Free Will Classic

8:29 pm, 2/15/04

New Iraqi Cops: Toughest Hosses Ever There Was
The Belmont Club nails it.

Good as their word, the Al Qaeda have struck viciously and repeatedly. After attacking Kurdish leadership while celebrating Eid, they went on to destroy police station after police station. Yesterday at Fallujah, Islamic terrorists "staged simultaneous morning assaults on three police stations, a civil defense base and the mayor's office". In the future many observations will be made of this battle: that the Al Qaeda timed their assaults to coincide with US unit rotations through Iraq; that they chose the moment when the baton is passing from US soldier to Iraqi policeman. But if the Iraqi nation goes on to live another hundred years, it will remember this:

Officers from the 82nd Airborne Division stationed a 10-minute drive away could hear the battle clearly. They offered help but the Hammad (the Iraqi commander) said it wasn't needed. The Americans did provide additional ammunition and weapons, including light machine guns. After the battle, soldiers at the civil defense base proudly displayed a light machine gun and a pair of rocket propelled grenade launchers they had captured from the attackers.

That when dying and bleeding, beset by the flower of terrorism, with pistol to set against automatic rifle and grenade, the Iraqi police did not ask for help from 82nd Airborne. They asked for ammunition.

Hell, yes. In other news, Iraqi police have carried out an operation to nab one of the most-wanted from the Hussein regime, and they did it all by themselves.

Mohammad Zimam Abd Razzaq al-Saadun was arrested by Iraqi special police forces at 2:00 pm (1100 GMT) Sunday at his Baghdad house, said Ahmed Kazem Ibrahim, the deputy interior minister and police chief.

"This was a very special arrest, with a special flavour because it was carried out solely by Iraqi police," he told a news conference in Baghdad.

Saadun was number 41 and the four of spades in the US deck of cards of 55 most-wanted Iraqis from the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein, who was himself captured by US forces near his hometown of Tikrit on December 13.

Saadun has already confessed the whereabouts of some of his hiding places while on the run and given interrogators the names of those who cooperated with him, the police chief said.

I'll bet it had a special flavor indeed. Sweet. Those guys are tough as nails, good at what they're doing, and have every right to the pride any man can carry who enforces law and order for free people. (Via Kallini.com)