Baquoba push

David posted briefly with his mailing address on The Interested Soldier blog yesterday.

The New York Times has a lengthy story on the Baquoba offensive on its front page today. I've put a link to the story, but to summarize:

More 2,000 troops, led by the Third Stryker Brigade, is leading a charge against Sunni insurgents and Al Quaeda.

Fighting is expected to be hard.

There are about 2,000 insurgents around Baquoba, a mix of Saddam's army and paramilitary, Al Quaeda, and embittered Sunnis. They are increasingly well trained, disciplined and well armed.

The operation has begun by assaulting their hideouts. The next step is house-to-house clearing.

Resistance, so far, according to the Times, has been limited. The city's population has turned against Al Quaeda and seem to hope if Iraqi forces can join with Americans to get Al Quaeda out, Americans will go home.

However, insurgents have buried enormous bombs, able to blow up armored vehicles, around the city.

I don't want this blog to be repeater of news stories; there are plenty of blogs that do that much better, plus I am very conscious of the copyright issues as someone who has been on the other side of seeing those rights blindly violated. So, I will link to stories and occasionally summarize stories that I think are useful or interesting.