Another Head

As the Incompetent Evil Little Prince has declared that heads should roll, another unfortunate has lost his.

Islamic militants Tuesday beheaded a South Korean who pleaded in a heart-wrenching videotape that ''I don't want to die'' after his government refused to pull its troops from Iraq. He was the third foreign hostage decapitated in the Middle East in little over a month.

  Boston.com article

And of course the only logical response is another airstrike on Falluja.

Hours later, the United States launched an airstrike in Fallujah on what the U.S. military said was a safehouse used by followers of the country's most-wanted terrorist: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian whose Monotheism and Jihad movement was believed behind the beheading of the hostage, Kim Sun-il.

That and the Idiot in Chief repeating that we will not be intimidated by barbarians.

Mass graves, torture, rape rooms. All those Saddam horrors we had to liberate the Iraqis from.

We've seen plenty of the torture and heard about the rapes (pictures of which we have yet to see released. Supposedly they're coming soon.)

Mass graves?

Go to Falluja. Try what used to be their soccer fields before April this year.



Or this latest...



The latest airstrike on this town that we've been bent on destroying was purportedly an attempt to get Bad Guy Zarqawi. And if you believe that....

Speaking at the rally, local Sunni cleric Abd al-Hamid al-Jumaili urged Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr to continue with his uprising against the occupation.

"The myth of Zarqawi is similar to that of weapons of mass destruction," he said.

"It is a pretext to strike peaceful towns, to hit mosques and patients and orphans. We should recognise the plot hatched against Falluja, Karbala and Najaf."

  Aljazeera article

So now we're back to air strikes on civilians?

A U.S. military plane fired missiles Saturday into a residential neighborhood in Fallujah, killing at least 20 people and leveling houses in the restive Sunni Muslim city, police and residents said.

...U.S. Marines declined comment and referred queries to the U.S. command, which said it had no comment.

  Iraq Net article

I'm sorry, but I think this deserves some serious comment.

Losing Falluja

A top Marine officer here says the compromise that gave control of Fallujah to an Iraqi brigade in exchange for the withdrawal of Marines may be a failure.

"This was a noble experiment that may not work out," Col. Larry Brown, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force's operations officer, said this weekend. "The brigade has not performed as well as we had hoped."

His comments were the strongest indication from the U.S. military that the effort to contain the insurgency by depending on the Fallujah Brigade was failing. It also was a sign that the model — turning to former Iraqi military including those who served Saddam Hussein — would not solve security problems after the U.S.-led coalition hands sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.

The Fallujah Brigade was established to end three weeks of combat in April that killed 600 to 700 insurgents and 10 Marines. The Marines withdrew to the outskirts of Fallujah after Sunni members of the now-disbanded Iraqi Governing Council objected to the bloodshed. Led by former members of Saddam's military and made up largely of insurgents who had been fighting the Marines, the brigade was supposed to bring peace to the city and meet several demands.

  USA Today article

Are we winning?

Falluja Update

I don't have more on the US move into the city again, other than this Juan Cole comment:

Insurgents killed 12 Iraqi soldiers of the Fallujah Brigade in Fallujah on Wednesday. This is the first time that insurgents targeted the indigenous Iraqi brigade.

The story he links says this:

The attack will put General Latif's security forces through their first major test and raise questions over whether the Americans will redeploy their positions closer to the town.

US troops are still within striking distance of Fallujah but the American military has tried to keep a low profile to give attempts to calm Fallujah an Iraqi face.

Members of the force say a joint patrol with American troops had been scheduled to pass through Fallujah at the time of the attack.

  ABC Australia article

As I understand it (which could be wrong), US troops are supposed to stay out of Fallujah. Certainly they are not welcome. So, I can't imagine that they thought a patrol through the City would go without incident.

Maybe that's the "test" of General Latif's forces - perhaps he's expected to be able to provide protection for the American troops to make their appearance as a show that we are still in charge. Not working, huh?

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

Fallujah, again!?!

This is a very direct, repeated, specific mission. People seem to forget (or maybe never knew) that those contractors whose bodies were desecrated by Iraqis in Fallujah were not the opening salvo in the war on Fallujah. Several civilian bombings and many instances of degrading treatment of civilians where Coalition soldiers used excessive force preceded that. In fact, according to local reports, the opening salvo was in the early stages of the Iraq invasion when Americans fired on a group of protestors outside a school, killing 15 unarmed people.

I guess the big dicks couldn't take the sting of suggestion that they got run out of Fallujah with their tails between their legs after going in their to exact vengeance for those four dead contractors. (Bush wanted heads to roll.) We'll flatten the whole damned town before we leave, because it has been successfully repelling our attacks since we started, and we cannot let that go unanswered. And that is just how ignorant our military planners are.

US tanks have taken up positions around Falluja and appear to be preparing to enter the Iraqi city.

At least 15 tanks were seen on Wednesday taking up temporary stations one kilometre past the US checkpoint that leads into the city.

Iraqi officials in Falluja confirmed that American troops had asked local authorities to provide them with safe passage through the city.

  Aljazeera article

It should be interesting to hear what story they make up about why they went in this time.

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

Fallujah - after the dust has settled

We really kicked ass there, didn't we? That'll teach 'em to roast Americans. See if they try anything like that again.

Wearing an American-supplied uniform and armed with a battered AK47 rifle, Abdullah lounged at the checkpoint on the outskirts of Fallujah.

A month ago he probably had his face masked by an Arab headscarf, and was launching attacks against US marines. Now, as a member of the US-sponsored Fallujah Brigade, he controls access to the city.

...US marines pulled out last month and an Iraqi security force hastily formed from Saddam Hussein's old army moved in. The fighting was over as abruptly as it had begun, with US commanders lauding the peace deal.

"It's an Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem," said a marine general optimistically. Fallujah has since become a model for dealing with the Shia uprising in the south.

But few on the ground share such optimism. There may be peace, but officers say Fallujah has simply been handed over to the insurgents.

A US officer said: "All we've succeeded in doing is paying off the mujahideen to stop shooting at us. There's a cauldron of hate out there and its going to boil over."

The town is currently a no-go area for US troops, and by extension, any westerner. Despite lucrative rebuilding contracts, none has entered the city since four contractors were killed and their bodies mutilated in March, prompting the American incursion.

...Many American military officials now privately accept that going into Fallujah was a mistake. Seventy marines and an estimated 800 Iraqis were killed in six weeks of clashes. The fighting inspired the Shia uprising in the south.

But officials also say that leaving the insurgents unbeaten may prove a greater problem.

"It's difficult to understand what's been achieved in Fallujah. We've got to start from scratch all over again," said a member of the civil and military affairs team outside the city.

...Abdul Razzak is a civil engineer who has spent the past month assessing the war damage for compensation claims.

So far he has a bill running into the multi-millions with thousands of claimants. The US military has agreed to hand out £650 million.

  Telegraph UK article

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