Sixty suspected al-Qaida in Iraq fighters hit national police facilities in a coordinated attack in Samarra, sparking two hours of fighting that saw three people killed and more than a dozen insurgents captured, police said Friday.
Massing for direct confrontations is rare enough.
And the Iraqi defenders held firm.
Plus, the Iraqis didn't suffer many casualties in the attacks.
And the Iraqis captured about a quarter of the jihadis.
Being a jihadi is losing a lot of its scare factor with performances like this.
Oh sure, they can still slaughter civilians when they plan it in detail, but the jihadis are looking more and more like incompetent bad guys.
They're going down. We need to keep up the pressure to put them down in Iraq for good.
UPDATE: Ralph Peters agrees the jihadi enemy is going down:
Out here in Anbar Province, al Qaeda did what religion-driven extremists always do eventually - they over-reached, setting the bar so high that nonfanatics couldn't measure up (nor did they want to). The terrorists responded with a campaign of slaughter against their fellow Muslims.
Now the Sunni Arabs who were fighting so bitterly against us are fighting beside us to destroy al Qaeda in Iraq. And the terrorists are going down.
Out here in Anbar Province - long the most troubled in Iraq - the change has come so swiftly and thoroughly that it's dazzling. Marines who were under fire routinely just months ago are now directing their former enemies in battle.
Although this trend has been reported, our battlefield leaders here agree that the magnitude of the shift hasn't registered back home: Al Qaeda is on the verge of a humiliating, devastating strategic defeat - rejected by their fellow Sunni Muslims.
When winning, the proper response is to continue until we win--not offer a hand to the enemy, help them up, and offer our sword to a somewhat disoriented and bloody enemy.
