WP: Despite Agreement,Insurgents Rule Fallujah (report from inside city)

[DeepModem Mom]

Despite Agreement, Insurgents Rule Fallujah

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 7, 2004; Page A15


FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The travelers entered Fallujah first through a checkpoint operated by the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a U.S.-trained paramilitary unit meant to add muscle to the American-led occupation....Then it became apparent who was really in charge. A few yards in, wild-eyed young men in masks pulled cars over at will, searched them and demanded identification documents. No one could leave or enter without passing muster. Other groups of fighters in masks roamed side streets and alleys, brandishing rifles at all sorts of angles.

It was not supposed to be like this. Under an agreement made last month with U.S. Marine commanders, a new force called the Fallujah Brigade, led by former officers from Saddam Hussein's demobilized army, was to safeguard the city. The unruly gunmen -- many of them insurgents who battled the Marines through most of April -- were supposed to give way to Iraqi police and civil defense units....

***

Fallujah byways are a hell of roadside bombs and ambushes. On Friday, an armored sport-utility vehicle carrying this Washington Post reporter and his driver was attacked close to Fallujah on the main highway to Baghdad. Four men in an orange-and-white taxi pumped dozens of bullets from AK-47 assault rifles into the vehicle for more than two minutes, each round causing a loud thump on the vehicle's metal plating and reinforced windows. They shot from behind, from in front and from the sides, where their determined frowns and mustached faces were clearly visible, as they and we weaved down the highway at 90 mph. The fusillade stopped when the SUV, its back tires missing and its rear windows shattered, spun out of control. The gunmen sped down the road, evidently thinking their mission was accomplished. Neither the driver nor the reporter was injured....

***

Since the truce, Islam has emerged openly as a potent force, according to (U.S. Marine Col. Larry) Brown and Iraqis familiar with the city. Islamic law, or sharia, is beginning to take root, to the point where clandestine vendors of alcohol have been flogged and paraded naked on the street; beauty salons have been shut down and barbers told to eschew Western cuts and not shave off beards. Among strict Muslims, beards are a requirement....On Friday, masked men in Fallujah handed out a manifesto signed by 18 groups with names such as the God Is Great Battalions, the Muhammad Messenger of God Forces, the Islamic Resistance Brigades and the Jihad Battalion. They rejected Iraq's newly named interim government and accused the United States of "acts of killing, destruction, violation of holy places and organized plunder."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20761-2004Jun6.html

[papau]

1. Insurgents Rule Fallujah means Iraqi Gov is a joke - and civil war coming.

Hard to believe the US would allow such a defeat - but then Rove is Commander in Chief these days - and not about to let Bush campaign get upstaged by war news.

[Dhalgren]

2. It won't be much of a "civil war",

with all of the Iraqis on one side and the US on the other. This is going to get really bad - US (and Iraqi, too) casualities are going to go way up. And no body has the will to stop it.

[papau]

4. We will cut and run, and Iran will absorb Iraq.

disaster.

[Aidoneus]

3. various Resistance movements have controlled the city for months

The reason those mercenaries were roughed up so badly months ago was because days before then, it was announced that the city of mosques was considered as fully liberated from the forces of occupation, and that they should not ever return. An example was made of the mercenaries for that reason, among others. A soccer stadium was filled with hundreds of new martyrs (one of those mass graves the invaders claimed they were trying to stop) as another example was made of the Marines that tried to take it back.

Now, the forces of occupation are afraid to enter the city. Any time they try, they get bombed and then run away from it. I suspect that the accusions made against the occupyers--"acts of killing, destruction, violation of holy places and organized plunder"--were taken from the desk of Captain Obvious.

[daleo]

6. I have no great love for the contractors/mercenaries

But "roughed up so badly" is a rather inadequate description of what happened. Assuming you are referring to the ones which were killed, which seems likely in this case.

On edit - I am only pointing this out in the interests of plain speaking.

[yellowcanine]

5. No Marines are dying who cares what happens next - Shrub thinking

Shrubby thinks if he can keep U.S. casualties low between now and the election he will be elected and then it doesn't matter what happens.

[JDPriestly]

7. Possibility

This is not a prediction, but a possibility. The U.S. could wait until the interim Iraqi government is installed and then, at the "request" of that interim government quell the "insurgencies" in Fallouja and Najaf. That would lend legitimacy to the bloodbath and allow the "transfer of power" to the Iraqi interim government to appear peaceful. Again, this is just a guess. I don't have any evidence to back up my theory other than the way the Bush administration operates generally -- saying one thing and doing the opposite.

[Disturbed]

8. BushCo has one goal now.

Win the next election. They will do anything to keep the deaths and wounding of US Troops to the lowest level possible. The Media mostly only reports on US casualties. If the events are low there will be scant reports on Iraq, especially TV coverage. That will make it seem that all is going well. This is the strategy of BushCo.

This "Full Sovereignty" is a complete sham. Most of the world knows that except the majority of the Americans.

I keep posting the following because it seems to be the dirty secret that only a few people are aware of.


Full Sovereignty?

"Throughout the spring, as hundreds died in the spiraling conflict, as Regime bosses applied their hardcore "anti-terrorist" tortures to innocent bystanders raked up in their occupation nets, as Regime mouthpieces prated endlessly of "liberation" and "sovereignty," Bush viceroy Paul Bremer was quietly signing a series of edicts that will give the United States effective control over the military, ministries -- and money -- of any Iraqi government, for years to come, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Bremer has placed U.S.-appointed "commissions" made up of Americans and local puppets throughout Iraqi government agencies; the ministers supposedly in charge weren't even told of the edicts. These boards "will serve multiyear terms and have significant authority to run criminal investigations, award contracts, direct troops and subpoena citizens," the Journal reports. Any new Iraqi government "will have little control over its armed forces, lack the ability to make or change laws and be unable to make major decisions within specific ministries without tacit U.S. approval, say U.S. officials."


"Earlier Bremer edicts laid the Iraqi economy wide open to ruthless exploitation by Bush-approved foreign "investors"; dominance of such key sectors as banking, communications -- and energy -- is already well advanced. The latest dictates aim to ensure that this organized looting goes on, no matter what kind of makeshift "interim government" the United Nations manage to piece together. Bush's plans to build a Saddamite fortress embassy in Baghdad and 14 permanent military bases around the country are designed to provide the knee-breaking "security" for these lucrative arrangements."



http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/05/21/120.html

[DeepModem Mom]

9. Just wanted to add a word of praise for the reporting in this piece --

WP should have placed it on page one. (Reporter Daniel Williams barely escaped Fallujah alive!)