Word: afar
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Another hot debate in the intelligence community is whether to make a major change in the counterinsurgency strategy--to stop the aggressive sweeps through insurgent-riddled areas, like the recent offensive in Tall 'Afar, and try to concentrate troops and resources with the aim of improving security and living conditions in population centers like Baghdad. "We've taken Samarra four times, and we've lost it four times," says an intelligence officer. "We need a new strategy...
...troops call it Route Barracuda, a patch of terrorist territory in the northern Iraqi town of Tall 'Afar, where thousands of U.S. and Iraqi forces have converged for the biggest battle in nearly a year. On this sweaty September afternoon, the neighborhood is living up to its name. A squad of U.S. commandos enters an abandoned house and clambers up to the roof. The 2-foot lip doesn't give much cover from the bullets raining down on them from insurgent gunmen firing from a building 200 yards to the north. Rounds flying at supersonic speed crack inches from...
...offensive in Tall 'Afar, which wound down last week, was this year's Fallujah--a mass assault involving 7,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers and hundreds of Bradleys, battle tanks, artillery pieces, all combined with AC-130 Spectre gunships, F-16 fighter jets and attack helicopters. Unlike the Fallujah battle, Tall 'Afar raged mostly unseen, with accounts of the fighting limited largely to the reports of U.S. and Iraqi officials in Baghdad, who declared that the onslaught had succeeded in driving out the bands of rebels--local units commanded by al-Qaeda kingpin Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi--from their latest...
...from U.S. forces. So there are limits to how much global networking he can do. But he is a skilled delegator, says one French official. And he doesn't even have to contact far-flung cells to influence them; he just has to inspire them from afar. --By Bruce Crumley
...sleeper cell of terrorists there. Eric Denécé, who heads the French Center of Intelligence Research in Paris, says that "there is some evidence" that Nasar helped plan the Madrid attack, and that "it wouldn't surprise me at all if he's found to have overseen London from afar as well...