Under US Noses, Brutal Insurgents Rule Sunni Citadel

[sintax]

Under US noses, brutal insurgents rule Sunni citadel

Guardian gains rare access to Iraqi town and finds it fully in control of 'mujahideen'

Omer Mahdi in Haditha and Rory Carroll in Baghdad
Monday August 22, 2005
The Guardian


The executions are carried out at dawn on Haqlania bridge, the entrance to Haditha. A small crowd usually turns up to watch even though the killings are filmed and made available on DVD in the market the same afternoon.

One of last week's victims was a young man in a black tracksuit. Like the others he was left on his belly by the blue iron railings at the bridge's southern end. His severed head rested on his back, facing Baghdad. Children cheered when they heard that the next day's spectacle would be a double bill: two decapitations. A man named Watban and his brother had been found guilty of spying.

With so many alleged American agents dying here Haqlania bridge was renamed Agents' bridge. Then a local wag dubbed it Agents' fridge, evoking a mortuary, and that name has stuck.

A three-day visit by a reporter working for the Guardian last week established what neither the Iraqi government nor the US military has admitted: Haditha, a farming town of 90,000 people by the Euphrates river, is an insurgent citadel.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1553781,00.html

[TahitiNut]

1. "a farming town of 90,000 people"??? I guess they're in their last throes.

:eyes:

[neverforget]

2. last throes, turning the corner, freedom, blah, blah, blah

I guess this town under insurgent control means that we're winning? :shrug:

[ElectroPrincess]

15. Hey, your forgot the most popular screed now = "Making Progress"

:puke: That was just stated by our illustrious Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) to Wolfie on the Corporate News Network (CNN).

Guess what ole' Roberts thought to himself as he was tooling around the Bagdad "green zone" in his up-armored humvee and a shit load of security around him?

http://sounds.wavcentral.com/movies/wizard/feeling_not.mp3

Damn with "Bush-Co Butt Boy" leaders like Sen. Robert, everybody who is Middle Class and Below are Royally Screwed ... most especially the poor bloody Infantry troops stationed in both Afghanistan and Iraq! They're deluded if not freakin' NUTS! :crazy:

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. USA shoulda remembered Iraq's been invaded for centuries

.
.
.

and they LEARN from their enemies, what works, and what doesn't

The US military are trained, then effect their training -whether it works or not . .

From the posted Article:

"Twice in recent months marines backed by aircraft and armour swept into Haditha to flush out the rebels. In a pattern repeated across Anbar there were skirmishes, a few suspects killed or detained, and success was declared.

In reality, said residents, the insurgents withdrew for a few days and returned when the Americans left. They have learned from last November's battle in Falluja, when hundreds died fighting the marines and still lost the city.

Now their strategy appears to be to wait out the Americans, calculating they will leave within a few years, and then escalate what some consider the real war against a government led by Shias, a rival sect which Sunni extremists consider apostasy."
_________________________________________________

and the different "insurgent" "rebel" whatever groups WILL wait

They are in THEIR country, and the first objective will be to frustrate the invaders into leaving, killing as many as possible in the interim . . .

then they will get on with their internal battles

Saddam's Iraq will appear to have been quite peaceful by comparison I'm afraid

(sigh)

[Javaman]

13. Just like Vietnam, we controlled the day, they controll the night

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Bozita]

5. I see ... I see a light ... I see a light at the end of the tunnel

This doesn't sound like death throes to me.

from the article:

-snip-

A year ago Haditha was just another sleepy town in western Anbar province, deep in the Sunni triangle and suspicious of the Shia-led government in Baghdad but no insurgent hotbed.

Then, say residents, arrived mostly Shia police with heavyhanded behaviour. "That's how it began," said one man. Attacks against the police escalated until they fled, creating a vacuum filled by insurgents.

Alcohol and music deemed unIslamic were banned, women were told to wear headscarves and relations between the sexes were closely monitored. The mobile phone network was shut down but insurgents retained their walkie-talkies and satellite phones. Right-hand lanes are reserved for their vehicles.

From attacks on US and Iraqi forces it is clear that other Anbar towns, such as Qaim, Rawa, Anna and Ramadi, are to varying degrees under the sway of rebels.

-snip-

[countmyvote4real]

6. Democracy is on the march. NOT.

And now that the * administration has admitted that they will settle for an Islamic theocracy (that was not in place under Saddam); this is what we get for our billions and the priceless lives of our soldiers.

So what is the fucking noble cause? It's obviously not democracy.

[ninkasi]

14. The cause is the enrichment

of Bush and his buddies. Halliburton is raking money in left and right, and Cheney is satisfied. The billions we taxpayers have been soaked for have been transferred to a small group of Bush and Cheney's friends. The lives lost on both sides are nothing to them. As an added bonus, Smirk has reduced their taxes, and saddled us, our children, and grandchildren, with the bill.

Most of us here have seen through the neocons from the beginning. For the rest, the ones who thought Bush could do no wrong, the media, the religious right, the greedy CEOs, I hope you can see what your blind support of this disaster of a so-called leader has done. You enabled Bush, you pushed for this war, you called us traitors. I hope the guilt of what you have done haunts you the rest of your life.

[maddezmom]

7. and parts of Baghdad aren't much better

Killers in the Neighborhood
Exclusive: How the death squads came to Washash and turned Shi'ites and Sunnis against one another
By TIM MCGIRK/BAGHDAD

~snip~
A murder spree has erupted in Washash, as in countless neighborhoods across Baghdad. Death squads, which tend to move in Opel sedans, are entering what once were tight-knit communities and killing ordinary citizens, apparently to stir up sectarian hatred. The goal: to incite a civil war that each side hopes will give its sect dominance over the other. In Baghdad, a city of more than 5 million, there were at least 880 violent deaths last month, according to Faiq Amin Bakr, director of the Baghdad central morgue. (In New York City, with a population of more than 8 million, the total number of homicides for all of 2004 was 571.) And the figure for Baghdad excludes those killed by car bombings and suicide attacks, which, if included, would add nearly 100 to the total. Most of the victims were felled by gunshots. Some were beheaded. Few of the murderers have been captured. "Nobody knows who is doing this killing," says Bakr. "It seems they're trying to destroy our society."

The U.S. military officials in charge of protecting Baghdad would be hard-pressed to locate Washash on a city map. That's because it's one of the few places in the city where insurgents aren't shooting at American soldiers; the U.S. patrols in their humvees tend to roll right past. But the violence in this neighborhood is an extension of the war the U.S. is waging against Iraqi insurgents. If the direct attacks on American troops are aimed at driving the U.S. out, the killings in Washash are a grim portent of the kind of chaos that may lie in Iraq's future, whether or not U.S. soldiers stay on in force. "If the U.S. troops leave, we will have a civil war," says a Sunni ex-army officer who prefers not to reveal his name. "It will go on until one sect wipes out the other."

`snip~
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1096488,00.html?promoid=rss_top

[psychopomp]

8. "If you go into Iraq you go without God"

Who is doing the killing? Nobody knows, but what seems to be certain is that the mysterious murders do not serve the Light...their perpetrators are agents of Darkness.

[magellan]

9. Fear, suspicion, hate and paranoia

These are the tools of democracy Bush** has handed Iraq. Sound familiar?

[dutchdoctor]

10. scariest part of the article:

"A year ago Haditha was just another sleepy town in western Anbar province, deep in the Sunni triangle and suspicious of the Shia-led government in Baghdad but no insurgent hotbed."

Wake up! things are not getting better in Iraq, things are getting worse!
Why have so many soldiers lost their lives in the last 2 years, when the insurgency has only grown stronger?

[go freedom]

11. We're training them.

I would bet that half, or more, of the guys who sign up to be trained as Iraqi policemen/soldiers are "insurgents" taking advantage of the free training offered by the Americans.

It blows my mind that, again, our leaders thought that killing people's families would make them love us, and want to imitate us. I'm wondering if it will take us ten years and 50,000 lives to figure it out, once again.

[Barrett808]

12. Anybody who's closely following the news from Iraq knows it's over

Bush's Islamic Republic, an Iranian client state, is largely in place. Frank Rich's recent NYT editorial said it well: "Somebody tell the President the war is over."