Posted on 07/06/2003 7:14:04 PM PDT by saquin
The Brits are mostly in the Shi'ite part of Iraq and the Shi'ites aren't nearly as hostile to the coalition as are the Saddamite dead-enders.
It is my impression that the insurgency is mostly being carried out by Saddam's former henchmen, who were Sunnis.
Fox News update just reported that the Wakefulness and Holy War took credit for the Fallujah attack and that they stated that the U.S. and Saddam were faces of the same coin.
There are currently three main theatres of — not war, precisely, but something resembling it, within the Middle East. One is the civil insurrection in Iran, which has continued to escalate, even though the media have withdrawn their attention again, wanting quicker results. One is in Iraq, which is now getting more media attention, as Saddamite and affiliated "dead-enders" try to step up resistance to the U.S. and British military occupation. The third is Israel/Palestine, always aboil, but where the media are reporting "hopeful signs".
I almost tire of mentioning how the media — specifically, the "liberal" mainstream media that determine how 60 per cent of Canadians and 40 per cent of Americans think — get everything backwards. So that by the time one has unwrangled their reflexive views, one is stupefied by the doublings, quadruplings, and sextuplings of negatives.
There are no hopeful signs in Israel/Palestine, per se. The Bush administration and the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon are entering consciously into a devil's pact, in which the Palestinian authorities who had pledged to disarm the terrorist militias, have instead made a show of arranging ceasefires with them. Far from putting them out of action, this gives Hamas, Islami Jihad, the various branches of Fatah, and affiliates of Hizbullah — all still recruiting and operating freely throughout the West Bank and Gaza — an opportunity to regroup and repair the damage the Israel Defence Forces were able to inflict on them through almost three years' of Intifada and counter-Intifada.
The ceasefires also give Israel an opportunity, and diplomatic cover, to pull back the most exposed West Bank settlements, and make preparations for the isolation of the various Palestinian enclaves when the terrorism resumes — which it will do almost inevitably. But on balance, time weighs to the benefit of the terrorists.
The hopeful signs are instead around the region — just where the media are affecting despair. With each passing day, the future of Iran's ayatollahs looks grimmer, as it becomes clearer they can depend on the loyalty of no significant section of Iranian society, and must increasingly doubt their own police and army. What appeared last year to be students versus ayatollahs, is now effectively the people versus the ayatollahs, with the biggest demonstrations yet planned for next week.
The U.S. occupation of Iraq has done more to destabilize Iran than the ayatollahs could hope to do in Iraq; and then something. This "something" has befuddled the various "experts" on regional security, trapped within their Pavlovian assumptions. They notice that the U.S. forces in Iraq have become a new magnet for regional terrorist activity. They assume this demonstrates the foolishness of President Bush's decision to invade.
It more likely demonstrates the opposite. While engaged in the very difficult business of building a democracy in Iraq — the first democracy, should it succeed, in the entire history of the Arabs — President Bush has also, quite consciously to my information, created a new playground for the enemy, away from Israel, and even farther away from the United States itself. By the very act of proving this lower ground, he drains terrorist resources from other swamps.
This is the meaning of Mr. Bush's "bring 'em on" taunt from the Roosevelt Room on Wednesday, when he was quizzed about the "growing threat to U.S. forces" on the ground in Iraq. It should have been obvious that no U.S. President actually relishes having his soldiers take casualties. What the media, and U.S. Democrats affect not to grasp, is that the soldiers are now replacing targets that otherwise would be provided by defenceless civilians, both in Iraq and at large. The sore thumb of the U.S. occupation — and it is a sore thumb equally to Baathists and Islamists, compelling their response — is not a mistake. It is carefully hung flypaper.
And I think the naïve "roadmap" exercise in diplomacy between Israel and the Palestinian Authority may make some sense in this context. I.e., Israel takes down its flypaper, while the U.S. puts up its own in Iraq.
At the moment it appears that most of the infiltration of Iraq is coming from the west, through Syria, and consists of Lebanese-based Hizbullah elbowing their way into Saddam's old territory. Their intention is to do to the U.S. Army in Iraq what they did to the Marines in Beirut in 1983. The chief source of both men and materiel is what Gal Luft has called "Hizbullahland" — the 1,000 square kilometre patch, that Hizbullah now rules under Syrian protection, which was formerly Israel's security enclave in southern Lebanon (until they withdrew in a peace initiative in the year 2000).
Hizbullah itself (the "Army of Allah" — Shia, and ultimately financed and armed by Iran's ayatollahs) are directing their attention less and less towards the "Little Satan" of Israel, and more and more towards the "Great Satan" of the U.S., as events unfold.
This is exactly what President Bush wants. To engage them, away from Israel, in mortal combat. To have an excuse for wiping them out — a good, solid, American excuse, from which Israel has been extracted. The good news is, Hizbullah's taking the bait.
(David Warren in The Ottawa Citizen, July 5, 2003)
To Read This Article Click Here
An Iraqi youth with his head and face covered in a keffiyeh to protect him from the sun, walks past US soldiers shopping for provisions at a super market in Ramadi.(AFP/Karim Sahib)
This little Iraqi youth dude is probably on his way around the corner to get his grenade launcher after testing our troops with his face hidden.
The Brits and the Israeli's have been fighting this type of war for years, and with regard to Israel, are still dying, just check out Jerusalem post on the net for the list of casualties just since the intifada began.
I have said it before, lock the place down, put CCTV camera on each street corner. Curfews from dusk to dawn etc and extend where necessary. Section off the areas of trouble and go in house by house (no notice) tell all the people to get out of there houses and look for weapons. Anyone found attacking troops, should be taken out or captured, either way his families home should be demolished, there has to be a price paid and not just for the person doing the shooting.
Start work camps, any male 16 or above who is not attending full time university or full time unemployment must attend work camps for 8 hours a day, for this, they get shopping coupons (we do not want to give cash they may buy guns).
Idle hand usually look for something to do, as in Northern Ireland and Israel, the vast majority of crazies are unemployed, disallusioned and easy for the fundamentalists to manipulate.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two American soldiers were killed in separate attacks on their convoys over the weekend in the Iraqi capital, the military said Monday.
The first soldier died in a firefight after two armed assailants opened fire, said Sgt. Patrick Compton, a spokesman for the military. The soldiers opened fire, killing one of the attackers and wounding the other. The wounded suspect was taken into custody.
In the second attack, insurgents threw a homemade bomb at another U.S. convoy, killing a soldier. Both of the dead American solders were from the Army's 1st Armored Division, the Germany-based division which is charged with occupying Baghdad.
At least three U.S. troops have been killed in Baghdad in a 24-hour period.
At midday Sunday, an assailant shot and killed a U.S. soldier waiting to buy a soft drink at Baghdad University, firing once from close range.
Work camps my a$$! I'll go you one better: work camps on Midway Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Tinian, French Frigate Shoals-any outcropping of rock that is barely habitable and that is in need of "improvement". Attu and Kiska might come in handy, as well.
Make them "disappear" off the streets. Make them "not come back".
Make them wake up one morning in the cargo bay of a C-17 headed for the Pacific. The word will get around.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
How many will it be in a year from now? Two years? I guess 26 dead aint too bad, unless you happen to be one of them.....
Or if you are a love one of the deceased.
Is your son one of your sources? I've read that there are many more attacks on our troops than are reported but that they went unreported because we didn't suffer serious casualties in them.
I'm always leery of reports that we're covering up losses in wars. Remember the bogus reports that we were suffering numerous unreported losses in Afghanistan? I think they were based on losses in our Special Forces that were truly unreported but were blown way out of proportion.
BTW, does your son have any info on Iraqi military losses in the war? We were bombing the crap out of the area south and west of Baghdad for days and days. Did we hit anything?
There is something wrong with these reports. The article this thread is based on mentiones attacks in Ramadi approximately 60 miles from Baghdad and appeares to have originated from Al Jazeera almost 6 hours ago.
The recent article states the attacks occured in the capitol Baghdad. Is it just me?
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