Word: raids
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When is a mosque not a mosque? Under U.S. military rules of engagement it's when it's used to house weapons, hostages and gunmen firing on American-backed Iraqi special forces. So it was in Sunday's explosive raid in a Baghdad quarter controlled by a Shi'ite, anti-American militia. Primed to bust up a vicious kidnapping cell linked to an insurgent group, Iraqi commandos and elite counterterrorism force members, with their U.S. counterparts in a supporting role, swooped on a target building they insist was bristling with armed fighters. By the time they'd left a hostage...
...minutes it took the soldiers to drive back to their heavily fortified compound their raid was in the spotlight, splashing across television with claims that the 16 men had been butchered as they gathered prayerfully in a mosque. Soon pictures showed bloodied bodies broken and prone over prayer mats, without a weapon in sight (U.S. army photos showed the exact opposite; dead men, weapons draped, not a prayer mat to be seen). Any military success the men of the 1st and 2nd Battalions, 1st Iraqi Special Operations Forces Brigade had was quickly swamped by a political and propaganda firestorm...
...multiple attacks that would be required to inflict serious damage on Iran's nuclear facilities--but they acknowledge that the U.S. military already has its hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although some in the Middle East fear that Israel might attempt to repeat its 1981 solo raid on Iraq's incipient nuclear bomb, a senior Israeli intelligence officer says, "We won't act alone. Why should we? It's a global problem...
...costs of a military strike would well outweigh the benefits. That would be no simple raid but a major military operation taking several weeks, akin to the opening onslaught on Iraq in 2003. Not just the nuclear sites but Iran's air defenses and retaliatory machinery as well would have to be destroyed. The collateral damage in Iranian casualties from the attacks or radioactive fallout could be severe, as could the political backlash against moderates and opponents of the existing regime. And then, how much would Iran's nuclear ambitions be set back? "You can't bomb know-how," says...
...okay. In a house somewhere in the city?s west, three devout aid workers from a faith-based outfit known as the Christian Peacemakers Teams - Canadians Harmeet Sooden, 32, and Jim Loney, 41, and Briton Norman Kember, 74 - were freed by British special forces and Canadian law enforcement. The raid, born of intelligence extracted from a freshly captured prisoner only three hours earlier, oddly found the kidnappers absent; alas it couldn?t save Virginian Tom Fox, 54, whose tortured body had been found on a rubbish heap earlier this month...