Iraq appears to be like a scene from Mad Max. What are we doing there?

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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18414

The 'Ceasefire' in Fallujah

By Dahr Jamail, The Nation
April 14, 2004

Fallujah, Iraq, a low-rise, mostly Sunni city of about 200,000, has become this war's Sarajevo. I was there on Saturday and Sunday during what was supposed to be a cease-fire. Instead of calm, I found a city under siege from American artillery and snipers.


At one of the city's clinics, I saw dozens of freshly wounded women and children, victims of U.S. Marine Corps munitions. Hospital officials report that more than 600 Iraqis have now been killed, most of them civilians. Two soccer fields in Fallujah have been converted to graveyards. I went to Fallujah with a small group of international journalists and NGO workers. We traveled in a large bus full of medical supplies; our plan was to unload our cargo, take a look around, then leave with as many wounded as we could take out with us.


When we left Baghdad, the road was desolate and littered with the scorched and smoldering shells of vehicles. At the first U.S. checkpoint, the soldiers said they'd been there for thirty hours straight. They looked exhausted and scared. After being searched, we continued along bumpy dirt roads, winding our way through parts of Abu Ghraib, steadily but slowly making our way toward besieged Fallujah. At one point, we passed a supply truck that had been hit and was being looted by people from a nearby village. Men and boys were running from the wreck carrying boxes. A small child yelled at our bus, "We will be mujahedeen until we die!"


At one overpass, we rolled by an M-1 tank that resistance fighters had destroyed. Smoke and flames still billowed from its burning guts. Down the road were more fires – the whole thirty kilometers to Fallujah was strewn with burned-out fuel tankers, trucks, armored personnel carriers (APCs) and tanks. As we approached Fallujah, we started running into mujahedeen checkpoints. Seeing our supplies and hearing that we were headed for Fallujah, the guerrillas let us pass.

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1. Hell on earth.

As we descend into Dante's Inferno, the rest of the world is watching, unable to do much besides express its outrage.

The US is trapped. They know they lack options; always a bad position to be in. We should be cognizant of the fact that the Iraqis are the ones initiating the first move, and the US is forced to respond, often with greater force than the last time. It's an attempt to intimidate and squash the enemy into submission.

They could level Fallujah and even Najaf tonight. Kill every last man, woman and child. The problem is, there are more towns nearby. There will be more Fallujahs, and more 20-year old men who will give their lives for Allah and await their own blessed redemption.

This is why guerrilla warfare is the hardest to fight. The enemy is not in large troops which can be vaporized quickly. It's locals who melt into the townsfolk. They are protected by the locals.

Americans, however, stand out. They can be followed with the barrel of a rifle. They are not on their home turf. They are not familiar with the climate & customs. This was exactly the problem with the VietCong. We lost that war, by the way.

The Iraqis have lots of time; we do not. The clock is ticking. Our war is costing us $4.2 billion per month, and we are no closer to our goal than when we started.

This is why the US has no alternative but to respond with every increasing intensity of warfare.

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2. We also keep getting reminded how important good intelligence is

While over the last year we have been running around Iraq digging up 20 year old mass graves and cutting ribbons for newly reopened donkey bridges guess what the Iraqis have been doing? They have been gathering intelligence on us. After a year they probably know more about us than we do. No one ever mentions that.

Don