Fallujah: Insurgents return to face Iraqis

[leftchick]

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/article_1043382.php/Fallujah_Insurgents_return_to_face_Iraqis


FALLUJAH, Iraq (UPI) -- The insurgents are back in Fallujah.

Last week, Ali Hassan, a 23-year old soldier who hailed from Baghdad went into a Fallujah barbershop to get his haircut. He had changed into civilian clothes but he chose the wrong storefront. Three insurgents came in and demanded to see everyone`s identification. They quickly found the soldier.

"They put the pistol to his head and shot him," said Dr. Khadim Ali, 29, an anesthesiologist who enlisted in the new Iraqi Army as a lieutenant.

No one knows how many insurgents have returned here, to what was their most formidable stronghold. They increase as the population increases -- it is now at about 130,000, half of what it was before the city was evacuated in November to clear the way for a massive offensive by the U.S. military.

<snip>

U.S. commanders in Fallujah believe the attacks are uncoordinated and often ineffective, suggesting the insurgent leadership that was once here has been disrupted. They believe if the political leaders in Baghdad get their act together, the insurgents will not be able to gain the traction they once had.

[hobbit709]

1. U.S. Commanders believe....

Yeah and some people believe the world is flat or the moon is made of green cheese too.

[rodeodance]

2. what a mess.

[bemildred]

3. What would you think if in, say, Atlanta, GA

there were gangs roaming the streets looking for cops and shooting them when they found them? And getting away with it, mostly? And it had been that way for years?
:banghead:

[StopThief]

4. Watch out. . .

Your post comes dangerously close to NOT supporting these executions. ;-)

[bemildred]

5. Oy, yeah, that's right, we're making Iraq a better place ... nt

[HamdenRice]

8. I think the better analogy is gangs roaming, looking for Russians ...

or some other occupying forces and Americans who collaborate with them.

This would of course be after the foreigners had bombed Washington DC, with "shock and awe"; disbanded the US Armed Forces and all municipal police departments; which led to massive looting in NY, LA, Chicago and every other city, including the complete looting of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Library of Congress; imprisoned all members of the administration and Congress, and enforced a lifetime employment ban on anyone who had ever been a member of the Democratic or Republican parties; "evacuated" Atlanta, and then killed vast numbers of people who could not get out, destroyed half of the homes and apartment buildings in Atlanta and then thrown up a military encirclement of the city; and then hired a new police force composed exclusively of people from say Seattle.

Yes and in that circumstance if there were gangs roaming around Atlanta, executing Russians and the Seattle-recruited police force, I'm not sure how I would feel. How would you feel under those circumstances?

<edited>

[bemildred]

9. So, I'm from Atlanta in this scenario?

I'd probably feel like hanging out indoors a lot, while doing my best to stay on the good side of the gangs and avoid the police.

[legin]

6. An article on numbers needed to police areas

http://www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/summer2003/burden.html

The usual ratio needed for sucessful stablisation is 20 per thousand.
From the graph in the article, in Iraq the u.s. has 6.1 per thousand.

[xchrom]

7. oh yeah they sound real ineffective.

i want some of what the u.s. commanders are smoking.

[leftchick]

10. and drinking...

:eyes:

[maddezmom]

11. how many of the "insurgents" were civilians before their city was bombed?

and often ineffective???

Hmm, well I suppose that means that sometimes they are effective.....and people die. :crazy:

[Roland99]

13. Not sure, but here are two good articles on the state of the insurgency

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1553781,00.html

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/08/08/corruption_pervades_government_in_basra/?page=2

[maddezmom]

15. thanks for the links

had already read the first one and was sickened but not surprised. And just read the BG article....and feel the same. What a depressing mess.

[leftchick]

16. I would guess most of them

remember this article....

http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/011205A.shtml


Fallujah, City of Ghosts
By Ali Fadhil
The Guardian U.K.


On November 8, the American army launched its biggest ever assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, considered a stronghold for rebel fighters. The U.S. said the raid had been a huge success, killing 1,200 insurgents. Most of the city's 300,000 residents, meanwhile, had fled for their lives. What really happened in the siege of Falluja? In a joint investigation for the Guardian and Channel 4 News, Iraqi doctor Ali Fadhil compiled the first independent reports from the devastated city, where he found scores of unburied corpses, rabid dogs - and a dangerously embittered population. Watch an extract from the documentary.


<snip>

Some of the worst fighting took place here in the centre of the city, but there was no sign of the 1,200 to 1,600 fighters the Americans said they had killed. I had heard that there was a graveyard for the fighters somewhere in the city but people said that most of them had withdrawn from the city after the first week of fighting. I needed to find one of the insurgents to tell me the real story of what had happened in the city. The Americans had said that there had been a big military victory, but I couldn't understand where all the fighters were buried.

[Roland99]

12. One big, f-ed up game of Whack-a-mole.

Only in this game, the moles fire back.

[David__77]

14. People tend not to like puppet soldiers.

I wish that Iraqi men think long and hard before signing their lives over to the US occupation.