Word: odierno
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...made possible by the tribal flip. It is not classic counterinsurgency warfare. It is not about protecting a population but about attacking a historically elusive enemy. This is not so easily done in Iraq. On the second day of Phantom Thunder, I flew into Baqubah with Lieut. General Ray Odierno - a massive man, decidedly more blood-and-guts than Petraeus - to check the progress of what was supposed to be the most intense, and symbolic, battle of the offensive. In 2006 al-Qaeda's leader Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi proclaimed Baqubah the capital of the new Islamic State of Iraq...
...lieutenant colonel named Bruce Antonia told Odierno about preparing to attack the Buhritz neighborhood a few nights earlier when he was approached by local Sunni inusurgents-members, they said, of the 1920 Revolutionary Brigades-who were streaming out of the neighborhood. "They said they'd been fighting al-Qaeda but had run out of ammunition and asked us to supply them. We told them, 'Show us where AQ is and we'll fight them.'" The insurgents did and the neighborhood was cleared...
...Odierno later told me similar anti-al-Qaeda rebellions were happening throughout the country, including some neighborhoods of Baghdad. "Iraqis notice things. They noticed what happened when we began to support the Sunni tribes against al-Qaeda in al-Anbar. And al-Qaeda seems to have overplayed its hand...
...Qaeda leadership had slipped away, north to Tikrit and Samarra, and that many of the fighters were burying their equipment before they left town, hoping to return-as always-when the Americans left. "Well, it's up to you to make sure they don't come back," Odierno said...
...Iraqi Army and local police have been pretty unreliable in Diyala-riddled with Shi'ite militia elements, incompetence and corruption. "They replaced the commander of the 5th Iraqi Army," Odierno told me. "He had a pretty clear Shi'ite agenda. The new guy says the right things, but we just don't know yet what he's going to be like...