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spurster
09-05-2004, 07:50 PM
I think the US is going to avoid casualties from now until the election.

www.nytimes.com/2004/09/0...5filk.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/weekinreview/05filk.html)

September 5, 2004
One by One, Iraqi Cities Become No-Go Zones
By DEXTER FILKINS

BAGHDAD, Iraq - At a recent meeting with a group of tribal sheiks, an American general spoke with evident frustration about the latest Iraqi city to fall into the hands of insurgents.

"Not one dime of American taxpayers' money will come into your city until you help us drive out the terrorists," Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said in his base in Tikrit, tapping the table to make sure he was understood.

The sheiks nodded, smiled and withdrew, back to the city that neither they, nor the American military, any longer control.

The city under discussion was Samarra, a small metropolis north of Baghdad known for a dazzling ninth-century minaret that winds 164 feet into the air. In the heart of the area called the Sunni Triangle, Samarra is the most recent place where the American military has decided that pulling out and standing back may be the better part of valor, even if insurgents take over.

In Iraq, the list of places from which American soldiers have either withdrawn or decided to visit only rarely is growing: Falluja, where a Taliban-like regime has imposed a rigid theocracy; Ramadi, where the Sunni insurgents appear to have the run of the city; and the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf to the south, where the Americans agreed last month to keep their distance from the sacred shrines of Ali and Hussein.

The calls are rising for the Americans to pull out of even more areas, notably Sadr City, the sprawling neighborhood in eastern Baghdad that is the main base for the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr. There, leaders of his Mahdi Army are demanding that American soldiers, except those sent in to do reconstruction work, get out.

Negotiations with rebel leaders foundered last week on precisely the issue of the freedom of American soldiers to enter the area; the Iraqi government, possibly with American backing, refused to accept the militia's demand. Even so, the point seemed clear enough: where Iraqis once tolerated American soldiers as a source of stability in their neighborhoods, they increasingly see them as a cause of the violence. Take out the Americans, the Iraqis say, and you take out the problem. Leave us alone, and we will sort our own problems.

"All we want is for the Americans to stay out," said Yusef al-Nasiri, a top aide to Mr. Sadr. "When the Americans come into the city, they insult our people. That's when the people get nervous. It makes them uncomfortable."

That certain Iraqis believe their cities and neighborhoods would be better off without American soldiers is neither new nor surprising; that is what the guerrillas' insurgency, now in its 17th month, is all about. What is new, however, is that the Americans, in certain cases, appear to agree or have decided that the cost to prove otherwise would be too high.

The pullback began in the west, in Falluja, which the Marines surrounded and attacked in April, after the killing and mutilation of four American contract employees. The Marines moved to within sight of the city center, but called off their attack after a public outcry spurred by reports that as many as 600 Iraqis had been killed.

Since then, American plans to have a group of former Baathist officers take control have collapsed, and the city is now run by a group of Islamic fundamentalists called the "Islamic council of holy warriors." The Americans do not go inside.

In recent months, much of the rest of the surrounding area, Anbar Province, has slipped away from American control. Insurgents roam freely in the provincial capital, Ramadi, and the Americans appear to have abandoned a permanent presence inside the city.

Even in the once-friendly Shiite areas, the Americans are giving way to local demands that they stay away. When American fighters expelled the Mahdi Army from the shrines in Karbala and Najaf, a condition for each of the peace agreements was that the Americans pull back.

There is a huge difference, of course, between the pullbacks in Falluja and Samarra and the ones in the Shiite cities. In Karbala and Najaf, the Americans cleared the way for Iraqi police officers. The struggle over Sadr City is over just that - who would take control, the Iraqi police or the Mahdi Army. The Americans, who have watched repeatedly as the Iraqi police have retreated before Mr. Sadr's militia and as the Mahdi Army has broken its promises, clearly fear the worst.

In places like Falluja, Samarra and Ramadi, on the other hand, the Americans and the Iraqi government appear to have forfeited their influence. Residents of all three places say insurgents are in charge.

Falluja, for instance, has become a haven for insurgents and terrorists, including, the Americans believe, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian thought to be responsible for a number of car bombings that have killed hundreds of civilians. In Falluja, the insurgents are free to carry out their own brand of justice, like the public lashings of people suspected of theft and rape, and the videotaped beheading last month of Suleiman Mar'awi, one of the city's National Guard commanders.

Most significant of all, the withdrawal from these cities calls into question the practicality of nationwide elections scheduled to take place before the end of January. At the moment, the Americans appear to be prepared to hold elections without cities like Falluja and Ramadi. But excluding the largely Sunni Arab areas from the elections would raise serious doubts about their legitimacy. Already, one of the country's leading Sunni groups, the Sunni Clerics Association, boycotted the selection of the National Council, which serves as a de facto Parliament here.

"We think the elections will be fake," said Abdul Salam al-Qubesi, a leading Sunni cleric and a member of the association.

There are indications that American commanders would like to reassert their control over some of these no-go zones before the January elections; in purely military terms, they have little doubt that they could. In Falluja, a Marine commander said that at the time he ordered his men to halt their offensive in April, they were just two or three days from capturing the middle of the city.

But the question now, as it was then, is at what cost, not just in American lives, but in American credibility, if Iraqi casualties begin to mount. "We could go into Samarra tomorrow if we wanted to," said Maj. Neal O'Brien, a spokesman for the First Infantry Division. "But we want to arrive at an Iraqi solution."

The problem facing the American leadership here is whether, in places like Falluja and Samarra, there are Iraqi solutions they cannot accept.

John F. Burns contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

DeSPURado
09-06-2004, 02:53 PM
Great article. Yet people keep claiming the war is marching on.

Tommy Duncan
09-06-2004, 03:20 PM
Perhaps, just perhaps, such a posture is being taken because the insurgents/terrorists would like to boost the US body count prior to the election?

DeSPURado
09-06-2004, 04:31 PM
Body count is definetly the reason we are not going there. File that one under obvious. The problem is we are controlling less and less of Iraq. This is going to mean that when we evetually withdraw these localities controlled by regional powers will struggle for power once we have left. We are leaving uneven sporadically placed power vaccuums behind us, which will inherently lead to instability. violence, and power struggle.

Tommy Duncan
09-06-2004, 04:42 PM
Sometimes the obvious needs to be stated.

So is the problem that the US is there are that the US isn't there?

exstatic
09-06-2004, 05:24 PM
So is the problem that the US is there are that the US isn't there?

Both. We are there, and shouldn't be, and when we leave, there will probably be an Afghanistan type power vacuum, leading to an Islamic state.

Tommy Duncan
09-06-2004, 05:41 PM
That's not both. That's "we are there."

spurster
09-06-2004, 11:09 PM
The problem is that the US cannot get much more of it wants out of this war. Many more troops (and more blood and money) are needed to really take control of Iraq and Afghanistan and impose a desired solution. But the US is struggling just to maintain the number of troops already there. I think the powers-that-be already realize this, and at this point, it's about winning elections. The US will keep Iraq from exploding until after November 2. After that, the US will declare victory and slowly withdraw, leaving Iraq and Afghanistan on their own.

Nbadan
09-07-2004, 06:09 AM
The Neocons don't care how many troops we lose in Iraq. One thousand, ten-thousand, one-hundred thousand what the difference to them as long as it's not their kids coming home in a flag drapped coffin, ignored by the mass media and the people they served. After all, as Barbara Bush said once "I can't bother my beautiful mind with such things".

Tommy Duncan
09-07-2004, 06:12 AM
SQWAK! NEOCON! SQWAK!

http://www.jtolentino.com/zoo_shots/images/Parrot.jpg

exstatic
09-07-2004, 09:02 AM
That's not both. That's "we are there."

Technically true, but it's GOING to be a problem when we are no longer there, too, so "both" fits.

Face it folks: we are involved in another quagmire with boys coming home in body bags, no exit strategy, and no end in sight.

Tommy Duncan
09-07-2004, 10:54 AM
That's not just "technically correct." The assertion is that the US is there in the first place. Any problems which derive from further US action are still a result of the United States being there in the first place.

So it's preferable that the US was never there and Hussein was still in power with the sanctions scheme falling apart?

This is not Vietnam.

Nbadan
09-07-2004, 01:55 PM
with the sanctions scheme falling apart?

Seems to me that the sanctions and embargo were working quite effectively until W. decided to pull out the U.N. weapons inspectors and bomb Iraq anyway.

Tommy Duncan
09-07-2004, 01:56 PM
Yeah, France and Russia would agree with you. ;)

Get a fucking clue.

exstatic
09-07-2004, 02:05 PM
So it's preferable that the US was never there and Hussein was still in power with the sanctions scheme falling apart?

All of Saddam's "teeth" were extracted during the first Gulf Oil war. The GOP whipped the country into a war frenzy with a series of lies. Just shy of 1000 GI's won't EVER be coming home, other than in an aluminum casket, and that number rises every day. The fucking deficit is now 2.29 trillion dollars.

Yes, I'd just as soon the US had left Iraq alone.

Tommy Duncan
09-07-2004, 02:09 PM
Every major intel agency thought he had WMDs and it is still not disputed if left alone he would have procured them. He had no problem using WMDs before.

He was skimming hundreds of millions annually from the UN Oil for Food sham and he was indeed starting to support terrorism both rhetorically and financially. It's not hard to see him aligning himself with terrorist groups determined to strike against the West.

If you have such a problem with the deficit then I don't think supporting a candidate whose desire is to explode spending above and beyond the current administration is the way to go.

exstatic
09-07-2004, 02:13 PM
If you have such a problem with the deficit then I don't think supporting a candidate whose desire is to explode spending above and beyond the current administration is the way to go.

Blah,blah,blah...free spending liberals. Wake up and smell the coffee. The only one's thinking they have more money in the account because they still have checks are the G O P.

CommanderMcBragg
09-07-2004, 02:15 PM
If this president had any real military experience he would know that you don't win a war this way.

Get in there and get the job done.

This is just going to costs more lives in the end.

Anyone who believes that this administration isn't worried about the body count as we near the election is living in different world then I am.

Tommy Duncan
09-07-2004, 02:17 PM
Blah,blah,blah...free spending liberals. Wake up and smell the coffee. The only one's thinking they have more money in the account because they still have checks are the G O P.

Well no shit. When did I say I was voting for Bush?

Try again.

Tommy Duncan
09-07-2004, 02:18 PM
PS...you don't seriously dispute that Kerry wants to spend even more than Bush, do you?

exstatic
09-07-2004, 02:50 PM
I don't know if that's even possible, MB.

Tommy Duncan
09-07-2004, 02:53 PM
Sure it is. Kerry wants to implement a single payer health insurance scheme and make no changes to the current Social Security system.

CommanderMcBragg
09-07-2004, 03:38 PM
Why, this administration has spent more in the past 4 years then all of us beer guzzling Americans put together.

I remember back when conservatives used to call liberals "big government".

spurster
09-07-2004, 05:03 PM
Every major intel agency thought he had WMDs
I think everybody thought he had some chemical weapons from the 1980s. How much and where were greatly, greatly exaggerated from the intel. Remember this administration stated that there were huge arsenals and they knew where the weapons were. For me, that is enough to kick them out of office.

and it is still not disputed if left alone he would have procured them.
Well, he would have tried to procure them, just as Iran is trying and Pakistan and North Korea succeeded. And the next Iraqi government will probably start trying just as soon as the US leaves. We can't afford to invade them all and occupy them permanently as dictated by the Bush doctrine.

He had no problem using WMDs before.
Back when he was Rummy's pal.

I don't think the US is going to get very far by making enemies out of each nation that has WMD capability. If we can manage to deal with Saudi Arabia and China despite their despots and dismal human rights surely we can manage with the others. The US can't control the whole world militarily.