False Nostalgia: The Original Fallujah Campaign Destabilized Iraq

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/01/nostalgia-campaign-destabilized.html

False Nostalgia: The Original Fallujah Campaign Destabilized Iraq
By Juan Cole | Jan. 14, 2014

We’ve been treated to a rash of articles about how US veterans of the Fallujah campaigns of 2004 are upset about the return of al-Qaeda to that city and the now dominant position of the extremists. Despite my respect for US soldiers who risked their lives, these veterans are making a political argument and I have to point out that it misunderstands what really happened in 2004.

It was being alleged at the time that Fallujah had become the center of the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who affiliated with al-Qaeda. It was being alleged by US generals that 80% of attacks in Iraq were being carried out by Zarqawi. All of these notions were nonsense. After Fallujah was reduced in late 2004, the Sunni insurgency did not skip a beat, and bombings in Baghdad continued. Likewise when Zarqawi himself was killed in 2006, violence did not subside; if anything, that year it got worse. There were 50 major insurgent cells in the Sunni Arab region, and Fallujah was only one site out of many for them.

George W. Bush was alleged by US reporters to have had a grudge against Fallujah because 4 contractors were brutally killed there by a mob in spring of 2004. “Heads must roll,” he said according to one reporter.

In November of 2004, Bush ordered the invasion of Fallujah. It was a brutal invasion that left much of the city in rubble, something Bush administration flacks attempted to cover up at the time.



unhappycamper comment: Fallujah - willie pete, depleted uranium, cluster bombs and (I think) napalm. Can any DUers verify the napalm?