Bill
08-13-2007, 01:03 AM
A big article on IEDs - more of them, and more sophisticated, all the time.
"The supply of IEDs and the men to deliver them has become so plentiful that there has been a decline of what is known in the narcotics trade as "street value." In 2005, the teams emplacing IEDs were being paid $100 for each successful blast. Now in central Iraq the payoff is sometimes as low as $40."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226446/site/newsweek/page/2/
New insurgent tactics killed 5 - a sniper lured a squad into a building, then the building was blown up.
"A sniper shot and killed a U.S. soldier, then lured his comrades to a booby-trapped house where four more troops were killed in a complex attack believed to have been the work of al-Qaida in Iraq, a U.S. general said Sunday.
U.S. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who commands the volatile southern rim of Baghdad and districts to the south, said the use of rigged houses was a new tactic against American forces trying to root out bomb networks in the rural insurgent strongholds.
The soldiers entered the house Saturday in search of the sniper who had killed one of their comrades minutes earlier. One soldier stepped on a pressure-triggered bomb. He and three others were killed and four wounded, Lynch told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20233068/
And, those missing weapons - turkish police have already confiscated 1000 Glock pistols which are flooding the turkish underground - including pistols used in islamic assasinations.
"... Father Andrea Santoro was kneeling in prayer when a bullet from an Austrian-made Glock 9mm pistol hit him in the back and pierced his heart. The soft-spoken 60-year-old Italian priest, who lived in poverty ministering to the city's tiny Christian community, slumped to the floor, and the killer squeezed off another round. "Allahu akbar!"—"God is great"—said the shooter, a 15-year-old boy with a grudge against the West.
In May of last year, another Muslim fanatic, guns blazing, attacked Turkey's supreme court in Ankara. Four justices were wounded and one was killed. The assassin's weapons of choice were a pair of Glock pistols.
The attacks were no mystery. What puzzled Turkish police was the weapons' origin. Glocks are high-quality sidearms, but by last year they had practically become common street weapons in Turkey. More than 1,000 had been taken from criminals, guerrillas, terrorists and assassins all over the country, and authorities believed tens of thousands more had found their way onto the black market—but from where? The Austrian government repeatedly checked the serial numbers of the murder weapons. The manufacturer informed Ankara that the pistols were consigned originally to " 'US Mission Iraq' [formerly the Coalition Provisional Authority], address: Republican Presidential Compound, Ministry of the Interior, Baghdad, Iraq.""
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226447/site/newsweek/
New and better weapons, new tricky tactics, and the region is flooded with american guns diverted into the black market by corrupt Iraqis who were supposed to be in charge of equipping the still incapable Iraqi army and police.
What could go wrong?
"The supply of IEDs and the men to deliver them has become so plentiful that there has been a decline of what is known in the narcotics trade as "street value." In 2005, the teams emplacing IEDs were being paid $100 for each successful blast. Now in central Iraq the payoff is sometimes as low as $40."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226446/site/newsweek/page/2/
New insurgent tactics killed 5 - a sniper lured a squad into a building, then the building was blown up.
"A sniper shot and killed a U.S. soldier, then lured his comrades to a booby-trapped house where four more troops were killed in a complex attack believed to have been the work of al-Qaida in Iraq, a U.S. general said Sunday.
U.S. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who commands the volatile southern rim of Baghdad and districts to the south, said the use of rigged houses was a new tactic against American forces trying to root out bomb networks in the rural insurgent strongholds.
The soldiers entered the house Saturday in search of the sniper who had killed one of their comrades minutes earlier. One soldier stepped on a pressure-triggered bomb. He and three others were killed and four wounded, Lynch told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20233068/
And, those missing weapons - turkish police have already confiscated 1000 Glock pistols which are flooding the turkish underground - including pistols used in islamic assasinations.
"... Father Andrea Santoro was kneeling in prayer when a bullet from an Austrian-made Glock 9mm pistol hit him in the back and pierced his heart. The soft-spoken 60-year-old Italian priest, who lived in poverty ministering to the city's tiny Christian community, slumped to the floor, and the killer squeezed off another round. "Allahu akbar!"—"God is great"—said the shooter, a 15-year-old boy with a grudge against the West.
In May of last year, another Muslim fanatic, guns blazing, attacked Turkey's supreme court in Ankara. Four justices were wounded and one was killed. The assassin's weapons of choice were a pair of Glock pistols.
The attacks were no mystery. What puzzled Turkish police was the weapons' origin. Glocks are high-quality sidearms, but by last year they had practically become common street weapons in Turkey. More than 1,000 had been taken from criminals, guerrillas, terrorists and assassins all over the country, and authorities believed tens of thousands more had found their way onto the black market—but from where? The Austrian government repeatedly checked the serial numbers of the murder weapons. The manufacturer informed Ankara that the pistols were consigned originally to " 'US Mission Iraq' [formerly the Coalition Provisional Authority], address: Republican Presidential Compound, Ministry of the Interior, Baghdad, Iraq.""
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226447/site/newsweek/
New and better weapons, new tricky tactics, and the region is flooded with american guns diverted into the black market by corrupt Iraqis who were supposed to be in charge of equipping the still incapable Iraqi army and police.
What could go wrong?