B36 News - 29 July 2006

"HAQLANIYAH, Iraq – Marines here say the amount of insurgent attacks against Coalition and Iraqi military forces have drastically decreased since three Marines eliminated two insurgents in a counterattack in front of the forward operating base here last month.

Marines assigned to the Hawaii-based Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment said the outcome of the counterattack sent a message to the insurgents: they will be outgunned and overpowered in a firefight with Marines and Iraqi soldiers."
bandit.three.six ~in the comments

This raises a question in my mind. Let's take what's said here as a fact and add to that the fact that Zarqy was off-ed and a bunch of his lieutenants to.

Well we know that after that it's true that attacks on the MNF have been reduced significantly, but attacks against Iraqi civilians, of a sectarian nature, have increased significantly.

So my question is, maybe these actors were holding people back from attacking each other and focusing their rage against the MNF and selected targets, now that they are gone all those factions are running around leaderless and so are focusing their attacks randomly on each other, targets that they are very intimately familiar with. You know that old colonial rule of war that said that your did not kill the officers because a leaderless army was more dangerous than a well lead army?
Does anyone think that that old truism might apply to Iraq, and might help explain the rise in violence that we are seeing now?