6 you are comparing Malcom X to george washington and then both of them to this rat? 
fraudiya sometimes..I tell ya…you crack me up..
No man, I am just commenting on the fact that rebels can amount to something, it depends on the rebel, other rebels i like are jinnah, gandhi, mandela, and rebel Mc..
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*Originally posted by Malik73: *
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Hey Falluja is in the opposite direction... I guess the ass kicking at the hands of Sadr made you lose you bearings... So now the yanks who were demanding for Sadr to disarm, leave, surrender and now gona withdraw.... Not bad not bad this is the first step towards the repeat of the chappal of the 50s and 60s... welcome to reality.
:rotfl:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=525673
US retreats after failing to capture militia chief
United States forces agreed yesterday to withdraw from the Shia holy city of Najaf and end fighting with the militia of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. In a climbdown by the Americans, who had vowed to kill or capture Sadr, it now appears he will be allowed to remain free. His Army of Mehdi militia will also withdraw under the deal. The Americans appeared to have given up their two main demands to end the fighting in Najaf: that Sadr surrender to them and that the Mehdi Army be disbanded immediately.
The American agreement to withdraw without capturing Sadr will be seen in Iraq as a second embarrassing capitulation in as many months, after US forces ended their April siege of the Sunni city of Fallujah without capturing those responsible for killing and mutilating the bodies of four American contractors - the original reason for the siege in which hundreds of Iraqi civilians are believed to have died. Civilians have died in Najaf too, though not as many as in Fallujah. There has been widespread anger in the Shia world at the fighting in the holy city, especially after Iraq’s most sacred Shia shrine, that of the Imam Ali, was damaged. Members of the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council who negotiated the deal with Sadr said yesterday it included an agreement to hold new talks over an arrest warrant under which he is wanted for the murder of another cleric last year, and on the future of the Army of Medhi. It remains to be seen whether the Americans, who have been demanding that Sadr surrender and face trial, will accept that. But the immediate threat to Sadr appears to have been lifted.
Dan Senor, the occupation authority’s spokesman, said US forces would suspend their offensive in Najaf immediately and withdraw as soon as Iraqi security forces are able to take control of the city - an arrangement similar to Fallujah. Mohammed al-Musawi, a Shia leader who was involved in extensive efforts to arrange a peaceful end to the fighting in Najaf, claimed the deal included an agreement that Sadr will not face any prosecution until after an elected Iraqi government takes office, which will not happen until next year. He also said that under the deal the Mehdi Army would become a political organisation. Whether Sadr will get that much remains to be seen, but at any rate he appeared to have got the most out of yesterday’s deal. It was a good result for him after scores of his militiamen were killed in the past few days.
The Americans may have agreed to the deal partly because of their need to calm the situation ahead of the planned handover of sovereignty to a new appointed Iraqi government on 30 June. Sadr also appeared to have outmanoeuvred the Americans. Until yesterday, their answer to any criticism for fighting inside the holy city was that Sadr’s militia had forced them into it by taking up positions there. But once Sadr had publicly offered to withdraw his militia if US forces did the same, a refusal would have made them appear the ones responsible for further violence inside Najaf. Sadr launched his uprising in April after the US occupation authorities closed a newspaper he ran. The arrest warrant against him was only announced after his uprising began. The Americans appeared to be banking on a lack of widespread Shia support for Sadr. But they got bogged down in fighting with his militia, and every day it continued risked a more general Shia backlash. Gunmen ambushed a convoy carrying a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Salama al-Khafaji, as she was returning to Baghdad from mediation efforts in Najaf yesterday, an aide said. She survived, but three bodyguards were killed and her son was missing, according to a council member.
Not so fast… just wait for the spin :)… Hmmmm conditional truce… my my my what next,? ..LOL..
Semper FI: Tales of Fallujah
The Few the Proud… If the rats who hide in mosques had half the decency of these boys… :jhanda:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108561482302622502,00.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
The Real Story of Fallujah
By ROBERT D. KAPLAN
May 27, 2004; Page A20
When Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment led U.S. forces into the heart of Fallujah in the pre-dawn hours of April 6, I was the only journalist present. It had been Bravo Company of the “1st of the 5th” that had been first inside the citadel of Hue in Vietnam in February 1968. Hue City, the sight of one of the most glorious chapters in Marine history – in which the Marines killed 5,113 enemy troops while suffering 147 dead and 857 wounded – was foremost in the minds of the Marine commanders at Fallujah.
The Marines never got proper credit for Hue, for it was ultimately overshadowed by My Lai, in which an Army platoon killed 347 civilians a month later in 1968. This was despite the fact that the Marines’ liberation of Hue led to the uncovering of thousands of mass graves there: the victims of an indiscriminate communist slaughter. Thus, Hue became a metaphor for the military’s frustration with the media: a frustration revisited in Fallujah.
Whenever the Marines with whom I was attached crossed the path of a mosque, we were fired upon. Mosques in Fallujah were used by snipers and other gunmen, and to store weapons and explosives. Time and again the insurgents forfeited the protective status granted these religious structures as stipulated by Geneva Conventions. Snipers were a particular concern. In early April in nearby Ramadi, an enemy sniper wiped out a squad of Marines using a Soviet-designed Draganov rifle: “12 shots, 12 kills,” a Marine officer told me. The marksmanship indicated either imported jihadist talent or a member of the old regime’s military elite.
By the standards of most wars, some mosques in Fallujah deserved to be leveled. But only after repeated aggressions was any mosque targeted, and then sometimes for hits so small in scope that they often had little effect. The news photos of holes in mosque domes did not indicate the callousness of the American military; rather the reverse.
As for the close-quarters urban combat, I was in the city the first days of the battle. The overwhelming percentage of the small arms fire – not-to-mention mortars, rockets, and RPGs – represented indiscriminate automatic bursts of the insurgents. Marines responded with far fewer, more precise shots. It was inspiring to observe high-testosterone 19-year-old lance corporals turn into calm and calculating 30-year-olds every time a firefight started.
There was nothing fancy about the Marine advance into Fallujah. Marines slugged it out three steps forward, two steps backward: the classic, immemorial labor of infantry, little changed since Hue, or since antiquity for that matter. As their own casualties mounted, the only time I saw angry or depressed Marines was when an Iraqi civilian was accidentally hit in the crossfire – usually perpetrated by the enemy. I was not surprised. I had seen Army Special Forces react similarly to civilian casualties the year before in Afghanistan. The humanity of the troops is something to behold: contrary to the op-ed page of the New York Times (May 21), the word “haji” in both Iraq and Afghanistan, at least among Marines and Special Forces, is more often used as an endearment than a slur. To wit, “let’s drink tea and hang out with the hajis” . . . “haji food is so much better than what they feed us” . . . “a haji designed real nice vests for our rifle plates,” and so on. Thus, it has been so appallingly depressing to read about Abu Ghraib prison day after day, after day.
By April 7, two sleep-deprived Marine battalions had taken nearly 20% of Fallujah. The following day a third battalion arrived to join the fight, allowing the first two to rest and recover their battle rhythm. Just as the three well-rested battalions were about to start boxing-in the insurgents against the Euphrates River at the western edge of the city, a cease-fire was announced.
As disappointing as the cease-fire was, the Marines managed to wrest positive consequences from it. It would free them up to resume mortar-mitigation, a critical defense task today in Iraq. Mortars and rockets rain down continually on American bases. If left unchallenged, it may be only a matter of time before a crowded chow hall or MWR (Morale, Welfare, Recreation) facility is hit; recalling the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 servicemen.
Furthermore, as soon as the 1st of the 5th Marines departed Fallujah they headed for Al-Karmah, a town about half the size of Fallujah, strategically located between Fallujah and Baghdad. Al-Karmah was no less hostile than Fallujah. I went there several times in March with the Marines. The streets always emptied upon our arrival and we were periodically fired upon. After the Fallujah operation, the Marines didn’t just visit Al-Karmah, they moved inside, patrolling regularly, talking to people on the streets, collecting intelligence and going a long way toward reclaiming that city. As one company captain told me, “it’s easily the most productive stuff we’ve done in Iraq.”
If Al-Karmah is reclaimed, if Fallujah itself remains relatively calm, if the Marines can patrol there at some point, and if mortar attacks abate measurably – all distinct possibilities – the decision not to launch an all-out assault on Fallujah could look like the right one.
But none of the above matters if it is not competently explained to the American public – for the home front is more critical in a counterinsurgency than in any other kind of war. Yet the meticulous planning process undertaken by the Marines at the tactical level for assaulting Fallujah was not augmented with a similarly meticulous process by the Bush administration at the strategic level for counteracting the easily foreseen media fallout from fighting in civilian areas near Muslim religious sites. The public was never made to feel just how much of a military threat the mosques in Fallujah represented, just how far Marines went to avoid damage to them and to civilians, and just how much those same Marine battalions accomplished after departing Fallujah.
We live in a world of burning visual images: As Marines assaulted Fallujah, the administration should have been holding dramatic slide shows for the public, of the kind that battalion and company commanders were giving their troops, explaining how this or that particular mosque was being militarily utilized, and how much was being done to avoid destroying them, at great risk to Marine lives. Complaining about the slanted coverage of Al-Jazeera – as administration officials did – was as pathetic as Jimmy Carter complaining that Soviet Communist Party boss Leonid Brezhnev had lied to him. Given its long-standing track record, how else could Al-Jazeera have been expected to report the story? You had the feeling that the Pentagon was reacting; not anticipating.
And had the administration adequately explained to the public about what the Marines were doing after Fallujah, there might have been less disappointment and mystification about quitting the fight there. But instead of a gripping storyline to compete with that of the global media’s, spokesmen for the White House, Pentagon, Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the Baghdad-based military coalition, in their regular briefings about events in Iraq, continue to feed the public insipid summaries, with little visual context, that have all the pungency of watery gruel.
This is not to say that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal should be forgotten, that our government should deceive the public, or that the overall direction of events in Iraq is positive: far from it. I have been to towns and villages in the Sunni triangle where the CPA has no demonstrable presence, where the inhabitants have no functioning utilities, where crime is rampant, where the newly constituted police are powerless and only sheikhs have the power to haul in criminals, and where it is only the social glue of tribe and clan that keeps these places from descending into Middle Eastern Liberias.
But I also found that there are many different Iraqs and different levels of reality to each of them. Presently, the administration lacks the public relations talent and the organizational structure for conveying even the positive elements of the Iraqi panorama in all their drama and texture
(more below)
Because the battles in a counterinsurgency are small scale and often clandestine, the story line is rarely obvious. It becomes a matter of perceptions, and victory is awarded to those who weave the most compelling narrative. Truly, in the world of postmodern, 21st century conflict, civilian and military public-affairs officers must become war fighters by another name. They must control and anticipate a whole new storm system represented by a global media, which too often exposes embarrassing facts out of historical or philosophical context.
Without a communications strategy that gives the public the same sense of mission that a company captain imparts to his noncommissioned officers, victory in warfare nowadays is impossible. Looking beyond Iraq, the American military needs battlefield doctrine for influencing the public in the same way that the Army and the Marines already have doctrine for individual infantry tasks and squad-level operations (the Ranger Handbook, the Fleet Marine Force Manual, etc.).
The centerpiece of that doctrine must be the flattening out of bureaucratic hierarchies within the Defense Department, so that spokesmen can tap directly into the experiences of company and battalion commanders and entwine their smell-of-the-ground experiences into daily briefings. Nothing is more destructive for the public-relations side of warfare than field reports that have to make their way up antiquated, Industrial Age layers of command, diluting riveting stories of useful content in the process. Journalists with little knowledge of military history or tactics and with various agendas to peddle can go directly to lieutenants and sergeants, yet the very spokesmen of these soldiers and Marines themselves -- even through their aides -- seem unable to do so.
The American public can accept 50 casualties per week if the path to some sort of success is convincingly laid out. If it isn't, the public won't accept even two casualties per week. It could not be helped that the shame of My Lai, as awful as it was, should have been allowed to blot out American heroism at places like Hue: The phenomenon of the media as we know it was new back then. But if the stain of Abu Ghraib, for example, is not placed in its rightful perspective against everything else that soldiers and Marines are doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Colombia and many other places in the War on Terrorism, then it won't be the media's fault alone.
Mr. Kaplan is a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. His complete, firsthand account of the planning and execution of the Marines' entry into Fallujah will appear in that magazine's July/August issue.
For those who don;t know...Fallujah is not Najaf
Matsui,
That account is far more accurate than some of the utter trash we read around here. No doubt the troops are doing a good job, but the command is losing the PR war. It is a funny world when the US is more worried about mosques than the "insurgents", and that a thug like moqtada is revered because he gets a couple hundred of his followers slaughtered.
OG, it comes down to the concept of taking responsibility. People are lauding these hooligans who have less regard for their own holy places than the coalition. I wonder who is actually waging a war against Islam. It seems to me...it is these clerics and firebrands and terrorists like the mehdi army themselves. Look around from Pakistan to the arab world, popular democratic voices are few and far between, their gov'ts calim some greater conspiracy to keep their masses in line, and these masses are hodwinked into not taking care of their own governance but abdicating the responsibility to the corrupt, incompetent and dictatorial powers. Be they Sadr or Musharraf, the fault lies at home.
What would be a greater jihad than for a populist coup in all these countries.
Re: Semper FI: Tales of Fallujah
This is really an independant and objective assessment of the situation. Right sir! :k:
Anyway, so coming back to Al-Sadr & Co… how do you guys wanna spin it… was it a bloody nose, a tactical withdrawl, a victory of US forces or a sign of things to come?
Re: Re: Semper FI: Tales of Fallujah
How else could he have had reported the story? By being attached to Al-Sadr?
I go back to this:
"You have to be careful about what you say about al-Sadir. Their hands reach every where and you don’t want to be on their **** list. Every body, even the GC is very careful how they formulate their sentences and how they describe Sadir’s Militias. They are thugs, thugs thugs. There you have it.
I was listening to a representative of al-sadir on TV saying that the officers at police stations come to offer their help and swear allegiance. Habibi, if they don’t they will get killed and their police station “liberated”. Have we forgotten the threat al-Sadir issued that Iraqi security forces should not attack their revolutionary brothers, or they will have to suffer the consequences."
http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/
Thugs. From the sound of this do you think that these are the wise and brave people you would like to lead your country? And WHY does a CLERIC have a militia? Come on folks, get out of your politically correct fog and ask some questions about this. I think Pat Roberson should form a militia, and see the guppy outrage.
i dont understand this logic of if u dont like someone than their foe must be good.
heck, fine be against US occupation and the war..but that does not mean that every two bit thug who has a beef with US is some sort of hero.
Fraudz,
Exactly. Nobody wants to be occupied. But putting armed gunmen on the streets is a recipe for disaster. Moqtada's self indulgent power grag has backfired. If the masses were going to rise up and overwhelm the US troops it would have happened two months ago. Moqtada is now just an open sore that will not heal.
And yes, guppies are so happy to have someone shoot an American, that they forget that their newfound heros have no aim, and will kill far more innocent bystanders than the Americans. But not a word or critisism for thugs who turn streets into battlefields. Just like the Palestinians, as long as somebody is killing the infidels, and preferably some cannon fodder not from my street, we are all happy. Those same bleeding hearts who were bemoaning the fate of the Iraqi's under sanctions are now very accepting of some warlord/cleric turning religious sites into war zones in a cheap power grab.
Can Muslims please rally around leaders who can do more than scream jihad with their hair on fire?
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*Originally posted by Ohioguy: *
Can Muslims please rally around leaders who can do more than scream jihad with their hair on fire?
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Many Muslims do but are snuffed and voiced out by those who rally around the thugs who want violent Jihad. Iraqis have much to complain about in regards to the way the U.S. has handled this occupation, but violence isn’t the way to voice those complaints and fact is most Iraqis know this and the majority of Iraqis refuse to take part in such acts.
Why is he a thug? Just because he is resisting the invaders and want to throw them out of his country. He is not the thug, the invaders are. Get a life. If he was supporting the Americans you would have been singing his praises and telling the world what a great patriot and democrat he was. Remember Chalabi?
I guess Sadr’s ‘conditions’ weren’t met?
Major Fighting Reported In Kufa, Najaf
http://www.thesandiegochannel.com/news/3363317/detail.html
I call this young Sadrs swinging chappal on Amreekan ass…
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-95-1838.jsp
Muqtada al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army: America’s nightmare
Could the insurgency of the radical Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr fuse with the Sunni rebellion to ignite Iraqi nationalism against the occupiers?
The young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has often been dismissed by observers of Iraq as a firebrand and an unstable junior member of the Shi’a religious hierarchy. The head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, calls him “an outlaw”. Yet al-Sadr’s influence among the Iraqi people and the impact of the current “uprising” he is inspiring, are more far-reaching and penetrating than these judgments imply.
The al-Sadr strategy
Muqtada al-Sadr’s “Mahdi Army” - comprised of former members of the Iraqi army, disgruntled youth, and several Iraqis who have returned from refugee status in Iran (where they fled during Iraq-Iran and the first Gulf war) - has in the past week been mobilised by religious invective and a rejection of the American-led occupation of Iraq to launch a series of attacks on US and other coalition forces.
In an escalating crisis sparked by the coalition’s closure of the al-Sadr newspaper al-Hawza on 28 March, around 190 Iraqis have died as Shi’a militants have taken to the streets. Despite the increasing numbers of casualties, it is unlikely the Shi’a will back down unless they are directly told to do so by al-Sadr. Furthermore, more Shi’a clerics seem to be lending their vocal support to al-Sadr and reports have emerged indicating that the Shi’a and Sunni for the first time are coordinating tactics and discussing the creation of a joint Sunni-Shi’a Islamic army.
“I will be the striking hand of Ayatollah al-Sistani and will help liberate my Iraqi brothers and sisters. I call on my Sunna (sic) brothers to continue their valiant resistance against the brutal occupiers,” al-Sadr said in a statement released late on 6 April.
This statement speaks volumes about what al-Sadr is attempting to do. First, he is acknowledging that he is a junior member of the Shi’a hierarchy and that he owes allegiance to Iraq’s leading Shi’a cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. By doing so, he is both appealing to higher authorities and also increasing his pool of support among the almost 12 million Iraqi Shi’a. Second, he is reaching out and acknowledging the Sunni resistance – the first time that any Shi’a cleric has publicly done so.
It is a dangerous precept to discount al-Sadr simply because his hardcore fighters number fewer than 1,000 and only tens of thousands support him. The power he wields is an inspirational one. Iraqis are a passionate people and are moved by acts of heroism and defiance. The “David and Goliath” story of Biblical times is not lost on the Muslims of Iraq. When David (al-Sadr) stands up to Goliath (US forces) and openly declares he is ready for martyrdom, Iraqis throughout the country are ready to be moved.
It is then no surprise that thousands of pamphlets were distributed in Baghdad this week indicating that the Sunni resistance is standing together with the Shi’a uprising. “We are with you,” the pamphlets said. Moreover, when Shi’a revolted in Hilla, Kut, Basra, Nasiriya, Karbala, and Najaf, the Sunni youth of the Athamiya district of Baghdad took up arms and attacked American troops on patrol.
After four days of al-Sadr’s men taking to the streets – with reports that they have taken power in Najaf and forcing Ukrainian soldiers to retreat from Kut – Sunni youth have found in him a symbol of resistance with which they too can identify. On 7 April, al-Sadr’s spokesperson made the unprecedented move of equating an attack on Fallujah as an attack on Baghdad’s Shi’a-populated Sadr City. This marks the first time both religious sects have endorsed, supported, and encouraged each other in the resistance, let alone merged certain fighting forces.
No wonder that some US commentators are calling the prospect of Sunni and Shi’a unity in fighting the US occupation a nightmare scenario for the coalition.
The United States’s impossible choice
Muqtada al-Sadr has sensed nationalism, as well as religious fervor, resonating among all Iraqis. He has issued a statement calling on all Iraqis to resist the occupation, to think of themselves as Iraqi Muslims, to put aside their differences and sacrifice themselves for Iraq.
The coalition regards this as a cause for concern, but seems less sure about how to address the challenge. Although US forces announced that they were seeking to execute a month-old arrest warrant for al-Sadr in the early stages of his uprising, more recent reports from Iraq indicate that the US is in no rush to arrest the fiery cleric. Iraqi Governing Council sources have hinted that they were seeking to negotiate with al-Sadr to back down from arresting him in return for his reining in of the Mahdi Army.
Muqtada al-Sadr is also clever enough to issue more secular-flavoured statements in the hope of appealing to a wider spectrum of disenchanted Iraqis. In these circumstances, other Shi’a clerics are beginning to feel squeezed into an uncomfortable obligation to choose between existing sides. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most senior Shi’a cleric in Iraq, gave al-Sadr a miniature endorsement when he issued afatwalate on 7 April condemning the manner in which US forces responded to the Mahdi Army. He also called for calm and for both sides not to provoke conflict.
The political and emotional dynamic among Iraqis creates intense difficulty for the United States. Al-Sadr has ensured that his destiny is a catalyst for further anti-US sentiment and resistance. If he is killed, he will be considered a martyr, in the same way as his father and uncle were under Saddam’s regime. This will set off a wave of revenge attacks against the coalition and all seen to collaborate with the “foreign occupiers”.
If al-Sadr is arrested, a prospect that currently looks feasible only after a bloody fight with hundreds of his supporters, Shi’a Iraqis will feel yet another in a long series of humiliations . However, for each day that al-Sadr’s forces retain control of the towns they have “liberated from the US occupation”, he will be seen as the centre of resistance to the occupation. The United States is then likely to be caught in a trap of its own making.