.Iraq rebels wage war by video
THE masked gunman cradles a sniper's rifle as he sits in the back of a car. Speaking to the camera, he taunts the US President with a chilling outline of his planned mission: "I'm going to give George Bush a small present. I have nine bullets - with each I'll shoot someone and, before your eyes, I'll give the present to Bush."
Alighting in a built-up area, he heads over rough ground to the corner of a building. The camera rolls as he cocks the Tabuk rifle - a Saddam Hussein take-off of the Russian-designed Dragunov.
The recording then cuts to a tightly spliced sequence of nine shootings, in which the targets appear to be members of the American or Iraqi security forces.
It is pure and brutal propaganda. Some of the images are blurred and there is no proof that the man with the gun has even fired the shots.
Each target seems to collapse as a single shot is heard, but there is no attempt to verify the gunman's claim that he has killed the victim.
Nonetheless, this and three other video CDs gathered recently by the Herald in Sunni communities near Baghdad are graphic indications of the extent to which an emboldened insurgency has dug in, arming itself with high-tech propaganda as well as low-tech weaponry.
Recorded over the past two years, the videos suggest that the rebel fighters have a remarkable ease of movement in urban and rural Iraq and an ability to acquire the weapons and uniforms of the new Iraqi security forces.
They show too their skill in crafting crude homemade missile launchers and improvised bombs for use in brazen daylight attackson military, political and economic targets.
As the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq (March 20) looms, they underscore the daunting challenge that still confronts US and Iraqi security forces as they attempt to execute the counterinsurgency orders of the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to "drain the swamp".
When told of the content of the CDs obtained by the Herald, one of America's leading terrorism analysts, Bruce Hoffman of the Rand Corp, said the insurgency was not just entrenched, but was now self-perpetuating.
When the Herald asked another US analyst, Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, how the insurgency might be defeated, he replied: "It all depends on the political process. There must be broad support from the Sunnis. But opinion polls show that more than 90 per cent of them think the elections were unfair and that the new government will be illegitimate."
Despite the seeming order of elections in Iraq, it is the continuing failure of the political process that has created a power vacuum in which thousands of Americans and Iraqis have died, been wounded or captured in what has become a war of attrition with the insurgents.
Since the December 15 elections, it has taken two months for the victorious Shiite religious parties to agree on a candidate for the prime ministership - they have yet to negotiate the make-up of the next government.
Officially, the cause of most of the 2260-plus American fatalities in Iraq is listed simply as "hostile fire". But there have been dozens of media reports of deaths and woundings by a single shot which could go some way to confirming the sniper-inflicted US losses which the insurgency attempts to glorify in its propaganda. However, official US acknowledgement of the insurgency snipers' competence is rare.
Last year The Guardian quoted troops at Camp Rustamiyah, a US base in Baghdad, on their wariness of an elusive sniper who they speculated might have killed a dozen of their colleagues. They claimed to have nicknamed him "Juba".
In the previous year, US marines stationed in Falluja marvelled to The New York Times at the prowess of what some of them believed was a single sniper who kept 150 Americans pinned down for the best part of a day. US aircraft dropped 500-pound bombs and ground forces unleashed dozens of artillery and tank shells and an estimated 30,000 rounds of automatic rifle fire before the sniper escaped - apparently on a bicycle, according to the Times.
US troops also have given media interviews on their lucky escapes - with one describing how a sniper's shot only dented his combat helmet, because he bent over at the critical moment; another on how his Kevlar headgear was shredded by an insurgency sharp-shot that left him briefly dazed, but otherwise unhurt.
The insurgency has since produced news clips in which a series of sniper attacks - different to those on the CDs acquired by the Herald - are attributed to Juba. They also released a clip in which they say that a sniper - only his hands and weapon are exposed to the camera - is Juba. In internet chat rooms, there is a debate about whether he exists at all.
But one of the more intriguing insights into the secretive world of the insurgency snipers was the capture by US forces of the sharpshooter who took a shot at Stephen Tschiderer, a US Army medic.
Tschiderer was knocked off his feet by the force of the hit while in Baghdad five months ago. But his body armour prevented any injury and he helped his mates give chase - and to treat wounds inflicted on his would-be killer as he was run to ground. A statement by the US Department of Defence on the discovery of the sniper's vehicle revealed incredible details of how he and his accomplice worked: "The van was lined with diapers to muffle the sound [of shots]. The vehicle contained a Russian sniper rifle, a 9mm handgun, three hand-grenades and a fourth rigged to the fuel tank with a pin.
"The soldiers also found a full bag of ammunition, as well as a video camera containing footage of [the attack on] Tschiderer. Two holes were cut in the back of the van - one for the camera and one for the weapon".
The speech by the marksman in the video obtained by the Herald, in which he is identified only as the Sniper of Iraq, is thought to be a new benchmark in an extensive, internet-driven propaganda campaign run by a range of insurgency groups (see story above).
But stripped of crude enhancements and dubious editing techniques that are intended to make them more appealing to impressionable young Muslim minds, these film clips are a doorway into a violent world that invariably is closed to analysts, the military and journalists.
They show rocket and mortar teams at work - often using crude launchers which appear to have been manufactured from water pipes and angle-iron.
Operating in daylight, the teams appear to launch missiles from busy, built-up communities - sometimes waiting for passers-by to remove themselves from the line of fire. In one sniper scene, the gunman bides his time as two young boys approach the target, seem to have a conversation with him and then exit the cameraman's frame of vision before the shot is fired. Another remarkable sequence begins with an Iraqi take on what could be a group of builders' labourers going to work anywhere in the world.
Carrying tool boxes, they are seen climbing a ladder to the upper level of a two-storey building. The scene cuts to the men at work - drilling and hammering in a corner of a darkened room which gradually fills with light as they break open a narrow, horizontal slit high on a wall. They build a scaffold on which they erect what appears to be a homemade multiple-rocket-launcher, with the tube opening positioned against the slit they have cut in the wall.
There is what looks like a thumbs-up shot of the labourers - they actually use their raised, right index fingers to make the Muslim assertion that there is only one God - before the scene cuts to the exterior of the building, showing the slit high on the wall that would hardly be noticed from outside until a series of missiles blast through it and towards an unseen target.
The video CDs also show rebel fighters being lectured in the open air, desert and riverside classes in weapons use and hand-to-hand combat; bombmaking and assaults on buildings.
In a telephone interview Hoffman outlines a fear that the insurgency film clips are spreading the jihadi propaganda at a quickening pace: "A depressing aspect of these videos is how they reveal the insurgency perfecting the low-risk means of war - it's unique stuff. Seeing them show people how to stage various attacks ratchets things to a new level. The arms race we grew up with during the Cold War is unfolding at a different level and as quickly as the counterinsurgency catches up with it, the insurgency finds new ways.
"That part of it is not new - it's how the Irish Republican Army worked. But the ubiquity of loading a CD to instruct others shows how the information age of the 21st century cuts both ways - as an engine of enlightenment but also as the curriculum of warfare and terrorism."
Hoffman says that despite the crude nature of some of the weapons, the internet is a force multiplier for the insurgency because it facilitates remote-control operations and missions that allows them to seek out enemy targets as opposed to simply waiting in ambush. He concludes: "It doesn't mean that the war is not winnable. But a new dimension is being set and the solution is not going to be quick and easy. Historically it's taken a good decade to defeat most insurgencies. These videos confirm that it's still early days in Iraq."
Cordesman points to a dangerous double-up of circumstances in Iraq: "There already were a lot of weapons, ammunition and explosives in Iraq and you can't stop people improvising weapons." Drawing out the theory of asymmetric war, in which varied technologies and tactics mean that the opposing armies bypass each other, he says: "The basic strategy of the insurgents is to avoid a direct fight. We don't train troops that way, but the insurgents must."
Cordesman is the author of Iraq's Evolving Insurgency, an e-tome that can be read on the CSIS website in which he constantly updates his analysis. Picking up Rumsfeld's analogy, Cordesman warns the swamp cannot be drained unless the counterinsurgency is locally driven, so that religious, cultural and ideological reforms are fostered from within.
He writes: "The US failed to act on these realities in Vietnam. It began the Iraq war by rejecting them, greatly strengthening the insurgency in the process while wasting critical months before it made effective efforts to help the Iraqis to help themselves."
Decrying an initial state of near denial by the US military and policy makers, he observes: "More than two years after the 'end' of the war, it still has not shaped an aid process focused around the Iraqis, local methods, local needs and local methods and execution." Cordesman describes Iraq's huge stocks of arms and explosives as "a unique opportunity" for the insurgents who have access to increasingly sophisticated trigger technology and the expertise to pack their improvised bombs with greater firepower.
Noting official Iraqi and US responses to fluctuations in data, he says: "It's easy to claim a trend towards 'victory', but … far more difficult to make them enduring or valid. Equally, it is easy to talk about 'tipping points' or 'turning points', but most such claims are wrong, oversimplified and/or premature.
"Real patterns take time to emerge and insurgencies are filled with cycles in which the patterns of a given day, week or month are reversed and later, reversed again."
SMH.com
You see this asshole gets all the press. You may ask yourself, why do I post this shit. You would be amazed at how many search hits I get about this guy Juba the Baghdad sniper. Hey I guess I'm turning into a media whore. I hate to do the I told you so, but I told you so. If we cut and run from the information battle ground, they will exploit it. They are exploiting it and will continue to do so. And unfortunately the administrations b-movie propaganda is not getting us anywhere.
Alighting in a built-up area, he heads over rough ground to the corner of a building. The camera rolls as he cocks the Tabuk rifle - a Saddam Hussein take-off of the Russian-designed Dragunov.
The recording then cuts to a tightly spliced sequence of nine shootings, in which the targets appear to be members of the American or Iraqi security forces.
It is pure and brutal propaganda. Some of the images are blurred and there is no proof that the man with the gun has even fired the shots.
Each target seems to collapse as a single shot is heard, but there is no attempt to verify the gunman's claim that he has killed the victim.
Nonetheless, this and three other video CDs gathered recently by the Herald in Sunni communities near Baghdad are graphic indications of the extent to which an emboldened insurgency has dug in, arming itself with high-tech propaganda as well as low-tech weaponry.
Recorded over the past two years, the videos suggest that the rebel fighters have a remarkable ease of movement in urban and rural Iraq and an ability to acquire the weapons and uniforms of the new Iraqi security forces.
They show too their skill in crafting crude homemade missile launchers and improvised bombs for use in brazen daylight attackson military, political and economic targets.
As the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq (March 20) looms, they underscore the daunting challenge that still confronts US and Iraqi security forces as they attempt to execute the counterinsurgency orders of the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to "drain the swamp".
When told of the content of the CDs obtained by the Herald, one of America's leading terrorism analysts, Bruce Hoffman of the Rand Corp, said the insurgency was not just entrenched, but was now self-perpetuating.
When the Herald asked another US analyst, Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, how the insurgency might be defeated, he replied: "It all depends on the political process. There must be broad support from the Sunnis. But opinion polls show that more than 90 per cent of them think the elections were unfair and that the new government will be illegitimate."
Despite the seeming order of elections in Iraq, it is the continuing failure of the political process that has created a power vacuum in which thousands of Americans and Iraqis have died, been wounded or captured in what has become a war of attrition with the insurgents.
Since the December 15 elections, it has taken two months for the victorious Shiite religious parties to agree on a candidate for the prime ministership - they have yet to negotiate the make-up of the next government.
Officially, the cause of most of the 2260-plus American fatalities in Iraq is listed simply as "hostile fire". But there have been dozens of media reports of deaths and woundings by a single shot which could go some way to confirming the sniper-inflicted US losses which the insurgency attempts to glorify in its propaganda. However, official US acknowledgement of the insurgency snipers' competence is rare.
Last year The Guardian quoted troops at Camp Rustamiyah, a US base in Baghdad, on their wariness of an elusive sniper who they speculated might have killed a dozen of their colleagues. They claimed to have nicknamed him "Juba".
In the previous year, US marines stationed in Falluja marvelled to The New York Times at the prowess of what some of them believed was a single sniper who kept 150 Americans pinned down for the best part of a day. US aircraft dropped 500-pound bombs and ground forces unleashed dozens of artillery and tank shells and an estimated 30,000 rounds of automatic rifle fire before the sniper escaped - apparently on a bicycle, according to the Times.
US troops also have given media interviews on their lucky escapes - with one describing how a sniper's shot only dented his combat helmet, because he bent over at the critical moment; another on how his Kevlar headgear was shredded by an insurgency sharp-shot that left him briefly dazed, but otherwise unhurt.
The insurgency has since produced news clips in which a series of sniper attacks - different to those on the CDs acquired by the Herald - are attributed to Juba. They also released a clip in which they say that a sniper - only his hands and weapon are exposed to the camera - is Juba. In internet chat rooms, there is a debate about whether he exists at all.
But one of the more intriguing insights into the secretive world of the insurgency snipers was the capture by US forces of the sharpshooter who took a shot at Stephen Tschiderer, a US Army medic.
Tschiderer was knocked off his feet by the force of the hit while in Baghdad five months ago. But his body armour prevented any injury and he helped his mates give chase - and to treat wounds inflicted on his would-be killer as he was run to ground. A statement by the US Department of Defence on the discovery of the sniper's vehicle revealed incredible details of how he and his accomplice worked: "The van was lined with diapers to muffle the sound [of shots]. The vehicle contained a Russian sniper rifle, a 9mm handgun, three hand-grenades and a fourth rigged to the fuel tank with a pin.
"The soldiers also found a full bag of ammunition, as well as a video camera containing footage of [the attack on] Tschiderer. Two holes were cut in the back of the van - one for the camera and one for the weapon".
The speech by the marksman in the video obtained by the Herald, in which he is identified only as the Sniper of Iraq, is thought to be a new benchmark in an extensive, internet-driven propaganda campaign run by a range of insurgency groups (see story above).
But stripped of crude enhancements and dubious editing techniques that are intended to make them more appealing to impressionable young Muslim minds, these film clips are a doorway into a violent world that invariably is closed to analysts, the military and journalists.
They show rocket and mortar teams at work - often using crude launchers which appear to have been manufactured from water pipes and angle-iron.
Operating in daylight, the teams appear to launch missiles from busy, built-up communities - sometimes waiting for passers-by to remove themselves from the line of fire. In one sniper scene, the gunman bides his time as two young boys approach the target, seem to have a conversation with him and then exit the cameraman's frame of vision before the shot is fired. Another remarkable sequence begins with an Iraqi take on what could be a group of builders' labourers going to work anywhere in the world.
Carrying tool boxes, they are seen climbing a ladder to the upper level of a two-storey building. The scene cuts to the men at work - drilling and hammering in a corner of a darkened room which gradually fills with light as they break open a narrow, horizontal slit high on a wall. They build a scaffold on which they erect what appears to be a homemade multiple-rocket-launcher, with the tube opening positioned against the slit they have cut in the wall.
There is what looks like a thumbs-up shot of the labourers - they actually use their raised, right index fingers to make the Muslim assertion that there is only one God - before the scene cuts to the exterior of the building, showing the slit high on the wall that would hardly be noticed from outside until a series of missiles blast through it and towards an unseen target.
The video CDs also show rebel fighters being lectured in the open air, desert and riverside classes in weapons use and hand-to-hand combat; bombmaking and assaults on buildings.
In a telephone interview Hoffman outlines a fear that the insurgency film clips are spreading the jihadi propaganda at a quickening pace: "A depressing aspect of these videos is how they reveal the insurgency perfecting the low-risk means of war - it's unique stuff. Seeing them show people how to stage various attacks ratchets things to a new level. The arms race we grew up with during the Cold War is unfolding at a different level and as quickly as the counterinsurgency catches up with it, the insurgency finds new ways.
"That part of it is not new - it's how the Irish Republican Army worked. But the ubiquity of loading a CD to instruct others shows how the information age of the 21st century cuts both ways - as an engine of enlightenment but also as the curriculum of warfare and terrorism."
Hoffman says that despite the crude nature of some of the weapons, the internet is a force multiplier for the insurgency because it facilitates remote-control operations and missions that allows them to seek out enemy targets as opposed to simply waiting in ambush. He concludes: "It doesn't mean that the war is not winnable. But a new dimension is being set and the solution is not going to be quick and easy. Historically it's taken a good decade to defeat most insurgencies. These videos confirm that it's still early days in Iraq."
Cordesman points to a dangerous double-up of circumstances in Iraq: "There already were a lot of weapons, ammunition and explosives in Iraq and you can't stop people improvising weapons." Drawing out the theory of asymmetric war, in which varied technologies and tactics mean that the opposing armies bypass each other, he says: "The basic strategy of the insurgents is to avoid a direct fight. We don't train troops that way, but the insurgents must."
Cordesman is the author of Iraq's Evolving Insurgency, an e-tome that can be read on the CSIS website in which he constantly updates his analysis. Picking up Rumsfeld's analogy, Cordesman warns the swamp cannot be drained unless the counterinsurgency is locally driven, so that religious, cultural and ideological reforms are fostered from within.
He writes: "The US failed to act on these realities in Vietnam. It began the Iraq war by rejecting them, greatly strengthening the insurgency in the process while wasting critical months before it made effective efforts to help the Iraqis to help themselves."
Decrying an initial state of near denial by the US military and policy makers, he observes: "More than two years after the 'end' of the war, it still has not shaped an aid process focused around the Iraqis, local methods, local needs and local methods and execution." Cordesman describes Iraq's huge stocks of arms and explosives as "a unique opportunity" for the insurgents who have access to increasingly sophisticated trigger technology and the expertise to pack their improvised bombs with greater firepower.
Noting official Iraqi and US responses to fluctuations in data, he says: "It's easy to claim a trend towards 'victory', but … far more difficult to make them enduring or valid. Equally, it is easy to talk about 'tipping points' or 'turning points', but most such claims are wrong, oversimplified and/or premature.
"Real patterns take time to emerge and insurgencies are filled with cycles in which the patterns of a given day, week or month are reversed and later, reversed again."
SMH.com
You see this asshole gets all the press. You may ask yourself, why do I post this shit. You would be amazed at how many search hits I get about this guy Juba the Baghdad sniper. Hey I guess I'm turning into a media whore. I hate to do the I told you so, but I told you so. If we cut and run from the information battle ground, they will exploit it. They are exploiting it and will continue to do so. And unfortunately the administrations b-movie propaganda is not getting us anywhere.
posted by madtom at 7:01 PM
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