NYT: 8 Months After U.S.-Led Siege, Insurgents Rise Again in Falluja

[Pirate Smile]

FALLUJA, Iraq, July 12 - Transformed into a police state after last winter's siege, this should be the safest city in all of Iraq.

Thousands of American and Iraqi troops live in crumbling buildings here and patrol streets laced with concertina wire. Any Iraqi entering the city must show a badge and undergo a search at one of six checkpoints. There is a 10 p.m. curfew.


Iraqi troops patrolled Falluja on Sunday. Despite their efforts, a 10 p.m. curfew and other security measures, the insurgents have been rebounding.

But the insurgency is rising from the rubble nevertheless, eight months after the American military killed as many as 1,500 Iraqis in a costly invasion that fanned anti-American passions across Iraq and the Arab world.

Somewhere in the bowels of Falluja, the former guerrilla stronghold 35 miles west of Baghdad, where four American contractors were killed in an ambush, and the bodies of two were hanged from a bridge, in March 2004, insurgents are building suicide car bombs again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/international/middleeast/15falluja.html?hp&ex=1121400000&en=be2554bd1a478b92&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[IndianaGreen]

1. It's the Occupation, stupid!

As long as one occupies someone else's country, acts of violence against the occupier and his allies are to be expected.

[skooooo]

2. Well, who'd a thunk it?

duh

[uppityperson]

3. Making the world less safe, the Uniter, not the Divider

1500 Iraqis dead. When the word finally gets out about what happened in Fallujah, I will be glad, and very sick.

[Skink]

4. Well the depleted Uranium will get em...

for the next billion years or so. Good planning,:-)

[geckosfeet]

5. Well whowoodathunkit? Ya wipe out their home and the bastards

come back. Just what do you think is going on? Maybe we are not paying Halliburton enough.

[LynnTheDem]

6. As it's their home, their land, their country, where are the "insurgents"

gonna go?

[WhiteTara]

7. talk about complete failures

They took an incredibly beautiful, holy city, reduced it to rubble, sprayed the people with napalm and are now surprised that the people who are from there are fighting back. I can not express my rage enough. :grr::nuke:

[Rose Siding]

8. Turning another corner

[krkaufman]

11. Exactly. How many corners must you turn....

.... before you realize you're going in circles?!?

[msongs]

9. why has there been no TV "special" about the attack on fallujah &

what has happened since>

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[Barkley]

10. Falluja = "Battle of Algier"

In the movie the French presumed that crushing the resistance would end opposition to their occupation; they were wrong.

[Hissyspit]

13. bingo The Pentagon screened the movie over the past couple of years.

Apparently they didn't learn anything from it.

[Hissyspit]

12. Nominated n/t

[wellst0nev0ter]

14. So Even When They Destroyed A Village

They couldn't even "save" it. Perhaps now they can declare victory and go home.

on edit: I wonder what kind of victory is achieved when you cleanse a city of 300,000 people to one with only 140,000 (at one point 30,000). Wouldn't the loss of 160,000 people qualify as a refugee problem.

Also, I like this graf at the bottom of the report:

An Iraqi employee of The New York Times, whose name is being withheld for security reasons, contributed reporting for this article. :eyes:

[anarchy1999]

15. Can we please go back to April of 2003. This was a town, much like

many of us live in. They held a protest to ask our soldiers to remove themselves from the school. All hell broke loose and many people died that day. "our soldiers" opened fire on a peaceful demonstration.

I told my husband, that day, Fallujah would be anniilated.

How would you feel?

Check out Dahr Jamail, and Rahaul Mahajan. Along with Riverbend and her family and friends.

Never forget to look for Robert Fisk.

Best source I've found is www.informationclearinghouse.info

[Pystoff]

16. Kinda like the old saying...

Cockroaches, Keith Richards, and now add Fallujah insurgents that can survive after a nuclear attack hehe.

[leftchick]

17. Insurgents rising again from rubble of Fallujah

http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2005/07/15/sections/nation_world/iraq_transition/article_597962.php

<snip>


But the insurgency is rising from the rubble nevertheless, eight months after the U.S. military killed as many as 1,500 Iraqis in a battle that fanned anti-American passions across Iraq and the Arab world.

Somewhere in the bowels of Fallujah, the former guerrilla stronghold 35 miles west of Baghdad, where the charred bodies of two American contractors were strung up on a bridge in March 2004, insurgents are building suicide car bombs again.

At least four have exploded in recent weeks, one of them killing six U.S. troops, including four women. Two of five police forts have been firebombed. Three members of the 21-seat city council have quit and another has stopped coming to meetings.

"Some preferred the city quiet, purified of the gunmen and any militant aspect," said Abdul Jabbar Kadhim al-Alwani, 40, owner of an automotive repair shop. "But after the unfairness and injustice with which the city's residents have been treated by the American and Iraqi forces, they now prefer the resistance, just so they won't be humiliated."

[Jacobin]

18. It's over. The war is lost

It was lost before we set foot in IraqNam. We had no reason to invade, the lies spun to justify this invasion were idiotic, the idea that we would be welcomed as infidel occupiers is peurile and naive neo-con babble.

This is so far gone, its going to be very sad to watch even thousands more Iraqis and troops getting maimed and killed for nada, zip, nothing.

And the blowback when IraqNam and Iran merge is going to be the biggest geo-political clusterfuck of the past 100 years

[Javaman]

19. Here's a little snippet about occupation, see how those people reacted...

These were the signers of our Declaration of Independence. These were the wealthy people of the colonies. I can only imagine what happened to the average folks.

What is shameful, we are doing the same thing the Brits did to us to the Iraqi people. This in a nutshell is why I'm ashamed to be American these days.

Oddly enough, these stories come from a rightwing site. Go figure.

In 1763, John Hancock had inherited what was believed to be the greatest body of wealth in New England when his uncle died. He was a marked man by the British, who had attempted to arrest him many times before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. John Hancock was the first to sign his name to the document. He risked his fortune in the struggle for independence and performed valuable services for his country during the Revolutionary War. He used his wealth to arm and feed much of the volunteers from Massachusetts.

Shortly after signing the Declaration of Independence, John Hart was elected to the new State Assembly and chosen its Speaker. When Hart left Philadelphia to take his seat in the state legislature at Princeton, he was besieged in his farmhouse during the British invasion of New Jersey. His thirteen children fled for their lives. His fields and his property were ruined. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, where he existed as a fugitive. Hart never lost his spirit and joined Washington's army as a private after the battle of Princeton.

On September 26, 1776, Richard Stockton was appointed to a committee to inspect the northern army. On his return home, the British were advancing and he moved his family to Monmouth, to the home of John Covenhoven. Stockton was betrayed to the British and on November 30, both Stockton and Covenhoven were dragged from their homes at night and taken to prison in New York. Stockton was treated with severe brutality. His home was pillaged, his library, which was one of the best in the country, had been burned, and his lands were destroyed. Stockton was subsequently the subject of a prisoner exchange. Stockton never regained his health and his fortune was so greatly diminished that he and his family were forced to live on charity. His suffering left him a broken and humiliated man. He remained an invalid until he died on February 28, 1781.

Lewis Morris was on hand to sign the Declaration of Independence, even though he knew that a large British army had landed within a few miles of his estate and that his extensive possessions would probably be ruined. "Damn the consequences, give me the pen," Morris is said to have shouted. Soon after, his house was ransacked, his family driven away, his livestock captured and the entire property destroyed. All of the Morris property and nearly all of his wealth had been destroyed in the war.

In December 1776, George Clymer risking capture by the British along with Walton and Morris remained behind to carry on remaining congressional business when the members of Congress were forced to flee from Philadelphia to Baltimore. After the British victory at the Battle of Brandywine, British troops advancing on Philadelphia detoured for the purpose of vandalizing Clymer's home. His wife and children escaped by hiding in the woods nearby.

During the Revolutionary War Button Gwinnett's property was totally destroyed by the British.

[Pirate Smile]

20. kick

[meganmonkey]

21. Ding Ding Ding - Round Three

:cry: