THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

Hmm, I'm not so sure it's fear that is motivating them. Just an unwillingness to let Democracy take hold, because they really don't want our democracy. What the hell are they afraid of, exactly?

iraq (who put saddam hussein in power??)

ICAN are you serious? Are you that naive? "Yeah, keep killing 'em and killing 'em THEN they'll understand". That has to be the most dense thing I've ever read. This is a guerilla war your in the middle of!!!. They don't need "insurgency recruiters" (WTF?) they have YOU - your kind of attitude is all the average Iraqi needs to join the resistance.

Because of the kind of war your involved in you will battle eachother to a standstill, its happened the world over and Iraq is going to be no different. People like yourself (I would imagine) are of the opinion " Never negotiate with a terrorist" - well get used to the possibility that someday your country just might have to do that to secure the peace in Iraq.

Foxfyre wrote:

From everything I've read, seen, and been told, anyone who says the U.S. is using cluster bombs in Fallajah either has no idea what cluster bombs are or is intentionally lieing. While I have no doubt some innocents have been killed, the vast majority of civilians have fled the city and extreme measures are being used to protect the 1/3 or so who stayed. This would show Revel's 'eye witness account' to either be completely contrary to what other eye witnesses are saying or it is highly suspect.

Oh, the buzzing of the bees, and the cigarette trees
The soda-water fountain....

gav wrote:

ICAN are you serious? Are you that naive? "Yeah, keep killing 'em and killing 'em THEN they'll understand". That has to be the most dense thing I've ever read. This is a guerilla war your in the middle of!!!. They don't need "insurgency recruiters" (WTF?) they have YOU - your kind of attitude is all the average Iraqi needs to join the resistance.

Yes I am serious. No I am not naive. They join the resistance to avoid being murdered by what you call the resistance. It's so simple and straight forward. Their survivors will eventually come to understand that the least risky and quickest way for them to get rid of the US is to adopt a democracy which they can subsequently easily shape to their own satisfaction once we leave.

gav wrote:

Because of the kind of war your involved in you will battle eachother to a standstill, its happened the world over and Iraq is going to be no different. People like yourself (I would imagine) are of the opinion " Never negotiate with a terrorist" - well get used to the possibility that someday your country just might have to do that to secure the peace in Iraq.

Rubbish! It is unfortunate that you do not understand that we and their terrorist resistance have irreconcilable, non-negotiable differences. Peace can never be secured with them without them or us being first destroyed in the process.

Did the negotiation that gave Hitler Czechoslovakia secure the peace in 1939? No, what secured the peace was the eventual destruction of Nazis Germany in 1945 and the subsequent multi-year development of a Democratic Germany despite remnant nazi resistance. We did not convert the nazis from haters to tolerators. We demanded unconditional surrender and we either converted many of them to dust, or we obtained their unconditional surrender.

Were we able to negotiate peace with the Shintoist Japanese? No, we demanded unconditional surrender enforced by a couple of atomic bombs. That bought us peace in 1945 and a Democratic Japan several years later.

Either the Iraqi terrorist resistance shall stop murdering their own people or they shall die, period. Since so many of them seek their own death anyway, in the evil belief it is an automatic escalator to paradise, that they will not stop murdering their own people, much less stop murdering us, whether or not we succeed in negotiating an agreement. Negotiated agreements between them and westerners have less status among them than negotiated agreements with pigs.

I don't think we're not so very far away in thought. I would agree with your Soviet /Afghanistan model, if you were talking about US/Afghanistan instead of Iraq. :wink: That, I suspect will take longer to fix... and I do expect Iraq to take a long time. But Iraq has the oil... and with it comes the wealth. With wealth comes the greed. And with the greed comes the purpose... the purpose that has nothing to do with worshipping invisible men. Nothing to do waiting for the next life for your reward.

The trick to winning Iraq IMO, is to stop hoping and start anticipating. Face it as a battle that must be won and therefore will be won. Doubting the ability of the United States Military to marginalize the resistance is foolish. The people of the United States spoke last Tuesday and the folks they spoke to will see this through. Believe it.

McTag wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

From everything I've read, seen, and been told, anyone who says the U.S. is using cluster bombs in Fallajah either has no idea what cluster bombs are or is intentionally lieing. While I have no doubt some innocents have been killed, the vast majority of civilians have fled the city and extreme measures are being used to protect the 1/3 or so who stayed. This would show Revel's 'eye witness account' to either be completely contrary to what other eye witnesses are saying or it is highly suspect.

Oh, the buzzing of the bees, and the cigarette trees
The soda-water fountain....

McTag, I've figured out those are lyrics to "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," a song I don't believe I've ever heard, but I haven't figured out why you've written them.

Ticomaya wrote:

McTag wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

From everything I've read, seen, and been told, anyone who says the U.S. is using cluster bombs in Fallajah either has no idea what cluster bombs are or is intentionally lieing. While I have no doubt some innocents have been killed, the vast majority of civilians have fled the city and extreme measures are being used to protect the 1/3 or so who stayed. This would show Revel's 'eye witness account' to either be completely contrary to what other eye witnesses are saying or it is highly suspect.

Oh, the buzzing of the bees, and the cigarette trees
The soda-water fountain....

McTag, I've figured out those are lyrics to "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," a song I don't believe I've ever heard, but I haven't figured out why you've written them.

Oh really? I think most here do. They describe the kind of fantasy-land Foxy and Ican, and a few others here, inhabit. The one where "extreme measures are being used to protect" the remaining citizens of Fallujah, and where surgical strikes and precision aim are being used to remove insurgents.

It's a nice song:

"In the Big Rock Candy Mountain, the cops have wooden legs
The bulldogs all have rubber teeth, and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs...."

Rebuilding What the Assault Turns to Rubble
Seabees, Other Units Began Planning Early for the Reconstruction of Fallujah

By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 10, 2004; Page A20

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 9 -- Weeks before Marine and Army units stormed into Fallujah, blowing up buildings and blasting holes in insurgent positions, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Larry Merola was already working on a plan to fix the damage.

Merola, an architect from Stoughton, Mass., was part of a Seabee team of engineers, builders and carpenters responsible for estimating the battle damage long before the first tank rolled.

Merola and his crew -- which included an ironworker from Connecticut, an electrician from Virginia and a general contractor from New Hampshire -- pored over combat plans with Marine commanders and made suggestions for how to secure the city without completely tearing it apart.

...

Ah, sorry to burst your bubble - but it aint 1945!!!!. Look you just don't understand. These people are'nt intentionally going out to murder their own civilians. Their own civilians (this is cold I know) are getting caught up in it. Now, who set up the Iraqi police force? Who set up the newly constructed Iraqi armed forces? Bingo!!! - we have an answer - AMERICA. These people are going to stand against everything America has a hand in. These fellow citizens who are now working at the behest of the American government (lets face it they are) have now become part of the American war machine- in lay mans terms they have become "legitimate targets". As have construction workers, because they are basically working at the behest of AMERICA. Can you not f**king see the common thread running through this!!!? And before you start your usual beheading rhetoric - look no further than Saudi Arabia, one of your bestest buddies!!

My Theory is they are far more afraid of each other than they are of us. Turning down an insurgency recruiter risks immediate death at the hands of the recruiter. Failure to comply with any insurgent's demand risks the same. Cooperation with the current provisional government or the US also risks the same. In brief the insurgents are bound together by their mutual fear of their comrads in arms.

Why their unwillingness to let Democracy take hold merely because they don't want democracy? It would be a less risky and more rapid way to get rid of us. Once democracy takes hold, we will leave and they can then vote or corrupt their democracy into anything they want including a theocracy, an aristocracy, a bureaucracy, a secular-ocracy, or even a demon-ocracy.

No rejection of democracy is not what is driving them. What is driving them is mutual fear of each other combined with an impatient obsession to maintain and/or obtain the power to continually generate fear in others.

Killing as many of them as it takes to convince them elections are a less risky and a quicker way for them to get what they want, is a workable tactic. Yes, we've been doing that for about a year now. Yes, we have not convinced them yet. Hell, I expect our current approach to look worse before it begins to look better. We just need to continue killing them for the next several years until it finally occurs to them that they can get all they want in less than a year after democracy takes hold and we leave.

What do you think is motivating them?

What tactic or tactics do you recommend we adopt?

Muhammad Abbud said he watched his nine-year-old son bleed to death at their Falluja home, unable to take him to hospital as fighting raged in the streets and bombs rained down on the Iraqi city.


In the midst of a US onslaught and hemmed in by a round-the-clock curfew, he said he had little choice but to bury his eldest son, Ghaith, in the garden.

"My son got shrapnel in his stomach when our house was hit at dawn, but we couldn't take him for treatment," said Abbud, a teacher. "We buried him in the garden because it was too dangerous to go out. We did not know how long the fighting would last."

Residents say scores of civilians have been killed or wounded in 24 hours of fighting since US-led forces pushed deep into the city on Monday evening.

Doctors said people brought in at least 15 dead civilians at the main clinic in Falluja on Monday. By Tuesday, there were no clinics open, residents said, and no way to count casualties.

Medical supplies low

US and Iraqi forces seized control of the city's main hospital, across the Euphrates river from Falluja proper, hours before the onslaught beganOvernight US bombardments hit a clinic inside the Sunni Muslim city, killing doctors, nurses and patients, residents said. US military authorities denied the reports.
Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said troops detained 38 fighters entrenched at Falluja hospital and accused doctors there of exaggerating civilian casualties.
Sami al-Jumaili, a doctor at Falluja hospital, said the city was running out of medical supplies.
"There is not a single surgeon in Falluja. We had one ambulance hit by US fire and a doctor wounded. There are scores of injured civilians in their homes who we can't move," he said by telephone from a house where he had gone to help the wounded.
"A 13-year-old child just died in my hands."
ICRC voices concern
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Tuesday that it was extremely worried about the fate of people wounded in the battle for control of the Iraqi city of Falluja.

"The ICRC urges the belligerents to ensure that all those in need of such care - whether friend or foe - be given access to medical facilities and that medical personnel and vehicles can function without hindrance at all times," a statement said.

The organisation said it was "deeply concerned about reports that the injured cannot receive adequate medical care".

Families flee
Weekend air raids destroyed a clinic funded by an Islamic relief organisation in the centre of Falluja and a nearby warehouse used to store medical supplies, witnesses said.


Residents say there is no power
and food supplies are running low
Many families fled the city of 300,000 long before the offensive began. An official from a Sunni Muslim group with links to some fighters in Falluja said on Monday only about 60,000 people remained.
Residents say they have no power and are using kerosene lamps at night. They say they keep to ground floors for safety. Food shops have been closed for six days.
"My kids are hysterical with fear," said Farhan Salih. "They are traumatised by the sound but there is nowhere to take them."
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday he did not foresee large numbers of civilian casualties in the assault, saying US forces were disciplined and precise.
Those words were of little comfort to the Abbud family, sitting in a house damaged by the bomb that killed their child.
"We just bandaged his stomach and gave him water, but he was losing a lot of blood. He died this afternoon," said Abbud.

The insurgents may harrass and kill those who do not agree with them, but I don't believe the kind of environment you are describing exists within the insurgency whatsoever. Don't attempt to marginalize the enemy by presenting them as unorganized or incompetent, for they are neither.

WE, the Americans, will never be able to defeat the insurgency. Only the Iraqi people can do that....