Antiwar.com Blog

UPDATE:Marchers break through US roadblocks
April 9, 2004

THOUSANDS of Sunni and Shiite Muslims forced their way through US military checkpoints Thursday to ferry food and medical supplies to the besieged Sunni bastion of Fallujah where US marines are trying to crush insurgents.

Troops in armoured vehicles tried to stop the convoy of cars and pedestrians from reaching the town located 50 kilometers west of Baghdad.

But US forces were overwhelmed as residents of villages west of the capital came to the convoy’s assistance, hurling insults and stones at the beleaguered troops.

Some 20 kilometers west of Baghdad, a US patrol was attacked just moments before the Iraqi marchers arrived. Armed insurgents could be seen dancing around two blazing military vehicles.

Two US Humvees tried to stop the marchers but were forced to drive off as residents joined the marchers, shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greater).

US troops again blocked the highway further west, but were forced to let the Iraqis past as they came under a hail of stones.

Sitting on top of supply trucks, young men also hurled empty bottles of water and waved their shoes in sign of disdain at the US troops.

The cross-community demonstration of support for Fallujah had been organized by Baghdad clerics both Sunni and Shiite amid reports that the death toll in the town had reached 105 since late Tuesday.

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Thousands of Iraqis are at the gates of Fallujah, many arriving in a convoy from Baghdad carrying food, water, and blood for the city’s residents.

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Thousands of Iraqis meanwhile forced their way through a checkpoint on the Fallujah road, most on foot followed by cars full of food and medical supplies for residents of the besieged city.

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“Our families in Fallujah, remember that our dead go to heaven and theirs to hell,” read a banner held by the marchers who had gathered early Thursday at the Um al-Qora mosque in west Baghdad where people donated food, drinks and medicine.

“No Sunnis, no Shiites, yes for Islamic unity. We are Sunni and Shiite brothers and will never sell our country,” they chanted.

The marchers carried Iraqi flags as well as portraits of Sunni Palestinian Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the head of the Hamas movement killed last month by Israel, and Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose forces were fighting the US-led coalition.

“Allahu Akbar,” or “God is greatest” sounded from the Um al-Qora mosque as people made the donations.

Sheikh Ahmad Abdel Ghafur al-Samarai, the mosque imam and a member of the Committee of Religious Clerics, said that “Baghdad residents decided to send initially 90 cars with food and medicines to Fallujah families.”

“The Iraqi Red Crescent got a permission from the coalition, following negotiations over one day and one night to bring these supplies into the city,” he said.

“We want to express solidarity with our brothers who are being bombed by warplanes and tanks. People donated these things, and women even sold their jewelry,” he said.

“It is a form of jihad (religious war) which can also come in the form of demonstrations, donations and fighting. The people who are occupied have the right to fight occupation, whatever the means they use,” he said.

He called on the US army to stop the operation in the city.

Robert Fisk: “The British took three years to turn both the Sunnis and the Shias into their enemies in 1920. The Americans are achieving it in just under a year.”

Rumsfeld on Wednesday sought to downplay the Iraqi resistance.

“The vast majority of the 25 million Iraqi people want freedom for their country,” he said. “The overwhelming majority of Iraqis are against those who are looting, intimidating and stopping children from going to school at the point of a gun.”

Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi writing from Baghdad:

I really want to understand from Rumsfeld where are his “majority”?? the “majority” of Iraqis that are against the current uprising, the majority that he wants to help them in reaching to their freedom… where are they?

If the millions in the “Sunni Triangle” are the minority, and the other millions of AsSadr are the minority… where are the majority? In Washington?

And if the minority can do all of this! And kick the coalition forces from cities like Kut… what can the majority do? Occupy the United States?

Raed, when I read what Rumsfeld said, I thought maybe he was practicing for a new career writing for the Onion.

“In Iraq … we are transforming a place of torture chambers and mass graves into a nation of laws and free institutions.”

George W. Bush
Address to the Nation
September 7, 2003

Marine engineers patrolling near Ramadi on Wednesday reported coming across a mass grave containing up to 350 bodies of Iraqis who appeared to have been killed in the fighting. It wasn’t clear whether the bodies belonged to combatants, civilians or both.

Knight Ridder Newspapers
Intense fighting continues across Iraq
April 7, 2004

Stolen from Billmon, proprietor of the Whiskey Bar

Interesting posts by Stirling Newberry analyzing the campaign in Iraq in military terms.

We have an enemy

Up until now the highest level of discipline that the Iraqi resistence showed was the ability to execute an ambush. Control was localized, and there was little evidence of operational planning, unit discipline, or logistical control.

That has changed in the last week, with two separate operations by two separate groups. This raises the threshold of danger in Iraq, from disgruntled elements, to organizations which have the ability to see, and exploit, weaknesses.

We have an enemy in Iraq now. And we are violating the tactical doctrine that defeats guerilla movements.

Shockwave

The Vigilant Resolve offensive was meant to reassert control over a series of cities – Fallujah, Nasiriya, Basra, the Sadr district of Baghdad being the most important. At each step of the way, the insurgent forces – though out gunned and out fought – showed a higher level of operational and situational awareness than their US counterparts. Thus, while the Coalition Troops were, in almost every encounter, superior to their antagonists, the result was a series of stings to the occupation forces.

The signs are that there are now armies on the ground in Iraq, opposing Coalition forces, capable of operational level discipline. This drastically increases the complexity and difficulty of crushing the resistance. And yet, the US and UK have made defeating them a matter of confidence. The future of Bush and Blair is now on the line, failure to crush Sadr and the uprising will be failure in the eyes of the public.

The failures of the Coalition offensive…

… have been costly.

Both good reading…

A recurring feature in which we keep an eye on the hysteria-inducing madmen of tomorrow, especially our favorite Central Asian megalomaniac.

Turkmen Leader Attacks Tooth Fashion

ANXIOUS to banish all signs of backwardness from his remote desert nation Turkmenistan’s president on Tuesday gave a word of advice to the country’s youth: resist the temptation to replace your teeth with gold ones.

“Don’t be offended,” Saparmurat Niyazov told a female student who caught his eye while she made a speech at the Saparmurat Niyazov Agricultural University. “But whatever some young fellows tell you, white teeth look better.”

“Besides if you keep your original teeth you can manage harder food,” Niyazov said at the ceremony broadcast on state television.

The Turkmen leader, officially known as Saparmurat Turkmenbashi (father-of-all-Turkmen), has been anxious to selectively remodel this former Soviet republic in his own image, throwing up vast tower blocks and banishing farm animals from the streets of the capital Ashgabat.

Recently he has taken to berating young people for their allegedly sloppy appearance and “wayward” behaviour.

Sounds like Hitler to me! When will Christopher Hitchens and co. get on this? Whatever happened to whiskey, democracy, sexy?