Ramadi at Heart of Iraq Election Hopes

[leftchick]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-ramadi22jan22,1,7912861.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=3&cset=true

RAMADI, Iraq — The pamphlet handed out by U.S. Marines and soldiers to residents here ahead of the national election draws on the ruinous experience of another volatile city in the Sunni Triangle.

"Thanks to the good people of Ramadi," the pamphlet reads, "Ramadi is not sharing Fallouja's fate."

A picture of a masked insurgent holding two rocket-propelled grenade launchers drives home the point about Fallouja, which was virtually the capital of the Iraqi insurgency until U.S.-led forces invaded it in November.

Now U.S. and Iraqi officials hope the same "good people" of Ramadi will participate in the Jan. 30 election and provide the intelligence needed to thwart insurgents' attempts to disrupt the balloting.

If the government and its American allies are going to pull off the election where Sunni Muslims are dominant, it will have to go well here in this provincial capital, an aging, deteriorating industrial center with 400,000 residents on the banks of the Euphrates River.

[jmcgowanjm]

1. On top of AlAnbar province as usual, leftchick-you rock

The article requires registration though

If the government and its American allies are going to pull off
the election where Sunni Muslims are dominant, it will have to
go well here in this provincial capital, an aging,
deteriorating industrial center with 400,000 residents on
the banks of the Euphrates River.

Then the election will not go well.



This reporter must have flown in
or he would've stopped in Falloujah
where this is happening;

IRR 012205

“and as I talk to you now, I’m standing on a number of
dead occupation troops.”

Shaykh Abu Nur, commander of a Resistance detachment
in al-Fallujah told Mafkarat al-Islam that the battle, which
lasted until the call to prayer just be fore sunrise Friday, left at
a minimum 48 American troops dead. He added that more
than 21 others were wounded in the fighting, noting that most
of the wounds were the result of an incendiary liquid that
the Resistance loaded into the mortar shells and rockets
they fired.

[jmcgowanjm]

2. And what happened in Hit-equidistant W of Ramadi, yesterday

Resistance storms, demolishes puppet police station in Hit.

Iraqi Resistance forces stormed and then demolished an
Iraqi puppet police headquarters in the city of Hit northwest
of Baghdad, preventing its being turned into an “election
center” for the sham “election” fraud being perpetrated in
the country by the US occupation authorities.

At 12:30pm Thursday afternoon, Iraqi Resistance forces
stormed the puppet police station in the main district
of downtown Hit. They evicted the puppet policemen,
warning them not to return to work and collaboration with the
US occupation.

Witnesses reported that the Resistance then seized
the weapons inside – about 50 anti-tank rocket launchers
and light and medium arms - and destroyed the
building.

Shaykh Yasin Turki, one of the leaders of the Iraqi Resistance
in Hit told the correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam that the
reason for demolishing this particular building was that
the occupation forces and their stooge regime were preparing
to turn it into an “election center” for use in the election farce
to be staged on 30 January 2005, in order to try to cover
the occupation in a coat of “democratic
legitimacy.”

[leftchick]

4. Ramadi is where the resistance decapited two people ...

just this week. Car bombs happen there daily. This is so FUBAR, I wish they would fucking admit it.

and jmcgowanjm, you rock too!!

:yourock:

[bemildred]

3. The election is out of luck then.

Isn't this quote telling:

"Thanks to the good people of Ramadi, Ramadi is not sharing Fallouja's fate."

If that is not a veiled threat I don't know what is.