October 12, 2005: It's become pretty standard for U.S. and Iraqi units to operate together for raids and patrols through Sunni Arab areas of central Iraq. During the first week of October, such operations left 12 terrorists dead, and 750 suspects arrested. In the course of these operations (175 patrols and raids), some fifty roadside bombs were discovered and neutralized, as well weapons caches and bomb making workshops.

Increasingly, suicide bomber attacks are being used against the American and Iraqi army units performing all these patrols. This has hurt the training and leadership for terrorist operations. The suicide bomb attacks mpw tend to be ineptly carried out, causing casualties mainly to Iraqi civilians. Since these are Sunni Arab civilians, the terrorists then lose popular support. Iraqi police and military intelligence have been quick to capitalize on this, often going immediately around the area looking for someone who is now upset with the terrorists and willing to share some useful information. This has led to more raids, and sometimes a string of raids, as each successful raid often leads to information about another terrorist location. With Iraqi police and troops along on these raids, the language barrier disappears, and U.S. troops are not dependent on a few translators.

Most Sunni Arabs are now willing to go along with a democratic Iraq, there being little enthusiasm for trying to vote the constitution down on October 15th. There is an increase in terrorist attacks to try and stop the vote, but the scale of these attacks are pathetic. All this terrorism is doing is reinforcing the hatred most Iraqis have for al Qaeda and the Sunni Arab terrorists. The enemy, as many Iraqis see it, is the Sunni Arab world. They can see this clearly by just tuning in the foreign Sunni Arab radio and cable TV news. These media outlets warp the news from Iraq to make it sound like the country is in an uproar against "foreign occupation." This sort of reporting is surreal to most Iraqis, who know very well that the Sunni Arab community simply wants control of Iraq, despite what the majority of Iraqis want, or how many of them are killed by Sunni Arab terrorists.