Westerner beheaded on Mosul street as Americans lose control of key city

[NNN0LHI]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=594312

Gunmen raked a car with machine-gun fire in the northern city of Mosul yesterday, killing three foreigners and their driver. They then cut off the head of one of their victims.

The killings show that at the same time as the US was recapturing Fallujah in a heavily publicised assault it largely lost control of Mosul, Iraq's northern capital. Though US troops launched a counter-attack, their grip on the city remains tenuous. The four men who died yesterday were travelling in a white sedan when it was attacked with automatic weapons and set on fire at a traffic intersection in Mosul.

One of the foreigners was briefly captured by the insurgents, according to an eyewitness. When he tried to escape they cut his head off and left his body in a pool of blood.

A photographer for Reuters news agency saw four bodies lying beside the burning car. Three of those who died appeared to be foreigners, one of whom looked Turkish and the other two European. The fourth body, possibly of the driver, was partly burnt, but appeared to be that of an Arab.

The men were carrying small automatic weapons, indicating that they may have been working for one of the private security companies in Iraq.

more

[Straight Shooter]

1. Fallujah redux, here we come

This is horrid. I just have no more words that can describe the revulsion I'm feeling about the situation in Iraq.

[fortyfeetunder]

2. Mission accomplished?

I think the only mission I see getting accomplished is more carnage.

[wordout]

3. did they dress him in orange first like mossciadoes?

[Fir]

4. There was only a small window of time.

After we invaded Iraq there was only a small window of time for the USA to make visible that our efforts were going to be in aid of the Iraqi people. That was to have been the key to successfully winning the hearts and minds.

Well our government has only wanted to throw money and men at the problem. Handing over the financial recovery of Iraq to corporate mismanagement. Corporations can't even make a near accounting of what they are doing, never mind what they have done. So our government has spent huge amounts and wasted precious time in the process.

The intolerable incompetence of not even making an effort to close Iraq's borders or protecting the ammo dumps that litter the country was another massive failure that has doomed this enterprise.

That Rumsfeld is still in the Cabinet is proof positive that Bush is not interested in doing what it takes to secure anything!

It is inconceivable that 1/2 this nation voted for this President.

How long will it take for us to live this tragedy down?

[Old and In the Way]

5. It was never about helping the Iraqi people.

It was about helping ourselves to their oil and making new Republican millionaires on this war and occupation.

That was evident when we went into Bagdhad and made protecting the Oil Ministry our only priority, while letting the result of the city go to hell.

[NNN0LHI]

8. The sooner folks like you realize that you can't win hearts and minds...

...by shooting cruise missiles and dropping bombs on them, the better off we will all be. You have been lied to. Anyone who thinks this was a winnable war to begin with must be smoking some pretty good shit. Really. You just cannot go into someones country with guns blazing and expect them to love you. It just don't work that way. Can't you see that? Would it work on you? Think about it for a moment. I don't know if I could be clearer here?

Don

[Chipper Chat]

14. I was watching an interview on Fox about 3 mo ago...

with some troops in Baghdad. One of the grunts said "We're here to help these people and they hate us -I just dont understand it."
I thought - what a dunce. He must represent the whole red south mentality that Americans are so righteous and kind that the world just has to love us - so even if we kill innocent children in Iraq surely they know it's for their own good." - and other such bullcrappy.
God in Heaven how I hate fucking war!!!!!

[cliss]

15. I agree.

This was never a war about "winning hearts & minds of the Iraqis". There were many, many planning sessions where the Bush Administration cut up Iraq like a side of beef and allotted it out to various profiteers. If the Iraqis would like all this, well then that would have been a nice bonus. It was never the overriding idea.

Think about it: why would we (the US) spend ourselves into oblivion, sacrificing over 1,300 troops, angering the entire world in the process, TO BRING DEMOCRACY TO IRAQ? Why would we be so "benevolent". There was never a window of opportunity. There was never even a glass.

For the record, I was never in favor of this war. I knew what was coming. For months, as we made our march to war, I was at my wretched worst. I kept searching for answers, and my relentless search brought me here to the DU where I actually found the truth.

[Career Prole]

6. Such news doesn't make the cut here. What we get is shrublicans

whining about the U.N.'s reluctance to send election officials to this hellhole of the GOP's making.

From the story...
Earlier in the year, the US occupation of Mosul by the 101st Airborne was presented as a model of what the occupation should have been in the rest of the country. Several thousand army officers publicly renounced Baathism. The local police force was being built up. The unpopular political parties of returned exiles in Baghdad were kept at bay.

Until the past few months, guerrilla attacks in Mosul were both less frequent and less effective than further south around Baghdad. This may have been because Mosul and Nineveh province, of which it is the centre, was never seen as a bastion of support for Saddam Hussein. But the city was always a nationalist centre and a recruiting ground for the officer corps of the Iraqi army. The defence minister under the old regime was usually from Mosul.

Unlike Fallujah, the guerrillas did not contest the recapture of Mosul by US and Iraqi forces in November. Leaflets were issued instructing fighters to hide their weapons and stay in the city. Since then 150 bodies have found, many of them members of the National Guard or other security forces. US forces in Iraq are being built up from 138,000 to 150,000 men and are already stretched trying to hold Sunni Muslim cities and towns around Baghdad. They were never able to surround Fallujah, even at the height of the battle last month, and many fighters escaped.

Much of the US Army in Iraq is tied down providing support services, guarding fixed positions or protecting convoys that are frequently attack. US patrols often seem to serve no particular purpose but severely disrupt traffic because Iraqi drivers do not want to get close to the American vehicles in case they are attacked.

Iraq has got to be the most ridiculous choice as a site for a fair election...outside of 21st century Amerika.

[DavidDvorkin]

7. Of America's making

this hellhole of the GOP's making

We may see it as being made by the GOP, but to the rest of the world and to history, all of this will be America's doing. We were unable to do anything to stop it in the last election, and now this is how the final years of America's empire will be recorded.

[Career Prole]

10. That's why it's so vitally important to disown it and them at every turn!

Because we want the history books to also say there were many who spoke out against it.
Don't ever let them lump you in with the nazis!

[Thurston Howell IV]

12. There were also Democratic votes authorizing the invasion

Sorry, I can't remember -- Did Kerry actually end up voting for it? (Hilarious that I can't remember... "I actually voted for it before I voted against it." But did he finally vote for it? I'm guessing not, since they didn't include the funding provision he wanted.) I believe Edwards did. So, your point is on target.

Of course, there were some voices of reason, and courage, during the debate -- Senator Byrd comes to mind.

One would hope that we would learn from the past, such as the vote on the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and the resulting Vietnam War. But some spineless Senators didn't want to take the heat in the post-9/11 world by voting against war. We gotta be tough guys -- drop bombs on all the bastards -- that'll make us safe!

[TahitiNut]

13. "US patrols often seem to serve no particular purpose"

Yes, this is an example of senseless robotic behavior in the military. In conventional warfare, a 'patrol' has the purpose of detecting opposition infiltration of a territory one claims for one's own forces. This is the territorial paradigm of warfare - a paradigm fostered by an agrarian culture. It is wholly dependent, however, on the ability to easily ascertain the difference between enemy and ally usually just by appearance.

In Vietnam, warfare had a mixed paradigm. It was both an occupation in which the opposition was a guerrilla/paramilitary force (VC) and a territorial defense in which the opposition was a conventional force (NVA). "Patrols" had mixed rationales. (The dirty little secret of Vietnam was that most US 'patrols' did their best to avoid enemy contact.)

Iraq is neither an agrarian culture nor conventional warfare against a uniformed force. The ability of US forces to ascertain any distinction between 'friend' and 'foe' is very limited. That's why they focus on "(swarthy) males between the ages of 15 and 60" - under the assumption that women aren't combatants. Thus, the only 'purpose' served by a patrol is one of being 'bait' or cannon fodder, and calling in an air strike on 'hostile forces.' Being an urban/suburban conflict, such an approach guarantees a vast preponderance of innocent civilian casualties.

To use a term often used in Vietnamm, it's a typical 'clusterfuck.'

[TahitiNut]

9. Yup. People are losing their heads.

Strangely, many haven't used them for some time.

[Sara Beverley]

11. Killing us with our own weapons. Saddam doesn't look all that bad now.

Compared to how life is in Iraq today Saddam's rule doesn't look that bad now. Only to his enemies.

[Moderator]

16. duplicate thread

discuss here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1081739