Fallujah not ready for return of civilians: US military

[floda]

NEAR FALLUJAH: Ongoing fighting between US marines and insurgents in the former rebel bastion of Fallujah makes the imminent return of residents announced by the Iraqi government unlikely, US officers said yesterday.

"Enough supplies and basic services will be in place to start returns next week," the interim Iraqi government said on Thursday.

But a marine officer based outside the city, requesting anonymity, said that such a scenario "seems highly unlikely, if you consider that we are still fighting the rebels at this very moment".

snip

"We shouldn't plan on anything happening before the first of January, at best... the difficult thing being to discriminate between the civilians and the bad guys," said Marine Lieutenant Rex McIntosh.

more

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Gulf%2C+Middle+East+%26+Africa&month=December2004&file=World_News2004121825720.xml

[uppityperson]

1. The bad guys wear uniforms, shoot people and drop bombs

Not difficult to discriminate between.

[manic expression]

2. Exactly

Most people are so foolishly happy about how we "beat" those "bad guys" in Fallujah. Reality will set in once the hit-and-run tactics start again. Once Fallujah is repopulated (if it can be), soldiers will be sitting ducks again. Our decimation of the city has made the situation even worse, as Iraqis, once more, get to see what American "liberation" is all about.

[DELUSIONAL]

3. Fallujah has given the US a major black eye

WAR CRIMES WAR CRIMES WAR CRIMES WAR CRIMES WAR CRIMES

This is how many people of the world view what the US has done to this city.

Also if you intend to travel overseas -- be prepared to answer questions about Falluja. The bushies/rovies may control the news in the US but the rest of the world is well aware that Fallujah was/is a killing field.

The new era of the Ugly American has arrived.

reporting from somewhere -- overseas -- I have been lectured to about Falluja by dozens of people. I let people vent -- and then I tell them that I didn't vote for the SOB.

Photos of the US War Crimes are getting out to the rest of the world. Meanwhile Americans (the vast majority) seem to be unaware of the rage the rest of the world feels -- "the rules don't apply to the US" -- "where will bush decide to attack next?" "Which culture, which people will he destroy next?" "How can 59 million Americans be such *&*&^%$%$# ass holes."

Four years ago Americans were given a pass -- but not anymore.

Imagine some of the best rants you've read at DU -- and then you can imagine the sort of rants you can hear overseas.

I've talked to Germans living abroad and they are comparing bush to Hitler -- saying that both men were able to appeal the the uneducated stupid people in their countries.

[uppityperson]

4. "they don't know what to do with it" remark

Woman behind me on a plane last month "we have control of Fallujah, we gave them what they want and they don't know what to do with it" as I was headed into red state area. I wanted to ask what it was they wanted that we gave them, a destroyed city, a big battle, or (as she meant) freedom?

[jmcgowanjm]

5. "we are still fighting the rebels at this very moment".

We are?

Poll: How many Americans think this.

When was the last time you heard "Fallujah" on TV?

America's Fallujan dystopia

With a few notable exceptions the media has accepted
the recent virtual news blackout in Falluja. 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. Fifty
American soldiers died in the taking of the city; 20 more died
in the following weeks -- before the reports
stopped.

http://uruknet.info/.?p=m8210

I keep going back to Grozny December 1999,
saying to myself, 2more weeks, can they (Chechens)
hold out for 2 more weeks.

It's been 46 days since the Battle of Fallujah started.
If Mafkarat al Islam is 1/2 right, over 500 US have died
there in the last week.

Knights Ridder reports that Marine officials are preparing
for casualties at "levels not seen since Vietnam."

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/008643.html

And when this gets out...

http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/solic/scale.pdf

Draft, Tactical nukes(no such thing), Creating a bigger distraction. Or, of course, the Empire falls.

[jmcgowanjm]

6. BTW-Crude $46.28 up $2.10

[Deja Q]

7. I miss the days when it was over $55/barrel. Made people shit their pants.

:-(

[jmcgowanjm]

16. Those people need to get their adult diapers ready again

When they find out that no matter what price crude
no more can or will find its way into the
Delaware River or the Hudson River Estuary,
or the Houston Ship Channel.

[bemildred]

11. Interesting PDF.

Can't spell Aerial, but at least he has a clue.
Some of that it appears they tried, but didn't have the patience for it.
Still drinking the hi-tech KoolAid, too.
Still don't understand it's the same old BOOM! at the end, whatever
electronics you attach.

Get a load of this guy:

Urban areas should become our preferred medium for fighting. We should optimize our force structure for it, rather than relegating it to Appendix Q in our fighting doctrine, treating it as an exception to the norm. In reality, Appendix Q should deal with fighting in open terrain--an increasingly rare event--while our main doctrine contemplates the city fight.

As we embrace the urban fight, we must stop thinking of it as only an obstacle. In fact, urban fighting presents many advantages to the American joint and interagency team. Among these are ready access to the population, to infrastructure, water, fuel, shelter, communications and power. Cities are a treasure trove of information and intelligence, if we develop the right tools for extracting this most valuable commodity. If cities indeed present obstacles and disadvantages to modern warriors, let us remember that the enemy is equally disadvantaged. In short, urban operations have the potential for fostering sustained military and interagency success, provided we adapt ourselves to reality instead of clinging to Sun Tzu’s bad advice. The city is an opportunity for maneuver.

What is the difference between 1,000 miles and 500 miles? The answer is eight million people. The National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, Calif., presents modern brigade commanders with 1,000 square miles of challenges. Probably the greatest training facility in the world for ground forces, the NTC represents also the fundamental shift in training strategy that revolutionized our Army in the 1980s. It remains the formative experience for Army officers today--a challenge that is often much harder than real combat.

However, the thousand square miles of desert and mountain terrain is virtually devoid of people. When a brigade task force deploys into the maneuver box, the commander must concern himself with offensive and defensive operations, reconnaissance, fire planning, air defense, nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) defense and a host of other tactical issues (not forgetting, of course, the infamous NTC sand turtle). These training challenges are not trivial, as any NTC veteran knows. In a larger sense, however, they shrink to insignificance when overlaid on the modern urban battlefield.


http://www.ausa.org/www/armymag.nsf/0/AA1C74DA9302525585256CEF005EED3D?OpenDocument

[jmcgowanjm]

15. The Hubris!: instead of clinging to Sun Tzu’s bad advice?!

This man has no idea of geography or
demographics. The 2 primary reasons
for cities. Social and physical fault lines.

Look at every city. Say, Montreal, San Francisco,
Warsaw, Baghdad.

Cities are the wealth of nations. Cities are collection,
distribution points.

This just shows that the military has no idea where
it's energy (money, wealth, power) to operate
comes from.

Some more "bad" advice from Sun Tzu-

Chapter 3 : Offensive Strategy
Generally, in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin
it is inferior to this. To capture the enemy's entire army is
better than to destroy it; to take intact a regiment, a company, or
a squad is better than to destroy them. For to win one
hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of
skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the
supreme excellence.
Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack
the enemy's strategy. Next best is to disrupt his alliances
by diplomacy. The next best is to attack his army. And the
worst policy is to attack cities.Attack cities only when there is
no alternative because to prepare big shields and wagons
and make ready the necessary arms and equipment require
at least three months, and to pile up earthen ramps against
the walls requires an additional three months. The
general, unable to control his impatience, will order his troops
to swarm up the wall like ants, with the result that one-third
of them will be killed without taking the city. Such is the
calamity of attacking cities.

[jmcgowanjm]

17. Thank you for the link, bemildred

I'll be studying this and posting snippets from it.

Kind of like the military side of PNAC/Brzezinski/
Huntington-Fools

As with Rome, we have our honest men who are inept and
wise men who are helpless. They still think they can cure
the beast and set it back up on its feet again. But in its agony
it cannot hear their obvious truths and lumbers on to its
doom.

http://www.swans.com/library/art10/mdolin03.html

[bemildred]

20. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

A fucking awesome piece. :thumbsup:

Another guy I read said we are approaching a "singularity".

So we have to choose between these two ostriches. Things have reached such a pitch that I would find some comfort in the thought that the imperial counselors had a plan for the United States. But they have long ago lost their way.Let's just note in passing that Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Manuel Noriega were American clients. Our wars are against our own stooges. Now, to use the commentator's crummy cant, "what message does that send?" After advertising such a bad deal, where are our new stooges to come from? Obviously, from the ranks of powerless cronies willing to take something rather than nothing and harboring the delusional hope that they can discern just how the big guy wants them to dance. Lots of luck, bozos. But what good is a stooge if you have to use your own army to prop him up? A quality stooge should supply an indigenous force to relieve you of the trouble and embarrassment. That's the whole point of a stooge. A stooge, a stooge, my Empire for a stooge! This is incompetence to the power of incompetence.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

8. In another few weeks they'll declare the entire country of Iraq

"not ready for the return of citizens."

Only oil workers and military need apply.

[w4rma]

9. "All Iraqis not checked in to their nearest concentration camp will be

subjected to the effects of being in a free fire zone. If you are in a free fire zone and wounded, maimed or killed it is your own fault for not checking into our "safe" concentration camps."

I wouldn't put it past these whackjobs to pull something like that.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

10. Jeebus, I'm afraid you're on to something there.

You have to know they're itching to do something like that.

[Karenina]

13. Testing the plan in Fallujah

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2839717

Before rolling it out in the U.S.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1446190#1446457

[leftchick]

12. My heart breaks for these people....

I am so sorry for what the US has done to you and your once beautiful city and country. All americans should be ashamed...






An Iraqi father and his son sit inside a tent near the highway leading to their war-torn city of Falluja, December 18, 2004. The U.S. military said it would allow some residents to return to Falluja, nearly six weeks after an offensive was launched to rid the city west of Baghdad of rebels and despite continued clashes in some districts. REUTERS/Omar Khodor

[underpants]

14. The march of "Freedom" doesn't seem to have made it there yet

-

[PurityOfEssence]

18. But...but...we won this a month ago

We can't even secure a puny little burg like this? That's seriously dangerous. Look at a map of the place, it's absolutely tiny.

What's worse is that if we can't "pacify" this place, the rest of the country knows just how limited our abilities are.

The fantasy dreamland of this administration is going to crash around all of our ears, and it's not going to be pretty. It's just beyond raging words of frustration to spit anything close to the incredulity I have for these these would-be world conquerers. They just make it up as they go along with no bearing on anything even approaching reality.

It will simply necessitate more restrictions on the press to keep the lid on their many domestic and foreign lies, and the rest of the world trembles in fear as we smash and loot everything in sight. Nobody can look us in the eye and say we're the fools and creeps that we are, and everybody's going to pay for it.

Our suckitude has reached biblical proportions: we're engaging in bald-faced international thievery and destruction, and we're doing it in the most incompetent, pigheaded and inflammatory way. Man, we suck.

[jmcgowanjm]

19. What we're dropping on Fallujah now

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/images/030311-d-9085m-004.mpg

And unbelievably it's not working.

The last time I heard the word "Fallujah" mentioned on TV:
about 3 days ago.

"It's Fallujah's Fight"-an Iraqi being interviewed
about a video circulating in Baghdad.
The video included NBC's docudrama (w/
Resistance overdubbing)of Pvt
Jessica Lynch showing how and where Lynch
was captured. The Iraqi, no exception, thought it was video
from Fallujah and it was selling like hotcakes.
5:50pmC,Kimberly Dozier, CBS

“Hack (Col. David H. Hackworth (USA Ret.), here’s a snapshot of how little of our 1st Quarter
mission has been achieved,” says an Army recruiter. “Look
at
it from a perspective of a business releasing quarterly
earnings information. To keep unit manning levels up out
in
the field, especially in Iraq, there’s no question our
recruiting mission is in serious trouble.”
 
“These are totals for the 41 USAREC (Recruiting
Command) Battalions, so these stats represent the
USAREC mission accomplishment:
 
Regular Army Volume (all RA
contracts):
 
Mission: 25,322
Achieved: 12,703
(50.17 percent)
 
Army Reserve Volume:
 
Mission: 7,373
Achieved: 3,206
(43.48 percent).”

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=103&rnd=73.58273015477806

I wonder if the troops on the ground are questioning
whether their fellow troops are gay now.
About 6000 have been drummed out of the military
between 98 and 03.