A very clear summation of the actual situation in Iraq at this time. Not quite the picture painted by the American major media and certainly not the rosy fantasy of imminent victory that FauxNews is trying to spin, but watch what happens over the next few months and see whose assessment turns out to have been more accurate.


A thousand Fallujahs
By Pepe Escobar

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FK12Ak04.html

"The bombs being dropped on Fallujah don't contain explosives, depleted uranium or anything harmful - they contain laughing gas - that would, of course, explain [Pentagon chief Donald] Rumsfeld's misplaced optimism about not killing civilians in Fallujah. Also, being a 'civilian' is a relative thing in a country occupied by Americans. You're only a civilian if you're on their side. If you translate for them, or serve them food in the Green Zone, or wipe their floors - you're an innocent civilian. Just about everyone else is an insurgent, unless they can get a job as a 'civilian'."
- Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl, author of the blog Baghdad Burning

Once again the US has been caught in a giant spider's web. Fallujah now is a network: it's Baghdad, Ramadi, Samarra, Latifiyah, Kirkuk, Mosul. Streets on fire, everywhere: Hundreds, thousands of Fallujahs - the Mesopotamian echo of a thousand Vietnams. The Iraqi resistance has even regained control of a few Baghdad neighborhoods.

Baghdad residents say there are practically no US troops around, even as regular explosions can be heard all over the city. Baghdad sources confirm to Asia Times Online that the mujahideen now control parts of the southern suburb of ad-Durha, as well as Hur Rajab, Abu Ghraib, al-Abidi, as-Suwayrah, Salman Bak, Latifiyah and Yusufiyah - all in the Greater Baghdad area. This would be the first time since the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, that the resistance has been able to control these neighborhoods.

Massive US military might is useless against a mosque network in full gear. In a major development not reported by US corporate media, for the first time different factions of the resistance have released a joint statement, signed among others by Ansar as-Sunnah, al-Jaysh al-Islami, al-Jaysh as-Siri (known as the Secret Army), ar-Rayat as-Sawda (known as the Black Banners), the Lions of the Two Rivers, the Abu Baqr as-Siddiq Brigades, and crucially al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Unity and Holy War) - the movement allegedly controlled by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The statement is being relayed all over the Sunni triangle through a network of mosques. The message is clear: the resistance is united.

The mobile mujahideen
Fallujah civilians have told families and friends in Baghdad that the US bombing has been worse than Baghdad suffered in March 2003.

The Fallujah resistance for its part seems to have made the crucial tactical decision of clearing two main roads - called Nisan 7 and Tharthar Street - thus drawing the Americans to a battle in the center of town. Baghdad sources close to the resistance say that now the Americans seem to be positioned exactly where the mujahideen want them. This is leading the resistance to insist they - and not the Americans, according to the current Pentagon spin - now control 70% of the city.

There are at least 120 mosques in Fallujah. A consensus is emerging that almost half of them have been smashed by air strikes and shelling by US tanks - something that will haunt the United States for ages. The mosques stopped broadcasting the five daily calls for prayer, but Fadhil Badrani, an Iraqi reporter for BBC World Service in Arabic and one of the very few media witnesses in Fallujah, writes that "every time a big bomb lands nearby, the cry rises from the minarets: 'Allahu Akbar' [God is Great]".

Badrani also disputes the Pentagon spin: "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. They say they are fighting not just for Fallujah, but for all Iraq." The mujahideen tactics are a rotating web - Ho Chi Minh's and Che Guevara's tactics applied to urban warfare by the desert: snipers on rooftops, snipers escaping on bicycles, mortar fire from behind abandoned houses, rocket-propelled-grenade attacks on tanks, Bradleys being ambushed, barrages of as many as 200 rockets, instant dispersal, "invisible" regrouping.

Iraq's borders with Syria and Jordan, all highways except a secondary road leading to the borders, plus Baghdad's airport, all remain closed. Baghdad in theory has become an island sealed off from the Sunni triangle - but not for the resistance, which keeps slipping inside. Hundreds of Iraqis are stuck on the Syrian border trying to go back home.

Riverbend, the Iraqi girl blogger quoted above, writes of "rumors that there are currently 100 cars ready to detonate in Mosul, being driven by suicide bombers looking for American convoys. So what happens when Mosul turns into another Fallujah? Will they also bomb it to the ground? I heard a report where they mentioned that Zarqawi 'had probably escaped from Fallujah' ... so where is he now? Mosul?"

He could well be in Ramadi, where hundreds of heavily armed mujahideen now control the city center - with no US troops in sight.

Tough tactics
The Pentagon is pulling out all stops to "liberate" the people of Fallujah. According to residents, the city is now littered with thousands of cluster bombs. In an explosive accusation - and not substantiated - an Iraqi doctor who requested anonymity has told al-Quds Press that "the US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons". The Washington Post has confirmed that US troops are firing white-phosphorus rounds that create a screen of fire impervious to water.

Dr Muhammad Ismail, a member of the governing board of Fallujah's general hospital "captured" by the Americans at the outset of Operation Phantom Fury, has called all Iraqi doctors for urgent help. Ismail told Iraqi and Arab press that the number of wounded civilians is growing exponentially - and medical supplies are almost non-existent. He confirmed that US troops had arrested many members of the hospital's medical staff and had sealed the storage of medical supplies.

The wounded in Fallujah are in essence left to die. There is not a single surgeon in town. And practically no doctors as well, as the Pentagon decided to bomb both the al-Hadar Hospital and the Zayid Mobile Hospital. So far, the International Committee of the Red Cross has reacted with thunderous apathy.

The Sunni revolution
When a few snipers are capable of holding scores of marines for a day in Fallujah - an eerie replay of the second part of Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket - and when eight of 10 US divisions are bogged down by a few thousand Iraqis with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers, the fact is the US does not control anything in Sunni Iraq. It does not control towns, cities, roads, and it barely controls the Green Zone, the American fortress in Baghdad that is the ultimate symbol of the occupation.

In 1999, the Russians bombed and destroyed Grozny, the Chechen capital, a city of originally 400,000 people. Five years later, Chechen guerrillas are still trapping Russian troops in a living hell there. The same scenario will be replayed in Fallujah - a city of originally 300,000 people. All this destruction - which any self-respecting international lawyer can argue is a war crime - for the Bush administration to send a brutal message: either you're with us or we'll smash you to pieces.

The Iraqi resistance does not care if thousands of mujahideen are smashed to pieces: it is actually gearing up for a major strategic victory. The strategy is twofold: half of the Fallujah resistance stayed behind, ready to die like martyrs, increasing the already boiling-point hatred of Americans in Iraq and the Middle East and boosting their urban support. The other half left before Phantom Fury and is already setting fires in Baghdad, Tikrit, Ramadi, Baquba, Balad, Kirkuk, Mosul and even Shi'ite Karbala.

They may be decimated little by little. But the fact is Sunni Iraqis are more than ever aware they are excluded from the Bush administration's "democratic" plans for Iraq. The only Sunni political party in interim premier Iyad Allawi's "government" is now out. And the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) - the foremost Sunni religious body - is now officially boycotting the January elections. There are unconfirmed reports that Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi, the head of the mujahideen shura (council) in Fallujah and a very prominent AMS member, died when his mosque, Saad ibn Abi Wakkas, was bombed.

The Sunni Iraqi resistance is now configuring itself as a full-fledged revolution. According to sources in Baghdad, the leaders of the resistance believe there's no other way for them to expel the American invaders and subsequently be restored to power - especially because if elections are held in January, the Shi'ites are certain to win. Contemplating the dogs of civil war barking in the distance, no wonder Baghdad's al-Zaman newspaper is so somber: "Iraq will remain a sleeping volcano, even if the state of emergency is extended forever."


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it. " --Noam Chomsky

Wow, what a reliable news source.

Sometimes you have to look really hard to find bad news to share with us.

...how some people are wishing and hoping that we will lose the War on Terror. They should hang their heads in shame.

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http://www.freedomswatch.org/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx

When religion ruled the world...wasn't that the Dark Ages?

Or actually go to the Mideast and have the experience of being kidnapped by some of these scumbags.... I'm sure they would quickly change their stances on the war after that. These terrorists don't care if you are against the war or not, they'll still kill you anyways.

Livefree only looks for bad news.

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"What exactly is this foreign policy experience?" Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. "Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no."

Unlike the rest of us, here's an account from someone who has to live with this crap:

http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/

happy now, its a source a lot closer than you'd like!

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I have something to hide.

How many times must we go over this. OK, I'll say it slowly so you can understand.

IRAQ...WAS...NOT...A...PART...OF...THE..."WAR...ON ...TERROR"

It only is now because we went there and indirectly created the terrorist networks. It is our own fault that Iraq may pose a terrorist threat once we leave.

Anyway, how does that article indicate wanting to lose the war on terror? It is simply saying how the Iraqi resistance is not going to die anytime soon and that they are becoming increasingly organised, both of which are self apparent.

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"I see no reason why...there should not arise a United States of Europe" Winston Churchill, 1946

"It only is now because we went there and indirectly created the terrorist networks. It is our own fault that Iraq may pose a terrorist threat once we leave.

Anyway, how does that article indicate wanting to lose the war on terror? It is simply saying how the Iraqi resistance is not going to die anytime soon and that they are becoming increasingly organized, both of which are self apparent."


It has already been proven that Saddam Hussein supported terrorists from the new information from the investigation of the UN Oil for Food scandal. And as everybody remembers Bush said terrorists, and people who support and harbor terrorists are the enemy. Our invasion in Iraq did not create terrorist networks. These groups moved in to Iraq because they are scared that we will win, they would rather fight us in Iraq than their own country. I hate how the media and these democrats have called the insurgents the Iraqi resistance, if the Iraqis really do not want us in there to create a democratic country, then why would they register to vote? The truth is that we are fighting the terrorists, not the people, that had the power, and now they want it back. This is just another way to demonize America and Bush. And it is pretty hard for the terrorists to become more organized when their main base of operations (Fallujah) has been taken over by the coalition.

IRAQ...HAS...ALWAYS...HARBORED...AND...BRED...TERR ORISTS...
THEREFORE...IT...IS...PART...OF...THE..."WAR...ON. ..TERROR"

Did I say it slow enough for you to understand?

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Be Alert: The world needs more Lerts