But of course, ALL of the "insurgents" are Iraqi...

Former Member · November 2004

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=58&story_id=14100&name=Three+Frenchmen+killed+fighting+US+in+Iraq

Three Frenchmen killed fighting US in Iraq

PARIS, Nov 18 (AFP) - Three, and possibly four, Frenchmen have been killed in Iraq fighting with insurgents seeking to oust US-led forces in the country, a French official said Thursday.

A 24-year-old Frenchman from Paris identified as Tarek W. was killed on September 17, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He was the latest addition to a list French authorities have drawn up of French casualties in Iraq, all of whom appear to be of Arab origin.

The two other men on the list were Redouane el-Hakim, a 19-year-old also from Paris who was killed July 17, and Abdel Halim Badjoudj, 19, killed in Iraq on October 20, according to the official, who confirmed a report in Le Figaro newspaper.

The case of El-Hakim, who was of Tunisian origin, was first reported October 22 and confirmed by officials. They said his brother, Boubakeur, 21, was being detained by Syrian authorities.

French officials were checking the identity of a fourth man who was killed in recent weeks to see if he, too, held French citizenship.

Authorities estimate that around a dozen Frenchmen of north African Arab background have gone to Iraq via Syria to join the insurgency against US-led troops, but said there was no proof of an organised recruitment network.

Appears that the idea of "bring it" to Iraq is working, and the Militant Muslims are drawn to the "heat sink"... better there than here.

But then... according to Aladdin, ONLY the US military are "foreigners" to Iraq...

And that "recruitment network"? We shall see, shan't we?

Former Member · November 2004

* waiting for the Fox News / CNN / whatever comments to pour forth, that this is simple propaganda from the "neo-cons"... *

Former Member · November 2004

Mercenaries fight on all sides. Your point was?

Former Member · November 2004

He seldom has one.

He just prefers to tell lies about what people say or don't say, and continues to live in this bubble of delusion.

Former Member · November 2004

better there than here

globe

I agree with that Globe and the radicals of 9/11 and Spain and Vn Gough's murder travelled all over the place. So they'd go on any jihad-worthy death trip their hateful clerics would send them.

I'm trying to see the good of that war...and your sentiment may be one thing. I'm still not sure we should be there...but it's too late. I support our troops.

Former Member · November 2004

Re: But of course, ALL of the "insurgents" are Iraqi...

Originally posted by Globe
But of course, ALL of the "insurgents" are Iraqi...

Says who, Wurzel Gummidge?

But of course, NO foreigners fought in the Spanish Civil War either, or is that one OK 'cause Hemmingway said so..?

Former Member · November 2004

I think that the point he is trying to make is that some times one these boards you would get the impression that the fighting in Iraq is just Iraqi trying to oust the invader. The freedom fighter. David vs Goliath if you will.

This is not, and has never really been the case.

All Globe has done is produce something to support the US arguement that they are fighting terrorists, not people fighting to free their own country.

Former Member · November 2004

Which is in fact little more than the same sort of inflated Pentagon-contrived lies that were sold to public to justify our long-running debacle in Vietnam, until of course the Pentagon Papers exposed the systematic falsehoods, coverups and whitewashes of 4 successive administration spanning 25 years.

Regardless of the odd handful of foreign mercs (plenty on our side as well if one researches the increasing unaccountable role of private mercenary firms in the US MIC's prosecution of war) the reality the warmongers (and completely hate filled, violence loving whack jobs like Globe) wish to deny is that the bulk of those we are fighting are indeed Patriotic Iraqi citizens rightfully fed up with our presumptuous machinations over their sovereign right to self determination free from cluster bombings, dehumanising detentions and wholesale profiteering by US corporate pirates.

This article is far more accurate a picture of what is being ignored or sanitised out of US domestic reporting....

THE ROVING EYE
The real fury of Fallujah
By Pepe Escobar

"The Romans create a desolation and call it peace."
- Tacitus

"The enemy has a face. It is Satan's. He is in Fallujah, and we are going to destroy him."
- Colonel Gary Brandl, US Marines

President George W Bush is "reaching out" to Fallujah - the first major foreign policy initiative of the second Bush administration. The name: Operation Phantom Fury. The strategy: precision-strike democracy. The message: kill them all, and let God sort them out.

Former US intelligence asset turned prime minister without a parliament Iyad Allawi - widely known in Baghdad as "Saddam without a moustache" - has got himself another title: the Butcher of Fallujah. On Sunday, before co-launching with the Pentagon the biggest urban war since the storming of Hue in 1968 Vietnam, Allawi installed de facto martial law in Iraq for 60 days. Historians and political scientists are breathlessly trying to explain to the world that no democratic election can possibly be preceded by a state of siege.

To add insult to injury, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld is saying that Allawi is responsible for all major military decisions regarding Fallujah: only the Bible Belt may be gullible enough to believe that an Iraqi civilian without an army rules over the Pentagon. So it's the Vietnam tragedy all over again, replayed as farce - a biblical crusade in Mesopotamia. Those who learned their lessons from history know full well what happened after Hue.

The new Hue, or the new Grozny
The Pentagon spin machine is selling Operation Phantom Fury as a battle of good against evil to root out "terrorists" in the "militant stronghold" of Fallujah. It is selling war on civilians as "the liberation of the people of Fallujah" as well as the next step towards implementing "democracy" in Iraq. These are outright lies. Fallujans insist they are not harboring al-Qaeda fighters, or even the elusive Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The Pentagon insists that Fallujah is the headquarters of Zarqawi's al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Unity and Holy War) movement. So if there's no Zarqawi - if he really does exist, he has already left the building, sources tell Asia Times Online - and no al-Qaeda, what's the point of unleashing this fury?

The code name betrays it all: the real motive for turning Fallujah into Grozny is revenge. In the first siege of Fallujah in April, the mujahideen inflicted a severe defeat on the Americans. Fallujah had already become the symbol of the Iraqi resistance after Marines killed 15 civilians in May 2003 - when the city even had a pro-American mayor. Last April, up to 1,000 Iraqis were killed, blown up, burnt or shot by the Americans - two thirds of them civilians, mostly women and children. Now, one of the first targets of Phantom Fury was a Fallujah hospital, qualified by the Pentagon as "a center of propaganda". The fact is, in April hospital doctors were carefully detailing to the world media the hundreds of innocent civilians killed by the American assault. Now, under a strategy of what could almost be called collective punishment, the hospital has become a military target.

No images, no sound
This is the ultimate asymmetric war - ultra high-tech F-16s, Cobra and Apache helicopters, AC-130 gunships, tanks, Bradleys and awesome firepower against a bunch of youngsters in tracksuits and trainers with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. A few hundred of them are Arabs - Saudis, Yemenis, Jordanians, Tunisians - the new generation of the jihad diaspora. But the majority are Iraqi fighters, many of them former or retired military officers, engaged in a war of national liberation. The Pentagon is pitting between 2,000 to 2,500 fighters in Fallujah and environs along with another 10,000 Iraqi civilians against at least 12,000 troops - four US military brigades and one 500-strong Iraqi brigade, trained by the Marines and included in the American payroll.

Serious fighting rages in al-Guaifi, in the northern part of the city, in the Golan and Military neighborhoods to the east, and in the Industrial and al-Shuhada neighborhoods to the south. The mujahideen, at least for the moment, are holding their positions.

Nobody will know the full extent of the horror inflicted on Fallujah civilians because this is a war micromanaged by the Pentagon - carefully built up for weeks, timed to set off only after the re-election of Bush, and now conducted with a few embedded journalists on the side duly brainwashed by a barrage of propaganda and spin. The Sunni triangle has become so dangerous that independent journalism is out of the question. Thus the absence of war images - apart from Pentagon propaganda videos of Marines under night vision cameras with the faint sound of explosions in the background.

There's no soundtrack to this war. No sound of 2,000-pound bombs falling on rows of houses and followed by relentless wailing, the sound of missiles flying overhead, the sound of prayers and cries of "Allah Akbar!" trying to drown out the fear, the sound of AC-130 Spectre gunships demolishing a whole city block in less than a minute, the sound of bodies hitting the sand targeted by Marine snipers. The only reliable information of what's happening on the ground in Fallujah comes from civilians who have left to Baghdad.

It's a blatant lie to describe a city of 300,000 as a "militant stronghold". Even if there were only 100,000 residents left, most of these, tens of thousands, are civilians, and as usual in any war, they are the most vulnerable: the poor, the elderly, the sick, the ones who could not get way because of fate, and the bravest of the brave - nurses and doctors.

Fallujah from the inside
Senior scholar Sheikh Omar Said identifies three major strands in Fallujah - Sufism, the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafism, all united at the moment against the occupation. The city is being run by the mujahideen shura (council) - led by influential imams and mosque preachers like Abdullah al-Janabi, Zafir al-Obeidi and Omar Hadid.

Fallujah has four main clans: Zawbaa, al-Jamilat, Bu Eisa and al-Mahameda, plus many secondary clans like Tamim, Bani Kabis, al-Fayad, al-Aneen and al-Raween. Most of the clans are Sunni and originally came from the Arab peninsula.

The backbone of Fallujah is Islam and its tribal clans. Bravery is the common staple. Vendetta is a must. People prefer to die than to submit to a foreign invader: it's considered their Islamic duty. More than 20 prominent Saudi scholars recently qualified the resistance as a legitimate right and obligation.
(cont...)

Former Member · November 2004

(...cont)

The Fallujah mujahideen shura is a real unifying force. There are no "terrorists" in the midst of these resistance leaders, tribal chiefs and Sunni clerics - only Iraqis fighting a war of national liberation. To counteract Pentagon propaganda, the shura has promised to protect journalists and house them in a "special building". But considering what happened in Kabul in 2001 and Baghdad in 2003, there's every reason to believe the Marines could have an "accident".

The local command in Fallujah is centered in two mosques: Saad ibn Abi Wakkas, run by imam Abdullah al-Janabi, and al-Hadra al-Mohammadiya, run by imam Zafir Al-Obeidi. Janabi controls the mujahideen shura and Obeidi controls the political shura, presided by Sheikh Tarlub Abdel Karim al-Alusi and uniting tribal and religious chiefs and city notables. Tarlub is the de facto political chief of the guerrillas in Fallujah - even though decisions are collective and the word of the imams and the emirs carries enormous power.

Asia Times Online sources in Baghdad close to the resistance in Fallujah confirm that Tarlub was saying as late as last week that the city would have preferred negotiations, but the Americans wanted a war. The sheikh also said that 80% of the youth of Fallujah had joined the resistance, as it would be a shame for their families if they were not committed to defend their city. According to the sheikh, there are more than 1,500 foreign jihadis in town (the Pentagon says they are between 2,000 and 2,500), but no al-Qaeda. The sheikh defends the presence of "the Arabs" - as Iraqis call them: they are "Muslim brothers" who came to help expel the invaders. Many nationalist Iraqis though are angry with the foreigners' presence because, they say, this serves the American strategy of labeling everybody as "terrorists". But in terms of an attack on Fallujah and as far as the Iraqi resistance is concerned, the sheikh was sure that the mujahideen would adapt, retreat and later come back in full force.

What will the world say?
Even before Phantom Fury, American bombing had been killing Fallujah civilians for weeks. Now the Marines are invading hospitals, targeting ambulances and in the next few hours and days may even bomb mosques: so much for capturing Iraqi hearts and minds. The souk in the city center used to be open until noon and still had some food - but this was before Allawi cut off the roads from Fallujah to Baghdad and Ramadi. The hospitals are overflowing, but with no supplies, medicine and only occasional electricity. The brand new Nazzal hospital - funded by Saudi donors - was destroyed last Saturday by two American missiles.

A few days ago, a message from "the mosques of Fallujah" threatened a jihad all over Iraq against the Americans and those who helped them if Fallujah was attacked. A fatwa - approved by top religious authorities in Baghdad - officially proclaiming the jihad may be issued in the next few hours or days, something that would set the whole Sunni triangle on fire and promote even closer collaboration between the jihadis and Iraqi nationalists.

The civilian victims of Phantom Fury can barely count on global public opinion expressing outrage. It didn't happen last April, under the first siege of Fallujah, and it didn't happen last August, when Najaf was attacked. According to a study published by the British medical paper The Lancet, the American invasion and occupation has caused at least 100,000 Iraqi deaths - September 11 dozens of times over. Fallujah may add one more September 11 to the list. More than half of the dead were women and children.

Fallujah as the road to civil war
What will be achieved by turning Fallujah into Grozny? Absolutely nothing positive for the US. History shows that a people fighting a war of national liberation is never easily intimidated. The resistance will melt away and regroup. Top Sunni clerics all over the Sunni triangle and beyond have reminded Iraqis - as if they needed any reminding - that they should help the guerrillas to escape. On the jihadi front, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, the group linked to al-Qaeda which has claimed responsibility for the Madrid bombing, has already threatened the US with "unbearable hell" - and did not forget to hold the American electorate responsible for condoning Bush's Phantom Fury-style strategies.

Mohamed Bashar Faidhi, a member of the Sunni Association of Muslim Clerics, promised the powerful association would boycott the January election if Fallujah was attacked. The association - as well as the majority of Iraqis - knows that "Saddam without a moustache" Allawi is alive and in power only because of 137,000 US troops.

On Tuesday, a major Sunni Muslim political party, the Iraqi Islamic party (Hizbul Islami al-Iraqi), quit the interim government and withdrew its single minister from the cabinet in protest against the assault on Fallujah. The Iraqi Islamic party is the Iraqi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamic party well established in the Middle East.

Its members have a long history of oppression under Saddam Hussein's rule. As a result, party leaders went into exile, mostly in London. Immediately after the fall of Saddam, they restored their activities, and somewhat surprisingly adopted a peaceful political struggle to give the US a chance to hand over power to the Iraqi people. This chance has now been lost.

Martial law means in practice a daily curfew, no political meetings and no free press - but the resistance won't go away. The dynamic is inexorable: Sunnis will increasingly view themselves as excluded from the new Iraq as Shi'ites keep gaining power. This is the road for civil war.

There could not be a more tragic exercise in futility than Phantom Fury as Vietnam revisited - to destroy Fallujah in order to "save" it. The new Grozny, filled with rubble, will either become a garrison - with scores of Americans being blown up by roadside bombs - or the resistance will eventually get the city back when the Americans leave. Few Sunni Iraqis will believe this was all about protecting them from "terrorists" and promoting "democracy". Precision-strike democracy is a neo-conservative phantom, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FK10Ak04.html

Former Member · November 2004

Originally posted by Man Of Kent
I think that the point he is trying to make is that some times one these boards you would get the impression that the fighting in Iraq is just Iraqi trying to oust the invader. The freedom fighter. David vs Goliath if you will.

This is not, and has never really been the case.

All Globe has done is produce something to support the US arguement that they are fighting terrorists, not people fighting to free their own country.

And a tip of the Chivas bottle to the man with the forebearance of a saint, and the intellect to properly make the most of it, standing in observance on the sidelines.

Originally posted by Clandestine
Which is in fact little more than the same sort of inflated Pentagon-contrived lies ...

Oh, yes... I can see it now... all of the French genuflecting to the Pentagon, and aching for the moment to fellate us in the US, each and every one...

Former Member · November 2004

Its quite clear to anyone with an ounce of sense that there are many different groups fighting for control in Iraq.
Why Globe thinks that this is such a revelation, I haven't a scoobie.

Former Member · November 2004

Clearly your preference for grasping on to tidbits to reinforce your truncated militaristic view of the world has dulled your wit every bit as much as your intellect, ol hoss.

But then, anything less than your usual just wouldn't make posting worth your ample spare time im sure.

Former Member · November 2004

Originally posted by Blagsta
Its quite clear to anyone with an ounce of sense that there are many different groups fighting for control in Iraq.
Why Globe thinks that this is such a revelation, I haven't a scoobie.

I do not. However... Clandestine thinks it a lie.

Would that mean? :eek: You believe that Clandestine lacks "an ounce of sense"? :eek:

On that? You and I just might be in agreement.

Former Member · November 2004

Originally posted by Clandestine
ample spare time

Might consult post counts, concerning that...

Former Member · November 2004

Originally posted by Globe
Might consult post counts, concerning that...

Clan is slightly handicapped in that respect, in that he doesn't have to re-register every couple of months to keep posting. Perhaps you should do a Topgunny, and have 'x number of posts as Sophie, etc' in your tagline

Former Member · November 2004

Actually you have just demonstrated once again your inability to comprehend the train of the discussion. The pentagon lies, to which your repeated verbal diahrea amply proves you an ever willing stooge, is that all those fighting against our illegal occupation are "terrorists". A label regularly used by aspirants to empire to dehumanise and disimiss the sovereign will of those they seek to subjugate.

Your similitude to the most ardent adherents of one reknown fellow nutter who sought to conquer Europe decades ago drips from every post you make justifying our own repackaged brand of war of aggression.

And do explain, since the UN is clearly irrelevant to you and your ilk, how then any UN resolution can simulataneously be applied by you as a fallback justification for our right to invade a country which did not attack us?

As ever the rightwing case undermines itself at every turn and thus can only be maintained in the minds of its indoctrinated adherents through regurgitated decontextualised soundbites about "terrorists", " spreading democracy", "liberating the oppressed", et al.

All wonderful political doublespeak for "grasping corporate hegemony and profiteering at all cost". Of course, to those itching to kill something like yourself, the claim alone is all that is needed to get your trigger finger twitching without any question.

Former Member · November 2004

Originally posted by Clandestine
... "terrorists". A label regularly used by aspirants to empire to dehumanise and disimiss the sovereign will of those they seek to subjugate...

So...

Those beheading kidnapped hostages, disemboweling women, targeting civilians with the IED's, etc... are NOT "terrorists"? Are NOT SUB-human in their barbarism? Standing beside Aladdin in your partisanship?

Only a fool believes that all those fighting against the US and Iraqi forces are "sovereign" to Iraq.

Might that appelation be discriptive of... you?

Or is it just a portion of a larger nefarious agenda, on your part?

Former Member · November 2004

Originally posted by Globe
So...

Those beheading kidnapped hostages, disemboweling women, targeting civilians with the IED's, etc... are NOT "terrorists"? Are NOT SUB-human in their barbarism? Standing beside Aladdin in your partisanship?

Only a fool believes that all those fighting against the US and Iraqi forces are "sovereign" to Iraq.

Might that appelation be discriptive of... you? Or is it just a portion of a larger nefarious agenda, on your part?

One thing is certain - the 134 000 US troops and the 25 000 coalition troops and the many mercenaries fighting with them ARE foreign fighters. The majority of the resistance ARE Iraqi, it is their home turf, and their oil, that they are defending.

And its merely a cultural bias to think a sword is more "sub-human" than a gun, or a bomb.

Former Member · November 2004

Ali gets ready to face the world
A shell attack has left Ali Hussein disfigured. Now two British surgeons are donating their skills to help give the Iraqi boy a normal life
By Hester Lacey
15 March 2004

Yesterday in the Craniofacial Unit at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, a team of leading medics carried out an operation that will change the life of a little boy. You may already have heard of Ali Hussein. He was featured in the Cutting Edge documentary "A Tale of Two Alis", which told the stories of two children called Ali who were both gravely injured in the Iraq war.

One child, Ali Abbas, aged 13, lost his arms. He was flown to the US for treatment and became one of the iconic images of the conflict. The other boy, Ali Hussein, then aged seven, suffered severe facial injuries that left him unrecognisable even to his own brothers. He spent two months in hospital in Kuwait, and was then sent back to his parents' farm outside Baghdad.

There was no medical or psychological support available for his family, and the story might have ended there. But a crusading new charity, Facing the World, stepped in. Facing the World supplies the most advanced and expert reconstruction surgery to children who would otherwise have no hope of a normal life. The founders of the charity, Martin Kelly and Norman Waterhouse, two of the world's leading craniofacial surgeons, along with a full medical team, are giving their time and skills for free to rebuild Ali's face.

Despite his ordeal, Ali Hussein is a remarkably perky, charming little boy with a ready smile and infectious giggle. Like any other eight-year-old, he loves toys, especially anything with wheels. From certain angles, last week, his face looked almost normal. But in the shell attack that killed several members of his family, he lost his left eye and the majority of his nose. Face-on, the extent to which he was disfigured is all too obvious.

Ali's father, Hussein Mohammad Jaloub, an austerely handsome farmer whose face shows the strain of the past few years, accompanied his son to London. A man of few words, he told the family's story via an interpreter. "At midday on April 3 the coalition troops started shelling in the village. In the afternoon we thought we should take shelter in the fields. We left home around 6pm, and at around 7pm the military started targeting us. They probably thought we were soldiers. We scattered and Ali was with his aunt. She was killed, Ali was badly hurt."

Seven members of the family died; Ali's father lost his mother, two sisters, two uncles and two cousins in the mis-targeted raid. The US army flew an unconscious Ali to hospital in Kuwait, where he spent two months, with no contact with his family. His father, already grief-stricken for his other relatives, feared they would never see him again. When he finally came home, he had been patched up and was very much alive. But he was so badly disfigured, he was unrecognisable. "At first his friends feared him," says Hussein Mohammad Jaloub.

Ali's trip to London was not easy to organise. Even the simplest task, like getting a photo for his passport, was a struggle in the shattered country. The American and British armies helped, along with sympathetic journalists, and British Airways donated flights for Ali and his father...

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health/story.jsp?story=501409

For full article:

http://forums.craniology.org/index.php?showtopic=122

I quoted enough of the article to show that the American army did help this boy. The point is, though, that without any intention of harming innocents, they destroyed his family and his face, and it's hardly an isolated incident. The fact that 'Coalition' forces aren't going around killing and maiming non-combatants deliberately is no consolation to Ali Hussein. Quite the opposite, in fact. If police in America were going around gunning down scores of law abiding citizens, in persuit of violent criminals, there would be hell to pay. As far as Iraq goes, it's 'OK, better that it's happening over there than here'. Well, give it time, American lives will eventually become as cheap, if the fear of AQ can be kept stoked high enough.

Getting off topic. The point is that 'supplements' of lead can be quite as effective in disemboweling people, and more besides, with little effort or intent.

But of course, ALL of the &quot;insurgents&quot; are Iraqi...

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But of course, ALL of the "insurgents" are Iraqi...