Some Troops Expect All-Out Fallujah Fight

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040413/D81U3NHG0.html

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FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - Digging in around Fallujah, their three-day-old truce punctured by shelling, gunfire and well-orchestrated ambushes, U.S. Marines gave vent to their frustrations Tuesday, saying they saw no alternative to an all-out battle for the city.

With U.S.-backed Iraqi officials still talking with city leaders about ending the standoff, it's not for the troops to decide how this tangle of conflicting forces will unravel.

But as Marines traded gun and mortar fire with rooftop snipers and fighters on the northern edge of Fallujah, some of them anticipated a bloody push to take the city of 200,000 people, a stronghold of Sunni Muslim insurgents.

"If they're trying to find a peaceful way out of this, great. But at this point, there seem to be few options other than to get innocents out and level it, wipe it clear off the map," said 1st Lt. Frank Dillbeck, scanning the city's outskirts with binoculars during a relative lull in fighting.
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How are me any different than Saddam again? Or Milosevic, for that matter.

Jay

EDITED FOR SPELLING

Because God said what we are doing is good and just.

We're different because we want to bring them freedom and democracy, even if it means killing thousands and bombing their cities into dust.

1st Lt. Frank Dillbeck, quoting an unnamed SS officer outside of the Warsaw Ghetto, well except for the part about getting the innocents out.

Sarcasm off :(

This can't be happening. I wonder if I feel the way decent German citizens did in Nazi Germany when they found out about concentration camps? What can I, one average powerless citizen, do?

n/t

That is all we can do. By our silence we are complicit.

I can't believe this either, even though last year I told my husband this would wind up happening to this town (after the April 28, 2003 slaughter and subsequent disasters).

So to deal with a few misfits, the military will just wipe the city from existance. How godlike of us. Just like in the bible.

The best way to prevent any more American deaths is to just turn around and leave.

Wasn't that the motto of the Crusaders? "Let God sort out the innocent from the guilty." Certainly makes the job of the warriors much easier, no?

they will be so thankful for the "freedom" and "democracy" we have given them

nt

I hope there are many video cameras at the ready. Whatever happens should be meticulously documented for every person to see. It would likely be the symbol of the USA for years to come.

This is better than Saddam how?

Everything we were told about the Iraq war has not been true or come true.

No imminent threat
No nuclear program
No drones
No WMDs
No biological weapons
No welcoming with open arms
No democracy by the people
house to house fighting
nation building
need to increase taxes or spending for war
fighting units without all equipment needed.
open ended war
No exit strategy
No after war plan
No help from the rest of the world or UN

continue your list here:

Is this going to be the much dreaded "knifefight in a phone booth" that many of us were afraid was going to happen at some point in this invasion?

Urban combat is always nasty, and rarely goes well for the intruding forces as the terrain greater favors defenders and most technological advantages are neutralized.

If carried out as stated, these are war crimes, plain and simple - no matter what some may say, this is against international law and all standards of human decency.

God have mercy on this country's soul.

and what you have now is what, 1200 marines gonig up against a city the size of Pittsbugh?? I guess the neocons that started this war, don't remember a little town called Grozny and how many more Russiona troops failed to capture that town until they leveled it..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_638000/638309.stm

in case we forgot...

and sell the women and children into slavery.

A full retreat would be the way to go!

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1075950,00.html

Bush says God chose him to lead his nation

Book reveals how President's religious and political beliefs are entwined - and claims he did pray with Blair

Paul Harris in New York
Sunday November 2, 2003
The Observer

President George W. Bush stood before a cheering crowd at a Dallas Christian youth centre last week, and told them about being 'born again' as a Christian.

'If you change their heart, then they change their behaviour. I know,' he said, referring to his own conversion, which led to him giving up drinking.

Behind Bush were two banners. 'King of Kings', proclaimed one. 'Lord of Lords', said the other. The symbolism of how fervent Christianity has become deeply entwined with the most powerful man on the planet could not have been stronger.

Few US Presidents have been as openly religious as Bush. Now a new book has lifted the lid on how deep those Christian convictions run. It will stir up controversy at a time when the administration is keen to portray its 'war on terror' as non- religious.

...more...

:puke::nuke:

While we are busy leveling Falluja, the rest of Iraq raises and slaughters westerners.
Doing this solidifys world opinion against us.

thanks.

you'll be glad you did.

before it's begun. The militia has already stood off the marines and forced a truce, they have the moral high ground in Iraqi (and increasingly, world) opinion, and even if and when US forces take the city, it'll only increase bitterness, anger, and untimately armed resistance.

No denigration of the marines on the ground intended; they're fighting a shitty battle with great courage and making terrible sacrifices--but they've been shoved into the wrong fight.

What a goddam clusterfuck.

:nuke:

to Oradour-Sur-Glane. Sixty years later the ruins remain. The French government preserve them to remind their nation and the rest of Europe of the horrors of war. Does 1st Lt Frank Dillbeck really want himself and his marine comrades to go down in the history books alongside Captain Khan and Lieutenant Barth of the 3rd company of the SS "Der Fuhrer" regiment ?

"That's the only way to be sure."

Aiieee! Iraqi xenomorphs!

Probably too busy playing Rainbow Six to give a fuck, is my guess.

A few excerpts from a paper titled "THE SOVIET WAR IN AFGHANISTAN:
HISTORY AND HARBINGER OF FUTURE WAR?" published in 1995 by the US Army's Foreign Military Studies Office:

"the only effective way for a technologically less-advanced country to fight a technologically-advanced country is through guerrilla war. Guerrilla war, a test of national will and the ability to endure, negates many of the advantages of technology"

"The initial active resistance by the Afghan military was confined to a short battle against the Soviet Spetsnaz 1 unit storming the Presidential Palace. However, the stunned citizens of this geographically isolated land immediately rose to defend their land. In defiance of the wisdom of conventional warfare, the citizens armed themselves, gathered into loose formations and began to attack and sabotage the superior occupying force's personnel, installations, depots and transport with any available weapons (to include flintlock muskets). Open resistance flared so quickly that only two months after the invasion, (on the night of 23 February 1980) almost the entire population of Kabul climbed on their rooftops and chanted with one voice "God is Great". This open defiance of the Russian generals who could physically destroy their city was matched throughout the countryside. The Afghan warrior society sent thousands of warriors against their northern invader."

"The Soviets expected the resistance to end here, but it had only begun. The ability to rationalize an intolerable situation that pervades the West did not hold in the mountains of Afghanistan. The Afghans' values, faith and love of freedom enabled them to hold out against a superpower, even though they suffered tremendous casualties in doing so."

Substitute "Americans" for "Soviets" and "Iraq" for "Afghanistan" and it's an eerily prescient description of the current mess.

More at: http://leav-www.army.mil/fmso/fmsopubs/issues/waraf.htm

You'd think a military that took an active interest in analyzing Soviet performance in Afghanistan would know better than repeating all the same mistakes.

bm

That should be quite clear by now.

The war is being run by the Whiz Kids in Rumsfeld's office...

But the Kimmitts, Sanchezes and countless colonels bragging on the evening news about getting tough with the raghead are their necessary enablers. History does seem lost on them as well as it is on the civilian leadership in DC.

bm

with collective punishment, military escalation and targeting the leaders of the oppoosition, and like the Israeli's they'll achieve nothing more than a generalized insurection (Iraqi Intifada).

I read in yahoo news that Sistani and other grand ayatollahs were actively trying to prevent this showdown http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040413/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_7

This misguided and callous attack will further unify Shiites and Sunnies and aggravate the situation. Like the Israel-Palestine situation, there is no military solution to the conflict, no matter how powerful the U.S. army is. The difference is that unlike the Palestinians, the Iraqis are prepared for a fierce and deadly military resistance and give the U.S. a run for its money.

it hasn't been attacked first.

:shrug:

If they had attacked us, we could engage in warfare to the death.

This elective war to "free them" "get rid of non-existent WMDs", "democratize the M.E", kind has us in a Catch-22.

We have NO moral high ground here.

This is an ideologue's clusterfuck and the military's worst nightmare.

and Goddammit, it IS Bush*'s Vietnam

And they aren't any different than Saddam and Milosevic except in level of tyrannization of their own citizenry.

And the Busheviks are working to close that gap ASAP.

Don't confuse the Busheviks with Free Americans who live under the Occupation of Imperial Forces in Amerika.

These monsters don't speak for me or Free America. They are the ANTITHESIS of Free America.