Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Now keep in mind that these gentlemen represent the very defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and represent what was basically half of the entire insurgency. They are now are active combat allies. Where’s the coverage? Trampled under the foot of Leftist politics.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sunni Arab leaders from Iraq’s Anbar province asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Wednesday for U.S. help in expanding their police forces.

They included Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha, older brother of Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the leader of a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq who was assassinated near the provincial capital of Ramadi in September.

The slain sheik had organized Sunni Arab clans into an alliance to drive al-Qaida from sanctuaries in Anbar province where the terror movement had flourished since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Also attending Wednesday’s meeting at the Pentagon were the chairman of the Anbar provincial council, the governor of Anbar, the mayor of the city of Ramadi and others, according to Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

Morrell said the half-hour meeting was “very warm and productive,” coming nearly two months after Gates joined President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a one-day visit to Anbar province for talks with provincial leaders, including the slain Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha.

Morrell said the Anbar leaders told Gates they hoped that the improved security they helped achieve in predominantly Sunni Anbar could be replicated elsewhere in Iraq. They also asked for U.S. help in expanding and equipping the provincial police force.

“They asked for all manner of our support,” Morrell said.

Baghdad, Nov 1, (VOI) – U.S. President George W. Bush promised a visiting delegation from the Anbar Awakening Council to the United States to keep the unity of the Iraqi land and people and to release innocents from U.S. detention camps “as soon as possible,” the council’s head said on Thursday.

“I delivered a message from Anbar chieftains to President Bush during our meeting in Washington on Wednesday,” Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) by phone.

“Tribal chiefs called on the U.S. president to help Iraq out of its current plight and confront attempts to divide the country,” Abu Risha explained.

“We told the president that we, Sunnis and Shiites, are the sons of Iraq. Iraq is in no need of sectarian and ethnic divisions,” Abu Risha said in response to a question about the main issues raised by the delegation.

A delegation of tribal leaders headed to the United States on October 27 on a 10-day official visit at the invitation of the U.S. State Department.

In September 2007, the U.S. Senate approved, with 75 votes for and 23 against, a non-binding resolution envisaging the division of Iraqi into three Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish entities, with a federal government in Baghdad undertaking border security and oil proceed management.

“We also urged the president to release those who have been proved not guilty from U.S. detention centers,” Abu Risha noted.
“We called on U.S. officials to help reinforce the Iraqi army,” he added.

The delegation included Anbar Mayor Mamoum Sami Rasheed al-Alwani; Ramadi Mayor Latif Obeid Iyada; the head of the municipal council, Abdul Salam Abdullah; three council members; the former minister of state for foreign affairs Rafia al-Isawi and six chieftains.

The visit is the first of its kind by an Iraqi delegation under the International Commanders’ Program, supervised by the State Department.