http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?ID=33639

Iraq to restore order in Mosul imminently: premier

Mujahideen Moves Easily In Fallujah; 19 Americans Killed In Explosion

Nov 16, 2004
By Muhammad Abu Nasr, Free Arab Voice; Edited By JUS

In a dispatch posted at 4:17pm Mecca time Monday, the Fallujah correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a noticeable quiet has descended over Fallujah, broken only by intermittent fire by one of the American snipers scattered on rooftops in places in the city. The calm prevails both in the city center and on the outskirts.

US snipers are deployed on the main streets of the city in six or seven positions along ath-Tharthar Street, the main street leading to ar-Ramadi (ar-Ramadi Road), and buildings overlooking the Euphrates to the west of the city.

Dozens of US snipers deployed on the main thoroughfares prevent the people in their areas from moving about normally and obtaining drinking water and food, though the city’s residents move freely in the narrow side streets. The grip of the snipers themselves has also loosened to the extent that people sometimes can even manage to sprint across the main streets.

Decomposing bodies still lie on some streets where the people cannot get to them to bury them. Some people have buried relatives in their homes for fear of risking snipers on the way to cemeteries.

The Mujahideen has changed its positions within the city, distributing different districts to different units, allowing the groups to reinforce one another whenever fighting becomes fierce. The Mujahideen move about easily within their own areas.

Mujahideen sharpshooters attempted to eliminate the American snipers by taking up positions on other high buildings to pick them off, but US Apache helicopters would unleash intense gunfire upon them whenever they made these attempts.

19 Americans Killed When Mujahideen Blows Up Building

Sources in the Consultative Council of the Mujahideen of Fallujah told Quds Press on Monday that Mujahideen blew up a building in Fallujah as American forces were entering it on Monday morning, killing 19 US troops.

The building in the al-Bazarah neighborhood opposite the al-Wuthbah Secondary School in the city was blown up using a large amount of TNT just as the US troops were entering it. The US forces brought in bulldozers to dig out the remains of their dead. US troops who were still outside the building when it exploded were wounded.

On Sunday the US military admitted that the Resistance in Fallujah had detonated a building killing three and wounding 13 other American troops. Resistance sources told Quds Press that the real number was 60 dead and 40 wounded in that blast. The building that blew up was the office of the Governor of Fallujah and more than 500kg of high explosive TNT was used to demolish that large structure over the Americans.

Resistance Commander Scoffs At Claims US “Controls” Fallujah

Iraqi Resistance commander Abu Muhammad, who leads fighters in the north of Fallujah scoffed at pictures broadcast by some television companies showing US soldiers resting on beds in Fallujah. Abu Muhammad observed that the Resistance was still looking for where those beds were so they could set them afire.

Abu Muhammad said that the occupation forces were good at forging photos. He said that images of US troops strolling about streets of Fallujah looked like images from the storming of any Iraqi city. Although he had not himself seen the images, he said that those who had seen them maintained that no houses recognizable as being in Fallujah showed up in them. As to the claims that the US forces were in the city, Abu Muhammad said that they might have taken pictures on the day they did enter the city – 26 Ramadan/ 9 November, but since then the situation had totally changed. Abu Muhammad offered the explanation that some of the pictures could be of places of no strategic importance that the Americans occupied.

Abu Muhammad told Mafkarat al-Islam that unbiased observers had acknowledged that the city had never been in the hands of the US occupation and that the war in Fallujah was still on.

Fighters In ‘Amiriyat Al-Fallujah Shoot Down Two US Helicopters

In a dispatch posted at 9:20pm Monday Mecca time, the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in Fallujah reported that Resistance forces had shot down two US Apache helicopters over ‘Amiriyat al-Fallujah in the last couple days.

The first of the two choppers was downed on Sunday; the second was shot down around sunset Monday. The correspondent noted that the Resistance brought both down with C5K rockets.

Amiriyah al-Fallujah, a town to the south of Fallujah, appears to have acquired some special skill in shooting down American helicopters. Several days ago they brought down a helicopter that was carrying some 60 US troops.

Mujahideen Attack US Positions Northeast Of Fallujah

Mujahideen in Fallujah attacked US troops located in the agricultural area northeast of the city in an attempt to break up their camp. The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported that the Mujahideen struck the most important US position northeast of the agricultural area. Fighting spread to al-Jarmah northeast of the city and continued for more than four hours.

US columns have moved up to the area where fighting has been underway in the agricultural area and the area of the city cemetery. The battle zone is now stretched over 35 to 40km.

Mujahideen fired Grad rockets on the headquarters of the puppet so-called “national guard” in al-Jarmah, destroying an American force that was there. US Apache and Black Hawk helicopters attacked northern al-Jarmah in an attempt to divert the resistance so that they could retrieve their dead and wounded.

Fallujah Doctors Issue Appeal

Fallujah’s doctors issued an appeal for assistance on Monday, noting the extent of the criminal activity of the US forces that had no qualms about blowing up hospitals and clinics with patients and doctors inside.

The doctors denounced US-appointed puppet “prime minister” Iyyad ‘Allawi and his so-called “health minister” ‘Ala’ ad-Din al-‘Alwan. They noted that US forces attacked Fallujah General Hospital in the first hours of their attack and arrested doctors, nurses, and medical professionals. These people were beaten and humiliated on the grounds that they were “terrorists.”

The doctors in their statement said that the puppet so-called “Iraqi national guard” who accompanied the Americans, drove nurses out of the delivery room as an Iraqi woman was giving birth, leaving the baby still attached to the mother.

After that US troops bombarded the substituted hospitals that had been set up inside the city, “and the blood of doctors and that of patients mixed under the ruins.” After the bombardment, if they found anyone still alive in the rubble, they crushed him with their tanks.

The doctors’ statement noted that US snipers killed more than 17 Iraqi doctors who had rushed to respond to an earlier appeal for help from Fallujah’s medical personnel that went out over al-Jazeera satellite TV.

The doctors’s statement also pointed out that US forces prevented aid teams from getting into Fallujah, terrorizing and repressing the Iraqi Red Crescent teams and humanitarian and Islamic volunteers.

The doctors in Fallujah denounced the puppet so-called “health minister” saying that he had threatened to cut off the salaries, take away their licenses, and imprison them if any of them talked about the outrages committed by the US and puppet forces in Fallujah.

The doctors concluded their statement calling on all doctors to condemn these barbaric acts and to take the initiative to save all the people of Fallujah who can be saved. They also insisted on the need to expel those who cooperate with the occupation, including the so-called “minister of health,” from the Iraqi Federation of Physicians.

Source: http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_inter...list=/home.php&

New Report, Footage Surfaces On Mass Graves Of US Soldiers

By: Bruce Kennedy, JUS on: 17.11.2004

In August, reports began surfacing about incidents of dead American bodies being dumped into the Diali River by US helicopters in the early morning hours. Fishermen on the Diali river area , a small river originates in Iran and ends at Deglah, 60 kilometer east of Baghdad, were the first to notice the American practice of dumping bodies wrapped in black plastic bags from helicopters at dawn time into the river. Some of the bodies, still wrapped in plastic bags, were caught in their fishing nets.

Over the next few weeks more bodies were found in other locations including Al-Tharthar in Sammara and Wadi Hairan in Al-Ratibah. The bodies have been collected and buried in the general areas of those locations.

A new report has now surfaced on the Arabic website abolkhaseb.net, accompanied by some footage, which provides an in-depth analysis of the discovery of the bodies. The writer of the five page report (in Arabic) goes into great detail details about locations and how the bodies were dumped in rivers and remote desert locations. The author claims to have talked to two American female soldiers and an American communications officer who reluctantly confirmed the finding but said that most of these bodies were mercenaries who were promised high paying job and in some case US citizenship.

The narrator on the film clip indicates that the bodies were taken from the mass graves to an undisclosed grave and they will be handed over to Red Crescent, Red Cross or any organization that promises to get the truth out.

Both the narrator and the author of the report give evidence which they conclude are the reasons why the Americans would dispose of dead soldiers in this fashion, specifically to hide casualties especially in an election year and that because many of the bodies were badly burned, such as occurs in explosions, the Americans would fear a of public backlash if this kind of carnage resulted.

The narrator on the film presents some convincing reasons why it is believed these bodies are Americans, besides the fact that some were seen being dropped from US helicopters by the fisherman, namely

• The bodies are tall, unlike Iraqis or many other Middle Eastern nationalities.

• The bodies were wrapped in the type of plastic bags used only by Americans.

• Their complexions when the bodies are not completely burned and could be inspected are mostly white.

• Their teeth are well maintained unlike those of individuals in poorer countries like Iraq.

The author of the text document claims that interviews with some soldiers and officers who refused to give their names confirmed the identity of soldiers and the validity of the findings, in addition to the Iraqi fishermen who witnessed the dumping of bodies into the river by copters in the early hours of the morning over a long period of time.

JUS translators are currently underway translating this lengthy document which we will make available in its entirety when the work is complete. In between time, you can view the footage by pasting the following link into your browser.

If this report can be independently verified, the Americans have another big problem on their hands.

Original Link

WARNING!!!! Graphic Content Advisory. Do not proceed if you are sensitive to graphic content.

http://www.abolkhaseb.net/media/vedio/shot6.wmv

"We lost the real battle of Fallujah last week"

Jack Lessenberry

We must get out of Iraq — now

We lost the real battle of Fallujah last week, a little more convincingly than we have lost other battles in the insane war our government is waging in Iraq. That’s not what the headlines said, but it happens to be the truth.

We lost that battle, we have lost this war and we are losing support everywhere across the globe. As a result of this military misadventure, we are dangerously weakening our country.

What’s going on now is far worse than Vietnam and promises far grimmer consequences. We need a massive, nationwide protest movement. And if you don’t start trying to do something about it, who will?

That is the major issue facing us today.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “How can we do anything about this now? George W. Bush has just been re-elected president! Two weeks ago we just finished a long national election campaign, and he won a majority. Didn’t that mean the voters, in record numbers, gave him a blank check?”

Well, yes and no. Nobody can dispute that he won the election. But the fact also is that the true nature of this war was never really addressed. John Kerry never called for us to get out of Iraq, either because he didn’t get it, or because he thought it might be politically risky, or both.

Yes, he criticized the president for starting the war, and for how he waged it. Kerry promised to do better and, in a comment that would have cost him dearly had he won the election, he promised that we would “win.”

There is only one way to win this war, and a man who died long before it started, a crusty old Vermont Republican, U.S. Sen. George Aiken, defined it. In 1966, long before it was clear to most that Vietnam was what it was, he said that President Lyndon Johnson should “declare victory and go home.”

Nobody listened, and the war dragged on another seven years. We don’t have another seven years to waste in Iraq. Let’s face one very harsh fact:

We are now the bad guys. The insurgents, no matter who they are and what they want, are morally in the right. Iraq is their country, not ours. We have no business there. We invaded them for reasons that were either lies or totally wrong. Remember what we were told by our president in March 2003?

He said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, he was trying to make a nuclear bomb and he was a direct threat to us. We also were told that the Iraqi people would greet us enthusiastically as liberators, and that transition to democracy would just be a matter of time.

All of this turned out to be not true.

Now we are fighting, as Phil Ochs once sang, in a war we lost before the war began. We cannot beat the insurgents because the insurgents are the Iraqi people. We are the foreign occupiers, and they do not want us there.

When we moved into Fallujah in force, “insurgent” or “rebel” activity flared up elsewhere across the country — in Baghdad, in Mosul, in small towns and villages across the nation we’re spending billions of dollars to occupy.

We haven’t a prayer of putting down resistance, even temporarily. Even if it were possible, we have only 138,000 troops there — not nearly enough.

Naturally, we were counting on assistance from the “good” Iraqis, those democracy-loving souls we liberated. The real story of the battle of Fallujah is how well our Iraqi allies did. They ran away.

That’s right, they ran away. Those who could manage to arrange sudden leaves did; the Pentagon admitted at least 200 others deserted their posts and skedaddled, and so did many freshly trained Iraqi policemen.

Yes, they are pro-American freedom sensations. No wonder their countrymen see them as traitors, collaborating with the occupying powers. We lost the battle of Fallujah. Want proof? Afterward, a U.S. officer told the press that the city was “occupied but not subdued.” The two most wanted figures, the supposed “terror mastermind” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and a religious leader, got away, as always. (Anybody see Osama or Mullah Omar lately?)

Yes, we killed a lot of people, including some infant “terrorists” too, I’m sure, and in the process earned the hatred of vastly more Iraqis.

What we need to do is get out. Not in a chaotic, run-for-the-last helicopter kind of evacuation that marked the fall of South Vietnam, although if we don’t start wising up this may come to that too.

What we need to do, as soon as possible, is arrange to turn Iraq over to an international peacekeeping body, probably the United Nations, which would try to maintain calm and hold some form of elections.

David Bonior, who became somewhat of an authority on Middle East matters during his many years in Congress, suggested dividing Iraq into some kind of federation, with Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite spheres.

What doesn’t make sense is what’s going on now. Even if there were some hope that after years and years Iraqis might be pacified, or “subdued,” we have two other enormous looming military problems — Iran and North Korea.

Everyone knows, in spite of what the propaganda is, that we don’t have enough forces to handle anything but Iraq. We have fewer people in uniform than at any time since 1940. James Fallows, in a superbly researched cover story in this month’s Atlantic Monthly, demonstrates that we have no realistic military option in Iran, which is busily working to acquire nuclear weapons.

North Korea almost certainly already has them. What if North Korea were to make a military move south? What would we do? At the very least, we’d have to reinstate the draft. How many countries can we fight and occupy at once?

Incidentally, this has nothing to do with partisan politics. If George W. Bush doesn’t leave Iraq, he may end his term, as Lyndon Johnson did, hiding in the White House with his party’s next nomination worthless.

So let’s support our troops the way we should, by bringing them home. John Kerry asked the wrong question. It should have been, “How can we ask one more man to die for what is clearly a mistake?” The answer is, we stop.

Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for Metro Times. Send comments to letters@metrotimes.com.

The address of this page is: www.uruknet.info?p=7321

Squeezing jello in Iraq

by Scott Ritter
Tuesday 09 November 2004 6:52 PM GMT

The much-anticipated US-led offensive to seize the Iraqi city of Falluja from anti-American Iraqi fighters has begun.

Meeting resistance that, while stiff at times, was much less than had been anticipated, US marines and soldiers, accompanied by Iraqi forces loyal to the interim government of Iyad Allawi, have moved into the heart of Falluja.

Fighting is expected to continue for a few more days, but US commanders are confident that Falluja will soon be under US control, paving the way for the establishment of order necessary for nationwide elections currently scheduled for January 2005.

But will it? American military planners expected to face thousands of Iraqi resistance fighters in the streets of Falluja, not the hundreds they are currently fighting. They expected to roll up the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his foreign militants, and yet to date have found no top-tier leaders from that organisation. As American forces surge into Falluja, Iraqi fighters are mounting extensive attacks throughout the rest of Iraq.

Far from facing off in a decisive battle against the resistance fighters, it seems the more Americans squeeze Falluja, the more the violence explodes elsewhere. It is exercises in futility, akin to squeezing jello. The more you try to get a grasp on the problem, the more it slips through your fingers.

"The goal is to kick out the invaders"

Alloy, Iraq

This kind of war, while frustrating for the American soldiers and marines who wage it, is exactly the struggle envisioned by the Iraqi resistance. They know they cannot stand toe-to-toe with the world's most powerful military and expect to win.

While the US military leadership struggles to get a grip on a situation in Iraq that deteriorates each and every day, the anti-US occupation fighters continue to execute a game plan that has been in position since day one.

President Bush prematurely declared "mission accomplished" back in May 2003. For Americans, this meant that major combat operations in Iraq had come to an end, that we had won the war. But for the Iraqis, it meant something else. In Iraq, there never was a 'Missouri moment', where the government formally surrendered. The fact is, Saddam Hussein's government never surrendered, and still is very much in evidence in Iraq today in the form of the anti-US resistance.

"It is a war the United States cannot win, and which the interim government of Iyad Allawi cannot survive"

While we in America were declaring victory, the government of Saddam was planning its war.  The first battles were fought in March and April 2003. Token resistance, no decisive engagement. The Iraqis fought just enough to establish the principle of resistance, but not enough to squander their resources.

Since May 2003, the resistance has grown in size and sophistication. Some attribute this to the incompetence of the post-war occupation policies of the United States. While this certainly was a factor in facilitating the resistance, the fact remains that what is occurring today in Iraq is part of a well-conceived plan the goal of which is to restore the Baath Party back to power. And the policies of the Bush administration are playing right into their hands.

The terror attacks carried out against the United Nations and other international aid organisations succeeded in driving out of Iraq the vestiges of foreign involvement the Bush administration relied upon to present an international face to the US-led occupation. In the chaos and anarchy that followed, the United States was compelled to use more and more force in an attempt to restore order, creating a Catch-22 situation where the more force we used, the more resistance we generated, requiring more force in response.

The cycle of violence fed the resistance, destabilising huge areas of Iraq that are still outside the control of the Iraqi government and US military. High profile operations in Najaf, Sadr City and Samarra did little to bring these cities to bear.

"While we in America were declaring victory, the government of Saddam was planning its war"

Today, fighters in Iraq operate freely, continuing their orgy of death and destruction in order to attract the inevitable heavy-handed US response. Falluja is a prime case in point. While the US is unlikely to deliver a fatal blow to the Iraqi resistance, it is succeeding in levelling huge areas of Falluja, recalling the Vietnam-era lament that we had to destroy the village in order to save it.

The images from Falluja will only fuel the anti-American sentiment in Iraq, enabling the anti-US fighters to recruit 10 new fighters for every newly-minted "martyr" it loses in the current battle against the Americans.

The battle for Falluja is supposed to be the proving ground of the new Iraq army. Instead, it may well prove to be a fatal pill. The reality is there is no Iraqi army. Of the tens of thousands recruited into its ranks, there is today only one effective unit, the 36th Battalion.

This unit has fought side by side with the Americans in Falluja, Najaf, and Samarra. By all accounts, it has performed well.  But this unit can only prevail when it operates alongside overwhelming American military support. Left to fend for itself, it would be slaughtered by the resistance fighters. Worse, this unit which stands as a symbol of the ideal for the new Iraqi army is actually the antithesis of what the new Iraqi army should be.

While the Bush administration has suppressed the formation of militia units organised along ethnic and religious lines, the 36th Battalion should be recognised for what it really is - a Kurdish militia, retained by the US military because the rest of the Iraqi army is unwilling or unable to carry the fight to the Iraqi resistance fighters.

The battle for Falluja has exposed not only the fallacy of the US military strategy towards confronting the resistance in Iraq, but also the emptiness of the interim government of Iyad Allawi, which is so far incapable of building anything that resembles a viable Iraqi military capable of securing its position in Iraq void of American military support.

"The images from Falluja will only fuel the anti-American sentiment in Iraq"
Falluja is probably the beginning of a very long and bloody phase of the Iraq war, one that pits an American military under orders from a rejuvenated Bush administration to achieve victory at any cost against an Iraqi resistance that is willing to allow Iraq to sink into a quagmire of death and destruction in order to bog down and eventually expel the American occupier.

It is a war the United States cannot win, and which the government of Iyad Allawi cannot survive. Unfortunately, since recent polls show that some 70% of the American people support the war in Iraq, it is a war that will rage until the American domestic political dynamic changes, and the tide of public opinion turns against the war.

Tragically, this means many more years of conflict in Iraq that will result in thousands more killed on both sides, and incomprehensible suffering for the people of Iraq, and unpredictable instability for the entire Middle East.

Scott Ritter was a senior UN arms inspector in Iraq between 1991-1998. He is now an independent consultant.

Aljazeera
By Scott Ritter

You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/718...A3F505021B8.htm

Falluja fighters resist as clashes spread

Thursday 18 November 2004, 10:08 Makka Time, 7:08 GMT

Fighters in Falluja are continuing to hold out in the face of massive firepower US forces are unleashing to try and seize overall control of the city.

"Fierce resistance is still raging with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and machine guns against the US forces stationed on the outskirts of Falluja," an Iraqi journalist in the city, Fadil al-Badrani, said.

Badrani said American war planes and tanks had resorted to bombing the holdout sectors of the city and some areas were still not under their control.

"Clashes are still continuing the southern and eastern edges of the town. US forces have so far failed to storm the northern al-Julan neighbourhood," he said.

He added that US-led forces had abandoned al-Julan and the northern parts of the city, resorting shelling and aerial bombing those areas.

News agencies reported heavy machine gunfire and explosions were heard on Wednesday morning coming from the south-central parts of the town as US marines continued to hunt remaining fighters.

US scaling down

But the US said its aerial missions over Iraq were beginning to slow after a 50% jump that accompanied the Falluja offensive, said Rear Admiral Barry McCullough, commander of the USS John F Kennedy battle group in the Arabian Gulf.

"The operation is starting to wind down now. That doesn't mean there aren't pockets of insurgents and terrorists in Falluja," he said.

Stepped-up assaults on fighters in Falluja and elsewhere have pushed the US toll to at least 91 in November, making it the second-deadliest month for US troops since the Iraq invasion in March 2003, Pentagon figures show.

The worst month was April, with 135 deaths, when marines fought fierce battles in Falluja, only to eventually withdraw.

Violence across Iraq

Meanwhile, fighting flared on a number of fronts across the country. In Ramadi, west of Baghdad, clashes erupted on Wednesday evening between US soldiers and armed groups opposed to the US-led government, leaving seven people dead, according to hospital officials.

The fighters fired RPG, mortar and machine gun rounds at US forces at several locations in the town, Abd al-Karim al-Hiti of Ramadi general hospital said.

The three-hour gun battle broke out after evening prayers at around 6pm local time. Another 13 people were injured in the fighting, according to al-Hiti.

Several floors of two residential buildings in the Aziziya district were set ablaze by the firefight, residents said.

Soldiers wounded

Northeast of the capital, in al-Mugdadiya and al-Khalis, an unknown number of US soldiers were wounded and several military vehicles damaged in heavy fighting between US troops and fighters, Aljazeera has learned.

Fighting also broke out in Baiji, which lies north of Baghdad. Iraqi police sources told Aljazeera that 15 Iraqis were wounded when an explosive device destroyed a US armoured vehicle.

US forces immediately cordoned off the site, ordering residents to stay in their homes and threatening to shoot anybody who ventured out.

In the northern city of Mosul, US and Iraqi troops said they had recaptured police stations and secured bridges.

Loud explosions

Nineveh province's deputy governor had said fighters blew up the Zuhur police station before the US advance, but the US military denied any police stations were destroyed.

On Tuesday, loud explosions and gunfire had rung out as US warplanes and helicopters circled over Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city with more than one million residents.

Mortar shells hit two areas near the main government building in the city centre, killing three civilians and wounding 25, hospital officials said.

One soldier was wounded when a car bomb exploded near a US convoy in western Mosul, the military said.

The stated aim of the US-led offensive is to seize control of the city 362km north of Baghdad, where fighters stormed police stations, bridges and political offices last week.

The operation was launched after US and Iraqi reinforcements were rushed to Mosul.

A US army infantry battalion was recalled from the fighting in Falluja, 300 Iraqi national guardsmen came from garrisons along the borders with Iran and Syria, and a special police battalion was sent from Baghdad. 

Mosul residents reported on Wednesday that one of the five bridges had been reopened to traffic.

Elsewhere

In other incidents on Wednesday, a rocket hit a busy commercial district near the government administration building in the northern town of Kirkuk, killing one person and wounding three, Iraqi officials reported.

In Baghdad a US Humvee, part of a military convoy, was damaged and several soldiers wounded in a roadside blast in the Sindiya district.

In a separate development in the capital, US troops arrested Nasir Ayaif, a deputy head of the Iraqi National Council and a high-ranking member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, according to Iyad al-Samarrai, an official of the Sunni Muslim political party.

Al-Samarrai said the arrest was in response to the party's criticism of the Falluja offensive and opposition to security policies of the US command and the US-backed interim government.

There was no comment from US authorities. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's office said it was demanding that Ayaif be turned over to the government and promised any charges would be investigated fairly.

Original source: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4A6...5BFB1689D9F.htm

US forces immediately cordoned off the site, ordering residents to stay in their homes and threatening to shoot anybody who ventured out.

Falluja Arithmetic Lesson

By Prof. Greg Palast
11-19-4

Monday's New York Times, page 1:

"American commanders said 38 service members had been killed and 275 wounded in the Falluja assault."

Monday's New York Times, page 11:

"The American military hospital here reported that it had treated 419 American soldiers since the siege of Falluja began."

Questions for the class:

1. If 275 soldiers were wounded in Falluja and 419 are treated for wounds, how many were shot on the plane ride to Germany?

2. We're told only 275 soldiers were wounded but 419 treated for wounds; and we're told that 38 soldiers died. So how many will be buried?

3. How long have these Times reporters been embedded with with military? Bonus question: When will they get out of bed with the military?

Monday's New York Times, page 1:

"The commanders estimated that 1,200 to 1,600 insurgents had been killed."

Monday's New York Times, page 11:

"Nowhere to be found: the remains of the insurgents that the tanks had been sent in to destroy. ...The absence of insurgent bodies in Falluja has remained an enduring mystery."

NOT in the New York Times:

"Every time I hear the news
That old feeling comes back on;
We're waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the Big Fool says to push on."

- Pete Seeger, 1967

Greg Palast is author of the Best Democracy Money Can Buy. The New Deal: "Joker's Wild: Dubya's House of Cards" - regime change deck from 7 Stories Press available @ www.GregPalast.com.

Original source: http://www.rense.com/general59/aafl.htm

Fallujah: Chinook Down With High Casualties, Rockets Hit Selective Targets

Nov 22, 2004
By Omar al-Faris, JUS

Mujahideen in Fallujah continued to “selectively target” American occupation formations in and around the city, both in the southern and northern areas, from Saturday night until Sunday morning. A Chinook was shot down and an estimated 50 American soldiers on board were killed. Mujahideen also executed a definitive operation when they penetrated American positions in the northern part of Fallujah to deliver supplies to the Mujahideen inside.

Here are details of these offensives:

American Chinook Shot Down, 50 Americans Reported Killed

A Chinook aircraft carrying a large number of American soldiers, estimated to be at least 50, was shot down by Mujahideen on Saturday night in the Shuhada’a neighborhood. The Mujahideen used a Strella rocket to bring down the plane and subsequent to its downing, fired several anti-personnel rockets which resulted in what is believed to be the killing of all American soldiers on board.

Rockets Fired In Selective-Target Offensives

Some 40 rockets, including 10 Ababils, known for their powerful destructive capability, hailed in on American positions from the direction of Taji on Sunday. Later in the afternoon, American positions in northwest Fallujah were hit with a barrage of eight more rockets. Mechanized vehicles in nine different locations were seen on fire by eye witnesses.

Mujahideen Penetrate American Positions In Northern Fallujah

A new twist in what has become a “cities war” occured when Mujahideen from outside of Fallujah were able to penetrate American lines in northern Fallujah in order to bring in supplys to Mujahideen inside.

Mufkarat al-Islam’s correspondent gave this detailed account of the event:

The operation was carried out by a large number of Mujahideen from Al-Azraqiah, a village outside of Fallujah to the west. Under thunderous chanting of “Allahu Akbar “ (God is great), Mujahideen advanced to “Old Fallujah” then to Golan area, from their they proceeded to the railway station, then to the civilian neighborhood, and finally, they made their exit from the northern part. The operation took 2 hours to complete and Mujahideen delivered undisclosed supplies to their comrades inside the city.

American occupying force opted to stay out of the way as the large number of Mujahideen advanced throughout the city under “Allahu Akbar” . Some marines retreated to “Officers neighborhood” while others retreated to northwest of Golan area to stay out of Mujahideen way. The thing that surprised observers about this penetrating operation is the speed by which it was executed and the ineffectiveness of the American siege around the city. American response was minimal in Old Fallujah, and Al-Jomhouriah neighborhoods, but somewhat stronger in Golan area and non-existent at the railway station.

This easy penetration is sure to give the Mujahideen “ideas” on how to further penetrate the American held north to reclaim the city. (JUS)

Original source: http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_inter...list=/home.php&