The real story of ...""Tal Afar""

The real story of Tal Afar is dramatically different than Bush’s deluded account and considerably more tragic.

The siege of Tal Afar began on September 2, 2005. It was the largest military offensive since the assault on Falluja a year earlier. In 2004 the US military attempted to take over the city but was rebuffed by heavy fighting. After that, the guerilla movement inside the city intensified expecting a future attack.

A US officer told the Washington Post, "The September operation basically made people angry, which the insurgents were able to take advantage of. It had the opposite effect as intended. We created a power-vacuum and they filled it"

Approximately, 5,000 American and Iraqi troops sealed off the city, enclosing it behind a massive wall of sand with military checkpoints. Then the city’s people were forcefully evacuated leaving them to fend for themselves. The Red Cross was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the exodus and was unable to provide shelter, water, or food for many of those who fled. Regrettably, thousands of people chose to stay and withstand the withering assault rather than expose themselves to the Shiite death squads from the Interior Ministry who were operating in conjunction with the American forces. The city was then relentlessly pounded for more than a week by Abrams tanks, F-16s, helicopter gun-ships, and heavy artillery. At least four mosques were bombed and the Sarai area was hammered persistently with 500 and 1000 lb bombs. The Iraqi newspaper Azzaman reported, "Eyewitnesses spoke of 'scores of casualties due to indiscriminate bombing".

The entire operation was conducted in relative secrecy because the people in the United States were more focused on the unfolding Katrina tragedy.

The siege was executed according to the normal protocols; massive destruction of personal property, leveling areas where resistance appeared, snipers picking off anything that moves on the city streets, and the routine rounding up of anyone who seems at all suspicious.


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http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m21779&hd=0&size=1&l=x

They announce to the residence of the town we are going to attack. There is no way any insurgency will hang around. This happened in Fallujah (sp?).

This story will be told in full in the very near future....by soldiers who were there, by militrary leaders who were there....the horror will eventually be exposed...why undertake something like this?

Why?

grabbed their money and will be out of the picture by the time the real story is told, if ever.

in the link all Bush's rhetoric about shops opening and children playing in the street as opposed to his description of the insurgents having a beheading school just scares me. His speeches are written by professionals to deceive audiences that want to believe what he says is gospel. The deception is worse than I ever could have imagined.

and I came acros a Daily Kos "hit". It no longer existed, but was still cached. Here's what was there:

CENSORSHIP OF NEWS IN AMERICA -- Google Shuts Off Uruknet

This morning Sheila, an Irishwoman, asked me why my eyes looked so tired and my face so strained. I explained that I had been staying up all night writing articles about a story that broke in the UK on the 20th of March, but still hadn't been reported in the US news by the first week in June. "Sure, there's censorship of the news in America, isn't there?" she said. "I mean, everybody knows that there are stories about the war in Iraq that you can't print in America." This came as the biggest news of the day to me, that censorship of the news is a state policy. "Can't you get in trouble with the US government for writing stories like this? Will the FBI be paying us a call?" I told her that I was not too concerned, as the stories came from the BBC and that is about as establishment as you get. All I have been doing, I told her, is finding the news from here and delivering it over there.

* Apian's diary :: ::
*

Having been out of the country for more than a decade, how could I have known that censorship had become a state policy? How could I have known that the government had shackled and gagged the fourth estate? But I learned fast during the Newsweek Debacle. How did that one go again? Newsweek reported the truth, as had the International Committee of the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty before them. A massive amount of FBI emails released through the FOIA by the ACLU last December told the same story. Yet the US government stepped in and demanded that Newsweek retract, and blamed the press for the ensuing violence for having reported the truth. The Qu'ran was desecrated, but one was not to report it.

The hardest thing to do is to find the truth. And it's the only worthwhile thing to pursue. During the 2003 State of the Union Address I heard the President of the United States boast that he had summarily executed 3,000 Afghani prisoners. "And let's put it this way, they will no longer be a problem to us or to our allies." Then later we learned of the "Convoy of Death." And how hundreds of these prisoners died in transit in airless containers, and that these containers were shot full of holes, "for the ventilation." And some of the personel doing the shooting were American soldiers. And some of the witnesses to these atrocities of war were American soldiers.

Among all the other lies I have heard, that one about allies sticks in my craw as well. I suspect the United States has no allies. A few bought friends. A very few. Looks right now like only one. And all the documents that have been leaked, every single one of them points like a neon arrow back to Washington, back to Crawford. Do you make your friends break the law with you?

There has been a media blackout of the story of the illegal war in Iraq. The truth is coming out against the strongest, and at times, the most peculiar resistance. Now we've got minutes, memos transcripts, briefings, and notes. We have briefcases full of doctored "intelligence that was fixed around the policy" of an illegal war of aggression. A large portion of the informed public has adopted the attitude that this is "old news." This is, they seem to imply, business as usual. Lying to Congress is business as usual. Manipulating the press, manipulating the circumstances to create the conditions for war that was, apparently predetermined in 2001. Manipulating the weapons inspectors, manipulating the Security Council, manipulating the intelligence, manipulating the people. With a rhetoric of God, faith, freedom and democracy for all.
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http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:NYBb2ZInfNQJ:www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/10/20379/1477+uruknet&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=22

pnorman