Badger 6 on Six Days
Badger 6 writes:
Ar Ramadi, Iraq, provincial capital of Al Anbar province, the biggest and western most province of Iraq. In the mind of many the Wild West, home to disaffected Sunni Tribes who even Saddam Hussein could not control. Last summer in a classified report that was leaked to the Washington Post the situation was characterized as “dire.” When I arrived in this city, the thought of being here in the daylight was unthinkable.
Over this last six days, in this city there have been no reported insurgent attacks.
None.
Zip.
Zero.
Nada.
No roadside bombs.
No snipers.
No “other small arms fire.”
No car bombs.
No RPGs.
Read it all. This is not a declaration of victory, or anything close to it. But things do seem to be different (and better) there recently.
UPDATE: See Badger 6’s update. Someone told him there may have been one attack, but he has been unable to verify it.
And we all know what the MSM considers a six-day span in which the positive effects of an efficient military occupation are shown:
Slow news day.
Rick Wilcox (bb4b76) — 6/6/2007 @ 4:57 amUnfortunately, having spent a year in Baghdad, I can tell you how meaningless this is. There were stretches where we went 10 days without an IED, and then suddenly caught multiple hits per hour for several days.
Bad Hajji is a disciplined, thinking, conniving SOB.
He hasn’t hit Badger 6 because he didn’t want to. Now, he may not want to because of some tactical or environmental element, but if he really wanted to, he could. Real progress will be shown when Hajji DOES hit B-6’s AO again. If he sustains ops for a significant amount of time then it the same old same old. But, if his strikes are weak and ineffective and only last a for a day or two, followed by another couple of weeks of calkm, then there may be something very significant afoot.
I’d really like this to be big. I’d love it. But I’m a realist, and I know that in Iraq nothing can be taken for granted or at face value.
rcjp (50a453) — 6/6/2007 @ 8:55 am