1. Even by the inflated 'standards' of CentCom and their constipated gyrine bombdroppers, recent Operation Matador was a resounding disaster. For one thing, the US military casualties might well exceed that of the 'insurgents'--but the operation was reported as a 'success' or a mechanized roll over territory that was mostly uncontested. So how to account for all those dead and wounded? On the 'other side', there were, to be sure, lots of bystanders shot at or rounded up and imprisoned. A few towns and villages destroyed. Enough bombs dropped and artillery fired to assure Iraqis, anyway, that the number one source of violence in occupied Iraq is the Occupation and its entrenched collaborators.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/15/AR2005051500785_2.html
>>Since May 8, when Operation Matador's scheduled start was accelerated by an unexpected but fierce clash at the riverside town of Ubaydi, the Marines had found no one to fight. But the insurgents left proxies to do the killing for them: meticulously rigged roadside bombs and mines, planted on dirt roads where wheels or tank treads would pass, or along bridges.
Primed for battle, the Marines found only booby traps. Sometimes they found them too late.
On Wednesday, two artillery rounds buried in the road detonated under an Amtrac, blowing a two-foot-wide hole in its armor plating. The explosion set off ammunition inside the vehicle, creating an inferno.
As the Amtrac burned, a 24-year-old Marine in a nearby vehicle grabbed his helmet in both fists and wrenched it. "I hate this country!" he screamed.>>
>>The insurgents were the only enemies, but they wouldn't come out to fight. "Frankly, I'm tired of going around not seeing anything, not knowing anything, and then having Marines, guys I know, get blown up by mines," Kalouf said.
"I'd much rather foreign fighters come out and shoot at us. We can respond to that," Kalouf said, as the Americans got ready to head back across the Euphrates. "We can't stand all their IEDs and mines, crap like that. Because we can't do that.''>>
2. Meanwhile, Shia Arab nationalist, al-Sadr gives a speech, and his analysis is spot-on. The real terrorists are the occupiers and their collaborators. The US tries to make a lot of the killings sound like nasty Sunni-on-Shia violence--even as it then also tries to say most of the violence is foreign fighters like the imaginary Zarqawi. Most of the violence comes from the US and its occupation, including covert 'anti-insurgency' operations, because CentCom (and the confederalist Kurds) know that a full-on Sunni-Shia collaboration means a full defeat of their Occupation.
>>Al-Sadr also accused the United States of trying to foment a sectarian conflict, and he demanded the coalition release all detainees.
"The occupier is trying to make up a sectarian war between the Sunnis and Shiites," al-Sadr said. "It is not acceptable to direct the allegations of ugly acts committed by the occupier against the Shiites, to the Sunnis, we also condemn and denounce all the terrorist acts.">>
Can the pod people awake from their stupour? Does it really matter? Most likely history will be made when the Occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are destroyed by armed resistance in the occupied countries and by economic-fiscal collapse on the homefront. You simply have to count the dead and the days and wait because it really does seem like something has got to give. Fugazy
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