Suicide squads await US troops' assault on Falluja

[Rose Siding]

Hala Jaber, the only western newspaper reporter inside Falluja

SCORES of suicide bombers have been primed to defend Falluja against an imminent onslaught by American and Iraqi forces, according to insurgents’ commanders planning a ferocious counterattack.

More than 100 cars laden with high explosives have been distributed throughout the city to be detonated when US marines mount a long-awaited ground offensive, they claim.

One commander said that 300 foreign fighters had volunteered for suicide bombings as American forces laid siege to the stronghold of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, America’s most wanted man in Iraq.
...........
“My house can be destroyed but I will never leave Falluja and abandon it so that it may be destroyed by the Americans,” he said. “If necessary I, too, will fight as will my wife and daughters to defend our city.”

The family had stocked up on food and water and was ready for anything, he said.

“We refuse to be turned into refugees by the Americans,” added a neighbour, 55-year-old Haj Jassem Faraj. “It is better to remain and die in one’s home with dignity than to turn into a refugee with nothing.”
............
One insurgent commander was in no doubt that his men would make an implacable enemy. “You will hear of unconventional tactics being used in Falluja,” he said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1348213_1,00.html

This was filed yesterday, but it's an extensive report and there's been virtually no news from within the city we're about to attack. I hope it's ok. If not, just lock or move to editorial. thanks!

[underpants]

1. They hit Bghdad airport today too (PICS-WARNING)

U.S. soldiers lift one of three bodies into a military medical evacuation vehicle suicide bomb attack on Baghdad's airport highway November 8, 2004. A suicide bomber blew up his car near a U.S. convoy killing at least three people, witnesses said. A Reuters photographer saw American soldiers taking three bodies from a four-wheel-drive vehicle wrecked in the blast and loading them on stretchers into a military ambulance. (Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters)

[H2O Man]

2. it's a scarey time ....

and I hope & pray that there will be a miracle and the violence will come to a halt.

[gratuitous]

3. And the U.S. effort is doomed unless . . .

The Marines and other U.S. military personnel are as willing to die defending Iraqi police and Iraqi officials as they are willing to die to defend themselves and their comrades.

If the Iraqis against the U.S. occupation can't hit U.S. military targets, they will turn to assailing the Iraqis they perceive as being accommodationists or collaborators. Will our military defend those Iraqis with the same dedication and ferocity with which they defend themselves and their buddies? If not, they don't stand a chance.

[Rose Siding]

6. This report says some of Duelfer's missing chem weapons may be in Fallujah

from UnFairWitness
Isn't it odd that although the resistance in Fallujah has allegedly vowed to use chemical weapons against the Americans that we hear none of the hullabaloo over chemical weapons suits or gas masks or anything that we heard before the invasion? Are the assaulting troops in chem gear or not? If not, why not?

Duelfer's report actually says that chemical weapons under UN seal were looted, so it is within the realm of possibility that the resistance has some.
http://ancapistan.typepad.com/unfairwitness/

the source articles for those assertions:
Rebels vow to use chemical weapons
Hala Jaber, Baghdad
November 01, 2004
AS the US reeled from the death of nine marines in Iraq at the weekend, insurgents in Fallujah claimed to have obtained chemical weapons and threatened to use them in any battle for control of the rebel stronghold.

Rebel commanders said chemicals such as cyanide had been added to mortar rounds and missiles that would be deployed against coalition troops reported to be preparing for a major assault on the town west of Baghdad
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11247879%255E2703,00.html

Looters overran chemical weapons site: report
AP
November 01, 2004
NEW YORK: Looters unleashed last year by the US-led invasion of Iraq overran a sprawling desert complex where a bunker sealed by UN monitors held old chemical weapons, American arms inspectors report.

Charles Duelfer's arms teams say all UN-sealed structures at the Muthanna site were broken into. If the so-called Bunker 2 was breached and looted, it would be the second recent case of restricted weapons at risk of falling into militants' hands.

Officials are unsure whether this latest episode points to a threat of chemical attack, since it isn't known if usable chemical warheads were in the bunker, what may have been taken and by whom.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11249904%255E31477,00.html

[Skittles]

13. the mission is doomed period

they are creating terrorists by the thousands

[peacetalksforall]

4. Was there any further news about the report that the top Iraqi force

honcho working with the Americans disappeared with the war plan for Falluja?

[yellowcanine]

5. Warsaw Jewish Ghetto Uprising in 1943 = Fallujah 2004?

I have this forboding feeling that the correct analagy is not Vietnam but the 1943 Warsaw Jewish Ghetto Uprising when Jewish partisans held off the German SS from mid January to early May. The conditions are strikingly similar. A determined group of fighters willing to fight to the death using any means against a modern army unadapted to urban warfare.

[jjanpundt]

7. This comparison has been running through

my mind too. When are our soldiers going to wake up to what they are doing? Such madness. Such a waste of lives - Iraqi and American. :cry:

[Wright Patman]

9. I'm reminded of the

U.S. officer who was quoted over the weekend saying the enemy is Satan.

In one sense, he is correct, although he meant it as a xenophobic slur identifying Allah as Satan in disguise. The Crusaders would have been proud of him.

Satan laughs every time another suicide bomb goes off and every time a U.S. jet drops another bomb on women and children. So far he has been able to laugh 100,000 times at the gruesome remains of dead Iraqis and 1,130 at Americans in a similar disfigured, lifeless pose.

[catmandu57]

8. Similar but

there wasn't 800,000 lbs of explosive missing in Warsaw.

[yellowcanine]

10. And several thousand Shoulder-fired SAM missiles.

Which were particularly effective when the Afghans used them against Soviet helicopters.

[TahitiNut]

11. Invasion - Occupation - Tyranny ... the pattern of conquest is ages-old.

From even before the Roman Empire through today's Totalitarian Capitalist Empire, the pattern is the same. "Might Makes Right!" "Gott Mit Uns!" "Hail Caesar!" "Sieg Heil!" "Operation Phantom Fury!" "The Final Solution!"


Once upon a time, the "American Dream" was merely to own the means of one's own production: a farm or ranch to feed one's self and one's own family through one's own labor - not one upon which others labor for the enrichment of the sedentary privileged. The American Dream was the "common weal" as opposed to the "narrow weal." The American Dream is now an Amerikan Nightmare.

[arwalden]

12. Wow! They Must Really Hate Our Freedoms, Huh?!