaneously from two places. They are from two different wire services, with supposedly two different photographers, and both spell "Diwaniya-/-h" differently. So two local stringers were standing shoulder to shoulder like good friends shooting away? Unless .... nah, couldn't possibly be that the wire services are being taken for a ride?

Are there any more examples? How about these photos [1] [2]?

An Iraqi soldier patrols the deserted streets in Diwaniyah, 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, April 9, 2007. American troops continued operations in Diwaniyah on Monday, detaining four guards at the office of a Shiite political party and scouring two neighborhoods in the city's northern and eastern sections, police said. At least 24 suspects were detained and one civilian was killed, police said. U.S. officials had no immediate comment. (AP Photo/Jalal Mudhar)

AP via Yahoo! News - Apr 09 8:57 AM

An Iraqi soldier searches for snipers in a street in Diwaniya, 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, April 7, 2007. U.S. forces launched an air strike in the volatile Iraqi city of Diwaniya on Saturday amid sporadic gunbattles between Shi'ite militiamen and U.S. and Iraqi forces seeking to return the city to government control. (Imad al-Khozai/Reuters)

Reuters via Yahoo! News - Apr 07 3:33 PM

But that appears to be the same guy, in an similar pose, in stories filed two days apart. Look at the face, arms bands, silver watch, webbing, the position and pattern of the cam on the vest relative to the webbing is identical. That is the same guy. He is "patrolling" in the first and "searching for snipers" in the second, doing neither very convincingly. Weird huh? Either its a remarkable coincidence or it is staged and/or mislabelled and mis-dated.

Maybe Imad and Jalal are buddies, they travel together and photograph stuff. Or do they just stage together, and inaccurately mislabel the photos as required to fit the moment and the wire services bite? Or does Jalal, who seems to travel (he has photos from many different cities in Iraq) borrow unattributed (staged) shots from his buddy Imad in Diwaniyah?

Hard to say. I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation, but IMHO its just more symptoms of the disease that infects AP and Reuters (and the MSM in general). Pathetic fact checking, reliance on unaccountable crooked stringers, embedded political bias. News that's skewed even if nothing is faked.

Micro-ReutersGate in Diwaniyah

The trouble in Diwaniyah has finally come to a head, with forces being diverted from elsewhere to clean the militias out. But more about that elsewhere.

Reuters has bungled a photo caption, in itself a quite trivial event, but IMHO illustrative of Reuters poor quality. Reuters stringers are apparently covering the operation, and Reuters shows this picture and captions it "A soldier from Bolivia patrols a street in Diwaniya".

A soldier from Bolivia patrols a street in Diwaniya, 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, April 7, 2007. U.S. forces launched an air strike in Diwaniya on Saturday as U.S. and Iraqi troops seeking to return the volatile Iraqi city to government control fought sporadic gun battles with Shi'ite militiamen.
REUTERS/IMAD AL-KHOZAI

Reuters problems with suspect stringers and negligent basic fact checking has been noted previously ("Reutergate"). Here is another example, though this may be news to Reuters :

- there are no Bolivian soldiers in Diwaniyah, mainly because
- there are no Bolivian soldiers in Iraq, mainly because
- Bolivia is not currently taking part in Operation Iraqi Freedom, mainly because
- Bolivia has never taken part in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

There are soldiers from El Salvador in Diwaniyah, part of MND(CS). Bolivia, Costa Rica whatever, I mean what's the difference, right? Course, some of us instincitively realize that the pseudo-narcostate pseudo-marxist Morales lead Bolivia is entirely unlikely to deploy to Iraq, but Reuters highly paid editors obviously needed to do some googling. Unless they think that a Bolivian born soldier serving in (for example) the US army, justifies a tagline like that. But the soldier is 100% most assuredly not from Bolivia in any way.

The soldier is Latvian, although Latvian participation in the Coalition of the Willing may also be news to Reuters. That a pale north european looking guy is patrolling in Diwaniyah may have been a clue, but the key diagnostic features are the unique Latvian large pixelled digitial desert camoflague and the custom H&K G36 (Compare the Reuters foto with these at Lv MoD).

Good morning Reuters. Try buying a clue.