Marines Prepare for Fallujah Pull Back (Fox Reports NO PEACE DEAL in Fallujah)

AP ^ | Thu, Apr 29, 2004 | Jayson Keyser

[Just mythoughts]

"Jayson Keyser" seems to have gotten "misinformation" Fox is now reporting that no such plan is in the works!!!!

[TomGuy]

Fallujah! Off again, On again!

Troops in. Troops out. No troops still in.

Ceasefire. No ceasefire. Ceasefire.

Heck, Fallujah is getting worse than Sharon chasing and threatening Arafat for the last 3 years.

[Eurotwit]

I don't trust our PM. He reminds of Kerry :-)

[prairiebreeze]

You raise a good point. I didn't like the tone of Perry's phone-in report to Fox a couple of days ago and had more than one suspicion raise when I heard he was a main source of this one.

Also see post 48

Prairie

[Dane]

This is JMO, but you would think with a lot of Freepers experience with the American mainstream media, that the old adage of "Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on me" would have sunk in.

Apparently it hasn't.

[rrrod]

I can certainly understand my fellow freepers points regarding this "PULL BACK"...relax folks this is ggoing to be a classic....stop and think Arab mentality for a min.

[prairiebreeze]

bump!

[arasina]

It's pretty easy for us to sit here at our computers and tell the Generals how to handle the battle of Fallujah. We have only the information we are fed by the Associated Press but they have the boots on the ground. I'm going to continue to trust the military leaders who have all the information rather than one or two embedded reporters who have a limited perspective.

[Pravious]

"The chicken littles on FR amaze me. Do you really think you have the big picture sitting 6000 miles away from the action in front of your computer screen. Lets just say for the sake of argument that most of the bad guys are no longer in Fallujah. Do our guys gain much by marching through the city, being exposed to every IED left behind, and taking the blame for every civilian casualty that results? We're their to kill the enemy. Not capture territory. If the enemy is destroyed, our job is done."

The enemy is obviously not destroyed, since everytime we poke our heads up someone takes a shot at us.

And I readily admit I don't have the big picture - no one could, except the people who are running the show. Does that mean we should all just shut up and trust the people who are running things to do the "right thing"?

It is, however, perfectly reasonable to gripe that by sitting on our thumbs in Fallujah we're appearing weak and indecisive to our enemies. This has nothing to do with inside knowledge of our course of action in Iraq - there may or may not be good reasons for acting the way we are around Fallujah, but the image we're projecting is real enough for any of us to see.

Perhaps what they're now reporting as a repositioning of troops is simply preparations for going in there and finishing this. It's embarrassing to see us crowing "Look! See! We're negotiating with the terrorists, and, um, we didn't hurt the Mosque, so please don't hate us!." It's as if Baghdad Jim has been put in charge of the war. I would have liked to see us stomp this cleric craphead the minute he tried to exert power and oppose us.

[TomGuy]

I can certainly understand my fellow freepers points regarding this "PULL BACK"...relax folks this is ggoing to be a classic....stop and think Arab mentality for a min.

Yeh, and the media reports overlooked telling us the Marines are loudly playing Rumsfeld laughing and Bruce Willis challenging the 'insurgents' about their manhood.

War is h3ll on the nerves (ours and the insurgents')!

[reagan_fanatic]

I have a nagging feeling that the Iraqis we turn over Fallujah to are going to march in and start hugging and kissing those very people who have been killing our troops. It's going to be a happy day for the terrorists and their supporters.

This is a bitter pill to swallow.

[mylife]

Glad to hear that this was misinformation.

On the other hand Im getting pretty tired of the press readily releasing misinformation

[Use It Or Lose It]

One of Fox News Channel's military experts (Col. David Hunt, I think) said the other day that the original plan was to "buy off" the Iraqi military and hold them in place so that the Coalition (U.S.) forces would not be handling the dirty work (paraphrasing). This plan was rejected (by our diplomats) and never executed. The diplomats have been trying to run the military operations from the get-go. This is not to say that Bremer and his group have done a poor job - they probably have succeeded immensely, in their own realm.

The plan to bring in Iraqi generals is over a year old and probably should have been implemented when our military planners said it was the right thing to do. Let the military run military operations and keep the diplomats at champagne and brie soirees at the U.N.

[Rokke]

"Fallujah is getting worse than Sharon chasing and threatening Arafat for the last 3 years."

Only because people grab on to every bit of media speculation like its gospel truth chiseled by our military leadership in granite. Those of us on FreeRepublic, who ought to know better than to bite off on every media report, seem to be the first to take the bait and immediately declare the President and anyone above the rank of Private, a wishy-washy and ignorant sissy.
We are controlling the situation in Fallujah. The adults are in charge. They know what they are doing. Believe it or not, they even know more than media reporters and chicken littles on FR. So if we could all relax just a little, they will continue doing their jobs, and we can go back to sipping coffee and picking apart the idioicy coming out of the press...not our military.

[Dane]

This is a bitter pill to swallow

Maybe a Freeper adage could be coined and that would be, "Don't post a reply until you have read the first 50 replies".

It's now being reported that the initial AP report is bogus.

[Maigrey]

If everyone would remember that the LA Times has as much credibility as The National Enquirer (maybe less....)

[RobFromGa]

I've been watching President Bush since 9-11 and I don't see him as the type to cut and run in order to increase his re-election chances. I will wait and see how this plays out.

The good news of the morning is that these people we are fighting are remnants of the old regime, which means that they are in limited supply. These are not regular Iraqis turned into fighters by the occupation. Since we have most of them in one place, we need to exterminate them.

[livius]

Those of us on FreeRepublic, who ought to know better than to bite off on every media report, seem to be the first to take the bait...

Absolutely correct. I don't know why hysteria breaks out here at every garbled media rumor.

[reagan_fanatic]

Maybe a Freeper adage could be coined and that would be, "Don't post a reply until you have read the first 50 replies".

My bad. I should start drinking coffee.

At some point, we will have to hand over Fallujah to the Iraqis. Whatever insurgents are still left will greet the Iraqis as liberators, not conquerors.

[Rokke]

"The enemy is obviously not destroyed"

And we're not done yet.

"Does that mean we should all just shut up and trust the people who are running things to do the "right thing"?"

No, but the very fact that you don't have the big picture means you ought to temper your criticism because it is based on guessing. Not fact. So how useful is it, other then to vent. Which isn't very useful.

"perfectly reasonable to gripe that by sitting on our thumbs in Fallujah we're appearing weak and indecisive to our enemies"

Sure, if that's what we are doing. But we aren't. It all goes back to the fact that we don't all have the big picture.

"It's embarrassing to see us crowing "Look! See! We're negotiating with the terrorists, and, um, we didn't hurt the Mosque, so please don't hate us!."

The only people doing that seem to be on FreeRepublic. Even Powell yesterday described why we have every justification to destroy the mosques we've destroyed.