Iraq says Fallujah offensive over but Zarqawi slips the net (AFP)

[Career Prole]

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - Iraq said that the battle to retake the Sunni rebel bastion of Fallujah was over, with more than 1,000 insurgents killed, but that the country's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had fled.

There was no immediate confirmation that control had been wrested from the rebels from the US military, which spearheaded the six-day assault on the city, where aid groups fear civilians trapped by the fighting could be starving.

"Operation Fajr (Dawn) has been achieved and only the malignant pockets remain that we are dealing with through a clean-up operation," Qassem Daoud, secretary of state for national security, told a Baghdad press conference.

He said that Zarqawi, whose supporters had made Fallujah their base, and a militant cleric who was one of his top aides had slipped through their fingers.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041113/wl_mideast_afp/iraq&cid=1514&ncid=1480

[benito]

1. Pleeease! Not another 'Mission Accomplished' banner! n/t

[HR_Pufnstuf]

40. message deleted by HR

ooga-booga.

zarkawi is already dead, and if he is not, how does a man with one leg, keep outrunning the usa?

[mike_c]

2. they'll need al-Zarqawi to justify the next city they raze....

eom

[Demit]

3. "they seek him here...they seek him there..."

[natrat]

4. got have a bad guy someone to hate-gays put aside for now

[Porcupine]

39. "savour-faire is everywhere!!".....nt

Fictional enemies are always the best kind for justifying a massacre.

[Neshanic]

47. that damned elusive Zarqawi" . Good show Higgybottom.

[Career Prole]

5. It's just a hunch, mind you, but I think these guys would really suck

playing "Whack-a-Mole". :eyes:

[jobycom]

15. LOL. That's very dark humor, but true. nt.

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

6. Exactly...as long as al-Zarqawi and Bin Laden are running around free

they are able to be used as "weapons of mass fear". MKJ

[springhill]

43. You got it..........

They got to keep those bad guys out bere (Bin Laden anyone?) to keep this war machine going.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

7. They need to keep Zarqawi alive in case Osama dies of old age.

How many civilians?

[jobycom]

14. No, that wasn't strategy, that was lack of ability to strategize

They plan these attacks assuming they are fighting some dumb street punks who fell off the truck last week. They are fighting some of the most clever geurilla warriors in the world, people who have been planning for house to house fighting and urban warfare for three years now. Al-Zarqawi has been taunting Bush into such an invasion for a year, and Bush and flapjack booted thugs are too stupid to grasp that Zarqawi can outthink them in his own home, that he can plan escape routes that they can't expect-- that he can outsmart them.

[Career Prole]

21. What's most offensive about this "offensive" was the blatant way it was

choreographed to the tune of the U.S. election, dooming it to failure before the first shot was fired.
The neocon repukes wanted Fallujah razed so bushco telegraphed the punch for months, yet held off on it until after the election because of the bloodbath which was expected to result which could sour the moderate repukes on the Grand Chimperial Plan.
As a result, all they succeeded in doing was wrecking Fallujah, killing and wounding yet more non-combatants and rendering many of the others homeless and impoverished.
The insurgency, along with al Zarqawi, moved on to greener pastures long ago.

[zippy890]

32. collateral damage #100,001

I am so upset by this fascist US government, who have EXCEEDED OBL's deed by tens of thousands


Actual photo from Fallujah

[Career Prole]

37. If that was my child, it would be the final straw.

After they'd destroyed my home and my livelihood over some vague and ill-defined promise of "freedom" at some date yet to be determined, if they hurt my kid chasing guys who were given a month or so to get away I'd find an RPG and join the insurgency.
Wouldn't have a damned thing to do with religion, or politics, or money.
I don't know why our government finds that so hard to understand.

[bhikkhu]

48. Someone else's family, someone else's city

gets blown to bits, and we say - if they did that to my city or my family, there'd be hell to pay.

the child in the picture from across the world has my daughter's eyes.

[peekaloo]

8. missed him by that much.......

Maxwell Smart
Chief Commander in Charge

[finecraft]

11. Maybe next time the US will only give him one week's notice

of their intent to blast the city he is supposedly located in back to the stone age, not the two or three week notice he got this time.

[Career Prole]

25. LOL! Perfect casting! n/t

[jobycom]

9. There's no strategy here, they are measuring success by body counts

They report numbers that are high enough to seem impressive by low enough to not shock people. 1000 insurgents, meaning 1000 people who happened to be killed by our soldiers, whether man, woman, or infant. "Look, that tiny infant skull with the bloody flesh sliding off came from an insurgent!"

Meanwhile, the actual insurgents outsmart us, flee through the escape routes they set up two years ago into the next stronghold they prepared last year, and they regroup, drink tea, and sign up the the new recruits we created when we blew apart the new recruits' children.

I hate America. That's not really true. I love America, I just hate Americans.

[Zynx]

28. Iraq also has 6.5 million potential manpower and 300K new per year

See CIA Factbook on Iraq.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iz.html

We'll get sick of this and leave long before they run out of potential insurgents.

[jobycom]

29. Yep. I swear, I don't believe that oil was the rationale for the invasion

I believe it was simply the defense industry. Those who remember his father's regime remember that Bush Daddy was dying to invade a country to lose his wimp image. He killed 2000 people in Panama, firebombing the slums in Panama City while everyone was sleeping to create a diversion while he arrested his old crony, Noriega, and his poll numbers went up. So when he had reports that Iraqi troops were massing on the Kuwaiti border, he never gave any signal that he would respond. He sat back and let it happen, just so he'd have another excuse to invade someone.

He had two reasons: One, he personally was offended that he was called a wimp, and two, his defense industry investments would profit.

That's all W is doing. He's slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people so we will use up our weapons stockpiles, and his family's investments will go up. I don't believe there is any higher goal for him.

[daleo]

34. Even at that, the "enemy" body count is probably inflated

Remember Viet Nam, and the inflated body counts there. With close to 500 dead and seriously wounded marines, they may have killed a lot of people in their turn. Alternatively, the military has a great motivation to inflate the body count - they wouldn't want it to appear that the Iraqi resistance was any sort of match for the U.S. military.

[dkofos]

10. Sounds like another premature "mission accomplished" announcement

They didn't even get half of the "insurgents", (freedom fighters).
This is not even close to being over.

[saigon68]

12. SUPPORT THE TROOPS YOU MORANS

[cubsfan forever]

19. Excellent!

Q: What's the difference between Vietnam and Iraq?

A: Bunnypants had a plan to get out of Vietnam.

:evilgrin:



Not an original, of course; I saw it somewhere else today.

[Spiffarino]

13. WTF?

Zarqawi must be CIA. Why else would they keep letting him get away? You previous posters are correct...this guy has always been their "jusitification" for the Iraq debacle. They can't afford to lose him.

[ScrewyRabbit]

16. Weeks before the election they were hinting that they would

assault Fallujah. Do you think Zarqawi had plenty of time to arrange a car to get out?

[zulchzulu]

17. 1,000 "insurgents" dead, 100,000 new Al Qaeda recruits

Thanks for making Iraq and the world more dangerous, Chimpy. I'm sure the last words of our dead soldiers were probably not what you'd want to hear.

[SoCalDem]

18. So... what was the point?? Blow shit up, get people killed and the bad guy

was not even there??? :eyes:

I think Alawi is being pressured ...

Sheeez

[teryang]

20. Malignant pockets? He got that right.

Only that the metastatic insurgency had already spread over the entire country some time ago.

It's a little too late to "clean out" the malignancy, unless you consider the invading parties the disease.

But I understand that the Iraqi state accounts and American slush funds appropriated by the Congress are being "cleaned out" in an efficiently unaccountable manner by the frauds who started this war.

[Career Prole]

26. True, teryang. Too true.

"Some folks call y'all 'malignant pockets'...I call ya Iraqis."

[tlcandie]

30. So when does the radiation begin to erase the malignancy?

:cry:

[Renew Deal]

22. I knew he was gone before it started.

You know how? I have never seen any hard proof that he was ever there.

[Career Prole]

23. Shrub had to promise Fallujah to the freeper faction who wanted

Fallujah levelled for months and months. Rove's problem was how to level Fallujah without getting a huge number of U.S. and civilian casualties.

The Rove solution was to dangle Fallujah as the carrot on the stick to keep the hawks engaged while delaying the actual offensive until after the election to avoid scaring off more moderate voters with what by all rights should have been a bloodbath.

The net result was the insurgency moved on. They'll be playing this same shell game come next election at this rate.
Hopefully the dimwits who voted for "more of the same" will keep a closer eye on the pea next time.

[natrat]

31. dint ya know votes dont really matter anymore

[leesa]

24. It's so convenient to have dead Zarqawi's and OBL's to justify

your desire to level cities and murder civilians.

[Darranar]

27. How large are these "malignant pockets"? n/t

[Career Prole]

36. Here we'd give them zipcodes and call them cities. n/t

[Darranar]

33. Aid enters embattled Iraqi city

Finally, some good news....

A convoy of emergency supplies has entered the war-torn city of Falluja, amid fears of a humanitarian crisis.

The Iraqi Red Crescent lorries are carrying the first humanitarian goods to reach the city since a US-led assault began five days ago.

US and Iraqi government forces are battling insurgents in Falluja, where civilians are reported to be trapped without drinking water or electricity.

More than 1,000 rebels have been killed in the assault, an Iraqi official said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4008825.stm

[MileHiStealth]

35. Anyone believe the casualty numbers ???

20 something US troops, 1000 insurgents ...
50 to 1 attrition rate in an urban warfare
campaign. Yea right ...

[Career Prole]

45. The numbers for our troops are more or less correct. For civilians,

take the raw number given of "insurgents killed" and multiply times five. Ten percent of that product will yield an approximation of insurgents killed.
The other 90 percent comes under the heading of collateral damage and will only be officially counted by grieving family members. :(

[teryang]

46. No, I don't believe them

Reading the spiraling numbers on icasualties.org and knocking them up against the exaggerated claims of the Arab press, my estimate is over 50 US dead, with at least 4 tanks destroyed, and nine aircraft forced down but evidently not totalled.

[robbedvoter]

38. Zarquawi - the new Goldstein (1984)

[WCGreen]

41. Goldstein, I mean al-Zarqawi lives to fight again,

and again,
and again,
and again.......

[glitch]

42. So they gained Fallujah (500k) and lost Mosul (3 mil). Another fubush.nt

[bklyncowgirl]

44. Deja Vue all over again n/t