US commanders admit losing ‘war of attrition’

[Barrett808]

US commanders admit losing ‘war of attrition’
Doug Lorimer

While 5000 US troops, using armour, artillery and warplanes, continued a three-week battle with Iraqi resistance fighters for control of the city of Tel Afar, 420 kilometres north-west of Baghdad, officials of Washington’s puppet Iraqi government told reporters that anti-occupation insurgents had taken control of the town of Qaim, 320km west of Baghdad.

The September 5 English-language online edition of the Baghdad Azzaman daily reported that most of Tel Afar’s “300,000 people are said to have fled and are currently living in squalor conditions, some of them in the open desert”. The report added that it was “difficult to give a clear picture of what exactly goes on in the besieged city as US troops forbid reporters from entering it. But residents who fled Tel Affar in the past two days speak of horrible scenes resulting from random shelling and street fighting.”

After encircling Tel Afar in mid-August, the US military began sustained artillery shelling and aerial bombardment of the predominately Turkomen-inhabited city on August 17, despite warnings against this from Iraqi parliamentary speaker Hajim al Hassani.

The August 21 Azzaman reported: “In interviews with the Azzaman correspondent in Tel Affar, the residents described the US shelling of their city ‘as fires of hell’.”

While US and Iraqi puppet government officials claimed there were non-Iraqi fighters linked to al Qaeda in Tel Afar, Associated Press reported on September 6 that fleeing residents denied this. “We did not see any strangers like Saudis, Syrians or others”, Hazem Mohammed Ali, deputy chairperson of a Turkomen association in Tel Afar, told AP.

The September 5 Azzaman reported, “As the battles raged in Tel Affar, the insurgents took control of Qaim, which US troops were supposed to have ‘pacified’ a few weeks ago”. AP reported the next day that “Iraqi officials said al-Qaeda-linked foreign fighters had taken control of large areas of the strategic city on the Syrian border after weeks of fighting between an Iraqi tribe that supports the insurgents and one that opposes them”.

(more)

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/642/642p17.htm

[GetTheRightVote]

1. When will they admit the US has lost and stop the lost of lives ???`

:kick:

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[opihimoimoi]

2. Bush needs some new Visine to open his eyes.

[WhiteTara]

3. damn george bush to hell

This is just like Vietnam.
IMPEACH GEORGE BUSH AND SEND THEM ALL TO THE HAGUE!
:grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr:

[necso]

4. A little context:

The Turkomen are reputed to be one of the groups unhappy with Kurdish "federalism" (perhaps better read as "independence"), the (reputed) activities of the Kurds to control the Iraqi portion (at least) of a Greater Kurdistan, etc.

If one was of a mind -- and especially if these Iraqi forces coincidently turn out to be comprised in no small part of Kurdish peshmerga -- then one could put an unflattering cast on this... (One really could.)

A little more context:

When you occupy a city (in part or in whole) by force, sometimes you can expect to irritate some of the locals. And it can be a good idea to leave behind civil order, some form of functioning government, etc -- and even go so far as to try to make things better for the remaining inhabitants.

And if you don't do these things, the inhabitants might prove susceptible to the "blandishments" of the other team. Not to mention that, unless prevented, the other team can possibly be expected to try to move back in.

[BQueen]

5. A war of attrition is "not the kind of war you win...."

to quote one of my favorite commentators on the Vietnam War - Owen Meany, from the John Irving novel "A Prayer for Owen Meany" (although to be accurate it should be in ALL CAPS ;-))

Just started re-reading it again, because it compares/contrasts Vietnam and Iran-Contra, mourns the short American attention span re: learning from our own mistakes, and most poignantly, addresses the feeling that your country has taken a part of you which you will never get back.

[bemildred]

6. Bwaaahaaahaaa.

That is an awesome quote.

A war of attrition is "not the kind of war you win...."

Like there was some other kind.
:applause:

[freethought]

7. Like plugging 11 leaks when you only have ten fingers n/t.