Word: afar
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...YOUNG: No, no, never saw him. I watched him from afar, and I thought he was he was just a character. You get that feeling from him that everything that happened to him, he was still who he was. He seemed like a wild guy but a good guy, and somebody that funny things happened...
Across Iraq, the prize for the U.S. remains a clear-cut outcome, some indication that the U.S. is doing anything more than playing whack-a-mole with the insurgents. In Tall 'Afar, the U.S. and Iraqi troops awake on the morning of Sept. 6 to the sound of messages being broadcast over loudspeakers instructing civilians to leave. At mid-morning, families begin to emerge across Route Barracuda waving sad little white flags. As a family shuffles past, a Green Beret weapons sergeant bellows for them to be stopped. "Who's that red-headed guy?" he asks. The men are sifted...
...grace for civilians to evacuate stretches to a four-day standstill, as Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari orders a tactical "pause." With his nation divided along sectarian lines over the Tall 'Afar operation, al-Jafaari insists on assurances from military commanders that the battle will be a decisive success. The wait leaves the troops embittered, their momentum lost to what they see as political calculations. "This is turning into a goat f___," bemoans an angry Green Beret. By the time al-Jaafari approves the dreaded assault into al-Qaeda's heartland, it fizzles. Not a hostile shot is fired...
What did Tall 'Afar accomplish? At best, the picture is mixed. McMaster did succeed in driving the insurgents out, denying al-Qaeda its Tall 'Afar base and disrupting its networks. Intelligence picked up in Tall 'Afar led to the arrest last week of Abu Fatima, al-Qaeda's military emir in Mosul. The cost in U.S. lives was minimal: only four died in the two weeks of fighting since Sept. 2. At the same time, many of the insurgents who had holed up in the city got away because of the indecision of Iraqi political leaders. And while the Pentagon...
With the war wrapped into so many political knots in Baghdad and Washington and the insurgents proving so resilient, the fight in Tall 'Afar, as in Iraq, is far from over. On the ground in the deserted city, the U.S. is pouring money into reconstruction in a bid to win local opinion. But there is every reason to believe the violence will return and the U.S. will be forced to fight there again--with the insurgents betting that the Americans will lose a bit more of their will and support each time they go back. In a house overrun during...