US 'pacifies' city but rebels take violence to rest of country

[leftchick]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=581298



~snip~

Even as US commanders were declaring that the rebel stronghold would be "pacified" very soon, the price being paid for the victory was becoming evident in the carnage being visited around the country. It appears that many of the insurgents who had been based in Fallujah slipped out of the city and moved to other parts of Iraq before the offensive.

The estimates given by the US military about the numbers of insurgents in Fallujah have varied. Two weeks ago it was claimed there were 6,000 heavily armed militants, including the Jordanian terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in the city. However, small groups of fighters, sometimes no more than 20 strong, have attempted to engage the Americans, who vastly outnumber and outgun them, before fading away.

The explanation of what had happened to those missing fighters could be found, perhaps, in what happened elsewhere in Iraq yesterday.

Hundreds of armed men entered Ramadi, taking over government buildings, while in Baquba, north of Baghdad, 45 people, including 25 policemen were killed in a series of attacks. Eleven people died in bombings in Baghdad, and an attack on a National Guard headquarters in Kirkuk killed three people.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. I knew this would happen! Bush is an IDIOT!!!

The ONLY way to stop the insurgents would be to secure the Iraqi border!

[maddezmom]

2. next week: "Flashpoint Ramadi"

then Baquba, then Sammarra, then .... and then back again into Fallujah to pacify the peace for a 3rd time. :eyes:

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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

[alittlelark]

Post that in the Stupid sh*t forum

[krkaufman]

4. The dude links to Coulter...

... though from the headlines on his front page, he may consider her too moderate.

Yikes!! Way CocoaPuffs.

[secretshopper]

8. Wow, nice HTML, Mr. Right Guy GroundedDemocrat

Looks like you just figured out blinking text and animated GIFs. Good for you! You rock!

The article about how poor Joe McCarthy has been maligned in the five decades since his death was touching. I'll have to ask people who were attacked for being American what they thought about Ol' TailGunner Joe. I think the apologist missed the part about abusing the legitimate power of the state for fear mongering and personal attacks.

Well, keep up the good work. You might try adding facts to your web site to round it out. Here at DU, we sometimes call that "Fact Based Communication," but I'll warn you, it IS harder than a page full of ranting ad hominem attacks.

Like I said, you keep it up, big guy. I bet that's just about the Bestest Web Page you could ever create. Go tell your Mom, she'll be extra double proud of you.

Secret Shopper.

[bowens43]

13. later dude.....

[saigon68]

29. Adios

wow 4 whole posts

[geomon666]

5. This is no different then Vietnam

Fighters would take over a piece of land, soldiers come in, they run away and comeback when the army leaves.

[The Magistrate]

6. These Developments, Ma'am, Were Sadly Predictable

First, an enemy seldom remains in place in place to receive a telegraphed blow. Even in conventional positional warfare, front lines are thinned out, and main resistance lines positioned well beyond reach of the enemy's start-line salvoes. Guerrilla fighters simply go elsewhere; guerrilla war attaches no importance to holding particular locales. Even in Mao's campaigns against the Nationalists in China, base areas were routinely abandoned to avoid crushing pressures; new ones could always be set up elsewhere.

Second, it is clear to all observers, and so must be clear to the Iraqi insurgents, that this blow against Fallujah is mounted by the bulk of U.S. combat power in that country. Thus, its execution constitutes an "all-clear" signal for insurgent activity elsewhere in the country, which can be carried out secure in the knowledge that no great reaction can be carried out against it. The great bulk of U.S. forces are tied up in protecting logistical lines and their own perimeters, and so cannot take effective action against guerrilla activities that do not directly engage them. But the principal object of guerrilla activity at this time is not U.S. forces but adherents of the "puppet" government of Allawi.

"Can't nobody here play this game?"

[saigon68]

30. Sir, for 18 months we've predicted this.

They are trying to kill 10 ants with a bulldozer. While the other million ants build hives all over the place.

Its like trying to kill a fly with a 10 pound sledgehammer.

Eric Shinseki said 280,000 troops. I believe his estimate was a little low

[NorthernSpy]

41. worst part: this attack was ordered purely to create "political capital"

... for chimpy and his crew.

Ever ask why this thing was advertised in advance? I mean, if we really wanted to take the resisters on and actually defeat them, would we have told them when to expect us? Did we send the Germans an engraved invitation to meet us on D-Day?

This was deliberately arranged to ensure that few of the fighters would remain in Fallujah, and that the bulk of them would predictably relocate themselves to other areas before the assault began. Likewise, the US would -- just as predictably -- leave places like Ramadi, and go to Fallujah.

The whole point is to give chimpy his victory in Fallujah, even as other cities are abandoned.

It's a choreographed farce, and its only aim is to create political capital for the War Party.

[Mikimouse]

7. Sounds like someone read Mao's book on Guerilla warfare...

Before anyone jumps down my throat, I know the idea were not originally his ideas, but I forget where they came from, so since his name is on the book, I cited him.

[secretshopper]

12. Lao Tzu stated similar stuff in The Art of War (nt)

[Mikimouse]

15. That's who I was thinking of, I think...thanks...n/t

[NYC]

20. Sun Tzu.

The Art of War.

http://www.kimsoft.com/polwar.htm

[Still_Notafraid]

21. I read

It every few years when i start to forget,they still teach Sun Tzu at west point,not sure why they don't comprehend him more,there is a lot of stuff in there that if you look past the ancient arms and chariot formations that are still very useful even today today.

You ever read Romance of the 3 kingdoms,there is many ruses based on Sun Tzu strategy in that novel, very good stuff,I love Asian history.

[NYC]

24. Who wrote Romance of the 3 Kingdoms?

Luo Guanzjong? I haven't read it.

[Still_Notafraid]

35. yes he wrote it

its a book of a 1000 ruses,the ruses of corse are the flower of the teachings of Sun Tzu.

[NorthernSpy]

14. why would anyone jump down your throat?

Mao Tse Tung's writings on guerilla tactics are famous! They're studied everywhere, and in fact, I quote a couple of sentences below.

[Mikimouse]

16. There are many here who know that many of the things that..

were published under Mao's name were not necessariliy his original thoughts, so I just wanted to make clear that I was aware of the possibility that they came from elsewhere. I read your other post too, and he was spot on as far as the, shal we say, non-conventional wisdom of guerilla war. Indeed, that seems to be exactly what the Iraqi resistance is doing.

[NorthernSpy]

9. it's just classic guerilla warfare...

"Exploit the enemy's weaknesses; flee from his strengths. The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue."

-Mao Tse Tung


These kinds of conflicts can drag on for ages.

[Still_Notafraid]

22. you nailed it

What makes them even more dangerous is that dieing is a reward.

[barb162]

25. delightful thought. We destroy Fallujah and most insurgents

already left. Aren't we smart? Make more people there homeless and we can claim a great victory

[0rganism]

31. Mao, "On Guerrilla Warfare"

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1937/guerrilla-warfare/index.htm

We might all take a moment to bone up on it ourselves, while we still have access to the bush's Internets.

[RedCon1]

37. The primary requisite for waging guerilla warfare

is popular support. If the people support the guerillas, they are unconquerable. That's why winning hearts and minds is kind of important. Destroying Fallujah won't win too many hearts and minds over to the American cause. It doesn't matter though, this is a neo-con political war. It serves their purposes to allow the enemy to slip away to fight another day. Victory will just dispell this usefull fog of war that they have created, thereby denying them the ability to politically maneuver so freely. It's a giant red herring..IMHO of course.

[VegasWolf]

10. Gee, who woulda thunk that! n/t

[Yavin4]

11. Can You Say "Whack A Mole"?

Hammer one town down and another springs up. Sixteen dead soldiers and Iraq is still a bloody mess.

[kurtyboy]

17. Yavin4--exactly what I've been saying

We're playing insurgency Whack-A-Mole (TM) in Iraq.

WORSE, we've let the insurgents develop their strength, all so GW Bush could win his election. Back in April, when we had our forces in Falujah (flexing our muscles after the four hired helpers got ambused), we coulda stayed and finished the job.

But 150-200 casualties/month were unacceptable to Rove and his re-election campaign. So we pulled out, against the advice of the Generals, and let the insurgents build, plan, and evade. In the interim, we lost a much more palatable (/sarcasm) 60-80 Americans/month.

Now, with the election decided, we go in and destroy the, er, uh, ---well, we destry the innocent because the insurgents left long ago. Big self-inflicted whack to the forehead! I guess we shoulda known they might move when the press reported we were gonna lay 'em out after the election--and they reported it starting a month ago.

I swear the OPSEC in Iraq is the worst I've seen, ever. How in the fuck are these guys so good with it here at home in political races?

It truly boggles............


Kurt

[Zero Gravitas]

18. What a mess

This is just sickening. We don't have nearly enough troops to "pacify" Iraq.

[Malva Zebrina]

19. What does heavily armed mean?

I know little about ordnance, but the article says the resistors are heavily armed. All I have seen mentioned is hand held guns and RPG's plus the explosive catalysts that were stolen. What else can they have if they can slip out of the city so fast and so unseen?

[Emillereid]

23. Isn't this some kind of classic war strategy that the resistance is

pulling off. One of those war maneuvers that is taught in war college?? I mean I'm no military strategist, but I saw this coming. Reminds me of the time in 1971 when we protested the war by shutting down the government for a day. The reasoning was to draw the cops to one place and then do our stuff elsewhere -- they couldn't keep up.

[number6]

26. well duh

"However, small groups of fighters, sometimes no more than 20 strong, have attempted to engage the Americans, who vastly outnumber and outgun them, before fading away. "

so much for our glorious victory, .. for the empire

[amber dog democrat]

27. There is no way we can win this.

And just like Vietnam, the more encounters the rebels have, the more they learn about how to fight us. We are in the early stages now - wait until the civil war starts.

[Rose Siding]

28. Here's the NYT on this-

Insurgent attacks continued to exact a heavy toll across Iraq on Tuesday. Two American soldiers died in a mortar attack in Mosul, where government authority appears to be crumbling.

Gunmen assassinated a senior government official in Samarra. Guerrillas fired mortars at police stations in downtown Baghdad while hundreds of fighters massed in the center of the provincial capital of Ramadi, just 30 miles west of Falluja.

A suspected car bombing outside an Iraqi National Guard base in Kirkuk killed three people and wounded two others, Reuters reported. The attacks on Tuesday followed a wave of bloody strikes over the weekend, both in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle.

The American military reported 130 attacks on Monday, well above an average of 80 a day for most of the summer.

The American military said Tuesday that six people had been killed in the car bomb attack Monday night outside Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad. Five were Iraqi policemen, and the sixth was a civilian, the military said. In the two church bombings the same night, one Iraqi was killed and several wounded, and one of the bombers was disguised as an Iraqi policeman, according to a report by a Western security contractor.

This spate of what appear to be coordinated attacks, as well as the dispersal of top insurgent leaders, suggests that the Falluja offensive alone will not crush an insurgency that has been gathering strength. And it raises the prospect that insurgents will try to regroup and infiltrate Falluja after the fighting is over, as they have done in Samarra.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/international/middleeast/10insurgency.html?oref=login

[leftchick]

46. They Finally mention the chaos in Mosul

"Mosul, where government authority appears to be crumbling"....

US media would have you believe that Fallujah is the only game in town. For literally weeks now I have been leafing through the Yahoo Iraq photo gallery and have seen the carnage elsewhere in Iraq. Especially mosul where convoys are blown up DAILY! Ramadi, Baquba and Tikrit are out of control as well. I would say the only place the US actually has 'pacified' is the sky... :eyes:

[Gloria]

32. BBC reported this AM that US troops had WITHDRAWN from Ramadi...

and also said that insurgents had fanned out to areas around Fallujah (inc. Ramadi)

[NorthernSpy]

39. like poking a balloon...

Press it down in one spot, it just pops up in another.

[peterh]

33. Look out for….what I guess is already Wednesday….

DJ Insurgents Warn Iraqis To Stay Home Wednesday

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP)--A posting on an Islamist Web site warned Iraqis to stay at
home Wednesday in Baghdad and other cities or they would be "putting their lives
in danger."
The statement, in the name of eight known militant groups, said the unified
"Islamic resistance" would step up operations against the "American enemy" in
retaliation for the U.S.-led attack on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
The statement urged Iraqis to stay at home Wednesday "to avoid putting their
lives in danger."
In Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, insurgents distributed leaflets warning
shopkeepers to close their stores indefinitely starting Wednesday to protest the
attack on Fallujah.
Some families said they would keep their children away from school Wednesday
because of the insurgent threat.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires
11-09-04 1955ET(AP-DJ-11-10-04 0055GMT)



Hopefully….my fears don’t come to pass…..

[The_Casual_Observer]

34. eight known militant groups

Now that was the dead enders, bathists, Saddam loyalists, A-Q, Foreign Fighters, Insurgents. I guess I missed a couple. They really rely on the stupidity of the folks back home in the USA to continue building this colony.

[ausiedownunderground]

36. Are the US Marines using chemical weapons???

Even Oz "Mainstream Murdoch media" reporting 16 Marines dead and at least 60 wounded so far in "The Bush Gangs" assault for "Allawi" Democracy. There are extremely brave Oz media personnel in Fallujah on both sides and the reports tonight from them seem to be from another planet, compared to what we are also hearing from CENTCOM.
While the "Mainstream media" report these US casualties as "Light" and show pictures of F-16's, helicopter gunships, Ac-130's, Howitzers and tanks pouring massive amounts of "Depleted Uranium" shells into Fallujah other independent media journalists actually on the ground are reporting that front line Marine forces are heavily bogged down surrounded by "cluster bombs" and "rubble" and "bodies". One reporter even said that Fallujah is "Just Rubble" like Kabul!Another said that for every 500 shells fired by "Semper -Fi" there was 1 round from the Iraqi Guerillas. The "Freepers got to love this shit"!!! Another reporter said that he and the "Semper-Fi" were wearing chemical weapon masks because he believed that "Semper-Fi" were using chemical munitions to "Smoke out" the enemy from their urban protection. Now i don't know if this could be possibly right, but if it is it will get around the rest of Iraq pretty quickly!!!!! I do know that the Israeli's have used Chemical munitions in Palestine. The reporters also said that the Iraqi Guerillas have been using high powered Blue/Red flares during the night in order to confuse "Semper-Fi's" night vision equipment, thus evening up the battle a tad. They also reported an extremely bizzare "Music" war going on. Fallujah loudspeakers pumping out "arabic" music in front of them while "Semper-Fi" forces were pumping out "Heavy metal" western music behind them. The reporter didn't say which was more annoying!
Interesting Comments after the news, by "illustrious tactical "OZ" warriors" on our current affairs programs, suggested that maybe "Semper-Fi" chose the wrong time to attack Fallujah as it was "Lial-Ul-Qadr" or the "Blessing night for Muslims" during Ramadan. This was the day that a 3 to 1 force of Meccan's (ie From Mecca) tryed to attack Mohammed's muslim forces and we know what happened there!

[NorthernSpy]

38. I doubt the US is using chemical weapons

AFAIK, chemicals weapons have historically been used against large formations of troops in ordinary positional warfare. They would be of little use under the conditions presented in Fallujah. And this is leaving aside the fact that the US already has a vast amount of firepower to bring to bear, and -- despite its many weaknesses -- is not outgunned, to say the least.

Chemicals weapons are banned under international law. I sure hope that ban holds.

[leftchick]

47. US Mainstream media is...

nothing more than state run television. Thank you for a reality based report.

[JSJ]

40. the iraqis will win against the cowardly us military- watch and see!

[NorthernSpy]

42. I don't think American soldiers are cowardly

I do think that they are killing and dying for nothing, because we're too weak politically at this moment to call a halt to the whole thing.

[JSJ]

43. i do!- only cowards kill unarmed children and old people

[NorthernSpy]

44. if I were in a warzone, I'd flee in a panic

Or just be completely paralyzed with fear and unable to move or think.

It takes a lot of physical courage to go to war.

I also think it takes a lot of moral courage for a soldier to refuse to kill.

There are different kinds of courage.

[JSJ]

45. that is the normal, human, pychologically sound thing to do...

...only 'the troops' who are criminally inclined (30% of all armed forces had criminal histories prior to their enlistments, ), would seek out a genocidal killing action for their jollies. And 'the troops' are strictly volunteer these days, yes?