It may be happening as I write this, but retaliation for "Wednesday ambush in Fallujah":http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000724.php, which left four private employees of Blakwater dead, burned and mutilated, appears to be imminent.
On the outskirts of the city last night, battalions from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force geared for a battle, setting up checkpoints and camps in preparation for their eventual return to the hostile city. As they braced against one of the season's first blistering sandstorms, several Marines said they were rearing to avenge Wednesday's killings. "I've got a lot of hate inside me, but I try to put that aside," said Sgt. Eric Nordwig, 29, of Riverside, Calif., a veteran of the battle to topple Saddam Hussein. "We just sit and take it and be mortared." The time has come to "clean up the town," he said.Fallujahis lived an "uneasy calm" today, and the city's clerics denounced the horrific mutilations of Wednesday (but not the killings.) "Islam does not condone the mutilation of the bodies of the dead," Sheik Fawzi Nameq said, according to the Associated Press. "Why do you want to bring destruction to our city? Why do you want to bring humiliation to the faithful? My brothers, wisdom is required here." Some Iraqis were distressed over what happened, with Samir Shakir Mahmoud, a Sunni businessman from Western Iraq saying: "It represented the worst in savage behavior ... neither Islamic, nor Arab, nor related to any of the values of this region... It does not represent me and it does not represent Iraq. It represents the worst that the previous regime created in Iraq." He's right. In my travels in Iraq, I never encountered that level of hate. "Even in Tikrit":http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000365.php, before the Marines had it fully secured, the Arab fighters we met never threatened us. Yes, I was heatedly warned us against bringing any Kurds into their city, but after a fiery denunciation of Jalal Talabani, the general-secretary of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan -- and now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council -- the man I was speaking with, Adil Ahmed, shook my hand warmly and welcomed me to Tikrit. He knew I was an American, but that didn't matter. Hospitality was his watchword, even in war. Fallujah is a different story, and it's about to get worse. I detect a bit of war-porn going on from the right, I think. Many of the posters on the FreeRepublic.com and Little Green Footballs have a sweaty-palmed, heavy breathing aspect to their calls for blood, almost as if they can't _wait_ for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force to turn Fallujah into a parking lot. Bam! Show 'em who's boss! Pow! Hama time! But remember: Where they make a wasteland, they call it peace. (Tacitus).
Well, there is no doubt we can make havoc and dust of the city real fast. In the process, we will make more enemy of otherwise peacefull locals.
Revenge? I thought we went there for liberation!
What tangled webs we weave.
The mutilation of the mercenaries was the bait and it’s obviously working.
More victory for Osama.
Peace through strength and victory is forgiven. I know that offends your bleeding hearts and endlessly depressed and sorrowful spirits. Cheerio! :)
Violence creates more violence, as obviously as you can think back into any wars taken place in history…
If you want to retaliate; they do, too.
Christopher: All I can think of is the line, “What fools these mortals be!”
So much for the proclaimed “soft approach” that never happened, eh? Time to let loose the real bloodbath, as was always intended. Too bad we won’t have a spokesman like Colonel T.E. Lawrence to point out the folly of it all.
Regarding the FReepers and LGFers, rarely have I seen a more determined bunch of couch potatoes. For people quite comfortably removed from all consequences of their expressed desires, they’re certainly “gung ho!”
Which inevitably makes me wonder why our military is so hard-pressed for recruits. You’d think all these would-be red-blooded “patriots” would by now have smashed down the doors to the recruiting stations. But no.
Todd Rungren (Utopia) had a song entitled “Soldier of the Mind”. That about sums up their mentality for me. Either that, or “soldier of the mouth”.
Well, War hath no fury like a deskbound computer warrior, eh?
They are such a laugh. Fat, lazy, cowardly wussie pants knuckledraggers just like their fearful leader, monkeyboy who is gonna be sitting on Cheney’s lap to testify. before the 911 commision.
Here here JMFeeny!
“Which inevitably makes me wonder why our military is so hard-pressed for recruits. You’d think all these would-be red-blooded “patriots” would by now have smashed down the doors to the recruiting stations. But no.”
And the beat goes on, in Sunni and Shia and Kurdish territory alike, and all at once.
We keep hearing how “most of the population likes us”, with the suggestion they also want us to stay and bring democracy and fix everything til it’s peachy. And in extension, that all the Middle East
feels the same. Let’s run that by the Russians, Chinese and North Koreans, and the South Americans, too (obviously a lot of Mexicans like us, or so many wouldn’t come here for work).
Let’s just take over EVERYTHING, and be done with it. Every young man and woman under, say 26 or 27, we draft into the military. Shoot, up to 30 or 32, if that’s what it takes. Think of the REBUILDING our companies could be doing! Between that, military growth and the buildup in weapons, supplies, etc., it ought to take care of the JOBS problem and get the economy going so good, we can not only extend the tax cuts, but, heck, ENLARGE them…and then the economy would be muy fuego! Everybodies’ 401-ks going thru the roof
and nobody worrying about Social Security or the cost of healthcare or pharmaceuticals, and a nation united behind the benefits of world domination!!!
It’s all so simple, really.
Peter,
Thanks for the chuckle. My brother is in that quagmire, and I am scared. Still, your comment brings a smile.
There is a lot of stuff out there on the contractors supporting the US military, that they fulfill support functions like person protection or building security. But the question I have is why do four or five of these contractors work in a city which the US military pretty much does not enter because they think it is too dangerous. It seems to me those contractors shouldn’t have been in Fallujah in the first place, a city with that much violence should have only been entered by the military and the military should not have allowed contractors to enter it. That Fallujah was dangerous was not a surprise, everybody knew it.
Im a Kurd that comes from the Kurdish region of Iraq. I live in london now, and never the less i welcome america with open arms.
Those animals that live in falluja are all over iraq.
I hope that america gets its revenge and that the kurds can help in any way possible.
We know what those bastards are capable of and we know that they are shit scared of kurds, because of all the propaganda fed to them by Saddam.
They think kurds are devils that attack rape and kill innocent people. But it looks like their the ones that are doing exactly what their scared of.
Long Live Kurdistan and Long live America