The Iraq War

[waioli kai]

Re: USraeli War in Iraq

"Bush should have said the main reason for us going to Iraq was to stop an evil man from doing damage to the rest of the world."

The President said just such a thing about going into Afghanistan to exterminate another "Evil Man". Instead of US War on Terror, perhaps it should be US War on Evil Man, one right after another.

Because US did not get Usama, the neocons-r-us propaganda priorities had to adjust. After all, had Bush said that US was going to war on Iraq to rid the world of Saddam, most everyone, maybe especially the military who were still exploring for remains of Usama, would have said: "?Come again?"

Few non-Islamic peoples, most especially those under the godspell of US, seem to wonder why Kerry expounding "we're going to hunt down those barbarians", and Bush laying on his Evil stuff do not have Usama responding in kind when Usama is given the chance to talk to the world. It is US candidates for public US office, especially the presidency, who look like animals in cages lashing out at their captor, instead of the other way around.

"The President tells us not to jump to conclusions about what happened to the explosives. We should all question how the explosives survived 'Shock and Awe'."

Explosives are not cheap. In some minds, explosives, especially in great preserved densities, are treasure troves for dispersing into present and future US foreign policy actions. Not something to be purposefully destroyed while in storage in virtual US protection.

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War

Here's hoping some of the additional $70 billion Congress will have to approve in January to continue funding the war will go towards giving the ground troops the equipment they need to stay safe. Besides the 1,100+ troops who have been killed, there have been an additional 8,100+ troops injured because they don't have the proper equipment.

According to the article below, there is $8.9 billion in "pork" in the last military spending bill, including curiously, funding for brown tree snake eradication in Hawaii. In the meantime, families are spending money out of their own pockets to send body armor, night vision goggles and other essentials to the troops. There is a bill floating around to allow families to deduct up to $1,200 of those expenses from their taxes.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110204C.shtml

Miulang

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War

And so begins the battle at Fallujah, which has been called the largest US offensive since the Battle at Hue, Vietnam. The city has been shelled and strafed for the last 12 hours to "soften" up the enemy; our troops are only waiting for the go ahead from the Iraqi provisional government before the ground troops march in to town to try to reclaim it.

We have 10,000 troops surrounding Fallujah. We have support from the Iraqi army, which will be the first wave of force into town. I hope and pray those Iraqis turn out to be true friends of the US and stay by our side to fight bravely. Many reports have come out of Iraq that say our troops don't trust many of the Iraqi forces because they have been betrayed in the past. When you're sharing a foxhole, you'd better trust the person next to you won't be aiming their rifle at you.

Please pray for our troops that when the ground battle really begins, we will sustain minimal casualties. Fallujah could end up being the turning point in this war.

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/310/...ks_agai:.shtml

Miulang

[waioli kai]

US decimation of Fallujah, a turning point?

Fallujah could end up being the turning point in this war.

A turning point in US neocons' war for the hearts and souls of Iraqi Shia and Sunni? When one considers that a "turning point" can be for better or for worse, no doubt the US decimation of Fallujah will be that.

&&&&&
Consider: This email was published on the presitigious Poynter Institute's Web site. WSJ reporter Fassihi's e-mail to friends 9/29/2004 2:58:10 PM

From: [Wall Street Journal reporter] Farnaz Fassihi Subject: From Baghdad

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.

Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't. There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.

It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are thing?' they reply: 'the situation is very bad."

What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health -- which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers -- has now stopped disclosing them.

Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.

For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighborhoods.

The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The various elements within it-baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda-are cooperating and coordinating.

I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive.

America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day-over 700 to date -- and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.

As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.

Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?

Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.

I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.

Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, "President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost."

One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle.

The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a 'no go zone'-out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they'd boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.

I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?"

-Farnaz

[waioli kai]

Fallujah bloodbath, Fall 2004

Falluja in their sights

As soon as British troops are redeployed, the US will again turn the city into a bloodbath

Patrick Graham Thursday October 21, 2004 The Guardian :

As the British government prepares to send its soldiers north to free up the US army to attack Falluja, it is necessary to focus on what this coming onslaught will mean for the city and its people. Falluja is already now being bombed daily, as it is softened up for the long-awaited siege. It has been a gruelling year for its people. First, they were occupied by the US army's 82nd Airborne, an incompetent group of louts whose idea of cultural sensitivity was kicking a door down instead of blowing it up. Within eight months of the invasion, the 82nd had killed about 100 civilians in the area and lost control of Falluja, leaving it to the US marines to try and retake the city last April. After killing about 600 civilians, the marines retreated, leaving the city in the hands of 18 armed groups, including tribesmen, Islamists, Ba'athists, former criminals and an assortment of non-Iraqi Arab fighters said to be led by the Jordanian, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Fallujans have now been offered a choice: hand over the outsiders they dislike (mostly Arabs) who are protecting them from the outsiders they really hate (the Americans), or get blown apart by the world's most lethal killing machine, the US marines. Zarqawi's influence on the resistance has been wildly exaggerated - indeed, many people in Falluja don't even believe he exists, and most find the non-Iraqi Arabs' brand of Salafi fundamentalism at odds with their local Sufi traditions. Today, many Fallujans are tired even of their own mujahideen, but trust the US army even less, and with good reason. Recently, a Bush administration official told the New York Times the bombing was driving a wedge between the citizenry and the non-Iraqi fighters. If, indeed, the civilian population is being bombed for this end, this is a grave war crime.

We have a blueprint for what will happen in the city during the coming attack: Falluja, part one. Like all sequels the next time will be bloodier. Last April I found myself inching across a bridge into Falluja holding an old white T-shirt: in front of me, marines blocking the bridge, screaming at me to go back; behind me, a large group of Iraqis yelling at me to go forward so that they could follow me through the roadblock and rescue their families. After a while, the marines opened the bridge allowing hundreds of women and children to stream out, but stopped the boys older than 16 and men younger than 60 from leaving the city. Preventing civilians from leaving a battle is against the Geneva conventions - although battle doesn't capture what a meat grinder the city had become in that first week of the assault, when the majority of civilian casualties were killed, blown apart by precision, and often inaccurate, airstrikes.

The dead were buried in gardens or in mass graves in the city's soccer field. For three weeks 5,000 marines surrounded the city of 340,000 - think an assault on Cardiff. The marines created a moving front line of humvees and tanks, cutting Falluja off. In the air, helicopters and fighter planes bombed a city without air defences, while unmanned drones circled continuously, looking for targets.

During that first week, I was told by Iraqi fighters that the marines nearly took the city after capturing a lot of rebel ammunition: stockpiles of land-mines and homemade rocket launchers that plugged into car lighters. Oil barrels with distances painted on them lined the streets so the rebels could register mortars. The mujahideen were more than a few foreign fighters and Ba'athists, as the US army had been telling everybody.

Initially, the majority of civilian casualties came from bombing that caused "multiple blast wounds, lost limbs, abdomens blown open," as Falluja's doctors told me. According to the Geneva conventions, force must be proportionate and when these images appeared on Arabic television - dead families stacked on top of each other - it looked anything but proportionate; it looked like mass murder. Against the advice of the marine commanders, the White House ordered a ceasefire. The resistance regrouped, re-supplied itself and fought on.

I made it back into Falluja during the second week of fighting by using fake Iraqi ID. I was accompanied by a translator who told people I was a brother suffering a brain aneurysm. We left Baghdad and drove down roads guarded by guerrilla fighters. The countryside from Ramadi east to Falluja and then to Baghdad was in revolt. We had to pass through resistance lines to get to the marines and then through insurgents to get into the city. It was the marines who were surrounded, not the rebels. This is why the US army needs British troops to free up their soldiers.

The Americans have more than enough troops to attack Falluja, but as soon as they do the area will once more erupt, and it will take everything the Americans have to control the surrounding villages of Habbaniya, Khaldiya and Al Kharma. According to the Iraqi president, Ghazi al-Yawar, there is a good chance that when the marines hit Falluja again, even Mosul, home to three million Sunnis, will explode. Unlike the US army, Mr Yawar knows what he is talking about and understands the way the tribes are grouped in northern Iraq, an intricate web of families that runs through the Sunni triangle. If Mosul is pushed over the edge, holding the north will be like trying to keep the lid on a pressure cooker by hand.

Once we got into Falluja, we were taken at gunpoint to a mosque where we were interrogated by a host of people - former Iraqi secret police and Islamists - before being saved by a friend of my translator's who told us later they were holding 18 hostages in another room. Both hostage-taking and using a mosque as a military base are - like preventing the escape of civilians - against the laws of war. You could hear the occasional shots from snipers, the circling drones, tank fire and mortars. At a clinic, the doctors rolled their eyes at the mention of the mujahideen, but most of their anger was directed at the Americans. The hospital, which lies across the Euphrates, had been cut off from the rest of the city by the marines - another questionable act under the Geneva conventions.

Worse still, the doctors said, several of their colleagues had been shot by snipers along with ambulance drivers, both grave breaches of the laws of war. At this point, most civilians being brought in had head and upper body wounds, most likely from marine snipers. Nothing I saw during the bombing of Baghdad could have prepared me for Falluja under siege. It was as if the marines had been able to cut the city off from the idea of safety itself.

The third time I went into Falluja was during negotiations to hand control of the city over to what became the Falluja Brigade. Mujahideen were busy attaching wires to bombs on street corners, in case the negotiations failed. Today the city is one giant improvised explosive device. But it is the snipers the people of Falluja fear more than anything else.

I have spent time with both resistance fighters and the US army, and there is no question the marines can take the city. But the US has a developed a habit of winning engagements while losing the war - while breaking the laws of war in the process. This is what Britain's redeployment will help to unleash.

· Patrick Graham is a journalist who worked in Iraq from November 2002 until August 2004 for the Observer, Harper's and the New York Times magazines. He is writing a book about his experiences pwgraham@mailblocks.com

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War

Don't get me wrong, Waioli: I definitely don't support the war, but I do support our troops and pray for their safety.

Reports out of Iraq today say that there is now widespread belief that most of the insurgents have evacuated from Fallujah (as have most of its residents) and relocated to neighboring towns. This will make it much much harder for us to eradicate the insurgents because they are no longer concentrated in one place. This is just arm chair quarterbacking, but maybe we should have completed our mission in Fallujah last April, when al-Zarqawi was still entrenched there.

If it is true that most of the rebels have now left Fallujah, then Fallujah will not be the turning point that I think the US forces wanted it to be and we will be subjected to more hit and run terrorism all the way to the elections in January. I doubt that the Shiites, the Sunni and the Baathists will ever reach the kind of accord necessary to successfully build a peaceful Iraq because there are fundamental differences in what they believe in.

Miulang

[waioli kai]

Re: Don't get me wrong,The Iraq War

"I definitely don't support the war, but I do support our troops and pray for their safety."

While i cannot say i pray for their misfortune, as indeed i do not pray so (especially as billions of humanity may engage in similarly but for their doing so sometimes five times a day -intensely at that), reason tells me that it is another step i don't want to take into the arena of illogically suspended conscience to accept i can -if i could- pray for their safety when not also inherently be praying they are free to reign death and decimation on all they perceive between them and goals to establish justUS , liberateUS, secureUS, without Thee.

And without any not-US justice or resistUSness proofing to a reasonable mind that it logically proceeds: as US eliminates militant anti-US secular and fundamentalist Islamic peoples and their mercenaries, eliminates trapped anti-USraeli militants in their lairs (Falluja deja vu USraeli desolations in Ramallah, Jenin, Gaza, ..,) along with any whose homes and neighborhoods are those very same USraeli targeted for annihilation whole neighborhoods/sectors, no matter the costs!! Makes for a compelling distraction from the perils of the ever rising tide of banruptUS Sea; makes for a righteously diversionary crusade of a nationUS whose core industry is financeUSery so fiscally unsound as to grow in astronomical nUmberS/byte$ without substance, void of redemptive worth, like a dream, a delusionUS state of omnipoten$US. Not a dream is when US reign$ fire on Thee. today Fallujah. then Ramadi, Samarra, Sadr City, Tehran, Damascus, back to Kabul, Beruit...how, by then could sectors of Riyad, Cairo, Libya, North Korea, not be eventual recipients of the wrath of USrael?

[waioli kai]

Fallujah insurgents, residents evacuate?

Reports out of Iraq today say that there is now widespread belief that most of the insurgents have evacuated from Fallujah (as have most of its residents) and relocated to neighboring towns. This will make it much much harder for us to eradicate the insurgents because they are no longer concentrated in one place. This is just arm chair quarterbacking, maybe we should have completed our mission in Fallujah last April, when al-Zarqawi was still entrenched there. Miulang

US forces, their Commander in Chief on down, have US media headlining the US assault on Fallujah as being a hunt down of al-Zarqawi. One can only imagine, lest the US seige and assault on Fallujah turns out "WMDs?"-like deja vu , that US forces and civilian commanders are praying to their god of weapons and delivery that US decimation of Fallujah yields a display of al-Zarqawi's head.

If it is true that most of the rebels have now left Fallujah, then Fallujah will not be the turning point that I think the US forces wanted it to be and we will be subjected to more hit and run terrorism all the way to the elections in January.

So, if it is true that most militant anti-USraeli remain in Fallujah and are subsequently exterminated by US, will it be not true that "we will be subjected to more hit and run terrorism all the way to the elections in January"?

I doubt that the Shiites, the Sunni and the Baathists will ever reach the kind of accord necessary to successfully build a peaceful Iraq because there are fundamental differences in what they believe in.

The U.S. Civil War of the 19th Century made 'the new and improved' nation a more united "melting pot" of peoples, perhaps that experience has led US to hope, to preach that salvation resides in firepower, that peace is born of death, destruction and chaos, that what is not delivered to US by a higher power will be taken by US at any cost to humanity, pissing on the future of Life on Earth as necessity demands.

[Miulang]

Re: Don't get me wrong,The Iraq War

While i cannot say i pray for their misfortune, as indeed i do not pray so (especially as billions of humanity may engage in similarly but for their doing so sometimes five times a day -intensely at that), reason tells me that it is another step i don't want to take into the arena of illogically suspended conscience to accept i can -if i could- pray for their safety when not also inherently be praying they are free to reign death and decimation on all they perceive between them and goals to establish justUS , liberateUS, secureUS, without Thee.

I personally don't want us meddling "pre-emptively" anywhere in the world! But since we are in Iraq, I also don't want our troops to have to suffer for the stupidity of an Administration which obviously has no idea of how to keep the peace if the war can be won (I am extremely skeptical of that happening). And I don't care if you don't pray. I don't pray to any Christian god, either. That is just a figure of speech.

BTW: I think it would be cool if Arafat could be buried in the Mosque in Jerusalem when he dies, because that is his last wish.

Miulang

[waioli kai]

Re: Don't get me wrong,The Iraq War

BTW: I think it would be cool if Arafat could be buried in the Mosque in Jerusalem when he dies, because that is his last wish.

Yes. Makes one wonder what opposition may arise with regard to honoring Sharon's last wishes for the location in which to inter Ariel Sharon's body.

[pzarquon]

Re: The Iraq War

Things are ramping up for the inevitable showdown in Fallujah.

More than 10,000 U.S. troops are poised for the Fallujah fight against an estimated 3,000 insurgents... "This is the Hue City (PDF) of our generation," says Lt. Col. Michael Ramos, commander of the Kaneohe-based 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, which is expected to play a key role in Fallujah.

It was disheartening to hear this morning that much of the Iraqi-derived force has dwindled in the past few days, echoing the earlier offense in which local soldiers refused to fight. Training is clearly still needed before Iraqis can defend themselves, and for this battle it'll once again come down mostly to the skill and bravery of U.S. soldiers.

[waioli kai]

Phantom Fuhrery

Falluja, Babylon 21st Century CE: opUS " Phantom Fuhrery " -> -> = = opUS " New Dawn"


New Dawnation = = ? = = New Damnation

what a difference a "W" makes !! Unfortunately, when inverted, in the context of terrorUSism, what appears as dawn to US is the city of Fallujah on fire, under fire. Homes, citizens, civilians, militants, dogs, cats, rats, non-militants, all.

What is it they say it is: Operation (!) Phantom Fury (!!) New Dawn (!!!) The Dawn (!!!!) Of More Damnation? What? OIL? Operation Iraqi Liberation? Operation Freedom, Liberty, Democracy and justUS? What's that crying? Not US for sure. Not today. Revenge is sweet, so they say; just cries of joy and jubilation.

An individually named, hydra-headed phantomUS operation, the seige and assault on Falluja has become. Were not for the fires in Mesopotamia would not Euphrates be flowing red, as was the vast land surface of Mesonorthamerica during semingly varied manifestations US of A, as even now the domestic maintenance of US is noted as a red landscape more than anything else?

[Glen Miyashiro]

Re: The Iraq War

Eh waioli kai, I heard Longs get sale on Reynolds Wrap.

[waioli kai]

Re: Phantom Fuhrery

opUS Dei "Phantom Fuhrery"

op us (Latin “work of God”)

Opus Dei

Roman Catholic lay and clerical organization whose actions and beliefs have been both criticized and praised.
Its members seek personal Christian perfection, strive to implement Christian ideals in their chosen occupations, and promote Christian values to society as a whole. Opus Dei, in full Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei, was founded in 1928 in Spain by Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer y Albá (canonzied in 2002). It is theologically conservative and accepts the teaching authority of the church without question. It was granted special status as the first and only personal prelature in the church by Pope John Paul II in 1982 and has established numerous vocational schools and universities. It is also highly controversial, accused of secrecy, using cult-like recruiting practices, and having grand political ambitions. There are separate organizations for men and women, which, since 1982, have been headed by a prelate elected by its members. At the beginning of the 20th century priests constituted only a tiny percentage of the organization, numbering roughly 1,600 of the nearly 84,000 members living in 80 countries. ttp://www.britannica.com/ebc/article?tocId=9384283&query=opus&ct=

opUS Day

US operation " Phantom Fury "

Falluja, Babylon

Fall 2004 CE

[Miulang]

Re: The Iraq War

I stumbled across this blogsite by Riverbend, an woman who lives in Iraq (probably in Baghdad) and is sending out information on what it's like to live in a country where a puppet regime under the firm control of the US government is trying to exert its influence.

She hasn't written anything since before the election, but it's a good insight into what's happening to the Iraqi people (and certainly a different view than what the US press reports). I just hope she is safe and can continue to post to her blog when the power comes back.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/20...g_archive.html

Miulang