Iraqi Rebels Fire Mortars at Governor's Office in `Tense' Mosul

[Barrett808]

Iraqi insurgents lobbed mortar shells at the provincial governor's office today in Mosul, wounding four bodyguards and igniting a fuel truck, a U.S. military spokesman said by telephone from the northern city.

``Mosul is stable, but there are isolated pockets where we continue to get small-arms fire or indirect fire,'' said Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings, Task Force Olympia spokesman. ``I would describe it as tense.''

Two mortar rounds cleared concrete barriers that guard the provincial hall, spraying shrapnel and wounding the bodyguards in the attack at about 11:30 a.m. local time, Hastings said. Governor Duraid Kashmoula was unhurt, and the building was undamaged, Hastings said.

The U.S. is trying to quell insurgencies in Mosul and other parts of Iraq before elections scheduled for January to replace the interim Iraqi government. Fighters tested U.S. and Iraqi forces last week when they seized Mosul's police stations and chased away three-quarters of its officers.

The Mosul governor called in U.S. and Iraqi troops to put down the rebellion.

(more)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a38iMaXdAoX4&refer=top_world_news

[leftchick]

1. ahhh HELLOOOoooo! Mosul is not 'tense'....

it is in fucking chaos along with the rest of Iraq!

Welcome to IRAQNAM!!!

:grr:

[Journeyman]

2. Now if someone on the other block from you was lobbing mortars. . .

at the governor's office, wounding guards and setting fuel trucks on fire, and throughout the city there were "pockets" of small arms and indirect fire (whatever the hell "indirect fire" might prove to be), and the week before bands of armed men had seized the police stations and tossed out the police, and the governor had felt compelled to call in troops from two different armies to "put down the rebellion" -- would you say your neighborhood was "stable"?

I thought not.

Sometimes, I'm convinced, a prerequisite to be an information officer for the US military is to be brain dead.

[Barrett808]

3. Not brain death...doublethink

"the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. "

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Doublethink