Things are looking very bad for Fallujah.
A Blog by Rahul Mahajan
April 25, 7:10 am EST. Amsterdam, the Netherlands -- Things are looking very bad for Fallujah. The various mujaheddin factions, who may have agreed to a truce just so that the siege of Fallujah would be partially lifted and the road to the hospital opened, obviously had no intention of handing over all their weapons (or even just the "heavy" ones). That demand by the Americans was basically the demand to win the battle without fighting it.
Since Fallujah will not capitulate, apparently,
Bush and his advisers decide this weekend whether to bombard the hell out of it. Here's a fascinating quote from the Times article:
"It's clear you can't leave a few thousand insurgents there to terrorize the city and shoot at us," one senior official involved in the discussions said in an interview on Saturday. "The question now is whether there is a way to go in with the most minimal casualties possible."It should be clear to anyone with basic knowledge of the situation and with no ideological axe to grind who the few thousand people terrorizing the city are. They're the ones that have assaulted it with tanks, AC-130 gunships, F-16's, and snipers, not the ones who have been defending it from assault.
Based on everything that's happened so far, the mindless desire for revenge and for showing military supremacy will triumph and the attack will be launched. As Bush said, "America will never be run out of Iraq by a bunch of thugs and killers." This is the kind of nonsense every colonial army has put out against its opponents -- as Henry Liu
points out in the Asia Times, the British general at the battle of Bunker Hill, Thomas Cage, called the American rebels thugs and tax evaders.
Sheikh Ahmed Abdel Ghafur Samarra'i, during Friday prayers at a prominent Baghdad mosque,
said, "We will not allow the shedding of Iraqi blood. If you strike again, the whole of Iraq, from north to south, from east to west, will become Fallujah," a sentiment virtually every Iraqi I've spoken with would agree with.
A bad moon is rising. Since Bush is so fond of the Bible (it was apparently his favorite book as a child), he should read that part about sowing the wind.
It would be nice if this time there were protests before the assault instead of after.
From 'A Blog by Rahul Mahajan'
http://www.empirenotes.org/april04.html#25apr043]
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NYT Article referenced above:
Bush's Decision on Possible Attack on Falluja Seems Near
By DAVID E. SANGER
and THOM SHANKER
Published: April 25, 2004
ASHINGTON, April 24 — Facing one of the grimmest choices of the Iraq war, President Bush and his senior national security and military advisers are expected to decide this weekend whether to order an invasion of Falluja, even if a battle there runs the risk of uprisings in the city and perhaps elsewhere around Iraq.
After declaring on Friday evening in Florida that "America will never be run out of Iraq by a bunch of thugs and killers," Mr. Bush flew to Camp David for the weekend, where administration officials said he planned consultations in a videoconference with the military commanders who are keeping the city under siege.
<snip>
As Mr. Bush discusses strategy for Falluja, administration and senior military officials portray his choices as dismal. "It's clear you can't leave a few thousand insurgents there to terrorize the city and shoot at us," one senior official involved in the discussions said in an interview on Saturday. "The question now is whether there is a way to go in with the most minimal casualties possible."
<snip>
On Saturday, as a blinding sandstorm swept across a sprawling former Iraqi Army base near Falluja, Marine commanders were getting assignments for potential targets, studying maps and planning lines of attack for a battle that they expect could come in the next few days. The Marines have encircled the city, awaiting Mr. Bush's decision.
<snip>
Mr. Bush is described by many officials as convinced that if the insurgents hold off American forces there, they will try to do the same in other Iraqi cities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/international/25IRAQ.htmlWe don't seek empires. We're not imperialistic. We never have been. I can't imagine why you'd even ask the question." Donald Rumsfeld, questioned by an al-Jazeera correspondent, April 29, 2003.
"No one can now doubt the word of America," George W. Bush, State of the Union, January 20, 2004. 
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