Tag: Antiwar movement

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?

Last night, Bill O’Reilly called Sadr “the new Saddam,” which, given what we now know about Saddam’s threat to America, should make us wonder why we need to topple Sadr. But who’s the real new Saddam? This Washington Times headline speaks volumes: “Clashes Raise Tensions Not Seen Since Saddam.” And how about those Kurds up north? How will they fare once the occupation ends? Let’s just hope them crazy Ay-rabs aren’t watching al Jazeera:

Unlike most other parts of Iraq – where people are actively hostile towards, or barely tolerate, the foreign invaders – Kurds do not feel the strains of occupation.

While Shia and Sunni Muslims have been fighting Americans in and around Baghdad in the past few days, Kurds on the streets of Arbil condemn anti-US attacks as “terrorism”.

A recent poll by foreign broadcasters that suggested most Iraqis were happier since the US-led invasion a year ago was heavily influenced by Kurdish respondents.

The survey found only one in three Arabs believed their country was liberated – compared to four out of five Kurds.

I’m sure no hostility will come of this, nor of the attack on that Sunni mosque. Whoa–didn’t we start out talking about Sadr’s “radical Shi’ites,” not the “Sunni savages“? Oh yeah, Amir Taheri says don’t worry about them–but, uh, reopen that freaking newspaper pronto!

But other than all that, everything’s swell.

From Riverbend, the Iraqi blogger in Baghdad:

Our foreign minister Hoshyar Zibari was being interviewed by some British journalist yesterday, making excuses for Tony Blair and commending him on the war. At one point someone asked him about the current situation in Iraq. He mumbled something about how there were ‘problems’ but it wasn’t a big deal because Iraq was ‘stable’… what Iraq is he living in?

And as I blog this, all the mosques, Sunni and Shi’a alike, are calling for Jihad…

.. read more: “Teapots & Kettles”