Shias rise all over Iraq, and join their Sunni brothers in the resistance to the US occupation.
US-trained Iraqi police abandoning their stations and joining the fighters.
Now even the US-appointed IGC members are publicly blasting the US war crimes.
It’s all falling apart for the occupiers…
^ Now the US appointed ICG will be declared a terrorist organization.
Two of the 25 members of the IGC have resigned, and four more are ready to quit…as rebels seize more strategic areas, and the resistance spreads across Iraq.
Iraqi leaders revolt over US action to quell rebel uprising
ONE year after US forces rode triumphantly into Baghdad the US-led coalition was facing a growing revolt last night by the very political leaders to whom it plans to transfer power. A second Iraqi minister resigned yesterday, four members of the US-appointed Governing Council are threatening to go, and the respected elder statesman Adnan Pachachi angrily denounced the Americans’ “illegal and totally unacceptable” use of force in the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah. US Marines announced a unilateral suspension of their five-day military operation in that city yesterday, but it lasted barely 90 minutes. **The increasingly emboldened rebels moved to cut off the main road from Bahgdad to sever the Americans’ supply route. They attacked a US army fuel convoy heading toward Fallujah, killing nine. They also claimed to have taken four Italians and two Americans hostage, though Italy denied that any of its citizens were missing. The Pentagon announced that six more US soldiers had been killed in action, bringing the total for the week to more than 50. Also, two US soldiers were reported missing last night after their convoy was ambushed near Baghdad International Airport. **
As Tony Blair began an unannounced holiday in Bermuda yesterday, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, admitted that he never imagined that the situation would be so grave one year after the war’s end. “There is no doubt that the current situation is very serious and it is the most serious that we have faced,” he told the BBC. He was speaking before news broke of the death of Michael Bloss, a British security contractor, in Iraq. Fallujah’s hospital director said that more than 450 Iraqis had been killed, and more than 1,000 wounded, since the Americans began their operation last Sunday to root out those who killed and mutilated four American contractors. Mr Pachachi, a Sunni member of the Governing Council, said: “We denounce the military operations carried out by the American forces because in effect it is inflicting collective punishment on the residents of Fallujah.” Another Sunni member of the council, Ghazi Ajil al- Yawer, asked: “How can a superpower like the US put itself in a state of war with a small city like Fallujah. This is genocide.” **He and three other members of the council are threatening to resign less than three months before the coalition hands over power. Abdel Basit Turki resigned yesterday as Human Rights Minister. On Thursday Nuri Badran quit as Interior Minister. Russia has joined the condemnation, calling for “an end to military operations, and restraint”. **
The most intense fighting yesterday centred on the town of Abu Ghraib, on the road between Baghdad and Fallujah, where gunmen appeared to be gaining control of the US Army’s vital supply lines from the capital. Guerrillas with rocketpropelled grenades destroyed at least three petrol tankers and a military vehicle. Witnesses saw bodies burning inside the vehicles, close to where another fuel convoy was hit the day before. The explosions could be heard across the capital, which was almost deserted as people stayed home in fear of the escalating fighting which flares almost nightly in districts where guerrillas have their forces. In Fallujah US Marines announced a unilateral ceasefire to allow aid convoys to enter the city, which has suffered five days of warfare waged with tanks, aircraft and helicopters on the US side and mortars and rocket-propelled grenades from the insurgents. Hundreds of Iraqis and a dozen US troops have been killed in the fighting there. Marines made little progress into the city yesterday before the lull in fighting. In one gunfight a tank shell hit the minaret of a mosque compound bombed two days earlier after a gunmen opened fire from the tower. In the no man’s land on the edge of an industrial zone, where some of the heaviest fighting has been concentrated, Iraqi bodies lay decaying in the heat, chewed on by wild dogs. Before dawn, the Marines engaged in psychological warfare, broadcasting ear-splitting “death metal” music to wear down the defenders’ nerves. Battles continued to flare elsewhere in Iraq as Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shia cleric, issued a chilling message to President Bush. “I address my enemy Bush. ‘You are now fighting an entire nation — from south to north, from east to west, and we advise you to withdraw from Iraq’,” he said.
Even as US forces swiftly redeployed troops from the capital to wrest control of the town of al-Kut from rebel Shia militiamen, fresh fighting erupted in the restive Sunni town of Baqouba to the north, stretching military capacity to the limit. For the first time, members of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council held talks yesterday with insurgents in the besieged Sunni town of Fallujah to try to calm some of the worst fighting that US forces have engaged in since the Vietnam War. A ceasefire announced for the talks quickly cracked as shooting broke out again in the city centre. Shooting also broke out after a demonstration in the northern city of Mosul, while night clashes in the shrine city of Karbala, between Shia fighters and Polish and Bulgarian troops, killed 15 Iraqis. In Baghdad US troops streamed into the fortified compound around the Palestine and Sheraton hotels after reports that supporters of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr planned to storm the hotels and take hostage the foreign journalists and contractors living there. The surrounding streets were sealed off and full of troops, who were broadcasting warnings that anyone approaching them would be shot. A mortar round fired at the Sheraton Hotel later in the day landed on the shed of a neighbouring house, causing minor damage but no injuries.In neighbouring Iran the influential former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, hailed Hojatoleslam al-Sadr — wanted by America for the murder of a rival Ayatollah — as “heroic” for rising up with his 10,000-strong al-Mahdi Army against the US-led occupation. While Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese Prime Minister, vowed to stand firm against kidnappers threatening to burn alive three Japanese hostages if Tokyo does not quit the coalition, the spate of violence sent shivers through the multinational force. Thailand ordered its troops to remain in their base in Karbala until the fighting died down, and threatened to leave the country if it deteriorated. Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, appealed to Iraqi guerrillas to release two Arab Israelis abducted by insurgents and accused of spying for Israel. Seven Koreans released said that their escape had been secured by an Iraqi BBC radio reporter who had also been abducted by gunmen and had pleaded for the men’s lives.
Fallujah will be remember in books like Dresden is today. Goodbye Al Sado.
But I give the americans credit for being so patient with fallujah.
I 've heard around 450 ppl are dead and they are being buried in the football stadium because they are not allowed access to the cemetries.
I mean how can this happen? How can this be allowed to happen?
Little, do you mean Soccer stadium? Did you see the pictures on TV when the whole town of Falujah was laughing and dragging the dead bodies of the soldiers thru the streets? They are lucky that the whole town was not wiped off, and now at least 450 of them can be peacefully buried in a Soccer stadium. I wish it were more. Specially after looking at those images of bad people. Puke.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Madhanee: *
Little, do you mean Soccer stadium? Did you see the pictures on TV when the whole town of Falujah was laughing and dragging the dead bodies of the soldiers thru the streets? They are lucky that the whole town was not wiped off, and now at least 450 of them can be peacefully buried in a Soccer stadium. I wish it were more. Specially after looking at those images of bad people. Puke.
[/QUOTE]
collective punishment? be it women or children who were not involved in it?
Yah that should be soccer stadium, sorry about that. And yes I did see the pics on tv and like I said before mutulating there bodies was wrong.
But bombs and guns mutilate, too. But it goes to show that american lives are much more important, even for some muslims.
Lets hope and pray that amreeka suffers for generations to come for the crimes that are being so shamelessly committed by its present generation. Every amrican soldier killed is a small victory for the Iraqies. There will be countless such victories in the next few days InshaAllah.
***“Today what we are seeking is a bilateral cease-fire on the battlefield so we can allow for discussions (in Fallujah),” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt ***
Yanks offering a ceasefire to the resistance fighters - just shows how they don’t have the stomach for a long, long fight. The deaths of some 50 American terrorists in the last week must have finally hit home?
Remember they never offered a ceasefire and negotiations before. It was just war, war, war. 
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Madhanee: *
Did you see the pictures on TV when the whole town of Falujah was laughing and dragging the dead bodies of the soldiers thru the streets
[/QUOTE]
Yes, and I enjoyed every second of it.
US-Appointed stooge IGC Collapse?
Well what do you say, the same stooges have either fled those who have not, condemn US terrorism the strongest posibble way. I think they should be labled as “terrorist” arrested and tried.
US-Appointed Iraqi Government Close to Collapse?
April 10, 2004
by Juan Cole
AP reported that the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) issued a demand early on Saturday that the US cease its military action against Fallujah and stop employing “collective punishment.”
Not only has what many Iraqis call “the puppet council” taken a stand against Bush administration tactics in Iraq, but individual members are peeling off. Shiite Marsh Arab leader Abdul Karim al-Muhammadawi suspended his membership in the council on Friday. A Sunni member, Ghazi al-Yawir, has threatened to resign if a negotiated settlement of the Fallujah conflict cannot be found. Old-time Sunni nationalist leader Adnan Pachachi thundered on al-Arabiya televsion, “It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah, and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal.” For him to go on an Arab satellite station much hated by Donald Rumsfeld and denounce the very people who appointed him to the IGC is a clear act of defiance. There are rumors that many of the 25 Governing Council members have fled abroad, fearful of assassination because of their association with the Americans. The ones who are left appear on the verge of resigning.
This looks to me like an incipient collapse of the US government of Iraq. Beyond the IGC, the bureaucracy is protesting. Many government workers in the ministries are on strike and refusing to show up for work, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Without Iraqis willing to serve in the Iraqi government, the US would be forced to rule the country militarily and by main force. Its legitimacy appears to be dwindling fast. The “handover of sovereignty” scheduled for June 30 was always nothing more than a publicity stunt for the benefit of Bush’s election campaign, but it now seems likely to be even more empty. Since its main rationale was to provide more legitimacy to the US enterprise in Iraq, and since any legitimacy the US had is fading fast, and since a government appointed by Bremer will be hated by virtue of that very appointment, the Bush administration may as well just not bother.
The Interior Minister, Nuri Badran, who was dismissed by Paul Bremer on Thursday, appears to have gone into exile in Jordan. He was probably let go because he objected to the twin US assaults, on Fallujah and on the Sadrist Shiites, or at least to the way it was being done.
The degree of hatred for the United States in the Muslim world is growing by the minute, as the events in Fallujah are broadcast throughout the region. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s warning to Bush that by invading Iraq he would be creating 100 Bin Ladens may well come to pass. For more on this see the Washington Post.
Part of what caused this incipient collapse of the US-appointed Iraqi government is that the US military decided to besiege the entire city of Fallujah to get at insurgents who killed 4 US Blackwater mercenaries last week, even though reports indicated that the guerrillas left the city after the killings. Those guerrillas, supported by civilian demonstrations and desecration of the mercenaries’ bodies, announced that they were taking revenge for the Israeli murder of Hamas clerical leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Just as the Israelis and their American amen corner helped drag the US into the Iraq war, so they also have inflamed Iraqi sentiment against the US by spectacular uses of state terror against Palestinians. Both the Sunni and the Shiite uprisings in Iraq in the past week in a very real sense were set off by Sharon’s whacking of Yassin, a paraplegic who could easily have been arrested. (Only once Muqtada al-Sadr announced his support for Hamas was he targeted by the Neocon-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority for arrest, convincing him that he had nothing to lose and had better launch an insurgency).
The siege and assault on Fallujah during the past 5 days have killed some 400 Iraqis and wounded 1000, according to eyewitnesses. The civilians in the city had begun wanting for food and water. On Friday, the US appears to have spread panic by broadcasting warnings of an imminent attack and encouraging women and children to leave. Large numbers have streamed out. Some attempted to take their men with them, but Marines refused to allow male civilians out. Some families chose to remain together and face further bombardments rather than split up.
One Marine was killed and another wounded at Fallujah on Friday.
AP said, ’ Throughout the afternoon, fighting was reduced to sporadic gunfire. But when night fell, heavy explosions resumed as an AC-130 gunship strafed targets and soldiers and insurgents engaged in a mortar battle. Marines said they had come under fire and wanted to return fire. The AC-130 hit a cave near Fallujah where insurgents took refuge after attacking Marines. A 500-pound laser-guided bomb also struck the cave, said spokesman 1st Lt. Eric Knapp. ’
The US announced a pause in the fighting to allow the Iraqis to “tend to their dead.” This statement of Paul Bremer’s is obviously a cruel taunt, and indicative of the fury and hatred of the American administration of Iraq toward the people of Anbar province, who have fiercely resisted the American occupation, largely out of Iraqi nationalist or Sunni fundamentalist motives.
At the western edge of Baghdad, guerrillas set off a spectacular explosion when they hit a fuel convoy, killing a US soldier and an Iraqi driver, and wounding 12 others. (Eyewitnesses spoke of lots of bodies, so the casualties are probably greater). Two American soldiers and several mercenaries may have been taken hostage.
Another US soldier was killed in Baghdad when his base was attacked. Substantial guerrilla groups engaged US troops in Baqubah and Muqdadiyah north of the capital.
[quote]
This looks to me like an incipient collapse of the US government of Iraq. Beyond the IGC, the bureaucracy is protesting. Many government workers in the ministries are on strike and refusing to show up for work, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Without Iraqis willing to serve in the Iraqi government, the US would be forced to rule the country militarily and by main force. Its legitimacy appears to be dwindling fast.
[/quote]
The last 10 days have probably been the most hellish for the American occupiers in Iraq, not just militarily but politically. For in such a short time it has united the Shia and Sunni's to fight together against them, something even the British and the Baathists never achieved, and it has also managed to lose the support of it's key allies/stooges whom it appointed to "self-rule" Iraq. Everyone in Iraq seems to hate them now, and with such a great passion as well, especially more after each American massacre of Iraqi civilians.
This is so, so much like Vietnam, but worse...
Worse then Vietnam? Do you know how many Americans died in Vietnam?