Scared half to death, security forces lock themselves behind barricades

[Barrett808]

Scared half to death, the security forces lock themselves behind the barricades
Rory McCarthy in Falluja
Friday April 2, 2004
The Guardian

Lieutenant Colonel Saad Jasim is reluctant to talk in the open courtyard. He orders his men to bolt the metal door to his small office before he will agree to speak. Outside the brick hut is a large walled compound in which dozens of his armed troops from the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps are barking orders to each other in the bright morning sun. Between them and Falluja's main high street is a vast concrete blast wall, guarded by a handful of extremely anxious defence corps soldiers.

...

None of the town's 900 defence corps troops went to intervene, nor did the Iraqi police, whose headquarters is even closer, nor did the thousands of better-armed, better-trained troops from America's 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based on the outskirts of town.

"We were only told about it when it had finished," Col Jasim, 38, a former Iraqi army officer, offered by way of explanation. "By the time we arrived there was no one there."

...

Individually, they admit their frustration with the Americans. Sheikh Mohammed Hanad al-Shihane, a deputy leader of the council, blamed the crowd's anger on unemployment, corruption that is delaying reconstruction and heavy-handed soldiering by US troops. The council asked the marine commanders to keep out of the city for the moment and to give more support and training to Iraqi security forces to handle law and order.

"It is not true that these people want Saddam back," he said. "All the city is against the occupation and all the mistakes happened because of the occupation. That much is so clear."

(more)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1184260,00.html

[deutsey]

1. "Scared half to death"="Amazing progress of glorious coalition forces"

in Bushspeak.

:evilfrown:

[mia]

2. It's not about Saddam - it never was

From the same article -

...American officials in Baghdad insisted the attackers were a "restorationist" movement that wanted to reinstall Saddam Hussein. "I don't believe they want Saddam back," said Col Jasim. "It is an Islamic movement. They are fighting to get the Americans out."

The gunmen who orchestrated Wednesday's attack disappeared once the four Americans had been killed. It was the crowd, and particularly a group of young, even teenage, men who dragged the bodies out of the cars and mutilated them.

Unbroadcast television footage showed them trailing a disfigured corpse from the back of a white car as they waved Kalashnikov rifles and posters of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas who was assassinated by the Israelis....

[BeyondGeography]

3. Sounds like the South Vietnamese Army all over again

[xchrom]

4. these are people who want american's out

they simply do not want to be occupied.
and as the article points out -- american efforts in their area have been poor.
it is time for the u.s. to get out anti-american sentiment will only grow.

[Jacobin]

5. We are like the dog chasing the car.....who caught it

Now, what the fuck do you do.

Hiding behind barricades.

Sounds like we don't "occupy" much of Iraq anymore, if we are behind barricades and blast walls and can't venture out. I think we are trapped.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

7. The dog was blind, and the "car" turned out to be an 18-wheeler.

[leftchick]

6. It certainly would be nice to hear these words on my tv....

<snip>"It is not true that these people want Saddam back," he said. "All the city is against the occupation and all the mistakes happened because of the occupation. That much is so clear."

... Rather than the RW talking points of "a few remnants" and "saddam loyalists".

:puke:

[rfkrocks]

8. Radical Islam resurgent

Who didn't see that as a risk of this moronic foreign policy? Apparently the whole friggin GOP-pick slips for all-what hell they have unleashed will paid in years to come-thanks a lot-have a nice day