Crossposted from Town Called Dobson & My Left Wing
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From that ultra liberal, tree-hugging, commie-pinko rag Bloomberg:
The leader of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Iraq said insurgents are manufacturing their own rockets and described the country as a “university of terrorism,” according to an organization monitoring extremist Web sites.
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq group, said in an audiotape message that fighters are becoming experts in the fields of electronics and explosives, the Washington-based Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute said.
“Quds-1 has entered the production phase and has high specifications in terms of height, weight, range and accuracy,” the institute cited al-Baghdadi as saying in the tape, adding he describes the rocket’s ability to shoot down aircraft.
What? They have a technical college now? I wonder how many semester hours you can get for taking “Big Explosions 203?”
The U.S. Defense Department said earlier this year it is studying whether insurgents are developing new tactics to fight the coalition after at least four helicopters were shot down in late January and early February. Nine U.S. helicopters have gone down in Iraq this year, Associated Press reported April 5.
The almost 42-minute-long audio speech, titled “Years of Achievement in the Country of the Unifiers” was posted on extremist Islamic Web sites two days ago, the institute reported.
The Islamic State of Iraq is a coalition of eight Sunni insurgent factions in which al-Qaeda in Iraq is a leading member, AP reported. Sunni groups, including the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Ansar al-Sunna Army, remain outside the coalition, the news agency said.
This tells you how far separated from reality BushCo and McCain are. This is not progress. We are sending our troops on suicide missions.
In the audio message, al-Baghdadi called for insurgents to unify and focus their efforts on fighting U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi government.
More than 34,000 civilians were killed in Iraq last year, the United Nations said in January. The violence includes daily fighting between insurgents and coalition and government troops, and a sectarian conflict between the country’s Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities.
Iraq’s anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr pulled his six ministers out of the government this week after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki refused to set a withdrawal date for coalition forces.
Well, that is progress of a sorts. At least SOMEONE is pulling out!
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