Tag: Antiwar movement

Today at 6pm Eastern, 3pm Pacific (on some satellite systems, 6pm Pacific), the History Channel is running “The Christmas Truce” on “Histories Mysteries.”

In 1914, British and German troops along the front declared a truce — they celebrated, shared food and gifts, and played football together. The truce was broken when commanders threatened to court-martial or shoot soldiers who did not resume fighting.

It is a wonderful piece of forgotten history.

Tomorrow’s Antiwar.com will have a special section on The Christmas Truce.

Check local listings, right away!

Wow, they’re really trying to get rid of Rumsfeld:

Rumsfeld in Mosul to Spread Christmas Cheer

Ansar al-Sunna taunts the US:

“First they said it was a mortar or rockets, then they said it was a suicide operation with local materials, and so on,” the statement on Ansar al-Sunna’s website said.

“Are they really this stupid, that they still don’t know how they’ve been hit, or was it too painful to admit?” it said.

The statement, dated December 23, repeated a claim on Wednesday that one of the group’s “martyrs” had carried out the attack.

For a more complete victory Ansar al Sunna needs the Americans to overreact and go on a rampage in Mosul, thus turning more of the locals against them. The US may be obliging.

More information is surfacing about the Mosul suicide bomber:

“I am concerned about … copycat attacks,” said Brigadier General Carter Ham, the U.S. commander in Mosul where the bomber killed 18 Americans and three Iraqi National Guards on Tuesday in a pre-Christmas lunchtime blast at a crowded base mess tent.
[…]
He said the bomber probably wore an Iraqi uniform of the kind increasingly common on U.S. bases as Americans train local forces that they hope will allow them to go home.

The blast creates a nightmare dilemma for troops battling insurgents bent on disrupting a January 30 election. They not only see increasingly sophisticated ambushes while on patrol but now also face a deadly threat to the bases where they eat and sleep.
[…]
It seemed possible the explosives and ball bearings were disguised as body armour.

To get an idea of how FOB Marez is run, see this post by Jeff Taylor at Hit and Run, who quotes a soldier describing the various services there, like what they call “Hajji Shops” run by Iraqis. While I was reading through blogs, I came across another soldier who adds this intriguing bit of information:

There are a lot more hagi shops here on Marez as well. Hagi is of course the nickname, derogatory or otherwise, for the Iraqis. There are barbers shops, tailor shops, gift shops, and miscellaneous overpriced stuff shops. They will sell you anything, and it’s all priced at about ten times its worth. The thing about the hagi shops here on Marez is that they aren’t run by Iraqis, most of them are Turkish. We have learned that there used to be Iraqis from Mosul that came into the FOB to work, but not anymore. Apparently the insurgents would target these civilians. So after a number of them were murdered and or decapitated, no one wanted to work here anymore. And so it goes.

All this to say that it seems more likely that the bomber had infiltrated the Iraqi National Guard. It’s a devastating blow for the US, not only because of the immediately apparent casualties, but in the wedge driven between the US forces and the Iraqis in the Guard. The trust level was hardly high in the first place and now every soldier will be wondering which Iraqi Guard will explode next. The news is full of US military commanders talking about how to tighten up security, but the reality is that tightened security isn’t possible without a change in mission. As long as the American exit plan is all about “training” Iraqi security the risk exists that the troops are exposed to resistance infiltrators. Background checks, etc. to “vet” trainees are next to useless in chaotic Iraq.

If it is true, as now seems likely, that a suicide bomber is behind the carnage at the US base in Mosul yesterday, the fact that the troops were eating in a tent rather than a hardened facility may have actually saved lives, since the force of the explosion escaped upward rather than being contained.

(see 10 for introduction)
2.5 next

John Nichols’ Capital Times column Tuesday is headlined Curtailing Christians in Occupied Iraq in the print edition. Bethlehem’s mayor and Jerusalem’s Latin patriarch have been speaking out, will Thursday bring Curtailing Christians in Occupied Palestine? We’ll know soon enough but for now, that’s 107 “Israel”less columns down, three to go.

Ideally, the holistic approach should be taken, the two occupations linked, as in Curtailing Reports in Occupied U.N. Yep, scratch one U.N. report.

John’s “Iraq” percentage is inching back up, he uses it for the 42nd time in those 107 columns, and in the process startles us with words we haven’t seen in the previous 41. “Baghdad?” “Mosul?” “Kirkuk?” You mean Iraq has cities where things actually happen? Should we prepare ourselves for “Najaf” and maybe even “Fallujah?”

“Lies” and “lying”; “claims” and “claiming”; “deceit, “deceiving,” “deceiver,” and “deceptive”; “spin”; “phantasy”; “discredited”: these are the words to be found in the brunt of the 41 “Iraq” columns. A journalism maven, John understands the message has to be hammered home again and again, the Bush administration is deceitful, deceitful, deceitful and must be voted out.

If a message has to be repeated for it to start sinking in, what practical difference does it make if John addresses the Israeli/Palestinian conflict before the end of the year? None, obviously, it’s the principle that counts.

Notes

John regresses re the Iraq sanctions, they’re not even “U.N”, they’re non-existent. “When Christians left during Saddam’s time, they tended to do so for economic reasons,” he writes. AFP reports that 700,000 have left since 1987, in part because of “crippling sanctions” (maintained throughout the Clinton years).

Should US-based churches boycott certain companies doing business with Israel? You can vote at the CSM website if you’re willing to risk offending the plucky little kingdom.

If John does trip up, it may be over Israeli soldiers urged to refuse orders.