Saudi security forces shot dead a suspected insurgent in a clash in the Red Sea port city of Jidda, police and witnesses said. Witnesses said two people escaped, leaving rifles and ammunition in a car in the Jamia district of Jidda where police shot dead another suspected insurgent earlier this month.
"Curly-toed slippers, don't fail us now!"
A policeman on the scene said the dead man was wanted on security issues but provided no other details about the shootout early on Saturday evening. The Interior Ministry later released a statement which said a small amount of ammunition and money was found on the man. "Security forces surrounded a car used by a wanted person, and when he saw them he tried to use a hand grenade in his possession, then died after being fired upon," the statement read on Saudi state television said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/27/2004 8:05:15 PM ||
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The construction of a nuclear power project in North Korea will remain suspended for another year, the U.S.-led overseers of the project said on Friday. The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, a consortium that includes the United States and South Korea, suspended the work last December after the United States said in October 2002 that North Korea had admitted working on an uranium-enrichment project as part of a nuclear arms program. "The future of the project will be assessed and decided by the executive board before the expiration of the suspension period," the New York-based organization, known as KEDO, said in a statement.
Not unexpected.
The board of KEDO, which also includes Japan and the European Union, said the site of two prospective light-water reactors in North Korea would be preserved and maintained under the suspension for an additional year beginning Dec. 1. The light water reactor project in Kumho, North Korea, was the product of a 1994 agreement to meet North Korea's energy needs in exchange for Pyongyang's promise to freeze its nuclear programs. The United States said in October 2002 that North Korean work on a secret uranium enrichment project nullified the 1994 agreement and it pressed to stop work on the two reactors.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/27/2004 12:33:44 AM ||
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Unknown assailants shot at and almost killed an imam overnight on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica then fled after daubing racist graffiti on a building where he was staying, a prosecutor said yesterday. Prosecutor Jose Thorel said a group of men drove up to a house, which serves as a Muslim cultural center and prayer hall in the southern Corsican town of Sartene at 2:30 a.m. They shouted racist insults, which brought the cleric to the door, although he did not open it. The assailants then fired several shots at the door and the bullets would have hit the imam if had not had the good sense to flatten himself against the wall, Thorel said. The group then left after daubing a swastika and the slogan "Arabi Fora" (Arabs Out in the Corsican language) on the walls of the building.
"I was asleep when I heard someone banging very loudly on the door. I went toward the door; they were shouting 'Arabs out'. It was the voice of someone young," the still visibly shocked cleric, Mohamed El-Atrache, said. "They fired! I flattened myself against the wall and I heard them leave quickly afterward," the 53-year-old Moroccan said. Ten bullet holes were visible on the door, all at head and chest height. In the corridor leading to a prayer room, a glass door was broken in two places and one of the nine-millimeter bullets was stuck in the kitchen wall, about 10 meters away.
Corsica, which is home to a strong nationalist movement, has recently seen an upsurge in attacks on North African immigrants. Emotions were running high among around a dozen people who often attend "The Sartene Muslim Cultural Association" and who came yesterday out of solidarity. "The problem here is that there is no enemy in front of you to try to explain things to... Our children were born here, we're integrated and don't have any trouble with the people here," said one, who refused to be named. Atrache said it was the first time he had been threatened. "I've lived here for 12 years, it's the first time something like that has happened. I'm scared now," he said. "But I don't think they came here intending to kill me. It's a bit like in Bastia or Ajaccio (the island's two main cities) or elsewhere ... young people with nothing better to do," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/27/2004 8:22:44 PM ||
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Singapore dispatched a troop landing ship with a crew of 180 to Iraq on Saturday in the city-state's latest military contribution to coalition forces there. The RSS Resolution will stay in the Persian Gulf for three months, the city-state's defense ministry said. The crew's mission is to protect the waters around key oil terminals, provide logistics support for coalition vessels and helicopters, and conduct patrols and boarding operations, the statement said. Singapore earlier deployed a troop landing ship, a C-130 transport plane and a KC-135 tanker aircraft to the Persian Gulf to aid Iraq's reconstruction efforts. It also sent 32 police officers to Baghdad for two months in July to help train Iraqi police.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/27/2004 11:26:27 AM ||
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Agence France Presse Palestinian security officials said yesterday they were dismantling a notorious militia squad, known as "the death group", in what appeared to be the first concrete move toward reforming the sprawling security forces. "We have decided to dismantle the protection and security department, which is known by the public as the 'death group' because we want to protect all the people," said Rashid Abu Shbak, head of preventative security in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "We respect the law and we will implement the reforms (of the security forces) and provide security for all people," he told a Gaza news conference.
"We do now that Yasser's dead. If we get somebody like him come the elections, we'll fire 'em back up again."
The Gaza-based group, which was set up before the four-year Palestinian uprising, or intifada, broke out in September 2000, was originally tasked with protecting VIPs visiting the territory. But over the last few years the 70-member group, which falls under the remit of the Palestinian preventative security forces has run increasingly wild, conducting raids, kidnappings and armed attacks. As the intifada rumbled on and security increasingly spiralled out of control, members of the group began running protection and extortion rackets, often involved in gunbattles through the streets of Gaza. Known to everyone and widely feared, this "armed-wing of the preventative security forces" would mete out justice to individuals, politicians or journalists it deemed worthy of punishment.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/27/2004 8:09:34 PM ||
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#1
"We do now that Yasser's dead. If we get somebody like him come the elections, we'll fire 'em back up again."
If the Paleos are stupid enough to be receptive to the idea of being led by the likes of another Yasser, then any notion of a Palestinian "homeland" should be dropped, never to be brought up again.
Twenty months after toppling Saddam Hussein, U.S. troops still battling his followers in the heartland of Iraq's old arms industry are hitting back with a new weapon -- ex-members of Saddam's special forces.
For five months, Iraqi police commandos calling themselves the Black Scorpions have been based with U.S. Marines in the region along the Euphrates south of Baghdad, which roadside bombs, ambushes and kidnaps have turned into a no-go areas and earned it the melodramatic description "triangle of death."
"All of them were previously officers in the Iraqi army or special forces," the Scorpions' commander, Colonel Salaam Trad, said at the Marines' Kalsu base near Iskandariya on Saturday.
"But Saddam was dirty and no good for Iraq."
The performance of this SWAT team, as the Americans call it, could be a critical test of how U.S. forces can hand over to Iraqis to meet their goal of withdrawing from a stable Iraq. U. S. officers in the area say they are increasingly optimistic.
"The hardest fighters we have are the former special forces from Saddam's days," Colonel Ron Johnson, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, told reporters.
Praising their local knowledge and fighting skills, Johnson singled out one man who fought against him at Nassiriya, the hardest battle of last year's brief war against Saddam's army.
"If I could have an Iraqi security force guy who's honest, reliable and dependable, it's worth five Marines," he added.
Captain Tad Douglas, who leads almost daily raids with the Scorpions, said he believed it was a unique experiment that made use of the Iraqis' feel for their home province of Babylon.
"Ninety-five percent of our intelligence is from the SWAT," he said. "They can put a guy in a cafe in the way we never could ... They have a good finger on the pulse."
NO HARD FEELINGS
U.S. officers are reluctant to discuss how big the SWAT team is and Trad and Douglas brush off questions on what they may or not have done to each other in last year's war.
"It doesn't matter to me what they did. They're staunchly anti-insurgent," said Douglas, who dismissed suggestions their training under Saddam might have made them too violent.
"We just had to polish them up a bit," he said. This week, Johnson has stepped up raids against insurgents in an operation code-named Plymouth Rock, hoping to keep pressure on Sunni rebels after their rout at Falluja to the northwest.
Of Johnson's 5,000-strong force in the region, which was once the heart of Saddam's arms industry and base of the Medina armored division of the elite Republican Guard, more than 2,000 are Marines, 850 British soldiers and the rest Iraqi.
At the camp 30 miles south of Baghdad, the Scorpions are very visible, wearing the khaki jumpsuits of Marine special forces and black mustaches traditional in the Iraqi military.
Occupying powers have a long and patchy history of creating local units and Iraqi forces in other regions have had mixed success. This month, thousands of police in the northern city of Mosul fled or changed sides when Sunni insurgents took charge.
Johnson acknowledges the loyalties of some Iraqis in his force may be divided but says they "want to be on the winning side" and is confident that U.S.-led troops can end what he sees as limited and decentralized violence by at most a few thousand disgruntled Saddam supporters and local bandits.
Iraqi police here have stuck to their posts despite killings of comrades in bomb attacks and murders of off-duty officers: " They don't cut and run, despite their losses," Johnson said.
Clearly exasperated by the "triangle of death" tag, he said: "I'm getting more optimistic every day."
As for Colonel Salaam, a small, wiry man of 32, he shrugs off insurgent threats to himself and his family and says what he wants is: "Freedom, a new Iraq, peace."
About 100 insurgents attacked and briefly occupied a government building in a town north of the capital early Saturday before U.S. troops and government forces drove them out, officials said. "Unknown gunmen attacked at dawn two police stations and the city hall. They occupied the city hall for a while," said Saad Ahmed Abbas, a municipal official in Al Khalis, 40 miles from Baghdad. Abbas said that U.S. soldiers and Iraqi security forces — including the police and national guard — regained control after a two-hour exchange of fire with the rebels. "Now the situation is calm," he said.
A police officer said that about 100 rebels took part in the attack, and that they had left behind several mortars and rocket propelled grenades. Ghassan al-Khadran, deputy of governor of Diala province, said one policeman was injured in the shootout and that several rebels had been killed.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/27/2004 11:35:47 AM ||
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#1
Well okay, sheesh, we'll add Al Khalis to the list. You could've just asked politely. Maybe we need to add Ritalin to the water supply.
Dr Steve, whaddya think? Cost effective? Alternative treament?
#6
It would be much more fun for everyone if, instead of being driven off, every one of these folks were nabbed or given the dirt nap. I suppose it's the details of the local situation, but I wonder why these people can't be relentlessly pursued every time they show themselves thusly.
A remote-controlled bomb exploded near a vehicle carrying German soldiers in northern Afghanistan, injuring three of them, NATO said Saturday. The homemade bomb damaged one of the two military vehicles carrying soldiers on patrol near Kunduz on Friday evening, a military statement said. The casualties, whose names were not released, were treated for hearing difficulties at a military camp in Kunduz, it said. Their injuries were described as minor.
Been back from Iraq long, Mahmoud?
Posted by: Fred ||
11/27/2004 11:34:31 AM ||
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"A spokesman for the force, Canadian Lt. Cdr. Ken Mackillop, said a pamphlet found near the scene threatened a "number of groups" without mentioning ISAF."
In a follow-up statement by the "Taliban and al-Qaida holdouts" who set the explosive, "Oops, our bad. We will strive to be more careful in the future to identify our targets as ordinary citizens, innocent bystanders, and young schoolgirls."
Looks like the backdoor negotiations story was true. A pity no one thought to drop some sand into the KY jelly as a precaution...
The Pakistan army said Saturday it will withdraw hundreds of troops from a tense tribal region near Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden and his top deputy were believed to be hiding. The withdrawals from the South Waziristan area come after several military operations by thousands of troops against remnants of bin Laden's al-Qaida organization and its supporters in recent months. Although the tribal region is considered a possible hiding place for bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, a senior Pakistan general said earlier this month that no sign of bin Laden has been found.
"So we might as well leave..."
The army will remove checkpoints in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, the top general in northwestern Pakistan, said after meeting with tribal elders Friday. He said the moves are "in return for the support of tribesmen in operations against foreign miscreants." Some troops will remain in the area, he said. "We have been assured by tribal elders that they will not allow miscreants to hide in areas under their control," Hussain said.
They assured you of that before the fighting started. Funny thing, there they were. Howdya think that might have happened?
Between 7,000 and 8,000 Pakistani forces were deployed in a three-pronged offensive in the eastern reaches of the rugged region this month. U.S. military forces remain largely on the Afghanistan side in hopes of capturing or killing any al-Qaida operatives crossing the border.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/27/2004 11:21:54 AM ||
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...We were just chatting and having fun. Our neighbor who is a Tikriti and worked for the intelligence knocked on the door and when I opened he asked me about the cars outside our house. I told him that these were our friends'. He said to me, "You know that gathering is against the law and if it wasn't for the fact that you're my neighbor and I respect your family, I would've sent you behind the sun. Be careful, as I understand but other people may not" He said it in a warning tone not as an advice!...
Posted by: Anonymoose ||
11/27/2004 10:19:56 AM ||
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French reporters Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, who will mark their 100th day in captivity this weekend, are now the longest-held Western hostages in Iraq, as French diplomatic efforts to free them continue to flounder. The two journalists were abducted on August 20 as they were driving to the holy Shiite city of Najaf. The reporters' exact whereabouts remain unknown but the little information available on their fate indicates they could still be held in Latifiyah, a lawless Sunni rebel enclave 40 kilometres from Baghdad.
An Egyptian trucker who was released on November 13 said he had been briefly detained in a room in Latifiyah next door to two Frenchmen and he believed they were still there when he was released. "I was kidnapped on October 20 and held afterwards at a house in Latifiyah where two Frenchmen were in the next room and whose voices I heard," he said. "I heard the kidnappers talking at night in another nearby room. One of them said 'Let's take the Frenchmen to Fallujah,' but another one said 'no, it is too dangerous'." During their assault on Fallujah, US marines found the two journalists' Syrian driver, Mohammed al-Jundi, who was kidnapped at the same time but had been detained separately since early September. "An' tonight, on zee 'Nightline', 'France Held Hostage', day one hundreed, as President Chirac he does not'ing. I am Francois Koppel reporting."
Posted by: Anonymoose ||
11/27/2004 9:54:04 AM ||
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#1
French chattering classes have been responsible for brain washing the French into a paroxism of anti-American hate. Want an example? If you thought the 60th anniversary of D-Day would be a moment of reconciliation forget about it: "Le Point" (not a Communist magazine but a moderately right wing magazine) made a special issue talking about rapes perpetrated by American servicemen or about people whinning because their house was destroyed by an Allied bomb (*).
And those two particular guys were particularly virulent supporters of the Paleostinian cause and particularly virulent Anti-Americans. Far, far beyond the people of "Le Point". So if American find them, the best thing they could do is lock the door again and throw the key
(*) Many French don't share those views. One day while at the hairdresser I heard a guy who was at Normandy while still a boy. He told about how him and his parents went to a house, weren't allowed in and that house was destroyed shortly after. And how happy he was to know the Allies were coming and to see German soldiers shitting in their pants.
#2
JFM - Assuming Chirac and His Minions are finally tossed in 2007, and I don't know how likely that really is, is there any chance that whomever replaces them will turn off or attempt to moderate the "Hate America" flow of screed?
Public statements indicate that we are the enemies of the French Gov't. As with Germany, I would like to say (and see vindicated at the next elections) , that it's a problem of leadership, not a true visceral enmity with the people.
I'm just wondering if it's simply too late... and you're the only voice there I'd readily trust to tell me the unvarnished truth, heh. SO if you're inclined...
#3
One thing about Chesnot and Malbrunot ("the friend of the arabs", as one jewish news agency called him, in regard of his anti-israelian/pro-paleostinian bias) : they will be released before Xmas, and they will bring with them a documentary made while in captivity detailing the activities of the "resistance".
Antoine Sfeir, director of the Cahiers de l'Orient, an arab world specialist usually well connected, has been saying so on french tv, though this was not noted by MSM, and IIRC an iraqi newspaper basically said the same.
Theses two tools are not hostages, they are guests, and they are working right now with the "islamic army", with cameras provided by the "France 2" gvt-owned tv channel.
#5
ST - Wow, I forgot about the effort to break up Canada - thx for reminding me just how insane De Gaulle really was... he was a trip, wasn't he, heh? And, as you say, Chirac is upholding the tradition. Marginlization of culture steeped in arrogance is a morbidly fascinating process to watch. Sad, however... recall Pascale, Pasteur, et al.
#6
I think the "Hate the Anglo-Saxons" meme started with Philip of Valois. The only difference the successor to Chiraq may make is to be less maladroit, but that is improbable and immaterial to moderating the mutual distaste.
Posted by: George W. Bush ||
11/27/2004 13:43 Comments ||
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.com
It is difficult to say. Between the right wing Sarkozy has warned against anti-americanism. There are also some figures in the left who are not systematically anti-american or intelligent enough to know when France should stop bickering and close ranks with the Americans. But the chatttering classes are sold to the EU and they
have told explicitly that the EU needs hate towards America in order to create European patriotism.
#8
have told explicitly that the EU needs hate towards America in order to create European patriotism. - Fits with my view that France, contrary to the multilaterialist brush they use to paint themselves, is the last 19th century power in Europe. They are continuing with their united Europe (against les Anglos) project that had to be shelved for a while after Waterloo.
#9
Phil_b The problem for the frogs is that it won't be "their" united Europe. Too many Europeans have figured it out and the Germans will catch on soon. That'll leave the French with their Riviera allies, Spain, Greece and Belgium. They'll probably name the alliance The Victors.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
11/27/2004 16:47 Comments ||
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#10
SwissTex
French anti-americanism didn't start with de Gaulle. It started for real under Napoleon III who had ambitions in South America and thus wanted to favour the Confederates, but as French public opinion wouldn't swallow helping the slavery cause French government began planting the seeds of anti-Americanism. After Napoleon III fall the third Republic was instaurated that anti-Americanism became really systematic: the French Republicans no longer needed America as a a beacon for the idea of Republican government. In fact they feared it since the French electoral system was carefully designed to give the impression of democracy while carefully emptying any influence of the people over France's government. The sending of Miss Liberty was a desperate attempt by the last pro-Americans to revive the Franco-American friendship in a rising tide of Anti-Americanism. Later, the rise of socialism and the secularization of the Republic (more exactly the atheization of the Republic since the conccept of the French "seculars" were closer to the ACLU than to the First Amendment) made that there were people interested in French people diverting their eyes from a country where blue collars became millionaires and where there was real religious freedom.
For De Gaulle, he wasn't antiamerican in 1940 and many of its traits should have contributed to make him American-friendly (his religiosity, his poor opinion of French self appointed elites, his belief in the need to change the system in order o empower the people). However Roosevelt administration's backstabbings spoiled him (plus the fact that the Allies had to account for De Gaulle's unpopularity in France after backing the British on the attack against the French fleet in 1940). When he returned to power in 1958 he had good relations with the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, was the first to support America during the missile crisis but with Johnson things went down with faults shared by Johnson (who was as anti-french as Roosevelt) and by De Gaulle who had become bitter and resentful (he was also resentful against the French) as he knew that crucial years had been wasted between 1946 and 1958 and that now it was too late both for him and for France. But De Gaulle knew when it was no time for power plays and triangulations (like during the missile crisis) and I have no doubt that he would have sided with America against any two bit dictator trying to get WMDs, even if for the simple reason that a Saddam with nukes would have been a threat for France too.
Note: De Gaulle had to deal with a country who had been deeply shaken by the 1940 defeat and the capitulation (the poison of it is still undermining it even in 2004). In order to restore some of France's self confidence he had to magnify Free French contribution to WWII and minimize Allied contribution to liberation of France. It was not specific to America: the way he treated the Spanish who fought in the Resistance (and were crucial in the liberation of Toulouse) was not precisely fair and full of gratitude.
#12
Mrs. Davis, your parochialism is showing. You are grouping together France, Spain, Belgium and *Greece* when they have nothing in common that distinguishes them from the rest of the EU -- except ofcourse an opposition to the Iraq war. But like it or not the Iraq war is not the pivotal event of human history or EU history -- in a Europe which on the public level was opposed to the war throughout the continent it's not even a significant fault line. Greece is not an "ally" of France even if we consider antiAmericanism alone -- Greek antiAmericanism seems to me for example to have very different roots than French antiAmericanism, since for example in Greece the most anti-American tend to also be the most anti-EU as well, representing an aversion to the whole of the West.
Europe is not divided in new and old, in good or bad, depending on their stances towards America. You could have chosen economic, geographical, cultural and political criteria, and different lines would have emerged, but with none of these would you have placed France, Spain, Greece and Belgium in the same category to the exclusion of the rest -- except through, as I said, an insane amount of Iraq-centered parochialism.
#13
I think the light is starting to dawn among the Frenchmen on the street that France is returning to equilibrium as a large, but weak nation, agrarian in nature, whose prosperity depends on the more powerful nations nearby. The real centers of power will, with reform, properly be Germany and Poland. They will be supported and balanced by a large second tier of nations that form and reform into blocs based in geography and economics. Any extra advantage the French will gain will be by unilateralism and treachery--and like with NATO, they may be the first to renounce the EU and leave.
#14
Europe is not divided in new and old, in good or bad, depending on their stances towards America. You could have chosen economic, geographical, cultural and political criteria...
Faire un oeuf [or fair enough]. To my mind the greatest divide within Europe is between on the one hand the media and political elites who by and large came out of the student movements of the late 1960s and 1970s, as well as their trade union vassals, and the broader European public.
The latter are in my experience likely to be anti-American only to the extent that they have been taken in by the distortions and relentless agitprop of the media/political elites. Otherwise, Europeans today are far more sympathetic to US-led global capitalism, US technology, and US culture than their elites would have one believe. I'd expect that as Holland's sad experience begins to be replicated in other EU countries, their publics will also come around to supporting the US-led war against jihadi fascism. The key for us is to break the media monopoly and stifling groupthink that the 1968er generation has imposed on Europe. We complain about our idiot MSM, but there's even less counter-meme dissent and debate in those nations than here. The view of the world from Le Monde, Der Spiegel, the elite press across continental Europe generally is a snapshot of a caricature of a fantasy.
At first glance, the U.S. Marines saw nothing extraordinary about a baby crib in the corner of a bombed-out house in Fallujah. But when Lance Cpl. Nick Fenezia threw back the blankets, a Kalashnikov rifle and bulletproof vest lay on the tiny mattress. "Man, did you have to be just another muj?" Fenezia mused of the baby's missing father, employing American shorthand for Iraq's insurgents - mujahedeen - or Muslim holy warriors. "Couldn't you have stopped shooting at us and watched your baby grow instead?"
He'd rather be dead than to see other people making their own decisions...
U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to fight sporadic gunbattles with rebel holdouts as they clear Fallujah of weapons. On Friday, Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said only about half the buildings in the city had been cleared even though organized resistance has collapsed. But as the battle calms, U.S. forces are reflecting on the fight, their often-unseen foes and the future of a city that lies in ruins. Fenezia, of Red Bank, N.J., also turned up a bayonet, ammunition and a baby photo - all lying amid walls shattered by the Americans' devastating firepower.
A burst of gunfire rattled nearby in southern Fallujah, but the Marines shrugged it off. "They have no idea what they are shooting at. It's just mental games they play. They know they've lost and there is no way out," says Lance Cpl. Brian Wyer, 21, of Chouteau, Okla. "This is nothing, not after the intense battle here."
Marine, Army and Iraqi troops opened their Fallujah assault Nov. 8 with massive artillery and air strikes pounding the city before tanks, armored vehicles and troops on foot pushed in from the north. They battled for days with rebels who had been fortifying the city since April, when planners called off a Marine assault amid widespread outcry over reports of civilian casualties emanating from Fallujah's hospital, numbers U.S. officers called inflated. The U.S. military says upward of 1,200 cannon fodder insurgents died in the latest offensive. More than 1,000 suspects were captured, and more than 50 U.S. forces along with eight Iraqis were killed. Marines are now clearing weapons from the city on the banks of the Euphrates River and preparing for the return of civilians, who once numbered up to 300,000 by some tallies, though U.S. officers estimated that only 50,000 to 60,000 were in the city before the well-publicized attack.
Nationwide elections are scheduled for Jan. 30, but some Marine estimates say Fallujah may not be fully repopulated by then. And on Friday, leading Iraqi politicians called for a six-month delay in the voting because of violence in the country. As the fight dies down, Marines are finally finding free time to reflect on the furious battle. The Americans wonder how Fallujah could have devolved into what officers say was a center from which rebels spread bombings, beheadings and attacks across Iraq. Cpl. Perry Bessant, 21, says Marines are "like a detective agency, coming to investigate, to put the pieces together of what Fallujah was."
"It was a space for so many foreign fighters. I just can't believe the locals tolerated them," adds Bessant, from Mullins, S.C.
"Maybe they were terrified of them. Maybe I'd feel like that too if someone said they'd kill my family," replies Staff Sgt. Alexandros Pashos, 38, from New York City.
New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Oklahoma: The Marines' homes are all a far piece from this central Iraq city in the middle of dusty plain, once dominated by Muslim men in red-checkered scarves and black masks who try to kill the American "infidel" invaders. When Fallujans do return en masse, they will find many parts of their city in ruins, with bank buildings scorched, mosques bombed, shops destroyed, cars burned, doors to their homes forced open and their cupboards and drawers rifled by foreigners. "It's going to be difficult putting Fallujah together again, but not impossible," said Pashos. "That is the saddest, to have it all come to this, all these people's homes destroyed."
But even before air and ground assault, Fallujah was poor by the Marines' standards, with many of its people living in mud-brick homes in tight, crowded neighborhoods. "After we rebuild Fallujah, it will be a lot better place to live," said Wyer, the Oklahoman, "something that was worth our sacrifice."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/27/2004 8:27:50 AM ||
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#1
Flash:
USMC Decides Fallujah to be home of a Chuckie Cheese/Malibu Grand Prix Conglomerate.
#5
They battled for days with rebels who had been fortifying the city since April, when planners called off a Marine assault amid widespread outcry over reports of civilian casualties emanating from Fallujah's hospital, numbers U.S. officers called inflated.
Note to current administration personnel and personnel of future administrations: don't ever do this again. If something needs to be done, do it soon, if not immediately, and don't stop until the job is completed.
Sunni insurgents have expressed concern over the prospect of a defeat by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. Islamic sources said that for the first time in more than a year the Tawhid and Jihad group led by Abu Mussib Al Zarqawi appears to have lost control over many of its insurgents in the Sunni Triangle. The sources said Iraqi and U.S. assaults on major insurgency strongholds in such cities as Baghdad, Faluja, Mosul, Ramadi and Samara have resulted in heavy insurgency casualties and a break in the command and control structure. Over the last few days, Al Zarqawi supporters have appealed for help from Al Qaida and related groups. The sources said Al Qaida's allies, including the Salafist Brigade for Combat and Call, have sought to increase recruitment of Muslim volunteers to fight the coalition. The Internet has also reflected the growing concern that Islamic insurgents would be routed in Iraq. A message posted on an Islamic website appealed for help from Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Pakistan and the Palestinian Authority.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/27/2004 8:16:00 AM ||
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#1
I remember of a post I saw in a Pashtoun group: the author (BTW, he was one of the nice guys, ie anti-taliban and pro-democracy) was angry against the Mullahs who had sent thousands of poor guys to be mown down by daisy cutters. He said something along the lines "what use is to put yourself in front of an angry bull".
And now, Zarkawi is unwillingky sending them a depairing message: going to Iraq doesn't mean going to fight infidels but going to be killed by indidels. Jihadis are many but there isn't an unlimited supply of them. Jihadis are fanatic but at one point they realise that continuing to throw themselves against the American forces means that at one point there will be no more Jihadis. And kaffirs win. the nice thing is that it is Zarkawi who is sapping jihadist morale ("hundreds of thousands dead").
#3
The sources said Al Qaida's allies, including the Salafist Brigade for Combat and Call, have sought to increase recruitment of Muslim volunteers to fight the coalition.
All the more reason to pulverize the enemy thoroughly in every single battle. The news that Zarqawi's thugs and allies rarely survive in one piece will get out, which should have the intended effect on potential recruits.
#4
This is a similar thing that my dad saw in the Pacific fighting the Japanese. On Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester, hardly any prisoners. On Peleliu, virtually no prisoners, except the ones holed up in the caves surrendered after the officers burned their colors and they were on their own. On Okinawa, fanatical fighting until the end, then thousands gave up and disobeyed their officers. The Japanese needed to be beat down until they had enough and quit on their own.
Coalition forces need to keep hammering the Sunni insurgency until the average Joe sees the handwriting on the wall in size 64 type and quits.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/27/2004 14:05 Comments ||
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#5
On Okinawa, fanatical fighting until the end, then thousands gave up and disobeyed their officers
Yep, not what you would call wholesale surrender, but more IJA forces surrendered at Okinawa than in the rest of the theatre put together. I've always been curious about why, the size of the island? the training level? Morale? Who knows. I'd really like to see a study on this. I've a feeling the final assault on the plains would be bad, but not near has bad has feared.
Four Gurkhas who were working for a British security firm in Baghdad have been killed and another 15 injured in a mortar attack on their base in the capital's heavily fortified Green Zone, company officials said yesterday. The Foreign Office confirmed that the men were at their camp when the mortars were fired on Thursday afternoon. The men worked for Global Risk Strategies, a London-based firm that employs about 1,500 security contractors of several nationalities in Iraq. Most are placed on guard duty at key sites, including the Green Zone and the main international airport in western Baghdad. A large number of the guards are Gurkhas, Nepalese soldiers retired from the military. "There was an incident yesterday [Thursday]. We lost four people and had 12 to 15 who were injured," said Tim O'Brien, a spokesman for Global. "We can't confirm what this incident actually was until we go through internal investigations."
In a website posting, the extremist Ansar al-Sunna army claimed responsibility for the attack. The same group claimed responsibility for massacring 12 Nepalese construction workers in August.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/27/2004 12:23:22 AM ||
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#1
Look for a lot of Kukri wounds in the back alleys of Baghdad in the coming weeks.
Two assailants riding on a motorcycle threw a hand grenade at a police checkpoint in this southwestern city of Pakistan, but no one was hurt, police said on Friday.
Must have been Hek's boyz.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on late Thursday in Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, and senior police official Hamid Shakil said the case was being investigated. The latest attack came hours after a bomb planted on a bicycle parked outside a shop exploded in a crowded bazaar in a remote town in Baluchistan, killing one person and wounding 14 others. Hours later, a little-known group, the Baluchistan Liberation Army, claimed responsibility and warned the government not to set up new army garrisons in the province. Baluchistan has been the scene of a number of small-scale explosions, but authorities have failed to arrest those responsible.Â
Must have surrounded them Saudi-style.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/27/2004 12:19:01 AM ||
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Egyptian police looking for the men who planted bombs at Sinai tourist resorts last month have detained some 2,500 people and subjected many of them to torture, rights activists said on Thursday. Police have hung men by their arms for hours, with electrodes attached to their toes, and burned their skin with devices that looked like oven lighters, victims and eyewitnesses told a fact-finding mission which visited the area.Â
Funny, we don't do it this way, we just build a careful, detailed intel map and then pop the bad guys.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/27/2004 12:04:25 AM ||
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#8
Yeah, it isn't really torture until you bring out the womens' panties... and some cigarette smoking wench to point at their d**ks and snicker in a disparaging manner.
#11
Alas, I do not smoke.
But I did go to a Halloween Party as a military dominatrix, once. I suppose I could bring myself to snicker disparagingly at whatever the mission required me to snicker at...
#12
I learned to play with bullwhips as a kid. I could cut a fig in half without knocking the rest to the ground. Dad didn't like that much. You don't know pain until you've been popped on a bare leg or the back of an ear with a bullwhip. Give me five minutes alone with ANYBODY, and they'll talk. and talk. and talk - anything to keep from hearing that bullwhip talk. We need to play the jihadi's game against them. I'm sure the bleeding hearts will scream, but it's time to stop tolerating their whining, too. We can always gather them up and dump them in Iran for a few years.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/27/2004 20:05 Comments ||
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#13
But they didn't make them run around naked in front of women!!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Saudi security forces shot dead a suspected insurgent in a clash in the Red Sea port city of Jidda, police and witnesses said. Witnesses said two people escaped, leaving rifles and ammunition in a car in the Jamia district of Jidda where police shot dead another suspected insurgent earlier this month.
Palestinian security officials said yesterday they were dismantling a notorious militia squad, known as "the death group", in what appeared to be the first concrete move toward reforming the sprawling security forces. "We have decided to dismantle the protection and security department, which is known by the public as the 'death group' because we want to protect all the people," said 
Two assailants riding on a motorcycle threw a hand grenade at a police checkpoint in this southwestern city of Pakistan, but no one was hurt, police said on Friday.
Egyptian police looking for the men who planted bombs at Sinai tourist resorts last month have detained some 2,500 people and subjected many of them to torture, rights activists said on Thursday. Police have hung men by their arms for hours, with electrodes attached to their toes, and burned their skin with devices that looked like oven lighters, victims and eyewitnesses told a fact-finding mission which visited the area. 
