- Update, Thursday 1400 GMT: In addition to all the following, even the New York Times is reporting that “Senior Marine intelligence officers in Iraq are … emphasizing that expectations for improved conditions [in Fallujah] have not been met.” Sounds bad, huh? Read the whole piece there.
I’ve seen confirmation elsewhere of my earlier surmise that the US/Allawist assault on Fallujah was timed to be over by November 22, the day the “Reconstructing Iraq” conference is due to open in Sharm al-Shaikh, Egypt…
Well, the best-laid plans can go awry. The resisters/insurgents in Fallujah are still very active in several parts of the city, according to this report on Al-Jazeera.net this morning.
The report quotes Iraqi journalist Fadil al-Badrani, who is still in the city, as saying:
- “Fierce resistance is still raging with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and machine guns against the US forces stationed on the outskirts of Falluja.”
… Badrani said American war planes and tanks had resorted to bombing the holdout sectors of the city and some areas were still not under their control.
“Clashes are still continuing the southern and eastern edges of the town. US forces have so far failed to storm the northern al-Julan neighbourhood,” he said.
He added that US-led forces had abandoned al-Julan and the northern parts of the city, resorting shelling and aerial bombing those areas.
The reports in the western media about aerial bombing raids over parts of the city offer confirmation of the view that: (1) fierce resistance is continuing, and (2) there are sizeable parts of the city over which the US forces notably do not exercize on-the-ground control. If they did, then (1) they wouldn’t need the aerial bombardments, and (2) the air attacks would actually be impossible, given the density of US forces present on the ground throughout the whole city.
So the situation continues to be one of active fighting, with the US employing massively disproportionate violence. (This latter, in large part because of the lack of active US or pro-US “boots on the ground”, as per the Rumsfeld doctrine.)
Not that the massive disproportionate violence will “win” the war for the US– or even, necessarily, win this battle for them. They can Grozny-ize the whole city–and it looks from the pictures as though they’ve come close to achioeving that already.
But has Grozny-ization worked in Chechnya, in terms of forcing the Cherchens into submitting to Moscow’s will? No. Don’t expect it to work in Fallujah either.
So we can expect more, grindingly more, of the same. With the banner of “democratization” pounded into the shattered ruins there. It doesn’t matter what the banner is called, the effects on human lives are exactly the same.
As for the Sharm al-Shaikh conference? Who on earth knows how that will turn out… Or the Iraqi “elections” either, come to that. (Note: they’ve had at least two rounds of “elections” in Chechnya since the fighting there started. Neither of them resolved the problems, and the last round was notably anti-democratic.)
Aren’t these topics “made to order” for a CSM “depth, not sound bites” article? The NYT and WP busily paste together a “wrap” of the latest 24 hours. They quickly mention a jumble of events in 12 places. None answers exactly what is going on at the Fallujah hospital or whether civilians, supply trucks, ambulances, or only military ply the streets or bridges.
It may be too dangerous for an unarmed journalist, whether pacifist or not, to check the vital signs or IDs of bodies in allies and buildings. Or will you trust snipers not to shoot from behind or, unlike that second-guessed and triple-stressed Marine, have no fear that a wounded jihadi will use his “last full measure of devotion,” expecting sweet reward in Paradise, to nail another Crusader?
Neither is it possible to know what happens in encounters with no imbeded journalists. Not too many jihadis or Baathist insurgents welcome correspondents. The US allows some. Whom does opinion punish more?
Yes, but it would be nice to have one comprehensive filing on what has gone on at the hospital, which is probably as safe as any place might be in Fallujah at this time.
“Not too many jihadis or Baathist insurgents welcome correspondents.”
Setting aside your demonstrably false assumption that the “insurgents” (sic) are predominantly “jihadis” or Baathists*, your assertion is incorrect. The resistance in Falluja and elsewhere have actually invited journalists to imbed with them. The fact is that they WANT journalists and other observers to witness what is happening at the hands of the Americans, and to make the world aware of it.
*There is a complete absence of evidence of the presence of any appreciable number of “jihadis” or Baathists among the “insurgents” (sic). On the contrary, even U.S. officials have admitted that there are very few “jihadis” among the captured and killed. As for the Baathists, for the most part they seem more interested in jockying for in positions of power in The New Iraq
Links, Shrin. How about some links?
Yes, there are lots of Europeans and expatriate Middle Easterners who posture solidarity with the “resistance” and vituperate lots of anti-US blather in front of cameras and reporters. Remember Iran’s first “revolutionary” president who accompanied Khomeni back from France? Yes, a stout fellow, a fine anti-imperalist. People like Bani Sadr are very loquacious, but do not represent the insurgents, and often become the first casualties of the regimes they help create.
But these are not the insurgents. I’ve not encounters any Herbert Matthews or Edgar Snow style interviews with any “Commander X” putative leader of the resistance. No such people are mentioned at this BLOG, Cole’s site, or the mainline press.
Don’t allege censorship or a media conspiracy. If such spokespeople did exist, and if they weren’t simply fanatics, Baathists, or thugs, we’d have read about it.
Or, if you mean the Zarqawi and bin Laden types, indeed THEY would like the press to cover their bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, excecutions. These people are terrorists, and an Iraq ruled by such groups would be no improvement over Saddam. But I don’t believe Zarqawi or Osama have given any full interviews of late.
John, your response is so incoherent I can hardly make head or tail of it. What ARE you trying to say? Do you even know? I have found when someone is as incoherent as you were in your last post, they are usually just trying to blow enough smoke into the air to conceal the fact that they have no argument at all.
In the mean time, here are some facts, all of which have been published in the mainstream media:
1. The claim that Falluja is or ever was a “center of Saddam loyalists” is the exact opposite of reality. It was traditionally a center of opposition to and defiance of Saddam, and its people periodically paid a heavy price for that.
The fact is that Falluja had all the potential in the world to be a model of Iraqi-American cooperation. At the time of the invasion Falluja offered no opposition or resistance at all. In the first few weeks of the occupation Falluja remained quiet and passive. Falluja’s mayor was pro-American, and Fallujans, like most Iraqis, were glad to be rid of Saddam, and hoping for the best from their “liberators”.
The fact is that not a shot was fired in or from Falluja intil after the Americans occupied the city, making their presence as obtrusive, intrusive, and obnoxious as possible, and finally shot and killed 18 unarmed demontrators who thought they were exercising their new-found “freedom” in demonstrating against the takeover of their school by the American military.
2. The claim that Falluja was a city “held prisoner by foreign ‘jihadis'” was and is utter nonsense. Even the American invasion and occupation forces finally admitted that they have found only a tiny handful of foreigners among the fighters (and alleged fighters) there, and that the overwhelming majority of the “insurgents” (sic), both real and alleged, were not only Iraqis, but Fallujans.
3. The “insurgents” (sic) in Falluja did indeed invite journalists to imbed with them in order that some journalists will have an opportunity to witness and report on the Iraqis’ experiences of “liberation” American style. Journalists have previously spent days at a time with groups of resistance fighters in Falluja and elsewhere, traveling with them, and interviewing and reporting on them in, for example, Newsweek.
4. Those who claim that Abu Mus`ab Zarqawi is behind every bad thing in Iraq (except the high pregnancy rate among female American troops) have yet to produce a single shred of actual evidence that he is even alive let alone that he is in Iraq, let alone that he has been in Falluja at all. In addition, many of the depictions of him and his activities are contradictory, and sometimes have him in three or four different places at the same time.
Even if he IS conducting “operations” in Iraq, he appears by all objective criteria to be a very small player. Only a tiny percentage of the total number of attacks have been claimed by the group alleged to be affiliated with him.
5. As for the claims that Iraq is swarming with Al Qa`ida terrorists, the Americans have come up as embarrassingly empty handed there as they did with all their WMD “finds” that turned out to be everything but WMD’s. One of their highly publicized WMD “finds” actually turned out to be feed supplements for chickens!
To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841 – 1935)