Attrition: The Bad Guys Come Out To Die

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April 4,2008: In northern Iraq, Sunni Arab terrorists have changed their tactics recently, moving about in the open much more frequently. This has made them vulnerable to attack by helicopter gunships. As a result, in the last two weeks of March, U.S. AH-64 helicopter gunships made 25 attacks on these armed groups, killing at least 25 and wounding many more. When attacked, the terrorists will scatter, aborting any operations they were in the midst of.The enemy had earlier learned that, to move around, they had to do so without carrying weapons and in small groups. But this made carrying out attacks more time-consuming. When using those tactics, the AH-64s caught an armed group in the open about once every two weeks. But in the last two weeks of March, the gunships found more targets than they had over the past 13 weeks.

The Sunni Arab and al Qaeda terror networks in northern Iraq have been under a lot of pressure these the past few months. These new desperation tactics, apparently to try and increase the number of attacks dramatically, failed. And the main reason was that you can't hustle around carrying guns, day or night, while the AH-64s are up there.

 

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