Falluja: A Chronicle of Genocide

Falluja Reacts to Troop Withdrawal

2011-12-15T06:23:00.001-06:00

Apparently, they're sorry to see us leave.

Source

And President #Compromise welcomes home some troops…

“Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries -- from the colonists who overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents who faced down fascism and communism, to you -- men and women who fought for the same principles in Fallujah and Kandahar, and delivered justice to those who attacked us on 9/11.

[...]

“That’s part of what makes us special as Americans. Unlike the old empires, we don’t make these sacrifices for territory or for resources. We do it because it’s right. There can be no fuller expression of America’s support for self-determination than our leaving Iraq to its people. That says something about who we are.

[...]

“And make no mistake -- as we go forward as a nation, we are going to keep America’s armed forces the strongest fighting force the world has ever seen.” And they’ve seen it a lot.

WIIIAI

Indeed they have. Indeed they have.

Falluja Is Still There

2011-01-10T12:29:00.002-06:00

What's left of it.

[The attack on Falluja] was one of the most horrific events of the still-unfolding act of aggression in Iraq. Presented in the U.S. press as an old-fashioned, gung-ho, WWII-style "battle," it was in fact a mass slaughter, largely of trapped civilians; almost all of the "terrorists" and "insurgents" in the city had long escaped during the months-long, oddly public build-up to the assault. It seemed clear that the intent was not to quash an insurgent nest, as stated, but to perpetrate an act of condign, collective punishment -- primarily against civilians -- in order to terrorize the rest of Iraq into submission.
One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. ...
So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.
[...]
The wanton, unnecessary destruction of Fallujah is one of the central stories of our time. Yet it is almost entirely forgotten, especially among the people in whose name this vast crime was committed. But the marks of this atrocity live on in its victims. Over the holidays, while America's high and mighty were making merry, yet another detailed study was released confirming a major spike in birth defects in Fallujah following the attack.
[...]
The new report follows on the harrowing findings reported by the BBC and The Independent (but strangely omitted from the American media) in mid-2010.
[...]
US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.
[...]
[Falluja is a] city whose birth defect rate is 11 times the world average. A city where children are suffering from cancers "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors" -- indeed, where the increase in leukemia is far greater than among the first victims of American WMD. [...] O where are our great American progressives, who stood so tall and proud against the American war machine when it was led by an embarrassing vulgarian, but now occupy themselves with handwringing and bead-counting about the political fortunes of his bloodstained predecessor, now perpetrating his own mini-Fallujahs week after week against defenseless villagers in Pakistan?
[...]
I have written about Fallujah over and over for a long time. In many respects, these stories are like the ones I've written about the American-abetted horrors in Somalia: no one gives a damn. Well, I don't give a damn that no gives a damn. I'm going to keep ringing this bell until my arm falls off. We -- Americans -- have committed and countenanced a great evil in Iraq. I can't change that -- and it's obvious that I cannot prevent the "continuity" of such hellish atrocities by the progressive Peace Laureate now in the White House, and by whatever similar blood-soaked poltroon comes to lead the never-ending Terror War for Loot and Power after him. But by god I will not let it be said that I stood by and failed to bear witness to this raging filth.
"The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." -- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.
I will not forget Artica Salim. I will not forget Fallujah. I will not "move on." I will not become part of the inferno. – Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque

I have never felt that aggressive about bearing witness - more like beating a drum knowing that I’m probably the only one hearing it, and wondering if that’s just masochistic . But from the inception of the atrocity of the attack on (laying waste to, really) Falluja, I felt a specially intense despair about the loss of any sense of morality on the part of my countrymen in particular, but also the world in general. At that point, I began keeping a blog devoted to that special Hell, and I must say I am indeed still amazed at the lack of attention paid it, even in light of the continuing reports of the condition of the people there. At the time, it was used as a source of pride and a rallying point for the pretense that our soldiers are over there protecting our freedom here. Once that was spent, we had no more use for it.

Perhaps if each American adult had to adopt, raise, and care for one child orphaned or afflicted by the war, we’d make our government stop.

Don’t worry. We don’t even have to look at them.

Video on Falluja Atrocity

2011-01-10T11:31:00.000-06:00

Windows Media Video

courtesy Information Clearing House

What Really Happened

2011-01-10T07:06:00.000-06:00

The Continuing Destruction of Falluja

2010-12-31T08:44:00.003-06:00

Iraq's government has built a new hospital in Fallujah, but the city's obstetricians have complained that they are still overwhelmed by the sheer number of serious defects. The US military has long denied that it is responsible for any contaminant left behind in the city, or elsewhere in Iraq, as it continues its steady departure from the country it has occupied for almost eight years.
[...]
A study examining the causes of a dramatic spike in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Falluja has for the first time concluded that genetic damage could have been caused by weaponry used in US assaults that took place six years ago.
The research, which will be published next week, confirms earlier estimates revealed by the Guardian of a major, unexplained rise in cancers and chronic neural-tube, cardiac and skeletal defects in newborns. The authors found that malformations are close to 11 times higher than normal rates, and rose to unprecedented levels in the first half of this year – a period that had not been surveyed in earlier reports.
UK Guardian

Of course, this isn’t the first time the subject has come up. It never caused much of a ripple in our part of the world, though.

The findings, which will be published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, come prior to a much-anticipated World Health Organisation study of Falluja's genetic health. They follow two alarming earlier studies, one of which found a distortion in the sex ratio of newborns since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – a 15% drop in births of boys.

Now that sounds like something that might be welcomed by certain people in charge of TWOT; perhaps even a goal.

"We suspect that the population is chronically exposed to an environmental agent," said one of the report's authors, environmental toxicologist Mozhgan Savabieasfahani. "We don't know what that environmental factor is, but we are doing more tests to find out."

I’d think it would have had to been exposed very heavily and for some time to affect the birth rate, but then I’m not a chemical expert. Perhaps they’ve been blanketed with something airborne? Or something has been put in their water supply? I do know that even when I studied agricultural chemicals back in the early 90s, research showed a marked “feminization” of the environment – both in animals and humans – attributed to the use of a number of those chemicals, facts which didn’t seem to draw much concern outside environmentalist circles. That surprised me, since I figure anything threatening man’s “manliness” would be a very serious concern indeed in this country.

At any rate, as it has been argued that the atomic bomb was deployed at the end of WWII, not to end the war, which was already by many accounts about to be ended by a Japanese surrender, but to test our latest weaponry, and as it has been reported that we used something akin to the banned napalm - white phosphorus - on the people of Falluja, it occurs to me that there may even be other experimental weaponry unleashed on these people in the heat of a widely accepted retaliation.

The findings are likely to prompt further speculation that the defects were caused by depleted uranium rounds, which were heavily used in two large battles in the city in April and November 2004.

The WHO and NATO say DU is practically harmless. Others disagree: CADU; Gulf War Syndrome & DU; Contamination of Persian Gulf War Veterans and Others by Depleted Uranium

Iraq's government has built a new hospital in Fallujah, but the city's obstetricians have complained that they are still overwhelmed by the sheer number of serious defects. The US military has long denied that it is responsible for any contaminant left behind in the city, or elsewhere in Iraq, as it continues its steady departure from the country it has occupied for almost eight years.

Of course.

War Crimes: Falluja Today

2010-07-25T15:54:00.000-05:00

In Fallujah, a city just 50 miles from Baghdad, life has never been the same since April 2004, when U.S. Marines declared the entire area a free-fire zone and proceeded to do what Marines do best. Packing the most destructive weaponry in the world, American soldiers laid siege to the city, deploying depleted uranium munitions, white phosphorus and tons of conventional ballistics.
[...]
In the wake of America's "shock and awe" bombing campaign to take Baghdad, radiation detectors as far away as the United Kingdom noticed a fourfold spike in radioactivity in the atmosphere.
[...]
Today, according to a study by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health [PDF link], rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality and sexual mutations in Fallujah are higher than those reported in the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear detonations.
[...]
Images of Iraqi children born horribly mutated are extremely difficult to look at and not for the feint of heart.
Raw Story

Marja Recalls Falluja

2010-02-15T09:14:00.001-06:00

U.S. Marines came under intense fire on Sunday after taking over a building in the heart of the last major Taliban bastion in Helmand province.
Taliban fighters unleashed automatic gunfire at NATO helicopters flying in and out of the town of Marjah, and fired on Marines during a ceremony to raise the Afghan flag over the compound to mark progress in the offensive.
Captain Ryan Sparks compared the intensity of the fighting to the U.S.-led offensive against militants in the Iraqi town of Fallujah in 2004.
"In Fallujah, it was just as intense. But there, we started from the north and worked down to the south. In Marjah, we're coming in from different locations and working toward the centre, so we're taking fire from all angles," Sparks said.
Reuters India

I can't help but wonder what deals the CIA has made behind the scenes with Talib poppy growers. This area of Afghanistan is reported to be a center of the opium drug trade (producing over half the world's supply), and where there's a center of drug trade, there's CIA.

The Next Falluja

2010-02-07T08:03:00.000-06:00

Juan Cole comments on the news that people are fleeing their homes in Marja, Helmland Province in the South of Afghanistan, in response to notice that NATO soldiers are coming to rid them of Taliban, in what is being called the "largest assault against the militants since the war began." He reports that it is mainly a British operation, but the link he provides says it is being led by a "huge force of US Marines." (He also says the operation's name is the Persian word for "joint", while the link reports it as the Dari word for "together".)

I cannot forget the night I read the news that the US military had given the Fallujan people their notice, sending tens of thousands of families fleeing into the desert. It made me sick.

Agence France Presse reports that thousands of Afghans are fleeing an anticipated NATO/Afghan (mainly British) campaign against the Taliban stronghold of Marja, a city of 80,000, south of the capital of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province. Marja is in the midst of a major poppy-growing region and so a center of narco-terrorism (the poppies are used to make heroin, and it is estimated that 40% of the drug trade goes to insurgents fighting the Karzai government).
The 5,000-man strike force will be British troops in the majority, and the rest will be Afghan or American. Although the campaign is called Operation Mushtarak, the Dari Persian word for "joint," it seems obvious that Afghan Army troops are a small part of the force. Unlike past such campaigns, the invasion force will be garrisoned in Marja rather than withdrawing, so as to allow the troops to keep the Taliban out and to win over local hearts and minds.
[...]
NATO is now racing to train enough Afghan troops to stay in the major southern city and keep it out of the hands of the Taliban.
Juan Cole

The Marjah assault is the spearhead of a new counter-insurgency strategy, brainchild of US General Stanley McChrystal, who commands foreign forces in Afghanistan, aimed at winning over ordinary Afghans to support the government.
Google/AFP

Winning hearts and minds by an invastion, driving thousands from their homes. I have a feeling we're getting off on the wrong foot.

President Hamid Karzai is eager to bring on board Taliban foot soldiers, who largely fight for cash rather than loyalty to the Islamists, by offering them money and jobs to put down arms and rejoin mainstream society.>

Because he hasn't noticed that this same tactic up to the present has simply succeeded in giving enemy soldiers intimate knowledge about the ways we go about fighting them, and money to purchase more arms. Because he hasn't noticed that their interest is in removing the infidel invaders and their passion is religious fervor, not a desire to rejoin mainstream society.

Sometimes I can scarcely believe what I read. Mark Twain said he couldn't decide if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. I expect were he alive today, he would have made his decision.

You may keep a measure of this type of attack and its results if you like in comparison to that ignoble previous such plan in Iraq through my compilation of Falluja posts (always linked in the right sidebar).

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Fallujah's Further Punishment

2009-11-15T12:21:00.000-06:00

Doctors in Iraq's war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.
[...]
Neurologists and obstetricians in the city interviewed by the Guardian say the rise in birth defects – which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumours, and others with nervous system problems - are unprecedented and at present unexplainable.
[...]
The rise in frequency is stark – from two admissions a fortnight a year ago to two a day now. "Most are in the head and spinal cord, but there are also many deficiencies in lower limbs," he said. "There is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of less than two years [old] with brain tumours. This is now a focus area of multiple tumours."
[...]
[H]ealth officials are also starting to focus on possible reasons, chief among them potential chemical or radiation poisonings. Abnormal clusters of infant tumours have also been repeatedly cited in Basra and Najaf – areas that have in the past also been intense battle zones where modern munitions have been heavily used.
UK Guardian

Still Searching for Justice in Falluja

2009-04-02T08:17:00.000-06:00

A US Marine sergeant claimed he killed an Iraqi detainee in self-defense, but a prosecutor has charged that he ignored basic procedures and killed an unarmed man.
In opening statements at the Marine's court martial Tuesday, Ryan Weemer, 26 -- one of three Marines accused in the killings of four Iraqi detainees during the battle for Fallujah in November 2004 -- was charged with unpremeditated murder and dereliction of duty.
"This case is about doing the right thing.”
[...]
After Weemer's best friend was gunned down, he and other Marines found four men in a house -- three young men and an older man with a beard. The men were unarmed and had their hands up in the air, Gannon said.
[...]
A military investigation was triggered when Weemer told a Secret Service agent during a job interview in October 2006 that he had been involved in an unlawful killing in Iraq .
[...]
"Ultimately, Sergeant Weemer took the man with the beard, took that detainee, pulled out his 9 mm (gun) and shot him two times," said Gannon. The accused claimed the dead man went for his (Weemer's) gun and he shot him in the chest, said the prosecutor.
"If you're gonna execute someone, would you shoot him in the chest?" countered defense attorney Paul Hacket.
Raw Story

Great defense.

Now we wait to see whether there is any justice. An earlier trial resulted in an acquittal of another marine involved.

See? Progress!

2009-02-15T13:28:00.000-06:00

Tourism in Falluja.

And they have George Bush to thank for it, don't they?

No, really, you must click and read.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Falluja- Now a Model City

2008-03-24T10:31:00.000-06:00

The U.S. military showcases Fallujah as a model city where U.S. policies are finally paying off and is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the region to promote the rule of law and a variety of nation-building efforts.
[...]
Fallujah today is sealed off with blast walls and checkpoints. Residents are given permits to enter the city. All visitors and their weapons are registered, and police check every car. The U.S. military has divided the city into nine gated communities, each with its own joint security station staffed by U.S. troops and Iraqi police. It also has been buying the loyalties of former Sunni insurgents, paying them $180 a month to join a neighborhood force that works with the police.
[...]
But the security that has been achieved here is fragile, the result of harsh tactics recalling the rule of Saddam Hussein, who was overthrown five years ago. Even as they work alongside U.S. forces, [Fallujah’s police chief, ex-Sunni insurgent fighting against the U.S., Col. Faisal Ismail al-]Zobaie's men admit they have beaten and tortured suspects to force confessions and exact revenge.
In Zobaie's world, to show mercy is to show weakness. In a land where men burn other men alive, harsh tactics are a small price to pay for imposing order, he said.
"We never tortured anybody," he said. "Sometimes we beat them during the first hours of capture."
[...]
"The city is like a big jail," said Abu Ahmed, a well-known doctor who asked that his nickname be used because he has treated people who were brutalized by Zobaie's men.
[...]
The story of Zobaie and his police force opens a window onto the Iraq that is emerging after five years of war. American ideals that were among the justifications for the 2003 invasion, such as promoting democracy and human rights, are giving way to values drawn from Iraq's traditions and tribal culture, such as respect, fear and brutality.
[...]
"Since Saddam Hussein until now, Iraq obeys only the force," [Cpt. Mohammed] Yousef said. "We are practicing the same old procedures."
Abu Rahma, 43, a taxi driver and father of four, was a victim of that approach. He was taken into custody last March and tortured in Fallujah's jail. "They kept beating me to force me to confess," he said. "I told them I am not with al-Qaeda, and neither is my brother. They beat me everywhere on my body. . . . Some of my nails were taken out."
[...]
Once a member of Hussein's elite Republican Guard, Zobaie is driven by allegiance neither to the United States nor to Iraq's Shiite-run central government. He wants U.S. troops to leave Iraq. But for now, he needs the United States to bolster him with military muscle and funds. And the U.S. military today depends on men such as Zobaie to help bring about the order and security in Iraq that could eventually lead to the end of the American occupation.
"I have realized that Americans love the strong guy," Zobaie said.
WaPo

Same values?

Zobaie has asked the U.S. officers to help obtain more aid for the city from the regional and central governments. Already, the U.S. military is employing street cleaners, building schools and putting up $9 million worth of solar street lights. But some U.S. officers question why insurgents once determined to kill them have so quickly embraced them.
"Every time they talk to you there's an agenda," said Miller, the captain who works closely with Zobaie. "You have to figure out what they want right now. If it is this easy, it begs the question: What are we giving them that we don't know that we're giving them?"
What Zobaie wants is for the U.S. military to hand over full control of Fallujah. He believes Iraq's current leaders are not strong enough. Asked whether democracy could ever bloom here, he replied: "No democracy in Iraq. Ever."
"When the Americans leave the city," he said, "I'll be tougher with the people."

Model city.

If you like, you can read all the background on Falluja from previous YWA posts here (always available from a link in the sidebar), and some other collected links here (with apologies for maintenance neglect).

P.S. I wonder what has become of these two little girls, from my blog post November 14, 2004.

Little Fallujan girls
Photo courtesyAljazeera

Falluja - A War Crime of Epic Proportions

2007-09-30T20:57:00.000-05:00

Incident Reports Fault Blackwater in Fallujah Ambush

More Troubles for Blackwater

2007-09-17T10:06:00.000-05:00

The company that ushered in the Falluja massacres has been banned from doing business in Iraq after a gun battle they were involved in killed eight civilians.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry revoked their license to operate in that country, since the Iraqi courts don't have jurisdiction over US private contractors and can't bring anyone to trial.

Update

Falluja

2007-07-09T13:07:00.000-05:00

The families of the four Blackwater contractors who were ambushed in Falluja have sued the company for information, and the company has filed a countersuit. We now have a little information on the totally unnecessary and outrageous screwup that created one of Iraq's first and worst disasters.

Blackwater, based in North Carolina, sent two squads through Fallujah without maps, according to memos obtained by The News & Observer. Both of the six-man teams, named Bravo 2 and November 1, were sent out two men short, leaving them more vulnerable to ambush.
The Bravo 2 team members had protested that they were not ready for the mission and had not had time to prepare their weapons, but they were commanded to go, according to memos written by team members. The team disregarded directions to drive through Fallujah and instead drove around it and returned safely to Baghdad that evening.
The November 1 team went into Fallujah and was massacred.
The Bravo 2 team memos, in emotional, coarse and damning language, placed the blame squarely on Blackwater's Baghdad site manager, Tom Powell.

Read about the memos here.

Falluja Redux

2007-05-22T13:14:00.000-05:00

If you don't remember what an unmitigated disaster the attempt to take Falluja was, you can check the YWA blogs on it here (a permanent link is in the sidebar).

Now, it appears we are about to go after Sadr City, proving I can sometimes still be surprised...

Commanders say they intend to use political negotiations to gain peaceful entry into the district, bringing with them Iraqi forces and reconstruction projects. U.S. officials hope "to take Sadr City without a shot fired," said Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., the senior U.S. general overseeing Baghdad.
But negotiations have had setbacks, with key players shot or intimidated.
[...]
If political avenues are exhausted, the U.S. military has formulated other options, including plans for a wholesale clearing operation in Sadr City that would require a much larger force, but commanders stress that this is a last resort.

Not particularly comforting when you stop and think about the chances of "political negotiations" gaining "peaceful entry". What? Al Sadr's group is just going to let the Americans waltz in and set up shop? We don't take hints very well, do we? What with "key players" being "shot or intimidated."

"A second Fallujah plan exists, but we don't want to execute it," a military officer in Baghdad said, referring to the U.S. military offensive in November 2004 to retake the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah in Iraq's western Anbar province. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with reporters.

Provide your own retort.

Mike at Born at the Crest of the Empire comments:

I'm not sure if this was "leaked" to pressure the folks in Sadr City, but if they're serious, they'd better look again. Fallujah had only 400,000 residents at the time, and the city is far more spread out.
Sadr City is 2 million people stacked into an apartment block slum.
"Clearing" Sadr City would be impossible with the forces currently available.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Actually, Falluja is still very much involved in the violence, even though the US tries to put a positive spin on it.

Progress in Fallujah is "phenomenal," he said, describing how although the 2004 Operation al-Fajr almost destroyed the city, with nearly all the residents being captured or killed, the city today has almost 4,000 residents.
"Fallujah today is an economically strong and flourishing city," Simcock said. "We're making great progress."

They never tire of spewing that bullshit, do they? I wouldn't call 4,000 "strong and flourishing." That may be a typo or a misquote. And then again, it may be exactly the kind of idiot logic we've come to expect. The Huntsville Times reports that Falluja has "well over" 350,000 people "and growing." I don't know what the real figure might be. Reports I've read say there were approximately 350,000 when we drove out most of them and tore it up. I read somewhere 36,000 out of its 50,000 homes were destroyed. I just don't know. But, here's another loose set of stats in light of a new British play:

The US attack on Fallujah in April 2004 convulsed the city – between 60 and 70 per cent of the buildings were flattened and even today the population stands at only 30-50 per cent of its pre-war level. Yet there is little public knowledge of what has been described as “one of the most extensive human rights violations of recent times”. Now a play at the Old Truman Brewery in London’s Brick Lane is trying to put it back on the map.
It’s an uphill task. A performance about a ruthless assault in a murderous war is not everyone’s choice of an evening out.
OneWorld UK

Even so, I imagine it will play better in England than it would on this side of the pond.

P.P.S. While they may no longer be making headlines, those soldiers are still missing.

Update 5/25: Car bomb exploded at a funeral in Falluja.

Meanwhile, in Falluja

2005-06-24T20:57:00.000-05:00

You remember - that place we cleaned up last fall.

A suicide car bomber slammed into a 7-ton U.S. military vehicle in Fallujah, killing five Marines and a Navy sailor, Marine Corps sources told NBC News, adding that at least three of the dead were female Marines and that 13 others were wounded.
MSNBC article

Remember Falluja?

2005-06-09T17:10:00.000-05:00

Well, now you can see it. What's left of it.

Photo Essay — Fallujah: An Unnatural Disaster All Falluja posts.

Falljua remade

2005-04-25T09:52:00.000-05:00

The NY Times in Falluja

by Mike Whitney
Progressive Trail
April 18, 2005

"Things are almost back to normal here. We have teachers and books. Things are getting better."

-- New York Times, "Vital Signs of a Ruined City Grow stronger in Falluja," March 26, 2005

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."

-- Rev. Martin Luther King

Cameras aren't allowed in Falluja. Neither are journalists. If they were then we would have first-hand proof of America's greatest war crime in the last 30 years: the Dresden-like bombardment of an entire city of 250,000. Instead, we have to rely on eyewitness accounts that appear on the internet or the spurious reports that sporadically surface in the New York Times and Associated Press. For the most part, the Times and AP have shown themselves to be undependable, limiting their coverage to the details that support the overall goals of the occupation. For example, in the last few weeks both the NYT and the AP ran stories on the alleged progress being made in Falluja. The AP outrageously referred to the battered city as "the safest place in Iraq," a cynical appraisal of what most independent journalists have called nearly total destruction.
[...]
The truth about Falluja is far different than the bogus reports in the AP and Times. The fact that even now, a full 6 months after the siege, camera crews and journalists are banned from the city, tells us a great deal about the extent of America's war crimes. Just two weeks ago, a photographer from Al Aribiyya news was arrested while leaving Falluja and his equipment and film were confiscated. To date, he is still being held without explanation and there is no indication when he will be released.
[...]
The fairytales in the Times and AP are typical wartime propaganda; no different from the fabrications about Jessica Lynch's heroics or the Dear Leader larking about in Baghdad with a plastic turkey in tow (Bush's "surprise" Thanksgiving day visit).
[...]
Falluja is undoubtedly doomed to the same fate as Afghanistan. The media will create the illusion of improvement for the American public, celebrating the meaningless trappings of democracy (sham elections, claims of sovereignty, and the writing of a constitution) while the nation remains fractured and under the brutal rule of the regional warlords. Afghanistan is a lawless, drug colony run by gangsters and narco smugglers. By any standard of measurement, our involvement there has been a complete failure.

The real Afghanistan bears no resemblance to the flourishing democratic republic that graces the pages of American newspapers.

Falluja and the rest of Iraq can expect the very same treatment.
[...]
Deregulation, privatization and control of resources, the same model applied over and over again. The real goal is a radical, fundamental change to the system; "shock therapy," the all-purpose antidote prescribed by the global banking and financial establishment. [...] After Iraq has passed through this vicious transition from semi-socialist government to deregulated capitalist colony, it will be entered into the new world order of American protectorates, stripped of its resources and subjected to the tyranny of foreign rule. All government properties and services will be controlled by multinational corporations and all assets will be held by the foreign lending institutions that own the majority shares of the Iraqi National Bank.
[...]
The real story of Falluja will never appear in the pages of the New York Times; the banned weapons, the bloated corpses, the thousands of dead animals killed by illicit chemicals, the wasteland of rubble and ruined lives. The magnitude of the crime simply won't fit within the paper's glib account of benign intervention. Rather, the Times is focused on promoting a credible story of "rebirth amid the ruins," of lives patched together by a kindhearted father in Washington and his heavily armed disciples.

They're wasting their time.
Occupation Watch article

Falluja report

2005-03-29T23:35:00.000-06:00

Presented to the 61st session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights For the period of 1ST January to 25th March 2005

Studies Center of Human Rights and Democracy - Bussells Tribunal

The city of Fallujah was subjected to a genocide war by the American forces. The military machinery destroyed almost 70 per cent of the city, from civilian houses to medical center and general services facilities especially water, electricity. This war resulted in killing thousands of innocent civilians and sending almost a half million refugee.

It is well known that the American forces and their puppet government prevented any medical or humanitarian relief agency to enter the city throughout its siege to the city.
[...]
In order to give the international community a clear image of what is happening, we present this short report:
[...]
Information Clearinghouse
article

And from a reporter who was there...

deep sea diver turned documentary filmmaker Mark Manning asked if I had six minutes to spare — a strange request, considering we’d already spent two hours talking about Manning’s recent trip to Falluja, the heart of Iraq’s bloody Sunni triangle. Six minutes more was nothing, so Manning queued up a short video of footage he’s shot in Iraq and hit play.
[...]
“There were 500,000 people living in Falluja at the time, not the 250,000 that the media reports. They were given one week to leave home,” Manning said. “After three days, they were told they had to walk out. Then after a week, the U.S. forces sacked the city and killed anyone that was left.” Manning expressed outrage that no provision was made for the mass exodus of refugees. “There were no refugee camps. Families were living in chicken coops, tents, and cars. In Iraq, the winters are very cold and very wet. And these are people who left with pretty much just the clothes on their back.”
[...]
“The whole town is radiated,” said Manning. “We are poisoning the whole country.”
[...]
Even though his taped interviews were stolen, Manning said he managed to download many video images of Falluja onto his computer, as well as many still photos. With these, he hopes to make first a 10-minute DVD, and then later a full-length documentary.
[...]
This 4-year-old spent his time either staring blankly ahead
or jumping at any provocation and shaking.
He was one of seven kids whose family Manning visited almost daily.

Independent.com article

That is a very interesting article. Check it out.

News about Falluja for Americans

2005-03-22T09:58:00.000-06:00

Knight Ridder headline:

Fallujah: From insurgent stronghold to 'safest city in Iraq'

Here are the opening paragraphs (which is all most Americans read, if they bother to go beyond the headlines - which are apparently written for George Bush to scan - and Knight Ridder knows it)...

Piles of rubble still line the streets here, but a few shops have opened on the main drag, schools are finally in session and a compensation program to help families rebuild made some token initial payments this month.
Four months after the assault on Fallujah, in the center of Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, American forces working to rebuild the city say they're seeing some progress, albeit limited, in a city that's still blockaded and under a curfew.

Even a little progress is an important development in a city that's been a major test for the American presence in Iraq.

See? It was a difficult and terrible situation, but through hard work and consideration of the people's sovereign needs, we are rebuilding Falluja.

And if you have any real interest in Falluja, you might actually make it all the way to the bottom of the article where you'll find these paragraphs...

And while Marine units adopt and help rebuild schools such as the Palestine School for Boys and Girls, some students aren't able to get through the checkpoints to make it into the city for class, said gym teacher Sulaiman A. Ali Al-Mohamadi.

The southern half of the city is still without electricity. Water service, though now extended to almost all areas, is limited because residents can't power the pumps that bring the water into their homes, said Navy Lt. Chris Lankford. Only 1,000 of the 13,000 telephone subscribers before the war have had their service restored.

For businesses, the security checkpoints on the perimeter of the city are a particular hardship. Fallujah used to be less than an hour's drive from Baghdad. Now, people wait for hours in line, submitting to searches and fingerprinting. Only Fallujah residents and contractors working on reconstruction projects can enter the city.

"Baghdad is the source of the goods we need," said spice dealer Haji Abbas. "I was going and coming from Baghdad almost daily. Now I can't. The checkpoints and the long lines make transportation costs extremely high and this makes my spice prices relatively high ... and Fallujah residents need money to fix their homes. The last thing they need is a shortage of goods and high prices."
[...]
So far, only 40 families have received compensation payments, out of an estimated 25,000 who suffered damages. American officials say the program is being run by the local government, which is still in disarray.

The article doesn't even mention how many Fallujans still reside in tents outside the city because the "damages" were total destruction of their homes. But that 40 out of 25,000 families receiving compensation, and 1,000 of 13,000 who have telephone service, the lack of water and electricity should give you some idea. Here are a great number of links to stories that provide information.

And how about Knight Ridder's summation starter....

Some are happy for a break in the violence, even at the price of their freedom.

How very American of them!

"We can't do business here," said Ali Muhammed Hussein, as he waited with his elderly father to receive a compensation check. "It's the safest city in Iraq because it's a prison."

Now for the Falluja section of 7th Fire's Iraqi Resistance Report from Arab sources:

Three US troops reported killed by Resistance roadside bomb in al-Fallujah Sunday afternoon.

An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US column in the ash-Shuhada neighborhood of al-Fallujah at 5:30pm Sunday afternoon local time. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the bomb virtually totally destroyed a Humvee killed three US troops and wounded two more. An official statement by the police said that a roadside bomb on the street leading to the al-Anbiya’ Mosque was responsible for the blast that left five SU troops “killed or wounded.”

Resistance car bomb in al-Fallujah Sunday evening.

An Iraqi Resistance car bomb exploded in the ash-Shukr area of northern al-Fallujah at about 6pm Sunday evening. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the extent of casualties as a result of the blast was unclear.

Resistance activity in al-Fallujah on Sunday.

Six 120mm mortar rounds into the as-Su’dad school in the al-Jurayfi neighborhood of al-Fallujah but the extent of losses was unclear.

An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded near the al-Firdaws Mosque, killing three Iraqi puppet troops, Mafkarat al-Islam reported.

An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded in the al-‘Askari neighborhood of the city by a patrol of the puppet so-called Iraqi national guard. Witnesses told Mafkarat al-Islam that a number of guardsmen were killed or wounded.

Iraqi Resistance forces battled Iraqi puppet “national guard” troops near the as-Siddiqiyah Bridge in the al-Khalidiyah district on Sunday afternoon. The Resistance forces fired BKC rockets killing two puppet guards and wounding three more, Mafkarat al-Islam reported.

If Falluja is the safest city, you might not want to know what's happening elsewhere. But go ahead and have a scroll through the report.

Reports from Falluja

2005-03-18T22:14:00.000-06:00

All is quiet in Falluja, or at least that is how it seems, given that the mainstream media has largely forgotten about the Iraqi city. But independent journalists are risking life and limb to bring out a very different story.

The picture they are painting is of US soldiers killing whole families, including children, attacks on hospitals and doctors, the use of napalm-like weapons and sections of the city destroyed.

One of the few reporters who has reached Falluja is American Dahr Jamail of the Inter Press Service.
[...]
Another report comes from an aid convoy headed up by Dr Salem Ismael. He was in Falluja last month. As well as delivering aid he photographed the dead, including children, and interviewed remaining residents.
[...]
"The accounts I heard ... will live with me forever. You may think you know what happened in Falluja, but the truth is worse than you could possibly have imagined"
[...]
Journalist and writer Naomi Klein has also come under attack for insisting that US forces are eliminating those who dare to count casualties.

No less than the US ambassador to the UK David Johnson wrote a letter to British newspaper The Guardian that published Klein's work, demanding evidence, which she then provided.

The first piece of evidence Klein sent to Johnson was that the hospital in Falluja was raided to stop any reporting of casualties, a tactic that was later repeated in Mosul.
[...]
But as Richard Perle, a senior adviser to US President George Bush said at the start of the Iraq war: "The greatest triumph of the Iraq war is the destruction of the evil of international law."
Common Dreams article

Dahr Jamail's website.

"I am sorry to say that there is no Fallujah to update."

2005-03-15T11:07:00.000-06:00

Do you note how if a party has 51% in this parliamentary system, it automatically gets to form a government?

So why is the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of Shiite parties that can count on about 53% of the members of the Iraqi parliament to vote for it in the wake of the Jan. 30 elections, not able to form a government? If it were the Labor Party in the UK, which is the parliament described above, Ibrahim Jaafari would already be Prime Minister.

The US spiked the Iraqi parliamentary process by putting in a provision that a government has to be formed with a 2/3s majority. This provision is a neo-colonial imposition on Iraq. The Iraqi public was never asked about it. And, it is predictably producing gridlock, as the UIA is forced to try to accommodate a party that should be in the opposition in the British system, the Kurdistan Alliance.

Likewise, in France, a simple majority of the National Assembly can dismiss the cabinet. Likewise in India. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the 2/3s super-majority is characteristic of only one nation on earth, i.e. American Iraq. I fear it is functioning in an anti-democratic manner to thwart the will of the majority of Iraqis, who braved great danger to come out and vote.
[...]
I think there is also a real chance that Iraqis will turn against the idea of democracy if it only produces insecurity, violence, and gridlock.
Juan Cole post

The Association of Muslim Scholars condemned the US for raiding the home of its secretary-general, Hareth Suleiman al-Dhari, for a second time in a week on Sunday.

A reader points out that the interim Constitution requires a warrant for a house search, and wonders if the US military applied to an Iraqi judge for such a warrant in the case of al-Dhari.

A sense of being under siege is palpable in the Iraqi Islamic Party of Muhsin Abdul Hamid.
Juan Cole post

Patrick Quinn of AP tells the truth about Baghdad, perhaps the world's most dangerous city.
' By day or night, Baghdad has become a cacophony of automatic weapons fire, explosions and sudden death, its citizens living in constant fear of being shot by insurgents or the security forces meant to protect them. Streets are crammed with passenger cars fighting for space with armored vehicles and pickups loaded with hooded and heavily armed Iraqi soldiers. Hundreds of bombs in recent months have made mosques, public squares, sidewalks and even some central streets extremely dangerous places in Baghdad. On Haifa Street, rocket-propelled grenades sometimes fly through traffic. Rashid Street is a favorite for roadside bombers near the Tigris River. '
When Farnaz Fassihi of the Wall Street Journal admitted as much in a private email last October, she was forbidden to report from Iraq for two weeks. I guess Paul Gigot can't dictate the news to the Associated Press. I'd wager most Americans have no idea how bad it is in Baghdad.
Juan Cole post

Readers often write in for an update on Fallujah. I am sorry to say that there is no Fallujah to update. The city appears to be in ruins and perhaps uninhabitable in the near future. Of 300,000 residents, only about 9,000 seem to have returned, and apparently some of those are living in tents above the ruins of their homes. The rest of the Fallujans are scattered in refugee camps of hastily erected tents at several sites, including one near Habbaniyyah, or are staying with relatives in other cities, including Baghdad.

The scale of this human tragedy-- the dispossession and displacement of 300,000 persons-- is hard to imagine. Unlike the victims of the tsunami who were left homeless, moreover, the Fallujans have witnessed no outpouring of world sympathy. While there were undeniably bad characters in the city, most residents had done nothing wrong and did not deserve to be made object lessons--which was the point Rumsfeld was making with this assault. He hoped to convince Ramadi and Mosul to fall quiet lest the same thing happen to them. He failed, since the second Fallujah campaign threw the Sunni Arab heartland into much more chaos than ever before. People forget how quiet Mosul had been. And, the campaign was the death knell for proper Sunni participation in the Jan. 30 elections [...]
Juan Cole post

Ramadi - the next Falluja?

2005-02-25T19:30:00.000-06:00

Actually, some people who fled Falluja went to Ramadi - they are in the same Anbar province.

Residents of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province some 100 km east of Baghdad, have started to flee the city following the latest offensive launched by US Marines and the Iraqi army.

The military have carried out raids in the province over the past few days in an attempt to crack down on insurgents, with the main focus of operations eing Ramadi, a rebel stronghold.
[...]
Government offices and shops have closed and people are having difficulties getting food supplies as the offensive came quickly and without warning, giving them no time to prepare.
[...]
Firdous al-Abadi, a spokeswoman for the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS), told IRIN that many people had been trapped in the university and inside mosques for over 48 hours as fighting raged outside.

"The government should take responsibility and provide those people with everything that is required for their survival," al-Abadi added. "People are tired of running from place to place."

Al-Abadi also said that the IRCS had sent a supply convoy last weekend to Fallujah, as nearly 100 families were still homeless inside the city after their homes were destroyed.
Alternet article

And by the way, people are still dying (including soldiers) in action in Falluja.

Falluja massacre update

2005-02-15T19:07:00.000-06:00

Dr Salam Ismael, now 28 years old, was head of junior doctors in Baghdad before the invasion of Iraq. He was in Fallujah in April 2004 where he treated casualties of the assault on the city.
At the end of 2004 he came to Britain to collect funds for an aid convoy to Fallujah. Now the British government does not want Dr Salam Ismael’s testimony to be heard.
He was due to come here last week to speak at trade union and anti-war meetings. But he was refused entry. The reason given was that he received expenses, covering the basic costs of his trip, when he came to Britain last year and this constitutes “illegal working”.
Dr Salam Ismael merely wishes to speak the truth. Yet it seems the freedom that Bush and Blair claim to champion in Iraq does not extend to allowing its citizens to travel freely.
Legal challenges, supported by the Stop the War Coalition, were launched this week in an effort to allow Dr Salam Ismael to come to Britain.
article

Excerpts from Dr. Ismael's account:

Nobody knows how many died. The occupation forces are now bulldozing the neighbourhoods to cover up their crime. What happened in Fallujah was an act of barbarity. The whole world must be told the truth.
[...]
I had come to Fallujah in January as part of a humanitarian aid convoy funded by donations from Britain.
Our small convoy of trucks and vans brought 15 tons of flour, eight tons of rice, medical aid and 900 pieces of clothing for the orphans. We knew that thousands of refugees were camped in terrible conditions in four camps on the outskirts of town.
There we heard the accounts of families killed in their houses, of wounded people dragged into the streets and run over by tanks, of a container with the bodies of 481 civilians inside, of premeditated murder, looting and acts of savagery and cruelty that beggar belief.
Read the full account. (Warning: photos)

THE RESPECTED cameraman and producer Michael Burke co-operated with Dr Salam Ismael to produce powerful material that was due to be shown on Channel 4 News this week. It included film taken of mass burials near Saqlawiya, on the outskirts of Fallujah.
The bodies that were interred there were collected mainly from the Jolan district in the city. Socialist Worker’s Simon Assaf saw the unedited footage and describes its graphic content.
[...]
As the sun begins to set a small cluster of civilians laden with belongings emerge from Fallujah.
They have been told to leave their houses by the US troops and their Iraqi allies.
They claim that the US troops were clearing out the houses so they can demolish their neighbourhood. They join the thousands of others now living in tents around the shattered city.
Read the full account.

Fallujan police purge

2005-02-06T12:08:00.000-06:00

Three-quarters of police officers in the city of Falluja are to lose their jobs in a purge of resistance sympathisers, an Iraqi commander has said.

The commander of Iraqi security forces in the western city, General Madhi Hashim, said not all policemen would be reincorporated

"The force had some 2000 policemen but we will rehire only 500," he said.

"They will be picked for their integrity and on condition they never took part in terrorist operations."
Aljazeera article

That could be hard to prove.

And get this:

Hashim said the city's old police force had been disbanded on 4 November, four days before a devastating US-led offensive on the city was launched.

That was handy either way, eh?

He said the new police chief would be General Shaaban al-Janabi. "The Interior Ministry has appointed General Shaaban, but he will not have full control over decision-making. If he proves able after a month, he will take full and official responsibility," Hashim said.

Al-Janabi, a former officer in Saddam Hussein's army, had been the first choice of Falluja's tribal leaders, Hashim said.

You just know these people are thinking things would have been so much better if Saddam had just been left in power.

Falluja - a city destroyed

2005-01-31T12:05:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago a documentary was made in Falluja for a joint UK Guardian and Channel 4 News report, by an Iraqi doctor, Ali Fadhil, who compiled the first independent reports of Falluja after U.S. operations in November. I posted a link to the transcript at that time. Here's the video of the documentary (courtesy Journeyman TV), which is much more powerful simply by virtue of being visual.

Falluja update

2005-01-24T19:44:00.000-06:00

Although there has been resounding silence about the humanitarian disaster in Falluja, the true cost to the civilian population is emerging. Preliminary estimates are as high as 6,000 Iraqis killed, a third of the city destroyed, and over 200,000 civilians living as refugees. It is estimated that it could be months before people are allowed to return to what is left of their homes. According to a UN emergency working group on this humanitarian crisis, there are shortages of food items and cooking fuel. The temperatures have dropped, underscoring an urgent need for winterization items and appropriate shelter. The International Committee for the Red Cross reported on December 23 that three of the city's water purification plants had been destroyed and the fourth badly damaged.
Aid organizations have repeatedly been denied access to the city, hospitals, and refugee populations in the surrounding areas. Sporadic fighting continues as some insurgent forces return. Iraqi National Security Advisor Qassem Daoud has warned of explosive ordnance still hidden in debris and on the streets. Residents seeking to return are required to go through intense security checks before being allowed to re-enter Falluja.
[...]
As firefights continue in Falluja, Iraq's third-largest city, Mosul, has become a new front line in the ongoing war. Suicide bombs and car bombs, firefights, kidnapping, targeted assassinations, and citywide curfews compound the violence.
[...]
Violence is claiming an increasing number of Iraqi civilians - an estimated 100,000 civilians had been killed before the November Falluja attack. During the months of October and November, 338 Iraqis associated with the "new" government or with Americans were assassinated.
[...]
As the US relies on Shia Muslim combatants to join with US forces on the siege of Sunni-inhabited Falluja, and Kurds to help rein in the violence in Mosul, surely an argument can be made that civil war is being fostered by the occupation.

The "catastrophic success" of Falluja

2005-01-16T18:06:00.000-06:00

Even before the attack, the U.S. promised that a newly liberated Falluja would be spectacularly reconstructed -- "a feat of social and physical engineering… intended to transform a bastion of militant anti-Americanism into a benevolent and functional metropolis."
[...]
Unfortunately, the only success in the Fallujan campaign so far has been in demonstrating "the consequences" that would accrue to cities that harbored guerrillas. Falluja was gutted. Two months after the invasion, Erik Eckholm of the New York Times described the city as "a desolate world of skeletal buildings, tank-blasted homes, weeping power lines and severed palm trees." At least a quarter of its homes were fully destroyed, and virtually all the others were severely damaged. Blown out windows, wrecked furniture, three-foot blast holes in walls, and disintegrated doors demonstrated that American troops had relentlessly applied what they jokingly called the "FISH" strategy (Fighting in Someone's House), which involved "throwing a hand grenade into each room before checking it for unfriendlies." Since (in the words of Lt. Gen. Sattler) "each and every house" was searched, very few remained livable.
[...]
After eight weeks of this, one leader who remained taunted the occupation by conducting a cell-phone interview with Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid from inside the city, claiming the fighting "would continue for months."
[...]
A January UN dispatch reported that only nine of 27 neighborhoods were safe enough for medical teams to enter; and that reporters were not being permitted in the city "for their own safety." A Los Angeles Times report referred just to "occasional firefights" in the city, but then declared that "only certain parts of Fallouja are considered safe enough for residents to return" and that temporary U.S. bases within the city bore signs with the peculiar but unambiguous warning: "STOP Or U.S. Military Will Shoot Fire."
[...]
A sense of the ongoing fighting is reflected in a report from a refugee describing his first and only night back in the city ("Report from Falluja Refugee Camp," Free Speech Radio News, Jan. 6, 2005): "The houses around mine have all been destroyed. Our house was full of smoke. It was a mess. We cleaned up the house and spent the night there. But the bombing started at seven in the evening and lasted until the morning. There were all sorts of bombs. My children could not sleep." Because there was "no real end of the fighting in sight," they chose to leave once again and focus on "day-to-day survival" as refugees.
Since the rubblized terrain that is now Falluja can probably hide guerrillas indefinitely, the fighting might only end with an American withdrawal. In the meantime, with so many front-line troops fighting in, or occupying Falluja, the American military has only been able to mount half-hearted responses to insurgent efforts elsewhere, while remaining vulnerable to IEDs planted along convoy and patrol routes, to the mortaring of bases and of the Green Zone, and to suicide attacks like the one at the army mess hall in Mosul.
Michael Schwartz at Tom Dispatch (links embedded)

Schwartz discusses the likelihood of Falluja being rebuilt as virtually none.

[T]he Bush administration is unlikely ever to allocate the massive resources needed for such an undertaking. The monetary commitment cited by U.S. officials escalated from a pre-attack $50 million to an early January estimate of $230 million. But this figure, which Hess claimed to be adequate for the job, is actually a fraction of what would needed.
[...]
Based on the estimated $400 million cost of repairing the less disastrously damaged Sadr City water systems in Baghdad, the repair of Falluja's sewers and treatment plants would in itself surely exhaust the entire $230 million allocation being discussed. The electrical system, which needed to be "ripped out and rebuilt from scratch," would cost at least as much as the sewers. Rejuvenating the medical system, rebuilding the schools, and clearing and rebuilding the streets, would likely claim another $100 million or more each.
And that's without even considering housing repair. The Iraqi Interim Government promised families from $2000 to $10,000 for each damaged dwelling. With 12,000 to 20,000 of the 50,000 homes in Falluja effectively demolished, this added up to yet another $200 million promise, with another $100 million needed to meet the government's promises to shop owners.
And remember that Falluja, the "city of mosques," now has had an unknown but significant number of its 100 or so mosques more or less annihilated, and well over half damaged. Christian Parenti, a knowledgeable independent reporter, estimated that just two of the mosques would require some $80 million in repairs; the full bill might therefore exceed $1 billion.
[...]
Total this up and you discover that the promised allocation for the reconstruction of Falluja is at least $2 billion less than would reasonably be needed. And, given the record of reconstruction funds released by the Americans over the last year, even the $230 million is certainly in question.

In other words, the promise of a "benevolent and functional metropolis" could be seen, at best, as a cruel hoax, vitiated only slightly by the fact that Fallujans never believed it.

ABC plays military's game

2005-01-12T07:46:00.000-06:00

A US soldier was killed in action in the volatile western province of Al Anbar on Tuesday, the military announced in a statement.

"A soldier assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in action on January 11, while conducting security and stability operations in the Al Anbar province," the military said.

The military gave no further information.

article

Nor does ABC give further information that "security and stability operations in Al Anbar province" is code for "continued fighting in Falluja". Must allow Americans to think that mission has been accomplished.

Reuters follows the same script, releasing the military's official statement, adding this silly, but true, closing line:

U.S. troops often come under attack from insurgents who want them to leave Iraqi soil.

Speaking of the relatively new "hot" spot, The Australian doesn't sugar coat the news that two bombs in the last two days have killed more Iraqi soldiers.

Mosul was plunged into all-out war between US forces and insurgents in early November.

Indeed. And the "operations" in Falluja still constitute war, too. No matter how they avoid saying so.<

Returning to Falluja

2005-01-11T12:40:00.000-06:00

They took prints of all my fingers, two pictures of my face in profile, and then photographed my iris. I was now eligible to go into Falluja, just like any other Fallujan.

But it was late by then, somewhere near 5pm (the curfew is at 6pm). After that anyone who moves inside the city will be shot on sight by the US military.

Guardian article

I guess pushing you into a river isn't so bad, then is it?

The approach to the checkpoint was covered in pebbles so we had to drive very slowly. The soldiers spent 20 minutes searching my car, then they bodysearched Tariq and me. They gave me a yellow tape to put on to the windscreen of the car, showing I had been searched and was a contractor. If I didn't have this stripe of yellow, a US sniper would shoot me as an enemy car.

How easy will it be to counterfeit a yellow tape? Will you want to drive with one, tempting an 'insurgent' to shoot you for your 'legal' car?

Falluja used to be a modern city; now there was nothing. We spent the day going through the rubble that had been the centre of the city; I didn't see a single building that was functioning.

The Americans had put a white tape across the roads to stop people wandering into areas that they still weren't allowed to enter. I remembered the market from before the war, when you couldn't walk through it because of the crowds. Now all the shops were marked with a cross, meaning that they had been searched and secured by the US military. But the bodies, some of them civilians and some of them insurgents, were still rotting inside.

[...]

Fallujans are suspicious of outsiders, so I found it surprising when Nihida Kadhim, a housewife, beckoned me into her home. She had just arrived back in the city to check out her house; the government had told the people three days earlier that they should start going home. She called me into her living room. On her mirror she pointed to a message that had been written in her lipstick. She couldn't read English. It said: "Fuck Iraq and every Iraqi in it!"

"They are insulting me, aren't they?" she asked.

[...]

I tried to figure out who these four men were. It was obvious which houses the fighters were in: they were totally destroyed. But in this house there were no bullets in the walls, just four dead men lying curled up beside each other, with bullet holes in the mosquito nets that covered the windows. It seemed to me as if they had been asleep and were shot through the windows. It is the young men of the family who are usually given the job of staying behind to guard the house.

[...]

The US military destroyed Falluja, but simply spread the fighters out around the country. They also increased the chance of civil war in Iraq by using their new national guard of Shias to suppress Sunnis. Once, when a foreign journalist, an Irish guy, asked me whether I was Shia or Sunni - the way the Irish do because they have that thing about the IRA - I said I was Sushi. My father is Sunni and my mother is Shia. I never cared about these things. Now, after Falluja, it matters.

Falluja today

2005-01-08T19:27:00.000-06:00

Zeynep hits the nail on the head with this post:

Even amidst all the Pentagon propaganda re-released as news, all the false assumptions, distortions and outright lies, it's hard to not understand what's actually going on in Iraq if one is paying a bit of attention.

This one is from the L.A. Times:

At five heavily guarded entry points to the city [Fallujah], military interrogators are selectively asking returning residents whether they have heard of the upcoming election and, if so, which, if any, candidates they support.

First a foreign occupying army levels your city. Then they tell you that you can't be in your own hometown without I.D cards issued by them and that there will be fingerprinting and retina scans. Then they claim it's so that there can be "elections" free of coercion. Then their military interrogators question you on your vote as you try to return to what's left of your house.

How can something like that be reported just like that, in passing, without much comment? Military interrogators questioning refugees about which candidate they plan to support. If it happened anywhere else in the world, everyone would recognize it for what it was.

People do recognize it for what it is. Some Americans don't. And some just refuse to admit what it is.

Support our troops.

God knows they need something. Maybe a little insight into reality.

"It's kind of bad we destroyed everything, but at least we gave them a chance for a new start," said Navy corpsman Derrick Anthony, 21, of Chicago.

LA Times article

Maybe a freaking lick of common sense would be helpful.

As he navigated his Humvee through rubble-strewn streets, Lance Cpl. Sunshine Yubeta articulated a question key to the Marines' mission here.

"I wonder," said the 23-year-old from Madras, Ore., nodding toward several sullen-looking men on a corner, "if they hate us or like us."

I hope that was rhetorical. On the other hand, if it weren't, maybe it's actually a sign of hope that the ignorant grunts are actually starting to wonder about what's obvious to everyone else on the planet (except the wingnuts back home, of course).

This is how the LA Times is reporting on Falluja - headline:

After Leveling City, U.S. Tries to Build Trust: In Fallouja, Marines are on a 'hearts and minds' campaign to woo residents and help keep rebels from returning.

How nuts. Again, as Zeynep asks, how can something like that be reported without any comment? Is anybody using their brain?

Wait, before you answer that...

Outside the Humanitarian Assistance center tents, Iraqis stand for hours to receive water and food packets stamped with a U.S. flag and the words "A Food Gift From the People of the United States of America." Hands are marked to prevent a return for seconds.

And...

Iraqis gather here not only for aid but for a chance to work in the assistance program, a job that pays about $8 a day.

Gee, Lance Cpl Yubeta, I wonder if they like you.

Maybe it just takes a few years of maturing - or maybe it's a Red State / Blue State thing.

In many ways, the "hearts and minds" tactics are straight from the Marine Corps' "Small Wars Manual," written in the late 1930s to preserve information about successful campaigns against insurgents in South America and elsewhere.

In preparation for Iraq, officers were ordered to reread the manual, particularly the section on insurgencies. One rule it discusses is maintaining moral superiority in the minds of the populace by stressing that the fighting was the insurgents' fault. Amid the destruction here, it is not an easy rule to follow.

"It's hard to look these people in the eye after blowing everything up," said Staff Sgt. Travis McKinney, 31, of Vallejo, Calif. "These people were just victims."

Indeed. To maintain moral superiority, you have to have it.

Left I comments on one of the bizarre quotes in the article:

"'Any time we can interact with these people is good,' said Sgt. James Regan, 29, of San Antonio. 'They can see us for what we are. I asked one of them, 'When was the last time the mujahedin gave you water or food?' Never.'"

And when was the last time the mujahedin dropped a 500-pound bomb on your house, or burned it down, or destroyed the water and electricity and sewage systems in your city? Oh yeah, that was "never" also. Jesus. Do these people hear themselves?

No. They're not listening.

Falluja's inflaming incident has precipitated a lawsuit

2005-01-06T05:38:00.000-06:00

Families of four slain security contractors whose bodies were burned and dragged through the streets of Fallujah, Iraq, sued the workers' former company Wednesday.

[...]

The workers were sent into Fallujah without proper equipment and personnel to defend the supply convoy they were guarding, according to the civil lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that one week before the deaths, Blackwater fired a project manager who had insisted that the contractors use armored vehicles.

Kansas City Star article

<

Fallujans demonstrate

2005-01-03T13:43:00.000-06:00

Thousands of Fallujans demonstrated on Saturday in front of the main entrance to the largely abandoned city. They demanded that US military forces leave their city and that basic services be restored so that they could return. One eyewitness reporter called in from the scene an estimate of 30,000 demonstrators. [Cole: I saw footage of the demonstration on Arab satellite television, and agree that it was a big, important demonstration, but I'd say it was only a few thousand strong; I suspect that having 30,000 people out by that gate would be a logistics problem--where did their water come from, e.g.]

Some of the placards announced that Fallujans refused to live under a military occupation. They presented a list of demands, which included the facilitation of their return to the city, speedy return of services, rebuilding of the devastated city, and monetary compensation to its inhabitants. They also protested the US military demand that returnees show identification papers. Many said that such papers got left behind in the city when they fled.

[...]

The Fallujah demonstration was big enough to be news, but I couldn't find out anything about it via Western newspapers and wire services.

Juan Cole post
<

Slight discrepancy

2005-01-03T12:01:00.000-06:00

The head of the Iraqi intelligence service has estimated that there are more than 200,000 active fighters and sympathisers in the war-torn country.

[...]

"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people," he added.

[...]

Past US military assessments on fighter numbers have been increased from 5000 to 20,000 full and part-time members in the past half year, most recently in October.

[...]

And in stark contrast to many US assessments of success in Falluja, the spy chief said the November campaign against the town was far from a military triumph.

"What we have now is an empty city almost destroyed and most of the insurgents are free. They have gone either to Mosul or to Baghdad or other areas."

Shahwani stopped short of saying that anti-US fighters were now taking control of the situation in Iraq, but warned: "I would say they aren't losing."

Defence experts have broadly accepted the new assessment as valid.

Aljazeera article

Alternative methods

2005-01-01T11:18:00.000-06:00

It has recently been discovered that US and Iraqi forces have been using a method of demolishing houses in Felluce (Fallujah) that Israelis have also used on Palestinian homes.

An Iraqi soldier told an Agency France Press (AFP) reporter that they set the houses on fire where they encounter pro-insurgence publications or materials. Ismail Ibrahim Shaalan, a 50 year old resident of Fallujah, explained that he saw some soldiers set houses on fire on December 14th even though there were no clashes. A US soldier also admitted that, in some situations, they use ''alternative precautions'' like ''setting fires and bombing'' for houses that are presumed to shelter insurgents. US Sergeant John Cross also said that if they are unable to enter a place, they apply alternative methods.

[...]

There are big X letters painted in red on the walls of the houses that have been searched by US troops. Others are either partially burned out or completely ruined.

[...]

Many of those who returned to Fallujah are picking up the pieces of what is left of their ruined homes and the corpses of their relatives.

[...]

The Halil family is one family that was forced to move out of their home by US soldiers and then found it in ruins when they returned to their home ten days later. US Major Naomi Hawkins says the Halil family can apply to the governor's office or Bagdat (Baghdad) and receive $100 to repair their home.

Zaman International article

Good old American justice for foreigners.

A reporter in Falluja

2005-01-01T06:45:00.000-06:00

The date is not current, but the news is still being suppressed. Via POAC, this link provides a reporter's account of the Fallujan seige, with photos.

Falluja - where are the reports?

2004-12-28T12:17:00.000-06:00

The role of the media in the siege of Falluja has been nearly as extraordinary as the battle itself. The siege began on November 8, but by Nov. 15 the military had declared "victory" and the story disappeared from all the major media.

[...]

The fact is, the siege is ongoing and the final results are far from certain.

[...]

The curtain has been drawn on Falluja; allowing the military to pulverize the city beyond the scrutiny of the world community. The only news to emerge is from the eyewitness accounts of independent journalists. Everyone else has complied with the "total news blackout".

[...]

The siege of Falluja continues to be a huge story, despite the fact that the establishment media is nowhere to be found.

[...]

The extent of America's war crimes in Falluja is gradually becoming apparent. On December 24, approximately 900 former residents of the battered city were allowed to return to their homes only to find that (according to BBC) "about 60% to 70% of the homes and buildings are completely crushed and damaged, and not ready to inhabit. Of the 30% still left standing, there's not single one that has not been exposed to some damage."

[...]

Over 250,000 people have been expelled from their homes and the city has been laid to waste. The US military targeted the three main water treatment plants, the electrical grid and the sewage treatment plant; leaving Fallujans without any of the basic services they'll need to return to a normal life.

[...]

Most of the city's mosques have been either destroyed or seriously damaged and entire areas of the city where the fighting was most fierce have been effectively razed to the ground.

So far, the army has only removed the dead bodies from the streets; leaving countless decomposed corpses inside the ruined buildings. A large percentage of these have been devoured by packs ofscavenging dogs. The stench of death is reported to be overpowering.

[...]

Two weeks into the campaign, the military claimed victory saying they had "broken the back of the insurgency", but the truth has proved to be far different. In reality, the assault has only dispelled the illusion of US invincibility. Pockets of resistance still maintain a tenacious grip on parts of the city and the guerilla-style tactics have negated the overwhelming force of their adversary. If anything, the siege has only emboldened the resistance and broadened its sphere of influence.

[...]

The obliteration of Falluja makes the prospects of "losing the war" all the more likely. The pointless murder of 6000 civilians (Red Cross estimate) will only galvanize the resistance and hasten the inevitable defeat of America's misguided crusade.

[...]

If the military succeeds, life in Falluja will become very similar to life in the West Bank; a demeaning daily struggle with the brutish enforcers of occupation.

Counter Punch article<

Returning to Falluja - further report

2004-12-24T16:48:00.000-06:00

According to another Falluja resident who returned to the town for the first time since 8 November, charred and half-eaten corpses littered the streets.

[...]

"I entered my neigbour's house and found him, after identifying him from an identity card. His body was lying on the ground, nothing left of him but some bones.

"The scene was very shocking and I could not stay as the smell in the houses and the street was intolerable," he said explaining why he left Falluja.

"Before entering the city, they [US forces] told us that the town is suitable for living but we were shocked when we found no water, no electricity and no simple services."

Aljazeera article

You just have to return to the city that you have, and not the one that you might wish to have in the future.

And three more marines were reported killed in Falluja today. Sorry -- U.S. reports read "in al-Anbar province." Because, Falluja is officially all hunky dory now.<

Fallujans return - sort of

2004-12-24T10:53:00.000-06:00

Regardless of the reality, BushCo will not negotiate with itself - Fallujans are being returned.

There was anger, frustration and resentment among Iraqis who returned to Falluja on Friday as many discovered their homes in rubble and their livelihoods ruined following a U.S. offensive.

"I saw the city and al-Andalus destroyed," said Ali Mahmood, 35, referring to the district of the city he returned to briefly on Thursday but now plans to leave after seeing the destruction.

[...]

While those who fled were at pains to say they had nothing to do with the rebels who made Falluja their stronghold, many of them have since become angry and militant as a result of the offensive.

"Would Allah want us to return to a city that animals can't live in?" said Yasser Satar as he saw his destroyed home.

"Even animals who have no human sense and feelings can not live here," he said, crying.

"What do they want from Falluja? This is the crime of the century. They want to destroy Islam and Muslims. But our anger and resistance will increase."

[...]

Aid workers said 200,000 people fled Falluja before the assault and have spent the past seven weeks living in nearby towns and villages or in tented refugee camps nearby.

[...]

The Iraqi interim government and the U.S. military this week announced that around 2,000 heads of household would be allowed to return to the Andalus district of Falluja, considered one of the more secure, from Thursday.

Some 900 people, mostly men, made the journey, going through intense security checks before being allowed to enter, including the fingerprinting and iris scanning of "suspicious military-age men" by the U.S. military to ensure insurgents do not filter back in.

[...]

But they will be without water and electricity as basic services and communications were knocked out in the assault.

Iraq Net article

Actually, the conditions being imposed upon those who return may be worse than the conditions of their homes.

But, for a spot of light in this darkness:

Families of US troops killed in the offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah are to travel to Jordan [December 26] with 600,000 dollars worth of humanitarian aid for refugees of the attack.

The November assault on Fallujah left 71 US military dead, according to the families, and the Iraqi government said more than 2,000 Iraqis were killed.

"This delegation is a way for me to express my sympathy and support for the Iraqi people," said Rosa Suarez of Escondido in California.

"The Iraq war took away my son's life, and it has taken away the lives of so many innocent Iraqis. It is time to stop the killing and to help the children of Iraq," she added in a statement released by the families.

Iraq Net article

I'm impressed.<

Falluja airstrike update

2004-12-23T13:14:00.000-06:00

Three US marines were today killed in action in Iraq's volatile western Anbar province, a military spokesperson said.

The spokesperson would not say where the three had been killed, but their deaths were reported as US forces fought insurgents in Falluja, in the Anbar province. F-18 fighter jets dropped several bombs in the city, sending up plumes of smoke, while tank and machine gun fire could be heard to the south.

Guardian article

This is what allows General Myers to say the answer is simple - we just win. And what allows Derr Rumsfiend to say it's "crystal clear" and "unambiguous" that "Fallujah was a successful effort". (Source) We just quit saying where the soldiers were killed and refer to any deaths in Falluja as deaths in the Anbar province. See how easy that is? Simple.

I had been working on a post commenting on the DOD briefing I'm quoting there, but decided to forego posting it, as I'd posted a couple of things yesterday regarding other people quoting some of the assinine things Rumsfiend and Myers said. I'll change my mind again and put it here:

A few more choice quotes from yesterday's DOD briefing

December 22

SEC. RUMSFELD: Good afternoon, folks. (Coughs.) I've got a catch in my throat, so I apologize, but I swallowed something wrong.

As an old ex-con friend of mine always said, paybacks are a motherfucker. For all the stuff he's asking other people to swallow, it's only right. It's what he's spitting out that's the real problem.

The tragic attack in Mosul, Iraq demonstrates again that the coalition and the Iraqi people face a vicious and a determined enemy. Freedom is at stake in Iraq and it's achievable. The only alternative to success would be to turn back to darkness -- to those who kill and terrorize innocent men, women and children -- and that must not happen.

Now you know he doesn't believe that drivel. A catch in his throat isn't enough of a signal to him to stop puking up bullshit. Let's have another look at the directives and the methods for the capture of Iraq before we discuss killing and terrorizing innocents.

My thoughts and prayers are with those who have been killed and with the wounded and with their families and with all those military and civilian personnel who have volunteered to place themselves at risk in our country's behalf.

And the families of these dead soldiers are going to get my personally signed letter of condolence, unlike the dead before them whose families got letters forged by my signing machine.

Okay, I know. Usually I don't bother to post this crap, because I assume you've heard enough of it that you could write these little briefings yourself. Be sure to add that Afghanistan has been liberated and elected a ~~mayor of Kabuhl~~ president, and that the enemy has ~~escaped Falluja and set up camp in Mosul~~ been routed from Falluja. And keep repeating that Iraqis are being trained to keep Iraq secure. Don't leave out that we are fighting the enemy there so we don't have to fight him here. (And be sure to mention that the enemy chops off people's heads.) (Go check it out if you don't believe he's still saying all these things.)

And especially remember this quote when they hold elections at the end of January without Falluja, without Mosul, and without numerous other cities being able to vote:

As long as an important region of the world is condemned to tyranny and violence, with one-half of their population barred from full participation, with little hope for a better future, terrorists will have a deep pool from which to draw recruits and to attack free people across the globe.

Then we get General The-solution-is-simple-al l-we-have-to-do-is-win Myers

Efforts to defeat the insurgents in the anti-Iraqi, anti- coalition forces who are targeting innocent citizens and coalition forces remain a top priority. Intimidation, kidnappings and executions, especially those focused in Mosul, north Babil, Ramadi and al Qaim are particularly troubling, and these areas will be a focus of particularly increased security emphasis.

Directly contradicting Mr. Abdel-Mahdi at the National Press Club.

This attack, of course, is the responsibility of insurgents, the same insurgents who attacked on 9/11, the same type of insurgents who attacked in Beirut, the same insurgents who -- type of insurgents who attacked the Cole, Khobar Towers, and the list goes on.

Maybe General Myers actually said these were the same insurgents who attacked on 9/11. Maybe the transcriber left out "type of". Whichever way it went down, it was a flagrant deceptive statement continuing the administration's efforts to make the people we are killing, in your mind, responsible for the WTC attacks.

SEC. RUMSFELD: We have said all along that we expected the level of violence to increase as you got towards the election. That is not new. We have also said that Fallujah was a successful effort. It was. It seems to me that's crystal-clear, that it's unambiguous, and it was an important effort.

Cyrstal clear and unambiguous.

Q: Can I do a follow-up, Mr. Secretary, on that same issue? Do you and General Myers think it's unwise or was unwise to put 400- plus servicemen and civilians and others in a huge tent the size of a football field on a base in a combat zone, a base that had been hit by mortars and RPGs? And if you do think it's unwise, are either one of you or both going to sound off to Generals Casey and Ham, or take them to the woodshed?

[...]

[MYERS:]We have had a suicide bomber, apparently, strap something to his body -- apparently a him -- and go into a dining hall. We know how difficult this is, to prevent suicide -- people bent on suicide and stopping them. We understand how difficult that is. But I think -- this was the insurgents that did this. It's not General Ham that attacked his dining hall.

Oh, good lord. Thank God it wasn't General Ham who attacked his own men. Who lets this man speak? "Losses are not our fault, you dummies. Our enemies are trying to kill us."<

Falluja update

2004-12-23T05:54:00.000-06:00

U.S. Marines clashed with insurgents in the battered city of Fallujah on Thursday [December 23] with warplanes dropping bombs and tanks shelling suspected guerrilla positions on a day when a first group of residents displaced by fighting were scheduled to return.

Iraq Net article

Falluja ironically at Christmastime

2004-12-21T17:39:00.000-06:00

Remember this Ben Hur re-enactment the troops entertained themselves with just before they launched into Falluja (Operation Phantom Fury) after the election?

It would appear they aren't having so much fun now.

Nearly six weeks after US marines stormed the rebel enclave of Fallujah, military psychologists are still seeing a steady stream of service personnel traumatised by the long days and nights of ferocious street fighting.

[...]

"After the offensive began, we had a lot of patients, then there was this lull, and it has picked up again recently with people trying to sit on their symptoms."

[...]

The US-backed government put rebel losses at more than 2,000, although unit commanders later revealed their troops had orders to shoot all males of fighting age seen on the streets, armed or unarmed.

Sierra Times article

Remember when Rome was the occupying force in a Middle Eastern country and had all the males of a certain age killed? Does the name Herod ring a bell?

What the images of Phantom Fury did not convey is that this assault is the largest concentration of heavy armor in one place, since the fall of Berlin. This was the first time since World War II that "an American armored task force" has been turned "loose in a city with no restrictions".

More to the point, the force of as much as 20,000 soldiers (12,000 to 17,000 American/coalition soldiers, about 2000 odd Iraqi "National guards" and perhaps 1000 odd peshmergas) were supported by an estimated 1100 to as much as 2000 armored vehicles and tanks. Air support was largely carrier based out of the gulf and B-52's from bases outside of Iraq.

The armor alone represents the heaviest ever concentration of armor since the fall of Berlin (1945) in one place against a single military objective.

Phantom Fury was officially underway on the 8th of November and declared to be a sweeping victory on or about the 15th of November.

[...]

There is no evidence of what has transpired save intermittent but very very regular losses attributed to "pockets of resistance" in the "Anbar Province". And, yes, reportage on the brand new movie on Fallujah starring Harrison Ford.

[...]

There are no satellite pictures of Fallujah available in the public domain after November 15th.

Or consider that the Red Cross/Red crescent has not been allowed to enter the city in any substantive manner. Today is the 20th of Dec and it has still not been allowed.

Or consider another break in the regular stream of consciousness. No reporter has set foot in the city or after the 22nd of November.

A "Great Victory" like this and no footage?

[...]

Fallujah has not been taken. Not only has Fallujah not been taken, but the coalition forces have staged several retreats and are now confined largely to the outside of the city.

The Iraqi resistance is currently in control of most of the city and have forced back at least three of the largest armored assaults in recent history.

Held off by a bunch of guys in tennis shoes and sandals with low-tech weaponry and remote controls taken from toys. Maybe this isn't true. But if not, then why don't we have embedded reporters cranking out hero stories and great photos like we got at the initial invasion of Iraq? Read more of this article: The End of Warfare

Falluja

2004-12-20T11:47:00.001-06:00

Al-Zaman reports that on Saturday night into Sunday morning, clashes broke out again in the eastern Askari, Sina'i and Shuhada' districts of Fallujah between US troops and guerrillas, and that the US forces called in air strikes on those quarters; I couldn't find any mention of this report, coming from Iraqi eyewitnesses, in the US press.

Juan Cole post<

Falluja

2004-12-20T11:47:00.000-06:00

Juan Cole post<

Regarding Harrison Ford's willingness to be Hollywood's propaganda for Falluja

2004-12-19T06:51:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I actually watched some TV. I skipped around from show to show as they got boring and as advertisements broke in. One show that I came back to from time to time was a focus on Hollywood director Phillip Noyce (an Australian), who directed a couple of movies with Harrison Ford portraying Jack Ryan, the CIA operative in Tom Clancy's novels.

I haven't liked Harrison Ford since the Star Wars movies back when. He is one of the most overrated, in my opinion, of Hollywood's stars - a one-dimensional character whom they say is just like the guy you see on the screen. Today's John Wayne (another terrible actor). Director Noyce was talking about how they decided to make Jack Ryan react differently to a viewing of murders than author Clancy had the character react in the book Patriot Games, which movie Noyce was directing. He said Clancy was very unhappy about the way they changed the character from someone who stonily appreciated the killing aspects that were a large part of his career. Noyce and Ford decided Ryan should be a sympathetic character for the audience. They looked on him as a hero, and they didn't believe a hero would be so cold-hearted. Obviously they understand very little about the CIA.

But, see how that works? It's the same mentality Americans have about all their war "heroes". Our guys have good hearts. Their killing is of a heroic, selfless nature. Harrison Ford is just portraying on screen the delusion that we wish to maintain about ourselves. Bringing you entertainment, not a portrayal of life. (There should be a different category for people who perform those roles - just call them entertainers, not actors - that insults the really fine actors out there.)

So anyway, it comes as no surprise to me this morning to see that Mr. Ford is considering another role guaranteed to entertain you and keep you divorced from reality.

Producers at Universal Pictures are developing what would be Hollywood's first feature film about the war in Iraq, with actor Harrison Ford ready to portray a U.S. general in the movie, the studio said on Friday.

The combat drama would be based on the upcoming book "No True Glory," an account of the battle for Falluja by Bing West, a Marine veteran and former U.S. assistant defense secretary now covering the war as a foreign correspondent, a studio spokesman said.

[...]

In "No True Glory" he would play Maj. Gen. James Mattis, the U.S. Marine commander ordered to lead an assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, an insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, after four Americans contractors were killed and mutilated there by a mob in March 2004.

The offensive was halted the following month, and the Marines were withdrawn until U.S. forces renewed their assault on the Sunni Muslim city following the American presidential election in November.

Reuters article

Here's the author Bing West (covering the war as a "foreign" correspondent??) on December 8 at MSNBC online:

The city's warlords, Janabi and Hadid, paid obeisance to the arch terrorist Zarqawi and competed for his favor by assassinations and bombings. They bragged their "martyr battalions" would cut to pieces any American force entering the city.

Deciding otherwise, the residents fled the city, leaving a few thousand jihadists to their fate. In a swift offensive, American soldiers and Marines swept in and hunted them down, destroying every house and mosque where Zarqawi's soldiers stood and fought. Seventeen-thousand buildings were searched, uncovering cache after cache of weapons. The numbers were staggering: Over 100,000 explosives found in just one section of the city.

Bulldozers and backhoes are now shoveling the debris from the streets. The few remaining insurgents emerging from the ruins have been quickly cut down. The other day, four of them fired from a cluttered alley at two passing Humvees. Half a minute later, they were dead. A Marine battalion commander, Lt. Col. Pat Malay, shot the last of the four.

"It's a good day when you get into it," Cpl. Michael Yerena, the vehicle commander in the second Humvee, said to me. "You feel you've earned your pay."

[...]

Politically, Fallujah was as infected as the air at the torture house at the corner of the park. Many of the residents were complicit in the reign of terror. Whether the city returns to its murderous ways depends on the resolve of the Iraqi security forces now moving into the city. Voter turnout in January will be an indictor of how the political winds are blowing.

Militarily, the battle of Fallujah was an unqualified success. Zarqawi has been deprived of his sanctuary. He will spend more time on the run and have less time to blow up and decapitate people.

And here's the reality of Falluja in today's news (which is very scantly reported; try changing your search to "al-Anbar", the province in which Falluja is located):

The US military has renewed its aerial assault of Falluja amid reports of fierce clashes with the city's resistance, an Iraqi journalist said.

According to independent Iraqi journalist Fadhil al-Badrani, US warplanes targeted Falluja's eastern and southern districts.

He said fierce clashes had broken out in the city centre between US forces who have been in the city since 8 November and Iraqi fighters who had infiltrated back in across the Euphrates river.

"There is no way to determine the number of casualties as US authorities have barred journalists and aid workers from entering Falluja," al-Badrani told Aljazeera.

Aljazeera article

U.S. forces, fighting what they now acknowledge as formidable foes in Iraq, are improvising along the road to an exit that Washington can call a success.

American-led forces face "a very, very sophisticated enemy," Major General Stephen Speakes said this week -- a change in tone from early postwar talk of a "dead-end" rabble of Saddam-era "thugs" which U.S. commanders said they were mopping up.

With troops taking hundreds of casualties a month, American commanders on Thursday tripled the bonus paid to reservists who re-enlist and almost doubled the initial recruitment bonus.

[...]

Falluja is a virtual ghost town, but Marines were still shelling guerrilla strongpoints on Friday, clouding hopes that most of the city's 300,000 residents can return home soon.

U.S. generals concede the Falluja attack did not quell the insurgency, but say it unsettled its Iraqi and foreign leaders.

Yet the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, Lieutenant General Lance Smith, also said this week the guerrillas were "becoming more effective", particularly at disrupting convoys.

Arab Times Online article

"U.S. forces will allow families to return to the Andalous area starting Friday under a 10-day timetable," Mahmoud Ibrahim said, referring to a neighbourhood in the southwest of Falluja.

But there was no immediate evidence of anyone returning and witnesses said U.S. forces still battling pockets of die-hard insurgents shelled Falluja on Friday.

Sign On San Diego article

Reuters has the headline for this report as: "Falluja refugees to start returning". Always misleading.

There was no immediate evidence of anyone returning.

More than 200,000 people have yet to go home and many are in need of aid as night temperatures in Iraq sink toward freezing. U.S. forces have so far prevented refugees from returning, saying basic facilities must be restored first.

The city has been without power or water since the attack, which also destroyed hundreds of buildings and left power and communication lines severed and lying in the streets.

Iraq's interim government said on Thursday civilians would be allowed to start returning home next week.

Reuters article

Because they are going to have power and water by next week? Sure. Those "renewed" airstrikes should be a nice invitation to return, as well.

Aljazeera is reporting a little differently than Reuters (surprise!).

The US military had earlier said it could not recommend to the Iraqi interim government the return of residents to Falluja.

"At some point we will make a recommendation; we have not reached that point," Lieutenant Colonel Dan Wilson, a deputy commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, told reporters in a military base near Falluja late on Friday. Aljazeera article

And let's review the plan for when they do return, anyway.

Residents will now officially be denied entry until at least Dec. 24; and even then, only the heads of households will be allowed in, a few at a time, to assess damage to their residences in the largely destroyed city.

With a few notable exceptions the media has accepted the recent virtual news blackout in Falluja.

[...]

Entry and exit from the city will be restricted.

[...]

Fallujans are to wear their universal identity cards in plain sight at all times.

[...]

No private automobiles will be allowed inside the city.

[...]

Only those Fallujans cleared through American intelligence vettings will be allowed to work on the reconstruction of the city.

[...]

Those engaged in reconstruction work - that is, work - in the city may be organized into "work brigades."

Alternet article

Zieg heil. Bet they can't wait to get home and get cracking.

The Promise of Falluja

2004-12-17T10:27:00.000-06:00

The chilling reality of what Fallujah has become is only now seeping out, as the US military continues to block almost all access to the city, whether to reporters, its former residents, or aid groups such as the Red Crescent Society. The date of access keeps being postponed, partly because of ongoing fighting - only this week more air strikes were called in and fighting "in pockets" remains fierce (despite US pronouncements of success weeks ago) - and partly because of the difficulties military commanders have faced in attempting to prettify their ugly handiwork. Residents will now officially be denied entry until at least December 24; and even then, only the heads of households will be allowed in, a few at a time, to assess damage to their residences in the largely destroyed city.

With a few notable exceptions, the media have accepted the recent virtual news blackout in Fallujah. The ongoing fighting in the city, especially in "cleared" neighborhoods, is proving an embarrassment and so, while military spokesmen continue to announce American casualties, they now come not from the city itself but, far more vaguely, from "al-Anbar province", of which the city is a part.

[...]

A report by Katarina Kratovac of the Associated Press (picked up by the Washington Post) about military plans for managing Fallujah once it is pacified (if it ever is) proved a notable exception to the arid coverage in the major media. Kratovac based her piece on briefings by the military leadership, notably Lieutenant-General John F Sattler, commander of the Marines in Iraq. By combining her evidence with some resourceful reporting by Dahr Jamail (and bits and pieces of information from reports printed up elsewhere), a reasonably sharp vision of the conditions the US is planning for Fallujah's "liberated" residents comes into focus. When they are finally allowed to return, if all goes as the Americans imagine, here's what the city's residents may face:

[...]

The name tags and the high-tech identity cards are meant to guard against both forgeries and unlawful movement within the city. The military-style work gangs are to ensure that everyone is under close supervision at all times. The restricted entry points are clearly meant to keep all weapons out. Assumedly kept out as well will be most or all reporters (they tend to inflame public opinion), most medical personnel (they tend to "exaggerate" civilian casualties), and most Sunni clerics (they oppose the occupation and support the insurgency). We can also expect close scrutiny of computers (which can be used for nefarious communications), ambulances (which have been used to smuggle weapons and guerrillas), medicines (which can be used to patch up wounded fighters who might still be hiding somewhere), and so on.

[...]

[T]he most revealing element of the plan may be the banning of all cars, the enforcement of which, all by itself, would make the city unlivable; and which therefore demonstrates both the impracticality of the US vision and a callous disregard for the needs and rights of the Fallujans.

[...]

It is not much of a reach to see that, at least in their fantasies, US planners would like to set up what sociologists call a "total institution". Like a mental hospital or a prison, Fallujah, at least as reimagined by the Americans, will be a place where constant surveillance equals daily life and the capacity to interdict "suspicious" behavior (however defined) is the norm. But "total institution" might be too sanitized a term to describe activities that so clearly violate international law as well as fundamental morality. Those looking for a descriptor with more emotional bite might consider one of those used by correspondent Pepe Escobar of Asia Times Online: either "American gulag" for those who enjoy Stalinist imagery or "concentration camp" for those who prefer the Nazi version of the same.

[...]

These dystopian plans are a direct consequence of the fact that the conquest of Fallujah, despite the destruction of the city, visibly did not accomplish its primary goal - "to wipe out militants and insurgents and break the back of guerrillas in Fallujah".

[...]

[T]he history of the Iraq war thus far, and the history of guerrilla wars in general, suggest that there will simply be a new round of struggle, and that carefully laid military plans will begin to disintegrate with the very first arrivals. There is no predicting what form the new struggle will take, but the US military is going to have a great deal of difficulty controlling a large number of rebellious, angry people inside the gates of America's new mini-police state.

Asia Times article

Falluja

2004-12-16T13:01:00.000-06:00

From Dahr Jamail...

“My list is now 32,”says Salam as he arrives at the hotel, “Now 32 of my friends have been killed.”

He still has tears in his eyes, even though he’s being stoic. Another of his friends has been shot and killed.

“You know I feel like shit every time I add someone to my list. Sometimes it feels like it is every day,”he says.

Welcome to Iraq. Where the news gets better with each passing day.

Heavy fighting is continuing in Fallujah. While the military claims to be in control of the situation, they are bombing areas of the city again with warplanes.

Sources in and around the city continue to state that the mujahideen are in control of large sections of the city as they’ve somehow managed to get more weapons in the city.

[...]

7 Marines have been killed in Al-Anbar province-read Fallujah. Does the military think it helps them to not announce that there has been ongoing heavy fighting in Fallujah for the last few days? How does this help the families of the soldiers there? What is this like for the loved ones back home who are living in an information blackout? When they know that the only hard news they will truly get from the military is when they are informed that their loved one is dead?

Letter from a soldier in Iraq

2004-12-13T13:52:00.000-06:00

[...]

We all saw the video on NBC of the mosque shootings of wounded and I can tell you it is a lot worse than that. We often killed the helpless, the wounded and many civilians. My own squad did. I did. And I will do whatever I am ordered to do, but it doesn’t stop me from not liking it. I didn’t join the service to kill women and children!

We do a lot worse than what you saw on the video. In Fallujah when we come to a apartment building, we shout for the people to come out. Most times because a lack of translators we couldn’t even say to come out in Arabic, and these people don’t know what an English “come out” sounds like anymore than you reading this would know it if I said it in Arabic.

A lot of people are too afraid to come out. But after we would warn them, we would go in. You know how? We would riddle the building and every window with high-caliber, armor piercing machine gun fire, then often we would throw in a grenade for good measure. If any civilians were in there they ended up either dead or wounded. (And I can tell you that over the duration of a week I myself saw at least a hundred bodies in the burned out and attacked apartments, and I only saw a little sliver of Fallujah) And what did we do with the wounded? I’ll tell you. We did nothing. We just moved on to the next building. We were fighters not medics, but there were no medics behind us. I believe the thinking is that it is better for the wounded enemy to die so they can’t fight us anymore.

I did what everyone else did, but it doesn’t mean I liked it. I am a fighting man in the tradition of my Dad and Grandfather and on back. I had a great, great, great grandfather who fought with Lee in Virginia. I am an American fighting man, not the murderer of civilians. It is true that we have to kill civilians if we are to survive because we can’t know who the enemy is, but how in the world can our leaders put us in this situation?

[...]

The people here on the streets have a name for us, they call us the Jews! At first I never understood this, but when I found out how Israeli agents in the American government like Perle and Wolfowitz were behind the war, all of it began to fall into place. You are right, it was never a war for America, it is one where thousands of Americans are being killed or maimed for life for Israel, not America.

Liberty Forum article

Number one, good on you, soldier, for telling the truth. Number two, stop doing what you know is wrong. Unlike the people you are shooting, it won't kill you. And, son, you are personally responsible, whether you are following orders or not.

Just say "we won"

2004-12-13T08:30:00.000-06:00

That's apparently all there is to winning in Iraq.

More air strikes on Falluja, notwithstanding the U.S. claim that the mission there was accomplished already.

Violent confrontations erupted in Falluja city on Sunday between the American forces and the gunmen in the city amid an intensive American air bombardment.

News reports said that confrontations which are the most violent since two weeks started yesterday morning in the eastern part of the city and covered the quarters of al-Askari, al-Senai, al-Shuhadaa and al-Jbeil.

The city was also exposed to intensive bombardment by tanks artillery from outside the city and clashes are still continuous in the southern and eastern parts of Falluja.

Witnesses said that humanitarian conditions are greatly deteriorated and that bodies of the dead are still scattered in the streets and parts of the city are covered with water after the destruction of its water station.

Arabic News article

Fallujah, the scene of a weeklong U.S.-led offensive last month to uproot insurgents based in the city, erupted in more violence Sunday that began with U.S. and Iraqi forces clashing with guerrillas in several suburbs and ending with a series of U.S. air strikes.

â€œThird Marine Aircraft Wing aircraft dropped 10 precision-guided bombs on structures in Fallujah where insurgents were hiding and attacking Iraqi and marine forces,â€ spokesman Lieut. Lyle Gilbert said.

â€œThe strikes were conducted throughout the day and were called in by troops in (armed) contact with and observing the enemy moving from house to house.â€

Fallujah resident Abdullah Ahmed said the fighting started after U.S. soldiers brought 700 to 800 men into the city to clear rubble from damage caused by the November offensive.

â€œThe clashes started as soon as the young men entered the city,â€ Ahmed said.

â€œThe American troops were surprised and decided to launch military operations.â€

Globe and Mail article

For three weeks beginning October 14, say sources at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the assault on Falluja was pure PSYOPS, a mere announcement of assault, designed to provoke "the opposition" into premature response. The lie worked pretty well. "The opposition" abandoned their so-called safe havens and "melted into the night." For this reason, many residents of the city expected the PSYOPS theater to let out early, too.

One hapless doctor, Hakim Mirzoev, says he expected the Americans to surround the city, fire a few shots, and declare victory. He didn't realize that a greater PSYOPS scheme was in the making, a plan to flatten Falluja under boot and mortar so that the City of Mosques could be rebuilt by Christian Soldiers into a Model City-a Pasadena by the Euphrates. With this world-historical Crusade in mind, Falluja was crushed, thousands were killed and wounded, hundreds of thousands displaced, so that America could perceive itself great in the gaze of the world.

So who made Falluja possible? Who enabled budgets to be filled with imperial plans? American taxpayers did. The moral tracer on this funding leads to me and you, the co-investors who backed this pre-holiday discount on the lives of Fallujans, thousands of lives, forever lost and unlived. To pay for this moral bankruptcy, we got up in the morning, worked all day, and sent money to the war machine. Ask not who bankrolled Falluja.

article

Falluja

2004-12-09T17:39:00.001-06:00

Dahr Jamail posts some pictures at Iraq Dispatches:

Two weeks ago someone was allowed into Fallujah by the military to help bury bodies. They were allowed to take photographs of 75 bodies, in order to show pictures to relatives so that they might be identified before they were buried.

[...]

Information with some of the photos is from those identified by family members already.

One of the family members who was looking for dead relatives, shared these photos which were taken from that book.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he told of what he saw in his village during the last few weeks.

"The Americans shot every boat on the river because people were trying to escape Fallujah by the river. They shot all the sheep, any animal people owned was shot. Helicopters shot all the animals and anything that moved in all the villages surrounding Fallujah during the fighting."

He said that none of the roads into Fallujah, or around Fallujah were passable because anyone on them was shot. "I know one family that were all killed. There are no signs on these roads that tell people not to use them-so people don't know they aren't supposed to use them. No signs in English or Arabic!"

There are several pages of gruesome photographs, a mere fraction of the number of bodies left lying in the streets and in homes in the city. Many are partially eaten by dogs.

To Iraqis, this is the handiwork of The Great Satan.

It's not your freedom they hate.

Previous Falluja posts
A Chronicle of Genocide

Update 9:40pm : Shortly after reading a skeptical commenter's claims, avowing that the military's rules of engagement would not permit these kinds of things - therefore, they don't happen - this article on Jimmy Massey, U.S. Marine with a conscience, came across my e-desk. Excerpt:

Jimmy Massey, a former marine staff sergeant, told an immigration and refugee board hearing in Toronto that he and his fellow marines shot and killed more than 30 unarmed men, women and children and even shot a young Iraqi who got out of his car with his arms in the air.

"We killed the man. We fired at a cyclic rate of 500 bullets per vehicle," testified Mr. Massey, a marine for 12 years who was honourably discharged last year. "The company gunnery sergeant came running over and began yelling, 'You just shot a guy with his hands up.' "

[...]

The former marine said none of the Iraqis they shot had suicide bombing materials in their vehicles. He speculated that they didn't understand the hand signals and signage indicating they should stop.

Globe & Mail article

Yes, I understand that the military's idea of a hand signal that means stop is a raised fist. They expect people outside their own organization to recognize that?

His testimony bolstered that of Mr. Hinzman, who said earlier the Iraqi conflict was considered "a new kind of war" and soldiers believed they were "going to Iraq to jack up [kill] some terrorists."

"We were told to consider all Arabs as potential terrorists . . . to foster an attitude of hatred that gets your blood boiling," said the former paratrooper, adding he did not want to be involved in capturing Iraqis who would not be afforded the rights of due process or of the Geneva Conventions.

As I posted in the comments section, there are plenty of articles exposing the criminal, inhumane behavior of the U.S. military over the course of many wars and other military actions. I have even heard from friends and read accounts of other soldiers who were special forces in Viet Nam stories that would give you nightmares. And these guys are trying to live with the memories of what they did in "service to their country" those many years ago.

But hey, believe what you want...you will anyway.

Update 10:00pm: And another one shows up...

Americans steadfastly refuse to notice the massacres ordered by a mad commander-in-chief and carried out by a berserk defense secretary, even as their fellow citizens are blown to bits in the process, and innocent men, women and children are gunned down in cold blood as they try to flee the carnage.

No one even blinked when Fox News military "analyst," retired Lieutenant General Tom Mc Inerney recently diagnosed what our mission in Fallajua should be -- "We must be ruthless, especially in the area of collateral damage," he said self-righteously. "We shouldn't be concerned about collateral damage. All the good civilians are gone. If we must make Falluja Carthage, then let's make Falluja Carthage..."

Information Clearinghouse article

Falluja's new freedom awaits

2004-12-06T10:17:00.000-06:00

Marine commanders working in unheated, war-damaged downtown buildings are hammering out the details of their paradoxical task: Bring back the 300,000 residents in time for January elections without letting in insurgents, even though many Fallujans were among the fighters who ruled the city until the US assault drove them out in November, and many others cooperated with fighters out of conviction or fear.

[...]

Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned.

[...]

One idea that has stirred debate among Marine officers would require all men to work, for pay, in military-style battalions. Depending on their skills, they would be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing platoons.

[...]

Most Fallujans have not heard about the US plans.

Boston.com article

They'll be thrilled when they find out. Bet.

"It's the Iraqi interim government that's coming up with all these ideas," Major General Richard Natonski, who commanded the Fallujah assault and oversees its reconstruction, said of the plans for identity badges and work brigades.

Sorry, I should have warned you not to be chewing or swallowing anything.

Bellon asserted that previous attempts to win trust from Iraqis suspicious of US intentions had telegraphed weakness by asking, " 'What are your needs? What are your emotional needs?' All this Oprah [stuff]," he said. "They want to figure out who the dominant tribe is and say, 'I'm with you.' We need to be the benevolent, dominant tribe.

But, the Oaf of Office told me that brown-skinned people are capable of ruling themselves.

When they heard of the proposal to require men to work, some Marines were skeptical that an angry public would work effectively if coerced. Others said the plan was based on US tactics that worked in postwar Germany. DiFrancisci said he would wait for more details. "There's something to be said for a firm hand," he said.

Arbeit Macht Frei
Zieg heil

Falluja "secured"

2004-12-06T09:55:00.000-06:00

The Iraqi Red Crescent (IRC) says it has left Fallujah on US military orders after the aid agency was told the former insurgent stronghold was not safe.

[...]

Ms Ibadi, speaking in Baghdad, had said earlier that the agency left of its own free will, but she said she was only informed after the IRC left the city that it had been told to do so by US marines.

[...]

There had been friction between the IRC and the US military as the agency was prevented from distributing aid throughout the city.

ABC article<

Dispatch from Iraq: Trophies

2004-12-06T08:49:00.000-06:00

From Dahr Jamail on December 4:

Two giant explosions occurred around 6:15am, followed by mortar blasts, then constant, heavy gun battles that went on into late morning.

The Hamid al-Alwan mosque, a small Shia mosque in the predominantly Sunni area of Adhamiya had been hit with a car bomb.

[...]

The interesting detail is that while US military are usually some of the first to arrive on the scene at bombings, they never showed up for this one. The Iraqi National Guard, who have a base in the ex-presidential palace less than one kilometer from the bombing, never showed up either.

The Iraqi Police, however, did show up at the scene. Most of them wearing facemasks to protect their identity (this is Adhamiya) but one man, a muscular, arrogant, loudspoken policeman, unmasked, was yelling, ''Of course this happened because this is a Shia mosque! The Sunni hate the Shia!''

Members of the crowd perceived his actions as deliberately provocative and inflammatory.

Aisha Dulaimy, a resident of al-Adhamiya said, ''The reason for this car bomb is the Americans want to cause a split between the Shia and Sunni. But there has never been fighting between the Shia and Sunni in the history of Iraq. They want to make a struggle between us, but it will never work. They tried this before and people responded by making demonstrations together against the occupiers. So they will never make it. We are living as brothers-Shia and Sunni. There is no difference because we all live in the same home, which is Iraq.''

She references an attack last winter in the large Shia mosque across the river in the Khadamiya district, which was followed nearly immediately by an attack on a Sunni mosque in Adhamiya. The attacks were perceived by both residents and religious leaders as attempts to divide the religious sects, so they held mass demonstrations together, Shia and Sunni, in a show of solidarity. They also prayed in one another's mosques.

The nearly immediate reaction from the bombing yesterday was an intense mortar barrage on the nearby US military base followed by fierce clashes in Adhamiya.

Dahr's post also has this information about Falluja...

Thursday the director of Fallujah General Hospital was shot and wounded by soldiers while he and two other doctors attempted to enter Fallujah in an ambulance in order to provide aid to families trapped there. They had gone into the city after having been granted permission by the military and Ministry of Health.

A friend of mine here who is a doctor told me that recently the Ministry of Health issued a directive instructing doctors not to talk to any media, particularly about patients who are wounded by the military.

[...]

[T]here are also eyewitness reports now from refugees that some soldiers in Fallujah were tying the dead bodies of resistance fighters to tanks and driving around with their ''trophies.''

Fallujans protest to return home

2004-12-05T06:53:00.000-06:00

About 1500 displaced Falluja residents demonstrated in Habaniya demanding to return to their city, parts of which sustained heavy damage during the military operation last month.

US and Iraqi officials have pledged to reconstruct areas devastated by the fighting.

[...]

The statement said the resistance had been lying low for a "few days" but were planning to resume attacks against US-led forces.

article

It's a little hard to reconstruct when you are still fighting and blowing things up.

Fallujan refugee camp in Baghdad

Aljazeera special report: Falluja in 2004

Flashback: November 10 - Fallujah, the Sequel: Preparing for Butchery

Falluja report

2004-12-04T17:39:00.000-06:00

The Pentagon now says US forces will see their tour of duty extended until after the Jan. 30 elections. While their fight is no longer a front-page story, the physical and mental toll is growing, as the marines here continue to hunt an enemy that rarely seeks them out. Instead, pockets of insurgents lie waiting until teams...come crashing through their door.

[...]

[T]he original problem persists: US forces sweep through one neighborhood after another, only to find insurgents popping up in "cleared" areas.

The battle Monday killed one marine and wounded three others - a high cost against three insurgents, who had moved into a house 50 feet across the street from a newly established marine position at a Fallujah fire station. That house and several others nearby had been cleared just two days earlier.

[...]

The Fallujah assault "is not good for the families and marines who have suffered and died, putting their lives on the line for the freedom of Iraq. But it has been good in terms of dealing a blow to the insurgency," says Wilson.

Christian Science Monitor article

Yeah, sure sounds that way.

For over a week rumors have circulated in the Arab press that both napalm and other chemical weapons were used mainly in the Jolan district of Falluja, a major area of the fighting. Now, despite a US media blackout, more evidence is leaking out and causing a furor in the British Parliament. As Gilfeather reports: “Last night Tony Blair was dragged into the row as furious Labour MPs demanded he face the Commons over it. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the gel bonds flames to flesh.”

[...]

The US has already admitted that it used napalm during the siege of Baghdad. The truth was reluctantly confirmed by the Pentagon after news reports corroborated the evidence. The military has tried to conceal the truth by saying that there is a distinction between its new weapon and “traditional napalm”. The “improved” product carries the Pentagon moniker “Mark 77 firebombs” and uses jet fuel to “decrease environmental damage”. The fact that military planner’s even considered “environmental damage” while developing the tools for incinerating human beings, gives us some insight into the deep vein of cynicism that permeates their ranks.

The Pentagon’s hair-splitting has done little to obfuscate the facts. Marines returning from Iraq call the bombs napalm and napalm it is.

ZNet article

The Pentagon's announcement this week that it is adding 12,000 more troops to the approximately 138,000 soldiers it already has in Iraq has put an abrupt end to the fleeting sense of triumph that followed November's "victory" by U.S. Marines who regained control of Fallujah, the main Sunni rebel stronghold.

While the administration sought to spin the decision as a matter of keeping the insurgents "on the run" and backing up security for elections scheduled to take place Jan. 30, most analysts have described the move as an effective admission that Washington's counter-insurgency campaign has not, in fact, been going particularly well.

[...]

Given the recent disappointing performance of Iraqi police and security forces, the influx of more U.S. troops marks at least a symbolic setback to the larger strategy of "Iraqification," or giving indigenous Iraqi forces more responsibility for maintaining order and keeping the largely Sunni insurrection in check.

"I fear that it signals a 're-Americanization' ... of our strategy in Iraq," retired Army Col. Ralph Hallenback, who worked with the U.S. occupation in 2003, told Thursday's Washington Post.

Lew Rockwell article

"Re-" nothing. It began and has always been an American war.

Troops who were originally promised tours of duty that would not exceed 12 months at the absolute most are now looking at extensions of two months at least. Some units originally scheduled to return home in October have been told they will have to wait until March 2005.

[...]

For the vets, one of the most important lessons of the whole Indochina debacle was to scrupulously avoid situations in which U.S. forces found themselves in an escalating guerrilla war, where the only way to contain a growing insurgency was to deploy more troops to the theater.

"Adding troops at this point is the opposite of what senior Pentagon officials expected when the war began in March 2003," noted the Post's veteran military correspondent Thomas Ricks.

"We now face the plain fact that the insurgency is growing," wrote Joseph Galloway, Ricks' experienced counterpart at Knight Ridder Newspapers, who scorned the claims of one widely quoted senior U.S. military commander that the Fallujah campaign had "broken the back of the insurgency."

Galloway noted that rebels had recently been mounting as many as 150 attacks a day â€“ 10 times the number of one year ago.

"Be studious, stay in school, and stay away from the military. I mean it." -- Marine Staff Sgt. Russell Slay to his 5-yr-old son in a letter home shortly before he was killed in Iraq.

The war on witnesses

2004-12-04T15:33:00.000-06:00

US authorities have denied that hundreds of civilians were killed during last April's siege, and have lashed out at the sources of these reports. For instance, an unnamed "senior American officer", speaking to the New York Times last month, labelled Falluja general hospital "a centre of propaganda". But the strongest words were reserved for Arab TV networks. When asked about al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya's reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed in Falluja, Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defence, replied that "what al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable ... " Last month, US troops once again laid siege to Falluja - but this time the attack included a new tactic: eliminating the doctors, journalists and clerics who focused public attention on civilian casualties last time around.

[...]

The images from last month's siege on Falluja came almost exclusively from reporters embedded with US troops. This is because Arab journalists who had covered April's siege from the civilian perspective had effectively been eliminated. Al-Jazeera had no cameras on the ground because it has been banned from reporting in Iraq indefinitely. Al-Arabiya did have an unembedded reporter, Abdel Kader Al-Saadi, in Falluja, but on November 11 US forces arrested him and held him for the length of the siege. Al-Saadi's detention has been condemned by Reporters Without Borders and the International Federation of Journalists. "We cannot ignore the possibility that he is being intimidated for just trying to do his job," the IFJ stated.

It's not the first time journalists in Iraq have faced this kind of intimidation. When US forces invaded Baghdad in April 2003, US Central Command urged all unembedded journalists to leave the city. Some insisted on staying and at least three paid with their lives. On April 8, a US aircraft bombed al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. Al-Jazeera has documentation proving it gave the coordinates of its location to US forces.

On the same day, a US tank fired on the Palestine hotel, killing JosÃ© Couso, of the Spanish network Telecinco, and Taras Protsiuk, of Reuters. Three US soldiers are facing a criminal lawsuit from Couso's family, which alleges that US forces were well aware that journalists were in the Palestine hotel and that they committed a war crime.

[...]

"We don't do body counts," said General Tommy Franks of US Central Command. The question is: what happens to the people who insist on counting the bodies - the doctors who must pronounce their patients dead, the journalists who document these losses, the clerics who denounce them? In Iraq, evidence is mounting that these voices are being systematically silenced through a variety of means, from mass arrests, to raids on hospitals, media bans, and overt and unexplained physical attacks.

Mr Ambassador, I believe that your government and its Iraqi surrogates are waging two wars in Iraq. One war is against the Iraqi people, and it has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. The other is a war on witnesses.

Information Clearinghouse article: Guardian columnist Naomi Klein letter to U.S. Ambassador to London<

Speaking of propaganda

2004-12-04T14:48:00.000-06:00

In three recent reports about the military invasion of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, the New York Times has misreported the facts about the April 2004 invasion of the city and the toll it took on Iraqi civilians.

Read about it at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

Mission accomplished in Falluja

2004-12-04T12:34:00.000-06:00

The Red Crescent compound houses more than 100 residents who became stranded there after a 24-hour curfew was put back in place last week by U.S. forces in eastern Falluja. Marine commanders had previously implemented a curfew between 3 p.m. and 7 a.m.

CNN article

Does that sound to you like Falluja has been "pacified"?

Red Crescent volunteer Sabri Abd Almalek said the restrictions imposed by the Marines are hindering their humanitarian efforts to bring relief to families throughout the city.

"We are stuck here," he said. "We came here to help the people, treat the sick, and they won't let us leave -- only when we have permission."

An aid worker on the streets in Falluja.

Pictures from Falluja

2004-12-03T11:29:00.000-06:00

Is this your boy? (Warning: extremely graphic - and I am not kidding - picture of a marine "injured" in Falluja.)

Other pictures that you won't see on cable TV or in your local paper are at Iraq in Pictures.

Meanwhile in Iraq

2004-12-03T04:56:00.000-06:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq Dec 3, 2004 â€” Insurgents launched two major attacks Friday against police stations in different areas of Baghdad, killing 20 people, including six police officers.

ABC article

Seventy-one US troops have been killed so far in the attack led by US marines to take control of the Iraqi city Falluja, the US military says.

Wednesday's reported toll is 20 more than had been previously reported.

[...]

The previous official tally was 51, given by Marine Corps Lieutenant-General John Sattler on 18 November.

[...]

Sattler said on 18 November the offensive had "broken the back of the insurgency", scattering the fighters and disrupting their operations nationwide.

A day later, air force Lieutenant-General Lance Smith, the second in charge at US Central Command, said it was "too early" to make such a prediction.

Aljazeera article

Ah, an honest man. He won't be getting a promotion any time soon.

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Down a steep staircase littered with glass shards and rubble, U.S. Marines descended Thursday to a dark basement believed to have been one of Fallujah's torture chambers. They found bloodstains and a single bloody hand print on the wall â€” evidence of the horrors once carried out in this former insurgent stronghold.

"We had sensed that there was a pure streak of evil in this town, ever since the first days of engagement here," said Maj. Wade Weems.

[...]

"Based on the evidence we have found here, we believe people were held here and possibly tortured â€” we have found enough blood to surmise that," Ray told reporters shown the basement Thursday.

On the wall adjacent to the hand print, human fingernails were found dug deep into the porous gravel around a hole in the wall â€” evidence, the Marines say, of a tunnel-digging attempt.

Although most of the evidence had been taken away, there was enough to suggest "they tried to dig their way out," Ray said.

No bodies or human remains â€” except for the fingernails â€” were found when the Marines discovered the underground chamber on Nov. 11, but they found "plenty of blood," he said. Marine experts have collected samples for forensic and DNA testing.

"This is tangible proof how horrific they were," Weems, of Washington, D.C., said of the insurgents, shuddering as he gazed at the bloody hand print.

[...]

"It's the combination of the chains, the cage, the blood â€” there were not nice people here, that's for sure," Ray said. "They certainly didn't have the morals I would expect in a human society."

Iraq Net article

These photos and more at AntiWar.com

Falluja report

2004-11-30T12:39:00.000-06:00

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society has delivered aid for the first time directly to families stranded by fighting in Falluja.

A Red Crescent team delivered food and water to five families in a battered northern Falluja neighbourhood on Thursday after US marines patrolling the area found them hiding in their homes.

The organisation estimates that only 150 to 175 families stayed in Falluja after the start of the US-led offensive on 8 November, and civilians living in the ruined city have become desperate for water and blankets.

[...]

Aid convoys were able to enter Falluja on Wednesday and Monday, but only toured the town, and were unable to move freely and find any of the civilians who needed assistance.

[...]

US marines have hinted that it could take more than two months to restore basic services such as water and electricity in the devastated town.

[...]

Meanwhile, there are increasing concerns for Falluja residents who left the town before the devastating US offensive.

Shaikh Muhammad Shawki al-Abdali, who lives in a cluster of hamlets just outside Falluja, said many of the 250 families who sought refuge in his village did not have shelter.

The villagers of nearby al-Subaihat said they welcomed the displaced with open arms.

"Friends of mine gave these poor people a room in their house, others gave them mattresses and food," 25-year-old Khalid Jiad said.

"But now there isn't much we can still do for them because we barely have any sugar, flour and rice left. We are almost in the same state as them."

Aljazeera article

The US military has prevented an aid convoy from reaching the besieged city of Falluja, a doctor based in Baghdad who accompanied the convoy says.

"The Iraqi ministry of health asked us to go to Falluja. When we were on our way, the US army stopped our convoy, and carried out a search," said Dr Ibrahim al-Kubaisi.

"After we waited in the US base, located near Falluja, for four hours, a doctor told us that they had agreed with the Iraqi ministry of health to send a medical team to Falluja but only after eight or nine days.

"There is a terrible crime going in Falluja and they do not want anybody to know.

[...]

"US forces allow people to go into al-Hadra al-Muhammadiya area, in Falluja, but they prohibited anybody to enter al-Julan, al-Askari and al-Senai neighbourhoods.

Aljazeera article

There are at least 150 families trapped within the city, and the military refuses to let any of them out. While a few ambulances were allowed into one section of the city a few days ago, there are at least three main neighborhoods that the military is keeping a tight lid on. Refugees continue to report the use of napalm and phosphorous weapons-of seeing dead bodies with no bullet holes in them, just scorched patches of skin.

[...]

Meanwhile, the military refused to allow yet another aid convoy into Fallujah. They were turned back because the military personnel told them the Ministry of Health would be allowed to send a relief convoy in ''8 or 9 days.''

[...]

While the humanitarian crisis facing families who remain trapped inside Fallujah grinds on, US-backed interim prime minister Ayad Allawi announced yesterday that the crime rate in Fallujah was down after the US siege of the city.

Iraq Dispatches post

Indeed.

Falluja's refugees

2004-11-28T15:42:00.000-06:00

At one refugee camp for Fallujans we learn it is closed-because a man named Kais Al-Nazzal who owns an apartment building in Baghdad has taken responsibility of the 100 refugee families at the Amiriyah camp and housed, fed and clothed them. An act of beauty amidst the tragedy of occupied Iraq.

Most of the aid going to the refugees is coming from Iraqis, rather than NGO’s or certainly not the MOH. Back at the MOH Shehab Ahmed Jassim, who is in charge of managing the refugee crisis, said they had provided everything the refugees needed. That they’d sent 20 ambulances to the general hospital in Fallujah.

What he neglected to say was that most Fallujans have been unable to reach the main hospital due to ongoing fighting and most being too afraid of detainment by soldiers or Iraqi National Guardsmen to seek medical help. The ambulances returned to Baghdad.

“During the Najaf fighting, things were not like this,” said a doctor I interviewed later, “There were delegations, moveable operating theaters, and plenty of help for them there which was allowed, but for Fallujah, they have done next to nothing. Why?”

Every doctor I’ve interviewed concerning the situation in Fallujah has shared similar sentiments. Theories abound as to why.

Dahr Jamail post

A 35 year-old merchant from Fallujah, Abu Hammad, starts telling us what he experienced, and barely breathes while doing so because he is so enraged.

“The American warplanes came continuously through the night and bombed everywhere in Fallujah! It did not stop even for a moment! If the American forces did not find a target to bomb, they used sound bombs just to terrorize the people and children. The city stayed in fear; I cannot give a picture of how panicked everyone was.”

[...]

Abu Hammad continues, “Most of the innocent people there stayed in mosques to be closer to God for safety. Even the wounded people were killed. Old ladies with white flags were killed by the Americans! The Americans announced for people to come to a certain mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the people who went there carrying white flags were killed!”

[...]

“There was no food, no electricity, no water,” continues Abu Hammad, “We couldn’t even light a candle because the Americans would see it and kill us.”

[...]

He continues on, “There are bodies the Americans threw in the river. I saw them do this! And anyone who stayed thought they would be killed by the Americans, so they tried to swim across the river. Even then the Americans shot them with rifles from the shore! Even if some of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their heads to show they are not fighters, they were all shot! Even people who couldn’t swim tried to cross the river! They drowned rather than staying to be killed by the Americans.”

Dahr Jamail post

Further reports of napalm in Falluja

2004-11-28T13:14:00.000-06:00

The U.S. military is secretly using banned napalm gas and other outlawed weapons against civilians in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, eyewitnesses reported.

Residents in Fallujah reported that innocent civilians have been killed by napalm attacks, a poisonous cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel which makes the human body melt.

[...]

Other residents of that area also said that banned weapons were used. Abu Sabah, said; ''They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud - then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of smoke behind them."

He said that pieces of these strange bombs explode into large fires that burn the skin even when water is thrown on the burns.

Phosphorous arms and the napalm gas are known to have such effects.

[...]

Kassem Mohammed Ahmed, who fled Fallujah last week, said that he witnessed many atrocities committed by U.S. troops in the shattered city. "I watched them roll over wounded people in the street with tanks," he said. "This happened so many times."

[...]

On Saturday, Labor MPs have demanded that British Prime Minister confront the Commons over the use of the deadly gas in Fallujah.

Halifax Labor MP Alice Mahon said: "I am calling on Mr. Blair to make an emergency statement to the Commons to explain why this is happening. It begs the question: 'Did we know about this hideous weapon's use in Iraq?'"

Furious critics have also demanded that Blair threatens the U.S. to pullout British forces from Iraq unless the U.S. stops using the worldâ€™s deadliest weapon.

The United Nations banned the use of the napalm gas against civilians in 1980 after pictures of a naked wounded girl in Vietnam shocked the world.

The United States, which didn't endorse the convention, is the only nation in the world still using the deadly weapon.

Aljazeera article

Arab report from Falluja

2004-11-28T12:35:00.000-06:00

Last evening, after US forces outside Fallujah took heavy rocket fire from the Lions of Fallujah, occupation forces pulled their units that were surrounding the western sector of the city back in the direction of the US base at al-Habbaniyah.

In a dispatch posted at 9pm Mecca time, Friday night, Mafkarat al-Islam's correspondent reported that US forces outside Fallujah were subjected to heavy Mujahideen bombardments, firing Grad and Tariq rockets that resulted in their withdrawal from the area. JUS also received information from sources close to the Mujahideen that US forces were indeed pulling back at al-Habbaniyah

This is the first report of a US retreat from any of the sectors of the occupation lines that ring Fallujah since the siege began some weeks ago. US forces also withdrew from check points on the old bridge and the new bridge west of the city.

[...]

The limitation of US forces has become widely apparent over the past few days as Mujahideen outside the city were able to break through US lines on three occasions; once by swimming the river and twice through what was referred to as the strongly fortified northwestern part of the city.

Mafkarat al-Islam reports that the Mujahideen have managed to cut all US supply lines on all land routes that support the US lines around the city.

[...]

As of the time of this filing, Mujahideen control over 65% percent of Fallujah.

[...]

Another development has been the withdrawal of US snipers from the streets overlooking the Euphrates Rive and the city is now exposed from the west according to Mafkarat al-Islam who reported the first US withdrawal from Fallujah during the first siege of the city last April. At that time, Mafkarat al-Islam's reports were met with disbelief and condemnation as other media simply echoed official US claims of nonstop "victory" and "advance" however they were ultimately proven correct.

On Saturday, JUS received reports from both Mafkarat al-Islam's and our own sources that, while the information is slightly different, both conclude that US forces has withdrawn in some areas.

Rense article

We're the "good guys"

2004-11-27T14:37:00.000-06:00

Although the US military has dismissed accounts of the health center bombing as "unsubstantiated," in fact they are credible and come from multiple sources. Dr. Sami al-Jumaili described how US warplanes bombed the Central Health Centre in which he was working at 5:30 am on November 9. The clinic had been treating many of the city's sick and wounded after US forces took over the main hospital at the start of the invasion. According to Dr. al-Jumaili, US warplanes dropped three bombs on the clinic, where approximately sixty patients--many of whom had serious injuries from US aerial bombings and attacks--were being treated.

Dr. al-Jumaili reports that thirty-five patients were killed in the airstrike, including two girls and three boys under the age of 10. In addition, he said, fifteen medics, four nurses and five health support staff were killed, among them health aides Sami Omar and Omar Mahmoud, nurses Ali Amini and Omar Ahmed, and physicians Muhammad Abbas, Hamid Rabia, Saluan al-Kubaissy and Mustafa Sheriff.

Although the deaths of these individual health workers could not be independently confirmed, Dr. al-Jumaili's account is echoed by Fadhil Badrani, an Iraqi reporter for Reuters and the BBC.

[...]

US airstrikes also leveled a warehouse in which medical supplies were stored next to the health center, Dr. al-Jumaili reports. Ambulances from the city had been confiscated by the government, he says, and the only vehicle left was targeted by US fire, killing the driver and wounding a paramedic. Hamid Salaman of the Falluja General Hospital told the Associated Press that five patients in the ambulance were killed.

[...]

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society has called the health conditions in and around Falluja "catastrophic." One hospital staff member who recently left the city reports that there were severe outbreaks of diarrheal infections among the population, with children and the elderly dying from infectious disease, starvation and dehydration in greater numbers each day. Dr. al-Jumaili, Dr. al-Ani and journalist Badrani each stated that the wounded and children are dying because of lack of medical attention and water. In one case, according to Dr. al-Jumaili, three children died of dehydration when their father was unable to find water for them. The US forces cut off the city's water supply before launching their assault.

Information Clearinghouse article

From Falluja to Mosul and back again

2004-11-26T04:43:00.000-06:00

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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?

World reaction to Falluja assault

2004-11-23T19:55:00.000-06:00

World revulsion against the US attack on Fallujah reached a crescendo during the past five days, with significant street protests breaking out in the Middle East and Latin America. Turkey, Palestine and Libya in the region, and Chile in the New World saw thousands of angry protesters come out against the US.

Juan Cole post

Gee, you hear anything about any of that?

No wonder Bunnypants was so scared to be without his SS bodyguard in Chile.

Falluja report

2004-11-22T13:14:00.000-06:00

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 22 (Xinhuanet) -- Fierce clashes between US-led forces and defenders of Fallujah renewed Monday Morning as relief teams were struggling to enter the battle-torn central Iraqi city.

[...]

Residents outside the city said the US forces let a relief team to enter the city on Sunday, but later they opened fire at the convoy, killing one member of the team and forcing them to withdrawamid growing fears of human crisis in Fallujah.

Xinhuanet article

The US military says Marines in Fallujah have shot and killed an insurgent who engaged them as he was faking being dead, a week after footage of a marine killing an apparently unarmed and wounded Iraqi caused a stir in the region.

"Marines from the 1st Marine Division shot and killed an insurgent who while faking dead opened fire on the marines who were conducting a security and clearing patrol through the streets," a military statement said.

[...]

Military sources had said that the rules of engagement were looser during the operation launched in Fallujah, for fear that rebels would be disguised, fake death or wear suicide explosives belts.

The US military and Iraqi government troops are still carrying house-to-house searches in the rebel bastion but two weeks after it was launched, the largest post-Saddam military operation in Iraq is all but over.

ABC News article

And related....

In Mosul...

A senior Sunni Muslim cleric has been killed in a drive-by shooting in the northern city of Mosul, medical sources say.

[...]

The cleric was a member of influential Iraqi Muslim body the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), and the brother of the organisation's spokesman in Baghdad, Muhammad Bashar al-Faidhi.

The AMS has called for a boycott of elections planned for 30 January. It says its members have been targeted by US and Iraqi security forces and also by armed fighters trying to fuel sectarian unrest.

[...]

Also in Mosul, four bodies, at least three of them Iraqi soldiers, were found in the past 24 hours by the US military, a US army officer said on Monday.

"We found them at 2300 (2000 GMT on Sunday). They had been dead for at least a couple of hours and their bodies set against the sidewalk, shot in the head and hands tied," Lieutenant Colonel Michael Kurilla said, adding that three of them were confirmed as being Iraqi soldiers.

Aljazeera article

In Tikrit...

Meanwhile, US forces arrested five Iraqi policemen and confiscated their weapons at a checkpoint in Ishaqi district south of Tikrit.

Aljazeera article

In Ramadi...

Insurgents launched a deadly ambush Sunday in the guerrilla stronghold of Ramadi, killing eight Iraqi National Guardsmen and injuring 18 others, police said.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer article

US marines have killed several Iraqi civilians after opening fire at a bus which drove through a checkpoint in the city of Ramadi, the US military and Iraqi police say.

Police said seven died on Saturday while the military said three.

"The driver ignored verbal warning and several warning shots," the military said in a statement.

"As US marines in the vicinity of the checkpoint attempted to disable the van, the van accelerated toward the marines. The marines then fired upon the vehicle to protect themselves and the integrity of the checkpoint."

Aljazeera article

In Samarra...

In Samarra, another mainly Sunni city north of Baghdad, three Iraqis were killed and six others wounded in fierce clashes between fighters and US troops, medical sources said.

Aljazeera article

In Baghdad...

Baghdad has been rocked by daily violence, including car bomb, roadside bomb, rocket and mortar attacks mainly aimed at US or Iraqi military targets but which often kill Iraqi civilians.

Aljazeera article

Two foreigners, at least one of them British, were arrested in Baghdad after a ministerial bodyguard was shot dead, a senior police source has said.

Shooting broke out when an advance party of the interim interior minister's security detail came upon a civilian vehicle whose occupants they felt were behaving suspiciously, the source said.

It is not clear who fired first, but the Iraqi driver of the vehicle and one of minister Falah al-Naqib's guards were killed and another bodyguard wounded.

Aljazeera article

Reporter Kevin Sites tells his story

2004-11-22T12:59:00.000-06:00

It's time you to have the facts from me, in my own words, about what I saw -- without imposing on that Marine -- guilt or innocence or anything in between. I want you to read my account and make up your own minds about whether you think what I did was right or wrong. All the other armchair analysts don't mean a damn to me.

Here it goes.

Go to Sites' website to read the rest of his account of the Marine who shot the wounded prisoners in a Falluja mosque last week.<

Falluja report: more mass graves, dead bodies, scavengers, and continued fighting

2004-11-21T09:23:00.000-06:00

Residents of a village neighbouring Falluja have told Aljazeera that they helped bury the bodies of 73 women and children who were burnt to death by a US bombing attack.

"We buried them here, but we could not identify them because they were charred by the use of napalm bombs used by the Americans," said one resident of Saqlawiya in footage aired on Aljazeera on Sunday.

There have been no reports of the US military using napalm in Falluja and no independent verification of the claims.

The resident told Aljazeera all the bodies were buried in a single grave.

Late last week, US troops in Falluja called on some residents who had fled the fighting to return and help bury the dead.

However, according to other residents who managed to flee the fighting after US forces entered the city, hundreds more bodies still lay in the streets and were being fed on by packs of wild dogs.

[...]

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Falluja remained too dangerous to secure proper retrieval and burial of corpses.

[...]

"The city is still suffering shortage of public services. There is no water or electricity. There is no way to offer medical treatment for the injured families still surrounded inside the city," he added.

Aljazeera article

Another truckload of bodies reached the outskirts of the city for burial Friday in a ceremony marked by anger at U.S. troops, who say they killed 1,200 Iraqi and foreign fighters.

With Marines scouring the largely deserted city house by house and occasionally clashing with remnants of the insurgent force, travel in or out is limited but the Americans have allowed local voluntary organizations to retrieve some bodies.

Two dozen arrived on a truck at the dusty outlying village of Saqlawiya Friday, greeted by a crowd of about 150 men who removed the corpses from military body bags to try to identify them and to bury them in shrouds, according to Muslim custom.

Amid the flies and stench of the blackened and bloated bodies, apparently dead for many days, identification was next to impossible but most appeared to be of men of fighting age and at least one wore an ammunition vest.

U.S. commanders say they do not believe civilians were killed during the offensive begun 11 days ago.

[...]

As onlookers stood in line to hear the traditional prayers for the dead, the preacher also called for revenge on Americans and their Iraqi allies, who believe the assault on Falluja has "broken the back" of the Sunni Muslim insurgency.

"We ask you God to be merciful," the preacher chanted.

"Shake the earth beneath the feet of the Americans, shake the earth beneath the feet of the Crusaders, shake the earth beneath the feet of the hypocrites that help them.

"God grant victory to Iraq."

ABC News article

On the eve of the assault on Falluja, the US military ordered troops to shoot any male on the street between the ages of 15 and 50 if they were seen as a security threat, regardless of whether they had a weapon.

"You are killers, not murderers. You are warriors not war criminals. Don't cross that line."

Those were the words of a US officer to his men before they took part in the recent assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja.

[...]

"The enemy can dress as a woman, the enemy can be faking to be dead," said one company commander to his marines before entering the heart of the city. "So shoot everything that moves and everything that doesn't move," he said.

The photographer embedded with this unit, which carried out some of the most dangerous missions on the frontlines of the Falluja battle, said the rules of engagement were gradually modified as the situation evolved.

"A marine was killed when a unit entered a house. They pulled out and dynamited the building, but when they moved back in, an arm stuck out from under the rubble and threw a grenade," he said.

The photographer, who did not wish to identify his unit, said the fear of human bombers combined with the discovery that fighters were taking amphetamines and adrenaline prompted his platoon to take new measures.

"From that point on, the rule was the so-called 'double tap': two bullets in every body," he said.

The night before the assault began, the order came down that troops could shoot any male on the street between the ages of 15 and 50 if they were viewed as a security threat, regardless of whether they had a weapon.

When marines asked a gunnery sergeant for clarification, he told his men if they saw any military-aged males on the street "Drop 'em."

[...]

After one marine was killed and five were wounded on the second day of the assault, the military command ordered platoons to spray homes with machine-gun and tank fire before entering them, in an effort to kill members of the resistance lurking inside waiting for them.

Brunei Direct article

Yes, after telling the civilians in Falluja to stay inside their houses and they would be safe.

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. Marines searching from house to house in Falluja are finding weapons caches everywhere from an upscale villa to the homes of Iraqi policemen.

[...]

Rebel snipers fire on search parties eager to stabilise Falluja after seizing control. Some houses are booby-trapped. Some weapons are hidden behind paintings, in air conditioning units and in couches -- and the arms supply seems endless.

[...]

"We found policemen with mortars and mines and surface-to-air missiles. What policeman do you know that needs that?" said 2nd Lieutenant James Collins, 23, of Jamesville, North Carolina.

Reuters article

Oh, you mean it isn't foreign fighters? You mean the very Iraqis we claim to be training to help us "stabilize" the country are fighting us? Oh, no, I'm sure you don't mean that.

Here's a look at it from Jamaica...

As for the city's inhabitants, the US military repeatedly assured the world that some 250,000 of its 300,000 population (again, those neatly rounded figures!) had fled Falluja in advance. But where exactly they fled to - that, we have not been told. A quarter of a million people is a lot of people! Where are they now; and how have they been accessing the bare necessities of life?

[...]

A Bush-supporting US congressman, whose name I sorely regret having missed, had no doubt his finest moment when he told CNN that among the many benefits Fallujans would reap from this heraldic harvest of blood and concrete was 'the tremendous number of jobs' they were going to get when the rebuilding of the city begins. (Bet you never thought of that antidote to unemployment, Mr Patterson - flatten downtown Kingston and then rebuild it!)

If fewer people made it out of the city than claimed, look at it this way....there will be less job competition for rebuilding. Continue reading 'The battle for Falluja' in the Jamaican Observer.

Aljazeera updates on Falluja

2004-11-20T07:24:00.000-06:00

ICRC blasts 'inhumanity' of Falluja battles

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) slammed the "utter contempt" for humanity shown by all sides in Iraq amid fierce fighting in Falluja.

Residents who fled the city gathered at a cemetery near the town of al-Saqlawiya, north of Falluja, in an attempt to identify the bodies. The Central Committee for Relief Aid transported the corpses by truck to the cemetery.

Fighting continues in Falluja, despite claims by US marines that they have wiped out "insurgents".

[...]

"As hostilities continue in Falluja and elsewhere, every day seems to bring news of yet another act of utter contempt for the most basic tenet of humanity: the obligation to protect human life and dignity," he said.

"For the parties to this conflict, complying with international humanitarian law is an obligation, not an option," Kraehenbuehl said in an unusually tough statement by the relief agency.

International law?

Outcome of US Falluja assault disputed

[W]hile 10 days of fighting had deprived fighters a safe haven, a spokesman for interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi conceded that many of the city's resistance had dispersed, posing threats elsewhere that US and Iraqi authorities would have to counter.

Furthermore, a report leaked to The New York Times, quoting US marine officers in Falluja, warned of the outstanding resilience of fighters opposed to the presence of foreign troops in Iraq.

Fighters would continue to disrupt efforts to set up reliable Iraqi security forces and to hold an election in late January, the marine intelligence report was quoted as saying.

That would put pressure on US forces, who have already had to return troops from Falluja to other northern and western areas where some in the once dominant Sunni Muslim minority fear elections will hand power to Iraq's Shia majority.

[...]

"They have been saying that Falluja is the source of and therefore the solution to their problems. The violence in Mosul has shown that to be a crassly stupid thing to say," Toby Dodge, an Iraq analyst at Queen Mary University of London, said.

"Insurgency is a national phenomenon fuelled by alienation. I don't think this war is winnable because they have alienated the base of support across Iraqi society."

[...]

Meanwhile, attacks on US forces and Iraqi police continued unabated throughout Iraq.

And, the related stories....

Clashes intensify in Mosul

The bodies of nine purported members of the Iraqi National Guard have been found in Mosul, where clashes between the troops, supported by US forces, and armed fighters continued for a third day.

[...]

The men, discovered in an industrial area not far from the scene of some of the worst clashes in Mosul, appeared to have been executed, as they all had a bullet in the head and their bodies were also badly burned.

Fighting rages in Baghdad

Three Iraqi policemen have been killed in heavy fighting out between armed fighters and Iraqi National Guards supported by US troops in western Baghdad.

[...]

An Iraqi journalist in the area, Ziad Badruldin, told Aljazeera that he saw the al-Aadhamiya police station up in flames.

Badruldin, however, also said there are reports that the three were killed when their car was set ablaze near the al-Aadhamiya bridge.

Clashes, the reporter said, had also occurred in Antar Square. Other confrontations occurred in al-Gazaliya, al-Amariya and Haifa Street.

Badruldin said he saw destroyed US vehicles near the Abu Hanifa mosque.

Aljazeera aired video of a US armoured vehicle, believed to be a Hummer, destroyed by armed fighters in the clashes. Its occupants are believed to have been killed, but there has been no comment from US military authorities on the incident.

[...]

Another Iraqi journalist Ziad al-Samarrai told Aljazeera that fierce clashes were spreading to other districts of the city including al-Dura.

[...]

In related incidents, two blasts rocked Baghdad on Saturday morning.

[...]

Aljazeera has also learned that an unknown armed group shot and killed an advisor to the interim Iraqi Ministry of Works and Public Affairs on Saturday in Baghdad.

Dr Amal Abd al-Hamid, her secretary, driver and bodyguard were all killed in the attack in the al-Qadisiyah neighbourhood.

Also on Saturday, five students were detained by Iraqi police at the Technology University of Baghdad. The arrest came in the wake of a demonstration at the university which called for an end to the "massacres and atrocities" committed in Falluja.

Iraqi groups call for election boycott

A group of national, political and religious groups in Iraq, including the Association of Muslim Scholars, have decided to boycott the elections due to be held early next year.

US to bolster troop strength in Iraq

[Lieutenant General Lance Smith, deputy commander of the US Central Command] Smith also dropped hints that elections may not be held in Falluja.

"And so it could be that even without, say, a city like Falluja voting, that there will be adequate representation by the Sunnis to feel or look like it was legitimate representation for all the parties involved."

[...]

The United States plans to extend tours of duty of more troops in Iraq to increase force levels through January elections, a top US general has said.

[...]

Smith...said on Friday that additional troops may also be deployed if necessary to secure the country before the vote.

"We are talking mainly about extending some units," Smith said. "We will make further assessment as we get a little bit closer and understand what the impact of Falluja has been in the entire country."

[...]

Elections may be held without certain problematic sectors voting, and more troops are going to be staying longer, and possibly more troops sent over.

Nicely done. Very nice indeed. Mission accomplished.

Falluja: Mission accomplished

2004-11-20T06:50:00.000-06:00

American military officials said Thursday that they had discovered a house in the devastated city of Falluja that appeared to have been a headquarters for guerrillas of the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

An American commander also said the weeklong offensive to take the city had "broken the back of the insurgency."

Despite that assessment, gun battles and mortar fire continued to shake the city, and the commander, Lt. Gen. John Sattler of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, said it would be "some time" before it was safe enough to allow many of Falluja's 300,000 residents to return.

NY Times article

Some more of those mexed missages.

From Falluja to Mosul

2004-11-18T11:51:00.000-06:00

And other stops along the way (Ramadi, Baghdad, Baiji, et al.)...

November 18: Marine intelligence officials have issued a report warning that any significant withdrawal of troops from the Iraqi city of Fallujah would strengthen the insurgency.

The assessment, distributed to senior Marine and Army officers in Iraq (news - web sites), also said that despite the heavy fighting with coalition forces, the insurgents would continue to increase in number, carrying out attacks and fomenting unrest in the area.

One officer said the seven-page classified report -- parts of which were provided to Thursday's edition of The New York Times -- was "brutally honest" and appears to contradict the US government's victorious account of the US-led fight against insurgents in Fallujah and other parts of northern Iraq.

Iraq Net article

The administration is lying to us. Well, what a frickin' surprise.

The pessimistic analysis was prepared by intelligence officers in the First Marine Expeditionary Force, or I MEF, last weekend as the offensive in Falluja was winding down.

Senior military officials in Iraq and Washington disputed the findings of the report, describing it as a subjective judgement of some Marines that did not reflect the views of all intelligence officials and commanders in Iraq.

Another surprise.

Rebels attacked the provincial governor's office in Iraq's third city of Mosul on Thursday, killing one of his bodyguards and wounding four more, the U.S. military said.

[...]

Insurgents fired 10 mortar rounds at the governor's office in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, setting ablaze a fuel tanker parked nearby, a U.S. military spokeswoman said.

[...]

Rebels also fired six mortar rounds at a U.S. military base in Mosul, but there were no injuries.

Iraq Net article

Falluja "restoration"

2004-11-18T07:50:00.000-06:00

The first steps toward reconstruction in Fallujah were taken Wednesday, and they were taken at a run, while crouching.

Two dozen members of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Engineer Group crunched over gravel, charred shell casings and broken glass, rifles out as they bounded down a war-torn street that was once a commercial strip.

They duck-walked through eerily empty streets as the sounds of a nearby gunfight echoed off the buildings and alleyways.

[...]

Seizing their first objective, teams of rifle-toting engineers crouched behind cover and pointed M-16s in all directions. One man produced a pry bar, another a sturdy shovel. Together they heaved up a sewer cover.

[...]

During a lull, one gravelly voice broke the silence, "Does the word `apocalyptic' apply?"

Continue reading...<

Falluja arithmetic

2004-11-17T17:27:00.000-06:00

A Greg Palast email.

Monday's New York Times, page 1:

"American commanders said 38 service members had been killed and 275 wounded in the Falluja assault."

Monday's New York Times, page 11:

"The American military hospital here reported that it had treated 419 American soldiers since the siege of Falluja began."

Questions for the class:

1. If 275 soldiers were wounded in Falluja and 419 are treated for wounds, how many were shot on the plane ride to Germany?

2. We're told only 275 soldiers were wounded but 419 treated for wounds; and we're told that 38 soldiers died. So how many will be buried?

3. How long have these Times reporters been embedded with with military? Bonus question: When will they get out of bed with the military?

Monday's New York Times, page 1:

"The commanders estimated that 1,200 to 1,600 insurgents had been killed."

Monday's New York Times, page 11:

"Nowhere to be found: the remains of the insurgents that the tanks had been sent in to destroy. ...The absence of insurgent bodies in Falluja has remained an enduring mystery."

NOT in the New York Times:

"Every time I hear the news
That old feeling comes back on;
We're waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the Big Fool says to push on."

- Pete Seeger, 1967

From Dahr Jamail in Iraq, IPS...

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of U.S. military reprisal, a high-ranking official with the Red Cross in Baghdad told IPS that "at least 800 civilians" have been killed in Fallujah so far.

His estimate is based on reports from Red Crescent aid workers stationed around the embattled city, from residents within the city and from refugees, he said.

"Several of our Red Cross workers have just returned from Fallujah since the Americans won't let them into the city," he said. "And they said the people they are tending to in the refugee camps set up in the desert outside the city are telling horrible stories of suffering and death inside Fallujah."

The official said that both Red Cross and Iraqi Red Crescent relief teams had asked the U.S. military in Fallujah to take in medical supplies to people trapped in the city, but their repeated requests had been turned down.

A convoy of relief supplies from both relief organisations continues to wait on the outskirts of the city for military permission to enter. They have appealed to the United Nations to intervene on their behalf.

"The Americans close their ears, and that is it," the Red Cross official said. "They won't even let us take supplies into Fallujah General Hospital."

The official estimated that at least 50,000 residents remain trapped within the city. They were too poor to leave, lacked friends or family outside the city and therefore had nowhere to go, or they simply had not had enough time to escape before the siege began, he said.

Aid workers in his organisation have reported that houses of civilians in Kharma, a small city near Fallujah, had been bombed by U.S. warplanes. In one instance a family of five was killed just two days ago, they reported.

"I don't know why the American leaders did not approach the Red Cross and ask us to deal with the families properly before the attacking began,â" said a Red Cross aid worker, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

[...]

If the U.S. forces would call a temporary cease-fire -we could get our trucks in and get the civilians left in Fallujah who need medical care, we could get them out," he said.

Mosques have organised massive collections of food and relief supplies for Fallujah residents as they did last April when the city was under attack, but these supplies have not been allowed into the city either.

[...]

The situation within Fallujah is grim, he said. If help does not reach people soon, "the children who are trapped will most likely die."

He said the Ministry of Health in the U.S.-backed interim Iraqi government had stopped supplying hospitals and clinics in Fallujah two months before the current siege.

From Jim Krane, AP...

As fighting winds down, U.S. troops face an even more difficult mission in Fallujah winning the people's allegiance. Planners want to make sure the Fallujah battle doesn't mimic the U.S.-led invasion: a well-executed military assault followed by a flawed occupation.

As soon as the city settles down, U.S. leaders and their Iraqi government partners plan to bring in a new city government including a new mayor and police chief as well as thousands of Iraqi police and paramilitary forces whose job it will be to keep order.

I believe that is what is called disconnect from reality.

Falluja genocide political fallout

2004-11-16T12:56:00.000-06:00

U.S. arrests Islamic leader in Iraq's puppet government

US forces have detained the deputy head of Iraq's interim parliament and senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party in a dawn raid on his Baghdad home.

Nasir Ayif was taken into custody in the northwestern Jamiah neighbourhood in response to the party's opposition to the US-led offensive on Falluja, party official Iyad al-Samarrai said.

[...]

Last week, the Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the strongest Sunni political parties in the country, had withdrawn from the interim government to protest against the US assault on Falluja, saying it "has led and will lead to more killings and genocide without mercy from the Americans."

[...]

"This action is a kind of punishment to the Islamic Party because we object to what is happening in Iraq, especially Falluja, and to the security policies adopted by the Americans and the Iraqi government," al-Samarrai was quoted as saying.

He told Aljazeera these kinds of arrests were always carried out "under the pretext of possession of weapons and explosives or carrying out anti-US actions".

Aljazeera article

Give us time. We'll get that sovereign government shaped the way we want it eventually.

Al-Samarrai said the detained official "spent the past few weeks devoting all his efforts to offering humanitarian aid to the families fleeing Falluja".

"His arrest may be an expression of dissatisfaction with the Islamic party's anti-US policies," the party official said.

Al-Samarrai said interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi had previously assigned Ayif to oversee the Falluja negotiations.

"Therefore, I call on Iyad Allawi to immediately do something and solve this issue."

Can't wait for that response.

Reports from Falluja

2004-11-16T05:38:00.000-06:00

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Dr. Ahmed Ghanim's nightmarish week began with a phone call in the operating room of a triage center in downtown Fallujah.

On the line was the manager of the city's General Hospital. Iraqi national guardsmen and U.S. Marines, the manager said, had entered the hospital, handcuffed the doctors and were forcing the patients out to the parking lot.

The guardsmen "stole the mobile phones, the hospital safe where the money is kept and damaged the ambulances and cars," said Ghanim, an orthopedic surgeon who works at the hospital. "The Americans were more sympathetic with the hospital staff and . . . untied the doctors and allowed them to go outside with the patients."

But the worst was yet to come. In the coming days, Ghanim would narrowly escape a bombing, then run through his city's battle-torn streets. He would walk hungry and scared for miles, carrying with him memories of the people he could not save.
Continue reading...

After six days of intense combat against the Fallujah insurgents, US warplanes, tanks and mortars have left a shattered landscape of gutted buildings, crushed cars and charred bodies.

A drive through the city revealed a picture of utter destruction, with concrete houses flattened, mosques in ruins, telegraph poles down, power and phone lines hanging slack and rubble and human remains littering the empty streets. The north-west Jolan district, once an insurgent stronghold, looked like a ghost town, the only sound the rumbling of tank tracks.

US Marines pointed their assault rifles down abandoned streets, past Fallujah's simple amusement park, now deserted. Four bloated and burnt bodies lay on the main street, not far from US tanks and soldiers. The stench of the remains hung heavy in the air, mixing with the dust.

Another body lay stretched out on the next block, its head blown off, perhaps in one of the countless explosions which rent the city day and night for nearly a week. Some bodies were so mutilated it was impossible to tell if they were civilians or militants, male or female.
Continue reading...

Water supplies to Tall Afar, Samarra and Fallujah have been cut off during US attacks in the past two months, affecting up to 750,000 civilians. This appears to form part of a deliberate US policy of denying water to the residents of cities under attack. If so, it has been adopted without a public debate, and without consulting Coalition partners. It is a serious breach of international humanitarian law, and is deepening Iraqi opposition to the United States, other coalition members, and the Iraqi government.

Tall Afar
On 19 September 2004, the Washington Post reported that US forces "had turned off" water supplies to Tall Afar "for at least three days". Turkish television reported
a statement from the Iraqi Turkoman Front that "Tall Afar is completely surrounded.
Entries and exits are banned. The water shortage is very serious".

Samarra
"Water and electricity [were] cut off" during the assault on Samarra on Friday 1
October 2004, according to Knight Ridder Newspapers and the Independent.
The Washington Post explicitly blames "U.S. forces" for this.

Fallujah
On 16 October the Washington Post reported that:
"Electricity and water were cut off to the city [Fallujah] just as a fresh wave of strikes
began Thursday night, an action that U.S. forces also took at the start of assaults on
Najaf and Samarra."

Residents of Fallujah have told the UN's Integrated Regional Information
Networks that "hey had no food or clean water and did not have time to store
enough to hold out through the impending battle". The water shortage has
been confirmed by other civilians fleeing Fallujahxiv, Fadhil Badrani, a BBC
journalist in Falluja, confirmed on 8 November that "he water supply has been cut
off"

Other cases
There have been allegations that the water supply was cut off during the assault
on Najaf in August 2004, and during the invasion of Basra in 2003. We have not
investigated these claims.
Continue reading (pdf)...

Falluja - take no prisoners

2004-11-15T22:46:00.000-06:00

A spokesman for the U.S. Marines says an investigation is underway into a videotaped incident in a Fallujah mosque, in which pool television pictures broadcast Monday appear to show a Marine shooting and killing a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner.

The shooting Saturday was videotaped by pool correspondent Kevin Sites, who said three other previously wounded prisoners in the mosque apparently were shot again by Marines inside the mosque.

The incident played out as the Marines 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment, returned to the unidentified Fallujah mosque Saturday. Sites was embedded with the unit.

CBS News article

So I guess we won't even be getting embedded reports any more.

Sites reported a Marine in the same unit had been killed just a day earlier as he tended to the booby-trapped dead body of an insurgent.

The Marine in the mosque videotape is reported to be in custody now as authorities investigate whether the shooting was self-defense or a criminal act.

Extenuating circumstances. Self-defense.

The events on the videotape began as some of the Marines from the unit accompanied by Sites approached the mosque on Saturday, a day after it was stormed by other Marines.

Gunfire can be heard from inside the mosque, and at its entrance, Marines who were already in the building emerge. They are asked by an approaching Marine lieutenant if there were insurgents inside and if the Marines had shot any of them. A Marine can be heard responding affirmatively. The lieutenant then asks if they were armed and a fellow Marine shrugs.

Sites' account said the wounded men, who he said were prisoners and who were hurt in the previous day's attack, had been shot again by the Marines on the Saturday visit.

The videotape showed two of the wounded men propped against the wall and Sites said they were bleeding to death. According to his report, a third wounded man appeared already dead, while a fourth was severely wounded but breathing.

Falluja's history

2004-11-15T08:59:00.000-06:00

Juan Cole reports:

Most Americans do not realize that Fallujah is celebrated in Iraqi history and poetry for its defiance of the British in the Great Rebellion of 1920. The 1920 revolution against the British is key to modern Iraqi history. One of the guerrilla groups taking hostages named itself the "1920 Revolution Brigades." Western journalists who don't know Iraqi history have routinely mistranslated the name of this group.

For the history of Fallujah in anti-colonialism, see Rashid Khalidi's article in In These Times.

Meanwhile, The Guardian hints around that the number of civilian casualties in the US assault on the city is enormous and will only come out as hospital authorities begin counting the dead and wounded.

Most Americans don't know diddly squat about Falluja or Iraq. (And that includes me, although I have learned a lot.) All indicators are that more foreigners of nearly every country know more about Americans' own history than they do! Good thing we have heavy weaponry and nukes backing up our ignorance.

Courtesy In These Times

Falluja war crimes

2004-11-15T06:54:00.000-06:00

Although Allawi's declaration of martial law timed with the crushing of Falluja removed the technicality of war crimes for some things (like shooting anyone on sight), check out Zeynep's post on our illegal, immoral tactics in razing that city.

This morning in Iraq

2004-11-15T06:45:00.000-06:00

"As we come down to the final fight, the last vestiges of enemy resistance that are continuing to fight have better equipment and tactics and they are prepared to fight to the death," Sattler was cited as saying. "The perception and reality of Fallujah as a safe haven for terrorists will be gone by the time this operation is completed."

[...]

The Iraqi government and coalition forces are taking "all necessary steps'' to meet the humanitarian needs of civilians in Fallujah, the Pentagon said on its Web site.

Fallujah General Hospital is fully staffed and has medical supplies, water and food, the military said.

Of course it stands across the river and has been roadblocked from the city and used as a U.S. military base for a week, and the Iraqi Red Crescent (parallel to Red Cross) was (apparently) only allowed into the city with food, water and medicine yesterday. (Although the quoted Bloomberg report is still claiming they have no access. And this article as well says they were refused admittance and turned back Monday - which is today, so perhaps the city's inhabitants never did get any aid.)

On Monday, U.S. forces resumed heavy airstrikes and artillery fire, with warplanes making between 20-30 bombing sorties in Fallujah and surrounding areas. U.S. ground forces were trying to corner the remaining resistance in the city.

Star Tribune article

"The final fight." And I suppose the Iraqi police, who have been deserting in droves and/or turning to fight with the resistance, are going to set up shop in Falluja after this final fight and maintain order? Or maybe it's going to be a unit from the Iraqi National Guard, which purportedly is mostly Kurds, who take up the job of keeping the peace there?

Well, whatever, once we leave off the daily airstrikes.....oh wait. Never mind.

Meanwhile....

Iraq's interim government and its U.S. backers said Phallus was the epicenter of the insurgency in Iraq, from where most of the bombings, killings and kidnappings that have swept the country were masterminded.

MSNBC article

Now there's an appropriate translation in names for an epicenter of war. However, I thought the masterminding was supposed to be coming from Falluja, which was supposedly why we have to flatten it. WTF?

In Baqubah, north of Baghdad, U.S. warplanes today carried out two strikes on insurgents who have clashed with Iraqi security forces in the city, Agence France-Presse reported. About 20 insurgents were killed, AFP said, citing an unidentified U.S. military official. In southern Baghdad, a mortar attack killed seven Iraqis and wounded seven others, the Associated Press reported, citing residents and hospital officials.

Bloomberg article

Alternatively...

Fierce battles between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces killed at least nine people Monday in Baqouba - the latest in a wave of clashes that has swept Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland even as American forces move against the last remaining pockets of resistance in Fallujah.

The fighting took place in Baqouba and neighboring town of Buhriz, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. American aircraft dropped two 500 pound bombs on an insurgent position.

Star Tribune article

Gunmen carried out near-simultaneous attacks on a police station and an Iraqi National Guard headquarters in Suwayrah, about 25 miles south of Baghdad, police said. Two policemen and five National Guardsmen were killed.

[...]

In the insurgent-heavy city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of the capital, heavy fighting erupted on Monday between militants and U.S. forces, residents said.

Sunni clerics at several mosques called on residents to kick out bands of armed men who have come from outside the city, claiming that the clashes inside Ramada are having a negative impact on the economic situation of citizens.

North of Ramadi, a U.S. convoy came under attack near the town of Baghdadi, with one Humvee destroyed, according to a Baghdadi police Lt. Mohammed Abdel Karim.

[...]

A gunbattle erupted Sunday between militants and U.S. troops in the main market in the northern town of Beiji [a northern city that houses Iraq's biggest oil refinery source], killing at least six people and wounding 20 others, according to witnesses.

Star Tribune article

On to Mosul...

AS Iraqi leaders trumpeted a swift victory in Fallujah, insurgents pressed claims on the northern city of Mosul, which is fast becoming Iraq's latest front.

An outbreak of rebel attacks on police stations and government buildings has paralysed parts of the city.

Corpses have been splayed on city streets. Police have said they fear going back to their jobs.

Families are fleeing en masse, but insurgents have assured city bureaucrats that it is safe to return to work, that rebels will secure city streets.

Herald Sun - Australia - article

U.S. troops fought insurgents on the streets of Iraq's third-largest city on Monday, where violence has surged during a week-long offensive to capture the city of Fallujah from rebels.

Isolated pockets of fighting occurred mainly in the west and southwest of Mosul, 240 miles north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

[...]

"I expect the next few days will bring some hard fighting," U.S. northern commander Brigadier General Carter Ham said in a statement. "The situation in Mosul is tense, but certainly not desperate."

MSNBC article

Well, it's early yet.

All Falluja posts

US doctors treat a blindfolded Iraqi prisoner's broken leg.
Picture: AP

Falluja update

2004-11-14T14:20:00.000-06:00

When the report came out on Monday last week that curfews were called and Allawi was shutting down the airport for 48 hours and closing the Syrian and Jordanian borders as the U.S.-led assault on Falluja was officially "ratcheted up", it seemed to me that the implication was they were expecting it to be over in two days. This weekend's news looks a little different. Pehaps I was just misreading the signal, but my faith in the government's propensity to boast and then change stories or make excuses is unshaken.

The U.S. military's ground and air assault of Fallujah has gone quicker than expected, with the entire city occupied after six days of fighting, Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski said Sunday.

Natonski, who designed the ground attack, said he and other planners took lessons from the failed three-week U.S. assault on the city in April, which was called off by the Bush administration after a worldwide outcry over civilians deaths.

[...]

"Had we done in April what we did now, the results would've been the same," Natonski said during a visit to the U.S. Marines' 1st Cavalry Division's 2nd Brigade, the unit charged with isolating Fallujah under a security cordon.

[...]

Natonski described the six days of ground war as a "flawless execution of the plan we drew up. We are actually ahead of schedule."

Several pre-assault tactics made the battle easier than expected, he said.

Canada.com article

Yes, I think one of those tactics was to broadcast for weeks before the invasion that it was coming so that many of the leaders and other "bad guys" could get on out of the city, along with half the population. That was helpful. Another tactic of choking off food and water supplies and cutting off hospital access was helpful in that it debilitated many of the people still occupying the city. A third tactic of laying down daily airstrikes ahead of the ground forces' entry to bomb to rubble those who remained was also quite helpful. Goes a lot quicker if most of the people are gone.

Another key tactic was choking off the city, the responsibility of the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, Natonski said.

That move prevented insurgents from slipping out of the city during the assault, although many, including top leaders like Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi and Omar al-Hadid, are thought to have fled.

"We never expected them to be there. We're not after Zarqawi. We're after insurgents in general," Natonski said.

Well, that's a rich admission. We're not after the guy we continue to insist is the mastermind of all the attacks across the whole of Iraq. Perhaps because he doesn't exist. And perhaps, if he does and he was in Falluja (something the Iraqis have been denying ever since they were first attacked), the previous weeks of warnings without blocking off the city made it a stroll in the park for him to get out. Eh? Do Americans never wise up to this military drivel? Do the military commanders and officers believe it themselves? I know some don't.

On Sunday, U.S. Marines and Army units were still battling gritty bands of defenders scattered in buildings and bunkers across the Sunni Muslim stronghold. Behind them, Iraqi troops were enmeshed in the painstaking task of clearing weapons and fighters from every room of Fallujah's estimated 50,000 buildings.

U.S. forces now occupy -but have yet to subdue -the entire city. U.S. officers said that it still could take several days of fighting to clear the final pockets of resistance.

But that doesn't seem to prevent us from announcing "mission accomplished" and having all the "reporters" file stories that Falluja is a done deal.

In the central Iraqi town of Buhriz, 40 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of Baghdad, demonstrators marched to protest the Fallujah offensive and denounce Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi.

Associated Press Television News footage showed some armed men, heads covered with black hoods and brandishing Kalashnikov rifles, among the marchers. The demonstrators, estimated by police to number between 60 and 70, carried banners calling Allawi a "thug" and "traitor."

Another "pocket" to be dealt with.

After troops uproot the insurgents, contractors are supposed to swarm into Fallujah to cart away rubble, repair buildings, and fix the city's utilities, Wilson and Natonski said.

Score another one for Halliburton.

The Iraqi government has already picked leaders for Fallujah, and thousands of Iraqi police and paramilitary forces have been recruited to try to impose order.

They may be a little "ahead of schedule" on picking leaders, too. (Something I'm sure is going to go over big with the Fallujans whose sole purpose since the U.S. invaded Iraq is to remain free of occupying leadership.) Because, rosy reports of "mission accomplished" notwithstanding, the fighting in Falluja is anything but over.

On Sunday eyewitnesses reported a large explosion in Baghdad near hotels frequented by foreigners while Aljazeera reported the downing of a US helicopter near Falluja.

Aljazeera article

The American-led assault on the city is in its fifth day.

A BBC correspondent in the city centre says US marines are still under sniper attack at their main base.

BBC article

[T]he main European military hospital of the US military said US soldiers wounded in Iraq have been arriving for treatment since the Falluja offensive at more than double the previous rate.

Aljazeera article

Keep in mind that the hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, is not the destination of lightly wounded soldiers.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Iraq...

US helicopter and tank fire blasted a building harbouring suspected insurgents near the restive city of Baiji, also north of the Iraqi capital, killing several rebels, a US military spokesman said.

I Africa article

As American marines have blasted their way through Falluja, another insurgent outpost has grown stronger 30 miles down the road in Ramadi.

Insurgent attacks against American troops here have markedly intensified in the past two weeks, and enemy combatants are now conducting a more determined battle, commanders say.

"My personal take is that Ramadi is a less-publicized Falluja, in the sense of the combat you face every time you go into town," said Capt. Ben Siebold, a company commander in an Army battalion stationed in the downtown at a small and aptly named base, Combat Outpost. "In the time I've been here, the nature of the enemy has changed," he said. "He's more determined, more organized and a little bit better shot."

According to commanders in Ramadi, the heightened violence here is an outgrowth of the siege of Falluja and the holy fasting month of Ramadan. They say some insurgent fighters from Falluja have migrated to Ramadi, a city of 400,000 on the Euphrates that is the capital of the sprawling Anbar Province, which covers most of western Iraq.

[...]

"Ramadi is really out of control, and they needed another infantry battalion in the city," said Lt. Col. Justin Gubler, commander of the First Battalion, 503rd Infantry, at Combat Outpost. Up to 150 foreign fighters are in the city, he said. "We've seen an increase in their proficiency and their will to fight."

NY Times article

Middle East expert Juan Cole has today's AP roundup....:

AP rounds up Saturday's events in Iraq. Explosions went off in Baghdad and at the Green Zone, apparently not far from caretaker Prime Miniter Iyad Allawi.

Guerrillas at Mosul detonated a car bomb as an Iraqi national guard unit from Kirkuk went by, injuring seven of them.

Guerrillas at largely Turkmen Tel Afar also clashed with US troops.

The US arrested 4 Sunni clerics from the Association of Muslim Scholars.

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat reports that a Communist representative in the 100-member National Council in Iraq, which serves as a sort of interim parliament, was assassinated while traveling in the north near Kirkuk on Saturday. This would be like a senator being assassinated in the United States.

...and news from Mosul in yesterday's post:

Az-Zaman reports that telephone calls with residents of Mosul reveal that the guerrillas who took control of the city's streets the day before yesterday have burned all the police stations in the city and have released from jails all the criminals that had been incarcerated in them. In the center of Mosul, eyewitnesses said, the offices of government service agencies and economic targets had been set ablaze. A number of shops were attacked and/or looted.

Armed men roamed the streets and manned checkpoints between city quarters. Mosque preachers called on Mosul residents to flood into the streets to protect their quarters and government offices and shops. The main streets seemed deserted. American troops had withdrawn from the center of the city, but maintained control of bridges.

All signs of Iraqi national guardsmen and police had disappeared. The police chief of Ninevah province resigned (other reports say he was fired by the Allawi government).

US military spokesmen denied that guerrillas were in control of the city, and maintained that US troops and Iraqi national guardsmen continued to advance into it. US warplanes repeatedly bombed suspected safe houses of the guerrillas. Guerrillas had killed one American serviceman in Mosul on Thursday.

A troubling bit of ethnic politics emerged when it became apparent that the remaining Iraqi troops fighting alongside the Americans against guerrillas in Mosul were mostly Kurds. Mosul, a city of about 1 million, is largely Sunni Arab but is up north near the Kurdish areas. Arab-Kurdish relations hit a new nadir at the news, and AP reported that "Gunmen attacked the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party in an hourlong battle that a party official said left six assailants dead." This attack on the PUK HQ was probably in revenge for the Kurdish national guardsmen cooperating with US troops.

Little Fallujan girls
Photo courtesy Aljazeera

Shia authority condemns Falluja attacks

2004-11-14T14:01:00.000-06:00

Baghdad's highest Shia authority has denounced the US military assault on Falluja and called on all Iraqi religious authorities to support the Iraqi people.

[...]

Al-Khalissi said he and his faction fully support the religious decree issued by Iraq's influential Sunni Muslim authority, the Association of Muslim Scholars, in which it prohibited Iraqis from participating in the US attack on Falluja.

"I am here today as a Shia figure belonging to a prominent Shia religious family to confirm that Iraqi Sunni Muslims are our brothers and dear countrymen. We lived since the dawn of Islam in this country as brothers.

"We back our brotherly Sunni Muslims in the city of Falluja and nothing on earth will spoil our brotherhood with them."

Aljazeera article

Well, the Great Uniter has succeed in one thing that might not have happened if he hadn't invaded Iraq - uniting the religious Shias and secular Sunnis.

For its part, the movement of the Iraqi Muslim Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr said it has suspended its support for the forthcoming election in January 2005.

Refusing Iraqi Red Crescent admission to Falluja

2004-11-14T13:14:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I posted that the one good piece of news was that the U.S. military had decided to let the Iraqi equivalent of the Red Cross deliver humanitarian supplies to the people of Falluja who are without water, food or medicine. It looks like that might have been a mistaken report. Today, they are appealing to the (useless) UN:

"There is no need to bring [Red Crescent] supplies in because we have supplies of our own for the people," said US marine Colonel Mike Shupp.

"Now that the bridge (into Falluja) is open I will bring out casualties and all aid work can be done here (at Falluja's hospital)," he added.

He said he had not heard of any Iraqi civilians being trapped inside the city and did not think that was the case.

But aid workers say there are still hundreds of families left in the city, which has been pummelled by sustained aerial bombardment and artillery fire in recent days.

"We know of at least 157 families inside Falluja who need our help," said Firdus al-Ubadi of the Iraqi Red Crescent.

[...]

The Iraqi Red Crescent sent seven trucks and ambulances to Falluja on Saturday, hoping to get food, blankets, water purification tablets and medicine to hundreds of families trapped inside the city during the past six days of fighting.

"There is no need to bring [Red Crescent] supplies in because we have supplies of our own for the people," said US marine Colonel Mike Shupp.

"None of the injured residents are being allowed to come to the hospital, while those outside are not allowed to go into the town," Abu Fahd said.

"The town is suffering from cuts in power and water supplies. There are no medicines or ambulances either.

"The injured and the dead are now on the streets. Many families want to get out of their houses, but they have no alternative shelters to go into," he said.

"The US forces have prevented us from entering the town claiming it is not safe. US forces have said they control 80% of the town."

"I have asked them to allow the relief team into the areas they control, to offer humanitarian aid for women, children and the elderly, and transfer the injured to the hospital, but they have refused," Abu Fahd said.

Aljazeera article

Update 3:45pm:ABC is reporting today that the Red Crescent was permitted to go through.

Here's the Reuters report:

An Iraqi Red Crescent aid convoy has entered Falluja with the first humanitarian goods to reach the city since a U.S.-led offensive began five days ago, a Red Crescent spokeswoman says.

"They are in the city," Firdoos al-Abadi said on Saturday.

She said 30 volunteers with five trucks and three ambulances had driven into the city, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, after an initial delay at a U.S. checkpoint.

Here we go again

2004-11-13T15:21:00.000-06:00

THE United States and the Iraqi interim government have claimed "mission accomplished" in the battle for the rebel stronghold of Fallujah.

Sunday Herald article

One can only hope that Butthead McChimp will don his flight suit and head on over there.

Genocide in Iraq

2004-11-13T14:59:00.000-06:00

Some interivew excerpts with journalist Fahil Badrani in Falluja:

The BBC News website spoke by phone to Fadhil Badrani, an Iraqi journalist and resident of Falluja who reports regularly for Reuters and the BBC World Service in Arabic.

We are publishing his and other eyewitness accounts from the city in order to provide the fullest possible range of perspectives from those who are there:

[November 11:]
A row of palm trees used to run along the street outside my house - now only the trunks are left.
The upper half of each tree has vanished, blown away by mortar fire.
From my window, I can also make out that the minarets of several mosques have been toppled.
There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable.
Smoke is everywhere.
[...]
I tried to flee the city last night but I could not get very far. It was too dangerous.
[...]
Without water and electricity, we feel completely cut off from everyone else.
[...]
It is hard to know how much people outside Falluja are aware of what is going on here.
I want them to know about conditions inside this city - there are dead women and children lying on the streets.
People are getting weaker from hunger. Many are dying from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever.
Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens.

More...

[November 10:]

I think it is misleading to say the US controls 70% of the city because the fighters are constantly on the move.

They go from street to street, attacking the army in some places, letting them through elsewhere so that they can attack them later.

The fighters have told me they are prepared to resist the Americans until the death.

They say they are fighting not just for Falluja, but for all Iraq.

In the Hasbiyyah area, I counted the bodies of at least six US soldiers lying on the ground.

Some of them were badly mangled with various bits blown off. Others were in better condition, as if they had taken small-arms fire.

I noticed two of the US soldiers were still clutching their guns tightly across their chests. But most of their weapons were missing.

Some of the dead are beginning to rot in the streets.

But the living do not exactly smell great either - I have not had a bath for a week.

More...

[October 18:]

Hospitals have all but run out of supplies and most people know this.

But still the injured are being taken there - just so that they can be near the doctors and receive some comfort.

The Iraqi health ministry has not sent any extra supplies.

Food supplies are also running out. All shops are shut.

Some people who fled the city a few days ago have begun returning because they ran out of food.

More...

Iraq War vet speaks out

Former Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, a 12-year Marine veteran, lives in Waynesville, North Carolina, a small town in the Smoky Mountains just outside of Ashville, where he spoke to the World Socialist Web Site. He is one of a growing number of American soldiers returning from Iraq who have become outspoken opponents of the war.

Massey entered Iraq as part of the initial US invasion in March 2003. He witnessedâ€”and in some cases participated inâ€”the killing of innocent civilians. During a single 48-hour period, he says, he saw as many as 30 civilians killed by US gunfire at highway checkpoints.

[...]

Massey said that the hostility of the Iraqi people to the presence of the US military grew exponentially over the time he was there in direct response to the brutal methods employed by American troops against the entire Iraqi population.

[...]

"When you put your hand up in the air with a closed fist, in the Marines it means you want them to stop," he said. "But, as we later learned, it's actually the international sign of solidarity. It has a totally different meaning for the Iraqis - to them it was a sign like hello. And that was just one example of how we were not trained properly to understand the cultural differences between us and them.

The bottom line is they [the military command] don't see the need to teach culture and humanity to men whose singular purpose is to kill. And that was just one of the cultural miscues."

I'm sorry, but I have to stop right here and interrupt. That's not a cultural miscue. That's insane. Surely there are military policy makers and trainers in the Marines who are old enough to recognize the American Black Panthers' most famous gesture. Surely there are some who have seen this gesture used around the globe. How can the Marines encourage their troops to use such an obviously well-known gesture of solidarity for another purpose in communicating in a foreign land? What the hell is wrong with an open-faced palm? Now that's a universal gesture that means stop. Are the Marines so precious they think the world should know their own little club signals?

There is just so much wrong with that. The more I read about our military, the more amazed I am that they manage to survive.

"We are committing genocide in Iraq, and that is the intention."

Read the rest of this incredible interview yourself here.

...or do what you want...you will anyway.

Falluja to Mosul - ongoing

2004-11-13T08:24:00.000-06:00

In the northern city of Mosul, a car bomb exploded as a convoy of Iraqi National Guards passed by in the eastern part of the city, witnesses said. In recent days, an armed uprising in sympathy with Fallujah's insurgents has killed 10 Iraqi National Guards and one American soldier since Thursday, the U.S. military said.

The region's governor blamed the uprising on ''the betrayal of some police members'' and said National Guard units had arrived to help quell the violence. Also, a U.S. infantry battalion was diverted from Fallujah and sent back to Mosul because of insurgent attacks in that northern city.

[...]

Overnight, two city mosques were hit by airstrikes after troops reported sniper fire from inside. On Saturday, two Marines were killed by a homemade bomb southeast of Fallujah.

Boston.com article

Something tells me the "insurgents" are far more organized than the U.S. military would like to believe. Maybe the belief in Allah's rewards to martyrs makes it possible for the resistance to lead the Marines around by the nose, spreading out and slipping back in, spreading out again, each group waiting its turn to play its part, each member willing to wait patiently for the time to die in glory for country and Allah. Police volunteers patiently biding their time within the ranks of Allawi's U.S.-sponsored brigades and then "betraying" them when the time is ripe. On the other hand, maybe they just get scared when the fighting approaches. Yeah, that's probably it. After all, we know the insurgents don't stand and fight like real men.

Insurgents appeared to be taking advantage of the thinning out of American troop strength around Fallujah as U.S. commanders report an increase in small-scale rebel attacks.

[...]

Overnight, two city mosques were hit by airstrikes after troops reported sniper fire from inside. On Saturday, two Marines were killed by a homemade bomb southeast of Fallujah.

[...]

A U.S. warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb to destroy an insurgent tunnel network in the city Saturday, according to CNN embedded correspondent Jane Arraf.

U.S. officials said they hoped the attack would be the final assault on Fallujah, followed by a house-to-house clearing operation to search for boobytraps, weapons and guerrillas hiding in the rubble.

[...]

A four-vehicle convoy of the Iraqi Red Crescent carrying humanitarian assistance arrived at the heart of Fallujah on Saturday after the Iraqi and American troops allowed them to pass.

Well, that is one bit of better, if not good, news.

In Fallujah, Saif al-Deen al-Baghdadi, an official of the insurgents' political office, urged militants to fight U.S. forces outside Fallujah.

''I call upon the scores or hundreds of the brothers from the mujahedeen ... to press the American forces outside'' Fallujah, al-Baghdadi said in a telephone interview late Friday with Al-Jazeera television.

''We chose the path of armed jihad and say clearly that ridding Iraq of the occupation will not be done by ballots. Ayad Allawi's government ... represents the fundamentalist right-wing of the White House and not the Iraqi people,'' he said a reference to Iraq's prime minister, who gave to the go-ahead for the Fallujah invasion.

[...]

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said four American helicopters had been hit by insurgent ground fire in two separate attacks near Fallujah. Their uninjured crews were able to return to base safely.

Earlier this week, three helicopters were downed by ground fire during the Fallujah operation.

[...]

U.S. and Iraqi forces launched their mass ground assault against Fallujah late Monday after the city's hardline clerical leadership refused to hand over extremists, including Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has a $25 million bounty on his head from the Americans.

The clerics insisted al-Zarqawi was not there.

[...]

Dawoud said Saturday that al-Zarqawi and Fallujah leader Abdullah al-Janabi ''have escaped.''

And how handy for the possibly one-legged, possibly dead, possibly non-existent, but certainly U.S-assisted in that he was let go three previous times, Zarqawi that the U.S. announced its big attack on Falluja for days before moving in, permitting anyone who wanted to get out plenty of time to do so.

All Falluja posts

Update 11/14: The permission for Iraq's Red Crescent to deliver humanitarian aid may have been a premature report.

From Falluja to Mosul - Part II

2004-11-13T06:50:00.000-06:00

The army diverted a battalion of soldiers to Mosul on Thursday, it was disclosed on Saturday.

[...]

Fallujah was covered in smoke midday Saturday as U.S. artillery, tanks and soldiers launched what military hoped would be the final attack.

[...]

Iraqi insurgents have been shooting at U.S. helicopters, hitting two on Saturday. But none of the crew were hurt, and U.S. casualties total 24 dead since the attack began. Five Iraqi government soldiers have also been killed.

More than 400 U.S. wounded have been airlifted to Germany.

Civilian casualties are not known.

CBC Canada article

From Falluja to Mosul

2004-11-12T16:03:00.000-06:00

Journalists based in Mosul are telling Aljazeera that local anti-US fighters may have taken control of the northern Iraqi city, contrasting US military statements that the situation is under their control.

[...]

Eyewitnesses in Mosul told Aljazeera.net that major sections of the city had been seized by anti-US fighters who were seen patrolling the streets.

"They control the streets, no one is going out for fear of more US air strikes," Abd Allah Ghafar, a freelance journalist in the city told Aljazeera.net in a telephone interview.

"The situation is very bad, there is no security, only armed resistance groups on the streets and it seems there is no government in Mosul," he said.

Another Mosul-based journalist told Aljazeera that US armoured vehicles were forced to retreat from two main bridges they had blocked off after coming under a fierce mortar barrage and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fire.

[...]

US military spokesman Captain Angela Bowman explained that retreat was carried out at the request of the governorate to allow civilians to attend weekly prayers at the mosques.

[...]

"In the southwestern area there are terrorists and insurgents on the streets but this is not city wide. We are still well in control," she said.

Aljazeera article

The new Napalm; and Satan apparently hides in a hospital

2004-11-12T07:34:00.000-06:00

"The enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in Falluja," declared a Marine lieutenant-colonel.

source

Two of three Fallujan clinics have been bombed, the brand new central hospital flattened, and the only remaining hospital taken over by the U.S. Marines at the outset of "Operation Phantom Fury".

Everything one needed to know about the true, unspinnable foreign policy of the second George W Bush administration is represented by the "capture" of the first strategic target in the assault on Fallujah: the general hospital, on the left bank of the Euphrates, now totally cut off from the city.

[...]

The assault, dubbed Operation Phantom Fury, perversely started on Laylat e-Qadr, the most important and holy night of the year for the Islamic world.

In terms of the information war, the hospital was indeed the most strategic of targets. During the first siege of Fallujah in April, doctors told independent media the real story about the suffering of civilian victims. So this time the Pentagon took no chances: no gory, disturbing photos of the elderly, women and children - the thousands unable to leave Fallujah in advance of this week's offensive, the civilian victims of the relentless bombing.

But this did not prevent the world from seeing doctors and patients at the hospital handcuffed to the floor - as if they were terrorists. Hospital director Dr Salih al-Issawi told Agence France-Presse that the Americans blocked him and other doctors from going to the center of Fallujah to help another clinic in distress; he also said an ambulance that tried to leave the hospital was shot at by the Americans - just like in April, when all ambulances were targeted. The Geneva Convention is explicit: in a war situation, hospitals and ambulances are neutral.

[...]

The main story playing in the Arab world in the past 24 hours is that of Mohammed Abboud - who saw his nine-year-old son bleed to death of shrapnel wounds when his house in Fallujah was hit because he could not venture out to go to a hospital. Abboud had to bury his son in his own garden.

[...]

There is no power, no water, shops are closed, food is scarce and practically no medical supplies remain, according to Dr Sami al-Jumaili, speaking to al-Jazeera. No more clinics are open throughout the city - and there is no possible way to estimate how many civilians are dead, blown up, burned or injured, although al-Jumaili tells of "scores of injured civilians". A brand-new clinic funded by a Saudi Islamic relief non-governmental agency was bombed by the Americans during the weekend, as well as a medical dispensary in the city center: this was apparently the last place where anybody could get any medical attention.

Asia Times article

Some of the heaviest damage was incurred Monday night by air and artillery attacks that coincided with the entry of ground troops into the city. U.S. warplanes dropped eight 2,000-pound bombs on the city overnight, and artillery boomed throughout the night and into the morning.

"Usually we keep the gloves on," said Army Capt. Erik Krivda, of Gaithersburg, Md., the senior officer in charge of the 1st Infantry Division's Task Force 2-2 tactical operations command center. "For this operation, we took the gloves off."

Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns.

Kamal Hadeethi, a physician at a regional hospital, said, "The corpses of the mujahedeen which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted."

Olympian article

Not a lot about that in the mainstream media. Or this, which comes from Occupation Watch (probably raghead propaganda, eh?):

US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988.

"The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally-banned chemical weapons," resistance sources told Al-Quds Press Wednesday, November 10.

[...]

"The US troops have sprayed chemical and nerve gases on resistance fighters, turning them hysteric in a heartbreaking scene," an Iraqi doctor, who requested anonymity, told Al-Quds Press.

"Some Fallujah residents have been further burnt beyond treatment by poisonous gases," added resistance fighters, who took part in Golan battles, northwest of Fallujah.

In August last year, the United States admitted dropping the internationally-banned incendiary weapon of napalm on Iraq, despite earlier denials by the Pentagon that the "horrible" weapon had not been used in the three-week invasion of Iraq.

After the offensive on Iraq ended on April 9 last year, Iraqis began to complain about unexploded cluster bombs that still litter their cities.

Ooops. Should have never admitted it. Oh well, we don't care.

The sources said that the media blackout, the banning of Al-Jazeera satellite channel and subjective embedded journalists played well into the hands of the US military.

Therefore, US troops opted for using internationally banned weapons to soften the praiseworthy resistance of Fallujah people.

Friday Falluja update

2004-11-12T06:29:00.000-06:00

Iraq rebels step up attacks
Chicago Tribune

As U.S.-led troops pressed their offensive Thursday in Fallujah, insurgents stepped up their counterattacks elsewhere in Iraq, exploding a car bomb that killed 17 people and wounded 20 in Baghdad and storming six police stations in an audacious attack in the northern city of Mosul.

[...]

In response to the wave of rebel attacks across Iraq, the U.S. military has been forced to detach an armored battalion from the outskirts of Fallujah to Mosul, The New York Times reported. The troop movement has stripped about a third of the forces that had cordoned off Fallujah in an effort to catch insurgents attempting to flee, the Times said.

The violence in Mosul appeared to be part of a coordinated attack. Dozens of gunmen stormed six Iraqi police stations, looting them of weapons and ammunition and setting some of the buildings ablaze.

Battles in Mosul raged for hours between the insurgents and U.S.-led forces, and officials suggested that the city would be dangerous for some time. A Kurdish official suggested that some Iraqi police had been cooperating with the insurgents.

[...]

In Baghdad, the midday car bomb on bustling Sadoun Street killed 17 people, wounded 20, destroyed two buildings and at least 12 cars.

[...]

Also Thursday, a car bomb exploded near the headquarters of a leading Kurdish political party in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing one bystander and injuring four others.

[...]

According to The Washington Post, residents in southern Fallujah reported that the bodies of 20 foreign fighters were found outside a truck repair shop, and many had been killed by a gunshot to the head. Insurgents native to Fallujah said the foreigners were executed for deserting their positions when the U.S.-led assault began Monday.

[...]

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that many insurgents may have slipped away and blended into Iraqi society, only to wreak havoc elsewhere in the country.

"That's the nature of an insurgency," Myers said.

[...]

"It's not working at all for the insurgents. We're exactly on plan. The insurgents are paying a heavy price for their resistance."

Fallujahâ€™s empty promise
MSNBC

As battles go, Fallujah has been a big disappointment to the U.S. military, which had wanted to draw the Iraqi insurgents into a cataclysmic mistake: a â€œfairâ€ fight. Not that any officer relished the prospect of a Stalingrad- or Hue-like street-to-street, house-to-house blood-letting. But the alternative has even less to recommend it: a continuing series of roadside bombings and mortar and grenade ambushes that bleed American forces and frustrate efforts to secure Iraq ahead of Januaryâ€™s elections.

Unfortunately, from a military standpoint, the latter, less attractive option is the reality, and the choice was never the U.S. militaryâ€™s to make. Iraqâ€™s insurgents, with weeks to react as U.S. forces gathered and postured about what was about to happen in Fallujah, decided against turning it into al-Alamo. They saw the folly of taking on the Americans on their own terms, and they did what intelligent, determined guerrilla movements have always done in the face of overwhelming force: They faded away and lived to fight and kill and maim another day.

[...]

â€œIn military terms, Fallujah is not going to be much of a plus at all,â€ says Bernard Trainor, a retired three-star Marine Corps general. â€œThe downside is that weâ€™ve knocked the hell out of this city, and the only insurgents we really got were the nut-cases and zealots the smart ones left behind â€” the guys who really want to die for Allah.â€

U.S. assault on Fallujah turns south, repels insurgent push
USA Today

An Iraqi journalist in the city reported seeing burned U.S. vehicles and bodies in the street, with more buried under the wreckage. He said two men trying to move a corpse were shot down by a sniper.

Two of the three small clinics in the city have been bombed, and in one case, medical staff and patients were killed, he said. A U.S. tank was positioned beside the third clinic, and residents were afraid to go there, he said.

"People are afraid of even looking out the window because of snipers," he said, asking that he not be named for his own safety. "The Americans are shooting anything that moves."

Falluja Battle Erupts, Unrest Spreads Elsewhere
Reuters

A battle erupted near a mosque in northwest Falluja on Friday just hours after U.S. Marines said insurgents were now trapped in the south of the city.

Insurgents determined to show they are undeterred by the four-day-old offensive in Iraq's most rebellious city have hit back hard with attacks and bombings elsewhere, causing two days of bloody chaos in the northern city of Mosul.

Iraqi authorities struggling to contain the unrest roiling Sunni Muslim cities have imposed curfews on Baghdad, Mosul, Baiji, Ramadi and Falluja this week. A curfew has been in force in Samarra since U.S.-led forces stormed it last month.

U.S. Captain Angela Bowman described Mosul as calm overnight, with its three million residents under a dusk-to-dawn curfew, after Thursday's attacks on nine police stations.

An American soldier was killed in the Mosul fighting, the military said, and Bowman said U.S. planes staged air strikes on Thursday as U.S. and Iraqi forces sought to restore order.

[...]

"They can't go north because that's where we are. They can't go west because of the Euphrates river and they can't go east because we have a huge presence there. So they are cornered in the south," Marine Master Sergeant Roy Meek told Reuters.

Well, that "corner" seems to have grown to include some other cities now, including Mosul. Oh my. Three million. Falluja only ever started with half a million or less.

Violence in Falluja and elsewhere in Iraq has taken a toll on U.S. forces. Two planes ferried 102 seriously wounded soldiers from Iraq to the main U.S. military hospital in Germany on Thursday, joining 125 who arrived earlier in the week.

[...]

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society urged U.S. forces and the Iraqi government to let it deliver food, medicine and water to Falluja, describing conditions there as a "big disaster."

"We call on the Iraqi government and U.S. forces to allow us to do our humanitarian duty to the innocent people," said Red Crescent spokeswoman Firdoos al-Ubadi.

A U.S. military spokesman said the Red Crescent had permission to help the many civilians who have fled Falluja, but could not say if it had been granted access to the city itself.

I think you can safely call that a "no".

Rasoul Ibrahim, a father of three, fled Falluja on foot on Thursday morning and arrived with his wife and children in Habbaniya, about 12 miles to the west, at night.

He said families left in the city were in desperate need.

"There's no water. People are drinking dirty water. Children are dying. People are eating flour because there's no proper food," he told aid workers in Habbaniya, which has become a refugee camp, with around 2,000 families sheltering there.

Aside from the heinous humanitarian issue here, those forces that were drawn off the "tight noose" U.S. forces had set up surrounding the city to prevent escapes is now proven to be letting escapes happen - if Rasoul is under the age of 50 or so, as no fighting age men were to be allowed to leave Falluja.

No matter how the media portray this offensive, it is obvious from reading between the lines of these reports that it has truly "gone south".

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, writing in Britain's Sun newspaper, said the Falluja offensive would improve security across Iraq and pave the way for elections due in January.

Under other circumstances, that would be funny.

Falluja update

2004-11-11T10:39:00.000-06:00

U.S. forces backed by an air and artillery barrage launched a major attack Thursday into the southern half of Fallujah, trying to choke Sunni fighters in a shrinking cordon. The military estimated 600 insurgents have been killed in the offensive but said success in the city won't break Iraq's insurgency.

The Fallujah campaign has also sent a stream of American wounded to the military's main hospital in Europe. Planes carrying just over 100 bloodied and broken troops were arriving Thursday at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, a day after 64 others were brought in.

The large number of wounded sent to Germany suggests that fighting may be more intense, at least in some areas, than the military had initially indicated.

Violence escalated dramatically in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul amid a campaign by guerrillas this week to step up attacks elsewhere to divert troops from Fallujah.

[...]

Gen. Myers, speaking on NBC's "Today" show, called the offensive "very, very successful."

But he acknowledged that guerrillas will move their fight elsewhere. "If anybody thinks that Fallujah is going to be the end of the insurgency in Iraq, that was never the objective, never our intention, and even never our hope."

"There has always been pockets of resistance in this type of fighting, just like there was in World War II we would claim an island is secure and fight them for months after that," Marine Capt. John Griffin said in Fallujah. "Claiming the city is secure doesn't actually mean that all the resistance is gone, it just means that we have secured the area and have control."

ABC article

I'm not sure what "control" means if you are still fighting people. That you are killing more of them than they are of you, perhaps.

In Mosul, residents said masked gunmen were roaming the streets, setting police cars ablaze and holding some of the city's bridges despite a government announcement a day earlier that Iraqi forces would seal the bridges and enforce a curfew in the city, one of Iraq's largest.

ABC

Eighteen U.S. troops and five Iraqi government soldiers have been killed in action since the start of the assault on Fallujah, the U.S. commander of the operation said Thursday.

Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine Division, also said 69 American service members and 34 Iraqi troops had been wounded since the assault began Monday against insurgents in the Sunni Muslim stronghold.

Miami Herald article

Falluja

2004-11-11T07:56:00.000-06:00

Two U.S. helicopters were shot down near Fallujah on Thursday as fighting in the insurgent stronghold continued.

...A surge in violence elsewhere has accompanied the assault on Fallujah, including a car bombing in Baghdad on Thursday that killed at least 17.

CBC article

Good story from Falluja

2004-11-11T07:54:00.000-06:00

U.S. marines pushing into Fallujah said Thursday that they had found a starving Iraqi hostage in a building they were searching.

The man was chained at his wrists and ankles and shackled to a wall. He told reporters he thought he would be killed. He'd been beaten and appeared malnourished.

Troops who are continuing their massive assault against Sunni insurgents in the city freed the man.

He said he was an Iraqi taxi driver who had been held for 10 days.

CBC article

Would the man have been a hostage if we had not invaded Iraq? Well, we don't know what his fate might have been, do we? Hussein could have tortured him. Anyway, add this story to the possibilities for pro-American propaganda.

Zeynep

2004-11-10T13:40:00.000-06:00

Answers my question about Gonzales, who apparently was general counsel for Enron as well as the WH...

Ashcroft, go forth in comfort. You have been one-upped.

Missing: America's anti-war movement

2004-11-10T06:56:00.000-06:00

A murderous operation is under way in Fallujah and the entire media and political establishment in the US is an accomplice in the crime. The unfolding massacre in the Iraqi city has failed to elicit an outcry, or even significant questioning of the assault, from these circles.

...Here is a city, surrounded and cut off, whose male population between the ages of 15 and 50 faces being "put to the sword" by the US military, and no one in the media can stir himself to raise an objection.

The deliberate demolition of a major urban center by a great power is unlike anything since World War II. The phrases used by the media - warplanes and tanks are "softening the defenses;" the city of 300,000 is being "cleansed" of insurgents - are meant to conceal from the American public the true character of the assault: a homicidal operation aimed at destroying a major source of opposition to the colonialist US occupation and its puppet regime.

What is the crime of the resistance forces in Fallujah - even if one accepts the unproven and dubious claims about the presence of alleged arch-terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi? That they resist by force of arms a foreign occupier, who has designs on the country's territory and natural resources.

If this is a crime, then so was the resistance to the Hitler regimeâ€™s occupation of much of Europe. Why not retroactively endorse the repression meted out by the Nazis to the French or Italian resistance? Perhaps it is time to recognize the essential wisdom and maturity of German policy during World War II. After all, the Nazis too claimed that their opponents were "terrorists" and "criminals."

There is no serious examination in the American media of the opposition in Iraq. Who are these people? Why are they fighting? Who is dying at the hands of the American military? These questions interest the embedded journalists and their superiors at home almost as little as they interest the Pentagon.

...No editorialist at a major newspaper or television news commentator has even hinted at moral qualms over the American onslaught. Not one columnist at the New York Times or Washington Post thinks Fallujah worth mentioning. Last week's Democratic Party presidential hopeful hasn't a word to say.

...This disgusting blood lust dominates official America, under conditions in which tens of millions have registered their opposition to the war through protests, polls and in the recent elections. Some 80 percent of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's 55 million voters "or 44 million people" oppose the Iraq war. This sentiment is being systematically excluded and suppressed.

World Socialist Website article

All of which leads us straight to the question on the world's mind: Where are the anti-war, protesting Americans? Where is the march on Washington?

Falluja this morning

2004-11-10T05:50:00.000-06:00

After nearly 16 hours of fighting, 1st Sgt. Ronald Whittington, with the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, appeared stunned after five of his men went down in a single moment after dashing through machine-gun fire to cross the road in front of the mosque.

"It was bad, bad," Whittington said. "I don't know where the shooting was coming from."

By evening, there was a lull in the fighting, and American tanks and other units were patrolling along the main east-west road through Fallujah, variously called Main Street, Highway 10 and, by the Americans, Route Michigan. Relentless airstrikes and artillery fire abated, at least momentarily.

1st Lt. Lyle L. Gilbert, a spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said American and Iraqi forces controlled at least a third of the city.

Military officials said the invading force also quickly overran Jolan, the northwestern sector thought to hold as many as 1,000 of the most hardened resistance fighters.

Duluth News-Tribune article (NYT report)

U.S. forces, facing booby-trapped buildings, snipers and roadside bombs, seized a third of Fallujah on Tuesday after fierce overnight fighting that left 10 Americans and two Iraqi soldiers dead and much of this Sunni Muslim stronghold in ruins.

...Insurgent gunmen, running from rooftop to rooftop, rained machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades down on advancing U.S. Army and Marine units. Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles responded with heavy shelling that left buildings in flames.

In the city's southeastern factory district, soldiers with the Army's 1st Infantry Division reported being fired on by women and children armed with assault rifles.

...American commanders said early today that they had not fully secured the northern half of Fallujah. Still, they said the operation involving as many as 15,000 troops was running on or ahead of schedule, and the central government in Baghdad designated an Iraqi general to run the city once resistance is broken.

Knight Ridder article

History repeats, and all that.

As insurgent fighters shot mortars, Spc. Kelly Licon of the 1st Infantry Division screamed, "Forfeit! You're just wasting your ammo. You've woken up Godzilla."

How old is Kelly? Apparently, this is the mentality of the whole operation, though. The whole U.S. army. Remember the pamphlets dropped in Afghanistan warning people that our missiles are so powerful and smart they could target right through a window? So give up. I watched a video clip the other day where a young marine was crowing that the 'insurgents' didn't have any guts - he wished they'd come out and fight like men - stand and fight, and instead they come out and shoot at us and then run. Dufus. Here are some comments on the subject from a post at Under the Same Sun about our ridiculous psy-ops (An Iraqi translator from the group said through a loudspeaker: "Brave terrorists, I am waiting here for the brave terrorists. Come and kill us."):

It is weird to watch isn't it? The army with vastly overwhelming firepower, high-tech armor, fantastic medical-care for the wounded, the ability to call for air-strikes, etc. still employs this come let's fight mano-to-mano rhetoric as if there's this level playing field upon which some personal, primitive battle is being fought.

---

I'm reminded of Japanese forces in WWII trying to sap our Marines' morale by hollering "F_ck Babe Ruth."

Christ. Men. Go figger. In fact, judging by our tactics, the Japanese taunts probably worked. And for all I know, the stupid juvenile taunts work on the Iraqis, too. Probably, though, they don't need taunts to get them to come out and take shots at us. Just guessing. And probably, they're keenly aware of what's at stake for them and so aren't inclined to do it foolishly - like "stand and fight". Just guessing.

[T]he U.S. military has sent up to 15,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops into the battle, backed by tanks, artillery and attack aircraft.

...Earlier, as many as eight attack aircraft - including jets and helicopter gunships - blasted guerrilla strongholds and raked Fallujah's streets with rocket, cannon and machine-gun fire ahead of U.S. and Iraqi infantry as they advanced just a block or two behind the curtain of fire.

Canada.com article

Yeah! Come out and fight ya cowards!

U.S. forces battled south through Fallujah's narrow lanes and alleys Wednesday to take control of 70 per cent of the insurgent stronghold and rebel fighters were bottled up in a strip of land flanking the main east-west highway that splits the city, the military said.

Major Francis Piccoli, of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, characterized fighting overnight as "light to moderate" and said U.S. casualties were "extremely light." "There's going to be a movement today in those areas. The heart of the city is what's in focus now," he said.

...The U.S. military said at least 71 militants had been killed as of the beginning of the third day of the intense urban combat. The number was expected to rise sharply once U.S. forces account for insurgents killed in air strikes.

Militants, which includes women and children who are now firing on the U.S. troops, and anyone in the vicinity when the bombs drop.

Although U.S. troops have punched into the center of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, they might later encounter many more insurgents who have escaped, perhaps to fight another day in another place.

"I personally believe that some of the senior leaders probably have fled," said Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the multinational ground force commander in Iraq.

article

Surprise.

Well, we'll just have to flatten every city in Iraq. And after that, bomb the entire countryside, laying a veritible carpet of depleted uranium throughout the country. Or maybe some of those biologicals we have. And then we'll have to take the Lord's wrath to neighboring unfriendly countries into which the "insurgents" will no doubt have escaped.

A nine-year-old Iraqi girl recovers from a skull fracture and two broken legs in the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad. A U.S. Army Bradley fighting vehicle crashed into her family's car. (AP /John Moore)

An Iraqi boy walks near a burning oil pipeline on the outskirts of Fallujah, Iraq, on Wednesday. Insurgents set off the fire using rocket-propelled grenades Tuesday night. (AP/Asaad Mohessin)

Photos courtesy Canada.com

As promised

2004-11-09T18:31:00.000-06:00

An influential group of Sunni Muslim clerics on Tuesday urged Iraqis to boycott the first democratic election in decades in protest at a U.S.-led offensive against the rebel-held city of Falluja.

The call by Iraq's Muslim Clerics' Association, which has helped negotiate cease-fires in Falluja in the past, could appeal to Sunnis at the forefront of a revolt against the U.S. presence in Iraq and undermine the credibility of the election due on Jan. 27.

..."The interim government of (prime minister) Iyad Allawi bears full legal and historical responsibility for the war of annihilation Falluja is exposed to today at the hands of the occupation forces and militias of some parties in the interim government," he said.

Reuters article

Juan Cole from this morning....

That the Iraqi Islamic Party is now contemplating leaving the Allawi government raises the question of whether a mass Sunni Arab boycott of the elections is in the offing, thus fatally weakening the legitimacy of any new government.

FUBAR.

Darn the luck

2004-11-09T17:34:00.000-06:00

The commander of the US-led forces in Iraq on Tuesday predicted more "tough urban fighting" in Fallujah as about 2,000-3,000 insurgents were resisting the massive US offensive started on Sunday.

"I think we're looking at several more days of tough urban fighting," Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, the operational level commander responsible for coalition military activities in Iraq, told a Pentagon news briefing through a video teleconference.

...Metz said at least half of the Iraqi citizens had left Fallujah and US forces "have seen very, very few civilians on the streets."He said he personally believed that some of the senior insurgent leaders also probably had fled, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Xinhuanet article

So we can still use him as the bogeyman. How handy.