LM quotes a Timeonline piece that reads:
>
> <...>
> At the last house on one street, the marines found the front door
> locked. For the past year coalition troops have been kicking down doors
> and storming into houses across Iraq. Sometimes they find signs of
> insurgent activity; often they find they have made a mistake.
>
> The last thing the Lima platoon expected was the firefight that awaited
> them.
To be sure there is a certain dipshittedness about gyrines ops that even the airbourne and other 'elite' forces can't match, but here I would have to say the Times' analysis is pure wank.
The firefight described sounds like how many that have occurred in Sadr City (mixed Sunni and Shia), in Najaf (mostly Shia, --Sadr's guys) and in Fallujah. Remember, the reason the gyrines had to decimate Fallujah late last year was that they got their butts kicked earlier last year. Early fighting in Najaf also killed a lot of US troops, so they decided to bomb their way into the city centre. One could say it was a training exercise for the destruction of Fallujah, though supposedly in the case of Najaf the mosques were spared, while in Fallujah they were systematically destoryed.
The questions for real analysis include: Has the Occupation divided the militant Sunni from the militant Shia (Sadrists) (and just how much of a real armed force does al Sadr have left after Najaf was destroyed by bombs, before Fallujah was)?
I'm guessing the people fighting are cooperating as much as they can--with goings on in Baghdad being the key to understanding that. The only thing that keeps things going in favour of of the Occupation (besides the overwhelming use of deadly force anywhere they please), I think, is a geopolitical factor. That is, Iran really hasn't made a decision what to do about Sistani and his ilk. They certainly don't want him back in his native Iran. And Arab Iraqi nationalists like al Sadr (even though he is Shia) want him long gone from Iraq. Does the current campaign against Iran amount to the US trying to keep Iran distracted and pinned down? Or is it going to lead to some real payback soon, with Iran helping al Sadr to head a miliant Sunni-Shia nationalist coalition in order to hand a defeat to the Occupation?
F
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