Make no mistake, terrorist will run and run they will because terrorist are neither big enough nor rich enough noe brave enough… Sadrs chappal was light one can imagine what Sistanis chappal would be like. Welcome to reality …
Oh yes please don’t forget the spin as that is the last line of defense to save their humilated ass.
Make sure the scums do not steal oil by hook or by crook, as long as freedom fighters blow the black liquid gold up in smoke see how the love for the Iraqi people also go up in smoke.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FF25Ak07.html
‘The liberation of Baghdad is not far away’
By Alix de la Grange
Editor’s note: Coordinated attacks and skirmishes in several Iraqi cities on Thursday killed at least 66 people and wounded more than 250. Forty-four people were killed in a series of car bomb blasts in the northern city of Mosul and 216 wounded. Fighting in al-Anbar province, where there were clashes in Fallujah and Ramadi, killed at least nine people and wounded 27, and fighting around Baquba killed 13 and wounded 15.
BAGHDAD - On the eve of the so-called transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi caretaker government on June 30, former Saddam Hussein generals turned members of the elite of the Iraqi resistance movement have abandoned their clandestine positions for a while to explain their version of events and talk about their plans. According to these Ba’ath officials, “the big battle” in Iraq is yet to take place.
** “The Americans have prepared the war, we have prepared the post-war. And the transfer of power on June 30 will not change anything regarding our objectives. This new provisional government appointed by the Americans has no legitimacy in our eyes. They are nothing but puppets.” **
Why have these former officers waited so long to come out of their closets? “Because today we are sure we’re going to win.”
Secret rendezvous
Palestine Hotel, Tuesday, 3pm. One week after a formal request, the prospect of talking with the resistance is getting slimmer. We reach a series of dead ends - until a man we have never met before discreetly approaches our table. “You still want to meet members of the resistance?” He speaks to my associate, a female Arab journalist who has been to Iraq many times. Talk is brief. “We meet tomorrow morning at the Babel Hotel,” the man says before disappearing. Against all expectations, this contact seems to be more reliable than the ones we have previously tried.
Hotel Babel, Wednesday, 9am. At the entrance of the cybercafe, mobbed by foreign mercenaries, the man we saw the day before lays it down: “Tomorrow, 10 o’clock, al-Saadoun Street, in front of the Palestine. Come without your driver.”
We arrive at the meeting place on Thursday morning by taxi. The contact is there. After a brief “Salam Alekum” we get into his car. “Where are we going?” No reply.
We drive for more than two hours. In Baghdad, even when traffic is not totally blocked by military checkpoints, traffic jams are permanent. In one year, more than 300,000 vehicles have been smuggled into the country. Every other car has no license plate and most drivers don’t even know what “driver’s license” means.
“We’ll be there soon. Do you know Baghdad?”, asks our man. The answer is clearly no. To get oriented in the sprawling city, one must circulate freely, and on foot. With criminal behavior spreading like a virus, a wave of kidnappings, the 50 or 60 daily attacks against the occupation forces and the indiscriminate response of the American military, there’s hardly any incentive to do any walking.
The car stops in an alley, near a minibus with tinted windows. One of its doors opens. On board, there are three men and a driver carefully scrutinizing all the streets and houses around us. If we don’t know at all what we are confronted with, our interlocutors seem to know very well who they’re talking to. “Before any discussions, we don’t want any doubts on your part about our identities,” they say, while extracting some papers from inside a dusty plastic bag: identity cards, military IDs and several photos showing them in uniform beside Saddam Hussein. They are two generals and a colonel of the disbanded Iraqi army, now on the run for many months, chased by the coalition’s intelligence services.
“We would like to rectify some information now circulating in the Western media, that’s why we took the initiative of meeting you.” Our discussion lasts for more than three hours.
Back to the fall of Baghdad
“We knew that if the United States decided to attack Iraq, we would have no chance faced with their technological and military power. The war was lost in advance, so we prepared the post-war. In other words: the resistance. Contrary to what has been largely said, we did not desert after American troops entered the center of Baghdad on April 5, 2003. We fought a few days for the honor of Iraq - not Saddam Hussein - then we received orders to disperse.” Baghdad fell on April 9: Saddam and his army where nowhere to be seen.
“As we have foreseen, strategic zones fell quickly under control of the Americans and their allies. For our part, it was time to execute our plan. Opposition movements to the occupation were already organized. Our strategy was not improvised after the regime fell.” This plan B, which seems to have totally eluded the Americans, was carefully organized, according to these officers, for months if not years before March 20, 2003, the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The objective was “to liberate Iraq and expel the coalition. To recover our sovereignty and install a secular democracy, but not the one imposed by the Americans. Iraq has always been a progressive country, we don’t want to go back to the past, we want to move forward. We have very competent people,” say the three tacticians. There will be of course no names as well as no precise numbers concerning the clandestine network. “We have sufficient numbers, one thing we don’t lack is volunteers.”
Fallujah
The lethal offensive of the American troops in Fallujah in March has been the turning point as far as the resistance is concerned. The indiscriminate pillage by American soldiers during their search missions (according to many witnesses) and the sexual humiliation inflicted to prisoners, including Abu Ghraib in Baghdad, have only served to magnify the anger felt by most Iraqis. “There’s no more trust, it will be hard to regain it.” According to these resistance leaders, “We have reached the point of no return.”
** This is exactly the point of view of a Shi’ite woman we had met two days earlier - a former undercover opposition militant against Saddam: “The biggest mistake of the occupation forces was to despise our traditions and our culture. They are not satisfied with having bombed our infrastructure, they tried to destroy our social system and our dignity. And this we cannot allow. The wounds are deep and the healing will take long. We prefer to live under the terror of one of our own than under the humiliation of a foreign occupation.” **
According to Saddam’s generals, “more than a year after the beginning of the war, insecurity and anarchy still dominate the country. Because of their incapacity to control the situation and to maintain their promises, the Americans have antagonized the population as a whole. The resistance is not limited to a few thousand activists.** Seventy-five percent of the population supports us and helps us, directly and indirectly, volunteering information, hiding combatants or weapons. And all this despite the fact that many civilians are caught as collateral damage in operations against the coalition and collaborators.”
Who do they regard as “collaborators”? “Every Iraqi or foreigner who works with the coalition is a target. Ministries, mercenaries, translators, businessmen, cooks or maids, it doesn’t matter the degree of collaboration. To sign a contract with the occupier is to sign your death certificate. Iraqi or not, these are traitors. Don’t forget that we are at war.” **
The resistance’s means of dissuasion led to an ever-shrinking list of candidates to key government posts proposed by the coalition, and this in a country ravaged by 13 years of