Fallujah

[dr_mabeuse]

It's Viet Nam all over agin. It really is.

The elusive enemy slipping away to hide among the people like a fish in the water whenever we appraoch.

The civilian casualties.

The enemy body counts.

The outbreak of insurgent violence wherever our troops aren't.

The infiltration of Iraqi police and military by the insurgents, insuring that they know our every move before we make it.

The grunts on the ground being asked to perform an impossible job, laying down their lives for nothing.

The loss of US credibility with the Iraqi population at large; their seething hatred of us.

The big assault that achieves its objective but accomplishes nothing.

The blind dedication to a military solution to a political problem.

It's all there. Just like 1968.

Doesn't anyone ever learn?

---dr.M.

 

[oggbashan]

No.

That is the short answer.

The assault on Fallujah has been telegraphed for so long that they might as well have issued business-class travel passes to the insurgents.

If it were done, t'were best done quickly.

Og

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

...Doesn't anyone ever learn?...

Only the victims, Doc, only the victims.

 

[Pure]

Doc a couple old incidents come to mind.

The US lieutenant, in Vietnam, who said "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

The US, at points, recaptured several cities, iirc. Hue being one. In this Fallujah case most of the populace has fled, and all 'insurgent' leaders.

Recapture and holding is relatively meaningless. There is a major assault by the world's greatest military power with the latest equipment and, what, 2000 men with the greatest backup, weapons, etc.

 

[shereads]

It's Viet Nam all over agin. It really is.

Not quite. This time, George W. Bush is involved.

 

[HornyHenry]

Well put, Dr.

GET US OUT!
Who gives a shit about Fallujuh?

 

[shereads]

Re: Well put, Dr.

GET US OUT!
Who gives a shit about Fallujuh?

I can think of some. The ordinary people of Fallujah who had homes and schools and businesses and better odds of staying alive before we brought them the gift of democracy.

 

[Edward Teach]

Re: Re: Well put, Dr.

I can think of some. The ordinary people of Fallujah who had homes and schools and businesses and better odds of staying alive before we brought them the gift of democracy.

Shame! They are runnig up to us with open, welcome arms and throwing flowers at our boys.

You unpatriotic Bush bashing liberals are spreading false rumors that they are suicide bombers rushing our boys and that what they are throwing are grenades. God will get you for that if the Justice Dept doesn't.


Eddie The Fox Watcher

 

[shereads]

Re: Re: Re: Well put, Dr.

Shame!

Don't make me come over there.

 

[Edward Teach]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Well put, Dr.

Don't make me come over there.

Turns you on when I talk dirty, doesn't it.

 

[Edward Teach]

Or maybe not.

 

[Goldie Munro]

Civilian cost of battle for Falluja emerges

Rory McCarthy in Baghdad and Peter Beaumont
Sunday November 14, 2004
The Observer

The full cost of the battle of Falluja emerged last night as large numbers of wounded civilians were evacuated to hospitals in Baghdad, as insurgents stepped up retaliatory attacks in other cities.

As the first Red Crescent aid convoy was allowed into Falluja, Iraq's Health Minister, Alaa Alwan, said ambulances had begun transferring a 'significant number' of injured civilians out of the battle zone, although he did not specify how many.

The evacuation of the wounded from Falluja came as insurgents consolidated their grip on large areas of Iraq's third largest city, Mosul, setting up checkpoints and conducting their own patrols, and as fresh Iraqi and US troops were rushed north to counter the new threat.

The moves came amid renewed warnings from aid groups that Iraq's civilian population was facing a 'humanitarian catastrophe'.

Although many of Falluja's 200,000 to 300,000 residents fled the city before the assault, between 30,000 and 50,000 are believed to have remained during the fighting.

The horrific conditions for those who remained in the city have begun to emerge in the last 24 hours as it became clear that US military claims of 'precision' targeting of insurgent positions were false.

According to one Iraqi journalist who left Falluja on Friday, some of the civilian injuries were caused by the massive firepower directed on to city neighbourhoods during the battle.

'If the fighters fire a mortar, US forces respond with huge force,' said the journalist, who asked not to be named.

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The city had been without power or water for days. Frozen food had spoiled and people could not charge their cellphones. 'Some people hadn't prepared well. They didn't stock up on tinned food. They didn't think it would be this bad,' he said.

At the main hospital, cut off from the rest of the city, doctors have reportedly been treating the injured with nothing but bandages, while the Red Crescent says people have been bleeding to death for lack of medical attention.

The claims came as an Iraqi Red Crescent convoy entered Falluja yesterday with the first aid supplies to reach the city since US-led forces began to blast their way in five days ago.

Prior to that the city had been surrounded by a US military cordon and subjected to heavy daily bombardment.

Red Crescent spokeswoman Firdoos al-Abadi - who had described the situation inside the city as 'catastrophic' - said 30 volunteers with five trucks and three ambulances had driven into the city west of Baghdad.

The aid convoy reached Falluja's main hospital, on the west bank of the Euphrates, but US forces stopped it crossing the river into the city centre, saying bridges were insecure.

The fears of large numbers of civilian injured have raised fresh warnings that the suffering in Falluja will be used to rally insurgents across northern Iraq.

As new attacks took place in Baghdad and Samarra and President Bush used a radio address to warn of increasing violence in the run-up to elections in January, US Marine officers in Falluja itself said they hoped to have the whole of the city under their control within 72 hours.

The predictions came as US troops, tanks and artillery launched a major attack on what they said were the final positions of insurgents still holding outs, leaving a pall of black smoke covering much of the city.

Iraq's national security adviser, Qassem Dawoud, said about 1,000 insurgents had been killed and another 200 captured during the Fallujah operation. This could not be independently verified.

Meanwhile, the US death toll rose to 24 after two marines were killed by a home-made bomb.