Mosul, Iraq, harrassed by terrorist stragglers from Fallujah, brushes danger aside:
Multi-National Forces from 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), are working with local-based companies on various construction projects. Soldiers of the 133 Engineer Combat Battalion, with Mosul-based contractors, are working to improve roadways on more than 104,000 square meters of roads in different locations throughout Mosul.
Thursday's Central Command operations summary indicates, after a number of successes against Iraq's enemies, a growing societal common good as Iraqi civilians step forward in greater numbers to expose the terrorists in their midst.
Elsewhere, American and Iraqi troops have been scuttling terrorist cells and capturing arms.
Marines in al Anbar province provided local authorities with two ambulances in time for throngs of pilgrims making the Hajj.
An unusually large terrorist improvised explosive device killed seven soldiers in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and the death of American soldiers pleases no one but the enemy and its sympathizers. The circuitous methods used to murder the Bradley crew and others, however, suggest that terrorists have little recourse but to continue following a strategy to weaken American public opinion — despite President Bush's November victory and American policy's attendant four-years reprieve from media-manipulated, fickle popular sentiment. Ali Fadhil's observations from Baghdad confirm that Iraqi determination to hold elections and build a pluralist government has only strengthened in the face of attacks from terrorists — whose Syrian and Iranian masters, Ali notes, could not possibly be pleased with Iraq's inexorable march towards elections.