From Falluja to Mosul and back again

In early November, insurgents carried out a series of co-ordinated attacks against local police stations.

They occupied and ransacked buildings, taking with them anything worth keeping including uniforms, weapons, radios and police cars.

The attacks caused the police force to collapse. The chief of police has left his job.

US commanders estimate that more than three quarters of local policemen are no longer showing up for work.

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The attacks on police stations punched a hole through the US strategy for Mosul.

US forces had wanted to take a back seat in policing and controlling this city. They wanted Iraqi forces to do the job themselves.

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Many of the US troops in Mosul have only been here for about a month.

Few have learned more than a few words of Arabic. Few have any direct contact with the local population.

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This is the city where US forces killed the sons of Saddam.

Last year the Americans thought they had fought off their enemies and freed Mosul for good.

But now the city is back under nightly curfew. Many Iraqis still live amid fear and uncertainty.

And the Americans have found their way into another fight.

  BBC News article

Bring 'em on, eh?

U.S. forces found 13 more bodies in and around the northern city of Mosul, the military said Friday, bringing to 35 the number of corpses discovered in the past week in the area shaken by an insurgent uprising.

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U.S. military said that 11 of the 35 bodies found have been identified as members of the Iraqi security forces, who have been targeted by insurgents. The others have not been identified.

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Meanwhile, Iraqi forces arrested four insurgents who said they were planning attacks against coalition bases and police stations in the southern city of Basra, officials said Friday, a day after a joint British-Iraqi operation netted three dozen men in the area.

Iraqi National Guardsmen arrested the four after a brief gunfight at the Al-Yarmouk Hotel. Three of the men came from Fallujah and the fourth from Samarra, according to an Iraqi National Guard official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The four men told Iraqi officials they were planning a series of attacks in southern Basra, which is the headquarters for some 8,500 British troops, in an attempt to relieve the U.S. military pressure on Fallujah.

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In Fallujah, insurgents ambushed U.S. troops as they entered a home during house-to-house searches in the former rebel bastion, killing two Marines and wounding three others, the U.S. military said Friday.

Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said the Marines responded with gunfire, killing three rebels hiding inside.

  ABC News article

Anyone left in Falluja is now considered a "rebel", no doubt. If you were a Fallujan, after the past two weeks of seeing everyone shot on sight, and hearing how they also shoot and kill the wounded, I don't think you would wait for the the troops to open fire on you once they get inside your home either, not if you had a gun, and apparently every Fallujan home has at least one. The report says they have finished "clearing" half the city in their house-to-house operation. Mission Not-Quite-Accomplished.

"There will be efforts to disrupt the elections," England said on a visit to Marines at a camp outside Fallujah. "The insurgents don't want the elections to be held and certainly not that they be successful. But we will prevail. We will provide the necessary stability."

And the Sunnis boycotting the elections - will they be considered insurgents as well?