Rebels return to 'cleared' areas (Fallujah)

[quaoar]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1203/p06s02-woiq.html

In Fallujah, US forces are going through 50,000 houses one by one. But Iraqi insurgents are coming back.

< snip >

Iraqi civilians are not expected to be permitted to begin returning to the badly damaged city until mid-December, and extensive damage to virtually every house and building across Fallujah means that detailed US and Iraqi government plans for rebuilding will take months, at least, to realize.

But the original problem persists: US forces sweep through one neighborhood after another, only to find insurgents popping up in "cleared" areas.

The battle Monday killed one marine and wounded three others - a high cost against three insurgents, who had moved into a house 50 feet across the street from a newly established marine position at a Fallujah fire station. That house and several others nearby had been cleared just two days earlier.

[indianablue]

1. surprise surprise surprise...as Goomer woudl say...

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. and the marines were not expecting this?

I will not blame the grunts... but some of their commanders...

(oh and before you say it I would love for this to have never happened

[maddezmom]

3. and I read another link, where the US military wants the head of household

to wear and ID badge to prove they aren't insurgents. :eyes:

[daleo]

5. And what does that remind you of?

I know, it is obvious, and plenty of posters (including yourself perhaps) have made the analogy.

But let's forget the analogy with Nazis. Didn't slaveholders in the south (including Texas) used to brand people? That may be more appropriate, given Bush's declared geographical background.

[MileHiStealth]

8. And an insurgent couldn't get an ID badge ....

because ???? Do they have "INSURGENT" tattooed
across their forehead ????

[Inland]

4. Insurgents are low tech, mobile.

They don't have a lot of fixtures that are destroyed in an invasion. So we captured the place they beheaded captives. We didn't capture them, or their swords. All they need is to move to another room.

[NuttyFluffers]

6. so did we turn the corner on fallujah again?

hmm, honestly, who *is* driving this car? oh that's right, a coke-snorting, boozer of a ne'er do well playboy.... i feel safe.

[KingChicken]

7. We've turned the corner so many times in Iraq, now were lost.

[NIGHT TRIPPER]

9. RESISTANCE-->wouldn't you resist too? I know I sure the hell would

I would resist if some military power invaded MY coutry and blew up My city and all My relatives and My friends---I wouldn't care if they were killing my people for "freedom" or killing in the name of "peace" or even killing so they can bring me the real "true" religion.
I wouldn't even care.
I'd resist.

So why am I not surprised there is a strong resistance?

Doesn't take a genius.

Why can't our "leaders" figure it out?

[driver8]

12. Because they are delivering "freedom"...

Our leaders are delivering freedom and democracy to these poor people. They are killing thousands and thousands of people in the process,but that is a small price for "freedom", isn't it?

I cannot believe that people think that Bush is protecting America. What a fucking mess.

[DireStrike]

10. Freedom is on the march

and so are the rebels.

[eridani]

11. Can you say Grozny? I knew you could!

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111204X.shtml

There are at least 120 mosques in Fallujah. A consensus is emerging that almost half of them have been smashed by air strikes and shelling by US tanks - something that will haunt the United States for ages. The mosques stopped broadcasting the five daily calls for prayer, but Fadhil Badrani, an Iraqi reporter for BBC World Service in Arabic and one of the very few media witnesses in Fallujah, writes that "every time a big bomb lands nearby, the cry rises from the minarets: 'Allahu Akbar' ".When a few snipers are capable of holding scores of marines for a day in Fallujah - an eerie replay of the second part of Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket - and when eight of 10 US divisions are bogged down by a few thousand Iraqis with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers, the fact is the US does not control anything in Sunni Iraq. It does not control towns, cities, roads, and it barely controls the Green Zone, the American fortress in Baghdad that is the ultimate symbol of the occupation.

In 1999, the Russians bombed and destroyed Grozny, the Chechen capital, a city of originally 400,000 people. Five years later, Chechen guerrillas are still trapping Russian troops in a living hell there. The same scenario will be replayed in Fallujah - a city of originally 300,000 people. All this destruction - which any self-respecting international lawyer can argue is a war crime - for the Bush administration to send a brutal message: either you're with us or we'll smash you to pieces.

[everclear]

13. plenty of nooks-n-cranys to hide in

stalingrad 1942

[Emillereid]

14. Haven't we learned anything about guerrilla warfare -- my god if they

haven't learned anything about Vietnam, you'd think they'd at least take a page from the Algerian war against France or even our own revolutionary tactics. When you are fighting the PEOPLE of a country, they do have a tendency to 'pop up' EVERYWHERE!!!! IT'S THEIR COUNTRY YOU IDIOTS!

[bvar22]

15. Wack-a-mole.....

with hand grenades. And the moles are fighting back, and the moles are winning.

Too bad the NeoCons don't read or study history. This is straight out of Mao.



Too bad bush* doesn't listen to his father:

“Trying to eliminate Saddam... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible... we would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq... there was no viable 'exit strategy' we could see, violating another of our principles... Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."---
George HW Bush

Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country.
-- Steven Wright

[TheWraith]

17. Mao hell.

It's straight out to The Art Of War. A force that is 'formless,' in this case lacking defined battle lines, targets, and structures, is described as the peak of military deployment because it can't be spied on or planned against. Although Sun Tzu meant it in a variety of ways, it's still an ideal strategy for a guerilla war on friendly territory.


Seriously, are the generals in command of this thing all brain-damaged? This is Tactics 101. I could go on for hours about strategy, but it boils down to this--if the enemy has no command structure, you can't decapitate it. If they have no bases, you can't blow them up. If they have no positions, you can't overrun them. These and many other reasons are why military occupations throughout history have eventually succumbed in the face of civilian uprisings.

[necso]

16. Using "stay-behinds" and infiltrators

(infiltrating into "enemy controlled" areas) are standard tactics for defending a city, particularly when the attacking forces do not have enough forces to completely control the areas (and access to those areas) that they have "seized".

Such tactics were used in the defense of Stalingrad by the Red Army. However, German losses (POW/KIA) at Stalingrad were well in excess of 200,000.

Of course, much of this loss was caused by Hitler's refusal to follow the advice of his battlefield commanders.

[Massachusetts]

18. Iraq - Nam

same script different location.:grr:

[SoCalDem]

19. Is anyone surprised?? Not me..

They are guerrilla fighters.. That's HOW guerrilla warfare is done.. Why did we "expect" them to stay put and face overwhelming force? They just drew us in, and sniped at our forces while WE destroyed the city (winning the hearts and minds of the people who had nowhere to go)...and when we "declared victory and pulled out"...they returned to "their people".. There are no doubt MANY new recruits in Fallujah after our "victory" there.

It's Advanced "Whack-A-Mole".