Hippercritical's Iraq Report: 2003-12-01

Welcome! Our goal is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. Our "Winds of War" coverage of the global War on Terror is a separate briefing today, and both are brought to you by Glenn Halpern of HipperCritical.

TOP TOPICS

• Last week, President Bush traveled all the way to Iraq to offer a Thanksgiving greeting to the American troops. SFC Ski, one of the troops on site, offers his thoughts here on Winds of Change.NET.

• A team of Spanish intelligence agents was ambushed by guerillas in an area south of Baghdad. 7 agents have been confirmed dead, and hostages may have been taken. Details of the assault are murky, even for the guerillas, but one thing is for sure: the resolve of the Spanish government will be tested over the next few days, a la Italy.

• As Bill Hobbs notes, however, other recent ambushes turned out very badly for the Saddam Fedayeen et. al. More on that story inside...

REPORTS FROM THE FIELD

• JK: Trent Telenko notes that the "unsuccessful ambush" was an armored car bank heist gone bad. Trent's thoughts: "I bet that Operation Iron Hammer's intelligence was generated in large part by tracking Saddam faced and Western currency in the Sunni Triangle and this failed bank heist was a result of it." Good news if so, as it would imply the Ba'athists are beginning to have cash issues.

• Blemont club has some thoughts on Iraqi lessons that can be drawn from Orde Wingates military experiences in the Middle East during the early 1940s. He also has a post on jihadi anti-air tactics in Iraq.

• The perpetrators of the attacks against foreign forces and Iraqi police and civilians are clearly a mixed bag. Rantburg points to a possible Jordan-Chechnya terror connection.

• JK: Hippercritical has a great article on Baghdad's new police force, and how they're coping.

• Army Staff Sgt. Adam R. Irby of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) of the 28th Combat Support Hospital, from Fort Bragg, N.C., deployed in Baghdad, got tired of waiting for $900 warming blankets to arrive to use to warm patients suffering from high blood loss, so he made "The Cuddler" a three-times-more efficient warming box. This medical device is likely to have immediate civilian applications in trauma care.

RECONSTRUCTION & IRAQI VOICES

• Reaction from around the blogosphere to the President's visit - and to Hillary's as well. Iraqi bloggers are included, a welcome trend to be sure.

• Iraqi blogger Omar didn't travel over such a long distance, yet his Happy Eid greeting to everyone was just as sweet, and much sweeter than those of Iran's Supreme Leader.

• In the streets of Baghdad, hundreds of Iraqis demonstrated against the terrorist attacks of the 'Resistance'. Glenn Reynolds rounds up the coverage.

THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

• Japan's defense chief assured his country that the self-defense forces operating in southern Iraq were situated in stable territory, so news of the assassination of two Japanese diplomats in Iraq comes as a major shock.

• Hans Blix expressed hope that America will learn its lesson in Iraq, as "they don't have much experience in reconstructing a country." I would like to express my hope that Mr. Blix learn this lesson before speaking out again on this topic.

• Where is Saddam? Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld thinks he must be hiding somewhere in the haystack. Meanwhile, Saddam's wife and daughter have fled to Yemen. This may be a good thing, in the eyes of Andrew Olmsted, for it would be better for the U.S. military to remove itself from the dirty game of hostage-taking.

ETCETERA

• Which "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker."

• The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops: American, Australian, British, Canadian, Polish. Anyone out there with more information? Email me. [updated Dec. 1, 2003]

• As Christmas approaches, don't forget the Toys for Iraq drive.