Fallujah Handed Over....to Former Saddam General??

Good move, a little late, but a good move.

DD

 

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

 

A larger question is where did these people come from? Some General has an Army? WTF?

This has bad mojo all over it.

 

NOW WE'RE BACK WITH CHEMICAL ALI'S GUY. It is really going to get dirty now as we are essentially threatening to let the worse of the Sadam's regime loose on the resistance, backed up with our heavy weapons.

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The US abruptly decided Thursday not to press the Marine assault on Fallujah. Instead, it is forming a 1000-man Iraqi unit to restore order in the city, led by a former Baath officer. There is controversy about who the commanding officer will be. Al-Hayat named Major General Jasim Muhammad Salih al-Muhammadi. Western wire services said it would be Salah Aboud, former army deputy chief of staff who at one point in the early 1990s had been an aide to the notorious "Chemical Ali," Ali Hasan Majid.


link

 

I've got a really bad feeling about this...

 

This is newsworthy, but what isn't getting reported in the US, but is, or was until the torture leak, the lead story on the BBC and elsewhere is the strategic defeat US forces were admitting when they pulled out of Fallujah.


They had created in Fallujah, both with words and actions, a sense that this was a stand they were making, that they were going to make a point here and teach the insurgents a lesson. But the fact that attacks elsewhere coincidental with their planned lesson made proving it impossible, and showed that they simply don't have enough troop strength to follow up on their operational plan.


It's weird that this isn't getting more US press, or have I simply missed it? Weirder still is that we all heard the reports about how we were going to overwhelm the insurgents in Fallujah and make a point, and we all now know we're pulling out, but few are looking at what this means.

 

It is a good move because it is exactly what we did in Germany.


We don't want to rule, and we need to utilize as much of the pre-war infastructure as possible.

In my opinion, we should have been doing this all along.


Just because someone was in Saddam's army does not mean that they share his views.

DD

 

THAT makes it a good move? Interesting...but....it's also exactly what we did in Vietnam. What does that make it?

 

When did we give a town full of people wanting to kill Americans over to a Nazi General leading an army of former Nazis?

 

Cautiously optimistic. I'm surprised that those who want the US to leave would criticize this move. Giving responsibility for security in Fallujah to an Iraqi general is a step toward self-rule. That's good right? If we were to suddenly vacate the country, who do you think will come to power? Iraqis won't keep Baathists out of power like the Americans.

He's a Baathist, but anyone you find with experience is going to be. If you want to eliminate everyone who was a party member, you'll have either Americans or second lieutenants in charge, and neither is both a good and a long-term solution. I think we can assume the Americans made their choice very carefully to find someone who was experienced and competent, but was not a rebellion risk.

What he gives you is a military presence that has some nationalist legitimacy. He's not American, so Fallujans can't criticize him there. He's Baathist, so that'll be a point among Sunnis. The only knock on his legitimacy is he is a collaborationist. Hopefully, he'll have the firepower to overcome that shortcoming.

 

It's from Al Jazeerra, so take it with a pound of salt, but I thought it interesting nonetheless. I couldn't find anything on Reuters, the supposed source.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FD57CF75-62E8-4C43-BF2D-2D0F0F89437B.htm

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Falluja fighters dent US morale

Friday 30 April 2004, 17:33 Makka Time, 14:33 GMT

The fighters have mastered the art of attacking occupation


Under cover of darkness, US Marine snipers hunting the fighters of Falluja have spent a long night on Iraq's desert sand, emerging with little but frustration.

"We were on some very exposed ground and we didn't get anyone," said an exhausted Lance Corporal Migel Nunez, 22, of Elgin, Texas.

It was their tenth ambush mission in Iraq, none of which killed or captured a fighter near the city, site of a weeks-long standoff with resistance fighters who the US occupation forces say include Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign Muslim fighters.

For weeks US Marines operating near the city have been searching houses, hunting suspected fighters and setting up ambush positions deep in enemy territory.

But the operations have yielded few tangible results and despite their high-tech weapons and draconian discipline, US Marines are struggling against resourceful resistance fighters with no clear leadership, structure or supply lines.

Marines say the fighters have mastered the art of attacking them and then melting away in villages where it is impossible to distinguish between fighters and civilians.

"They fire their AK-47s from their homes, walk out the back door and then actually walk up and shake hands with American soldiers when the fighting is over," said Lance Corporal Peter Johnson, 20, of Wheaton, Illinois.

"It is just impossible to tell them apart. They can't aim very well and they don't have lots of weapons but they are resourceful and smart. They are getting better."

That reality is especially troubling for Marines who had hoped to launch an offensive in besieged Falluja but have instead been searching for resistance fighters in nearby villages along roads infested with bombs.

So far they have seen signs of activity only in hamlets where assault rifles are hidden in wheat fields, while they listen to air strikes and explosions around Falluja in the distance.

Some Marines have begun questioning their own tactics. Many complain they alert their enemies long before they enter villages by travelling in noisy armoured vehicles.

But commanders say moving in small groups is far too risky in a land where everyone from farmers to soda shop owners could be guerrilla supporters or fighters.

Overnight on Thursday, the sniper unit attached to Golf Company returned to a village they left just hours earlier, hoping to ambush fighters who might have returned.

As soon as their noisy armoured vehicle approached, every household in one hamlet turned off its lights and then switched them on again when they left, an apparent signal to fighters.

"The problem is they know everything about us. They hear us coming, they know what vehicles we ride in and calculate how many in each vehicle," said Private First Class Joseph France, 19, of Batesville, Indiana.

"We know nothing about them. We don't know who they are. They know how to surprise us and they are resourceful with their weapons and know how to escape."

Marines recalled how one resistance unit put ice in a mortar tube and then pumped the mortar down it. The ice melted and the round was fired after they made their getaway.

The eagerness to kill fighters showed in a recent skirmish when Marines entering a village spotted three men running as they approached. They pursued and fired on the men, killing one, wounding and capturing another.

Marines said the men fired on them. A senior officer said they had no weapons, but that with shots coming in the men were legitimate targets because they ran.


Reuters

 

That's exactly what I was thinking.

 

The question is, what kind of self-rule? Iraq was self-ruled when Saddam was in power. Did we go through all this for nothing? Do Bush's pronouncements about changing thew world and bringing Democracy and Freedom to the ME not matter?

 

I agree with JV (and DaDa, although not as enthusiastically). I think that this could be a good move. The Baath military guys will, at the least, be immediately recognizable as elements of order. They will still be under US control, so it is not as if they can really start taking over and being "bad guys" again. In context, this is not a bad move and could possily be a good/great one.

 

rimbaud (anyone),
Is it true that in the reconstruction of Germany and Japan (as much as I hate to make those comparisons) that former government officials were allowed to play large roles in reconstruction as long as they were not linked directly to war crimes? I believe that is the case.

I really only know the science aspects, sadly, but we certainly got some good mileage out of former Nazi physicists.

 

So

We went to war to get rid of WMDs.

Only there weren't any.

We went to war because of the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Only there wasn't one.

We went to war to topple the Hussein regime and free the Iraqi people.

Only now we are putting Baathist generals back in charge.

Was this worth the deaths of hundreds of US soldiers and thousand of Iraqis? Do people who have supported the war really value the lives of our soldiers so little, that they are not outraged by the way this has turned out?

 

That sounds right, but a lot of folks wondered if they weren't directly linked because they were helping us out.