"Iraqi's Great Escape" Huge tunnel and Feces Bombs...Amazing. what

[KoKo]

we Americans are up against:
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http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/world/3323020


IRAQI INMATES NEARLY PULL..GREAT ESCAPE!
Tunnel found, but attempt shows the war goes on even behind bars
By STEVE FAINARU and ANTHONY SHADID

Washington Post

CAMP BUCCA, IRAQ - In the darkest hours before dawn, groups of 10 detainees toiled 15 feet beneath Compound 5 of America's largest prison in Iraq. The men worked in five-minute shifts, digging with shovels fashioned from tent poles and hauling the dirt to the surface with five-gallon water jugs tethered to 200 feet of rope. They bagged it in sacks that had been used to deliver their bread rations and spread it surreptitiously across a soccer field where fellow inmates churned it during daily matches, guards and detainees recalled.

The 105th Military Police Battalion, charged with running Camp Bucca in the scorching desert of southernmost Iraq, knew something was amiss: Undetectable to the naked eye, the field's changing color was picked up by satellite imagery. The excavated dirt was also clogging the showers and two dozen portable toilets. The dirt was showing up under the floorboards of tents; some guards sensed that the floor itself seemed to be rising. Mysteriously, water use in the compound had spiked.

Hours before the planned prison break on March 24, an informant tipped off the Americans, who then drove a bulldozer across Compound 5. What they discovered was breathtaking: a fully completed tunnel that stretched 357 feet, longer than a football field. Inside were flashlights built from radio diodes and five larger spaces to provide ventilation. The tunnel's walls were as smooth and strong as concrete, sculpted with water and, the Americans believe, milk. The exit, beyond the compound's fence, was camouflaged with sand-colored cardboard. It opened into a partially concealed trench that would lead the detainees to freedom.

Exhibiting resilience
The discovery of what came to be known as "The Great Escape" tunnel was a seminal moment for the Americans charged with guarding Iraq's exploding prison population. It underscored the fact that the guards were not simply policing more than 6,000 detainees but, in their own way, fighting an enemy that exhibited the same complexity and resilience inside the prison's chain-linked fences and miles of coiled razor wire as it did in the most embattled streets of Iraq. For the inmates, the fight had never stopped.

"It was a military operation. It was very organized, and it was very disciplined," said Mohammed Touman, 27, an inmate released May 27 from Compound 5.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/world/3323020

[xray s]

1. the funny thing is they probably talked about it in front of our soldiers

...because we don't understand their language!!!

[opihimoimoi]

2. If it wasn't for the stoolie...the boys woulda walked away

It just shows our boys brighter side wasn't that bright...

They had gotten the warning an escape was planned. At Least someone down there knew what to do with a strong warning like that...

Bush fucked up HIS WARNING...result, 9/11.

[KoKo]

3. Opi...the sadesst part for me is..

I found myself kind of rooting for the Iraqi's on this one...:blush:

I know...I must be a "bad American" but I go way back ...and I think of the "Resistance" and how our little band of American's stood up to the Brits before the Revolutionary War.]

I know. "Agent Mike" has me on his list...but I think this little story out of Iraq by Prisoners who are there for "who knows what" is sort of inspiring...

But..SHHHHHHHHH! We mustn't say that "little folks" have a voice in anything that goes on in our Whole Globe today. Who are WE? We are NOBODY...:-(

[opihimoimoi]

5. We are Nobody?? Girl, Please don't you ever say things like that again

We are part of a small Force trying to gain in Strength and Numbers.

The Pubs are doing all they can to minimize our efforts. They wish to continue to RULE....

Our final success are depended on our tiny efforts to voice the Truth, New Ideas and perspectives, etc leading to a more Mature Voting Pattern.

Please take Heart in our quest to slowly achieve this mission, our kids and grand kids cannot speak, we are their final hope. It is US who must speak for THEM as well as ourselves...

Come, we go light a Fire and make the stones ready for the Fire Walk, then we go Luau

[KoKo]

9. Thanks...for that....

:-)'s your way.

[NYC]

4. Prison riot.

Suddenly, everything the Americans had provided the inmates over the previous months was turned against them, according to guards and a videotape of the riot made available by the military. The cinderblock had been chiseled from the concrete base of a tent pole. The detainees used floorboards as shields. They hurled socks filled with a cocktail of feces, dirt and flammable, slow-burning hand sanitizer, the Americans said. One of the crude devices ignited a Polaris all-terrain vehicle.

The Americans fired back with rubber bullets and tear gas but failed to slow the projectiles cascading from the courtyard. "With that deadly velocity they were out-ranging our nonlethal weapons, which becomes very dangerous," Brown said.

On the fourth day of the riots, the Shiite prisoners finally gave up.

[KoKo]

6. Yes..I remember hearing on the MSM about Camp Bucca Prison Riots but

NOT this. The Bushistas don't want the Americans to know that Iraqi's are intelligent...seen centuries of oppression and they are inventive, creative and smart...and we've sent our troops into what they are told is a "Noble Cause" against people who've lived for Centuries under One Dictator or Another. Bush II is only the NEXT in a long line of DICTATORS who have wanted what Iraqi's had on their land that all of the WORLD wanted.

It's very sad that Bush/Cheney/Rummy and the PNAC (who for all their Harvard/Yale/Whatever Degrees...didn't ever understand that "POWER" comes from the people. If you oppress us we will rise up with whatever we have to stop you. It's been that way since the Dawn of Time...and they "rewrite the history books" and force their "peoples" to react like some sort of 14th Century Warriors against their "pre-entlightenment dogma."

It's so disheartening and frankly disgusting :puke: that we've come to this in the dawn of the 21'st Century.

Where is that cave I can crawl into with my fellow DU'ers who think we are back to Primative Times with "Intelligent Design" being forced into School's Curriculum and cowering intellectuals fighting over how better to support Bush on this, plus "Patriot Act," etc...and the daily onslaught of attacks against Womens Bodies, Rights to Live Freely without "Iris Scans" and the rest...to get on with our lives.

It's sickening. :-(

[KoKo]

7. It's a great read no matter what side of the "coin" one falls on..hit it

for a slice of what our Soldiers are up against in Iraq and how badly Rummy/Cheney Miscalculated on "THIS WAR." I won't even get into the PNAC whose "101 First Keyboarders intellectuals from University of Chicago" so dreadfully miscalculated what they sent our innocent young men and women in the Military into....THE HORNET's NEST. They had NO reason to be sent there when there were other ways to deal with OSAMA and Al QUEADA....No REASON....No REASON...that couldn't have been found..in another way...these deaths, these maimings...this huge loss of life.

[KoKo]

11. Kick for the Midnight Insomniacs....An interesting read of what our troops

are up against...as I said before..no matter how one feels about this "invasion."

[Contrary1]

8. Shades of Shawshank!

"Many of the freed detainees express bewilderment at why they were held".
That may be part of the problem, ya think?

[KoKo]

10. yeah....I think.............n/t.