Things are simmering. Kept to a low boil. The sides are jockeying for position, trying to improve their chances for success when the next move comes. And the next move will come. Muqtada al-Sadr is not going to lay down his arms and be taken into custody by the US. And the US, not to put too fine a point on it, is showing what big dicks they have. The military must show what manly men they are and not back down. Do they really believe their bluster or are they just lying to us? If they actually believe their bluster, we are in for some bad times. Not to mention the Iraqis.

Just what is happening in Fallujah? Body and Soul has a rundown...

Civilian casualties in Fallujah

This has been a horrible week. The worst for coalition forces since the fall of Saddam. And for non-Iraqi civilians as well. Hundreds of Iraqis also died this week, but we seem to be doing our damnedest not to see or hear them. The Associated Press reports roughly 882 Iraqis killed this week, but plays we say/ they say when trying to explain who they were.

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Check out these posts from a blogger in Iraq. I've linked to his comments in other blogs. Be sure to read his Report from Fallujah -- Destroying a Town in Order to "Save" it. He doesn't have permalinks in his blog so you will just have to scroll down. It all should be read anyway...

Empire Notes

April 13, 10:50 am EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Aadhamiyah. After a day cooped up shuttling between hotel and Internet cafe yesterday, I went out again, this time to the Sunni neighborhood of Aadhamiyah. I have yet to write up what I saw in full, but here's the basics. [...] We talked with Issam Rashid, the chief of security for the mosque. He told us the story. At 3:30 am on Sunday morning, 100 American troops raided the mosque. They were looking for weapons and mujaheddin. They started the riad the way they virtually always do -- by smashing in the gates with tanks and then driving Hummer in. The Hummers ran over and destroyed some of the stored relief goods (the bulk of the goods had already been sent to Fallujah -- over 200 tons -- but the amount remaining was considerable). More was destroyed as soldiers ripped apart sacks looking for rifles. Rashid estimated maybe three tons of supplies were destroyed. We saw for ourselves some of the remains, sacks of beans ripped apart and strewn around. The mosque was full of people, including 90 down from Kirkuk (many with the Red Crescent). They were all pushed down on the floor, with guns put to the backs of their heads. Another person associated with the mosque, Mr. Alber, who speaks very good English, told us that he repeatedly said, "Please, don't break down doors. Please, don't break windows. We can help you. We can have custodians unlock the doors." (Alber, by the way, was imprisoned by Saddam for running a bakery. As he said, "Under the embargo, you could eat flour, you could eat sugar, you could eat eggs, all separately. But mix them together and bake them and you were harming the economy by raising the price of sugar and you could get 15 years in prison.) The Americans refused to listen to Alber's pleas. We went all around the mosque and the adjacent madrassah, the Imam Aadham Islamic College. We saw dozens of doors broken down, windows broken, ceilings ripped apart, and bullet holes in walls and ceilings. The way the soldiers searched for illicit arms in the ceiling was first to spray the ceiling with gunfire, then break out a panel and go up and search. [...] When I asked Rashid if we could use his full name, he said, "Why not?" It's a response we get more and more these days, from people who would have been afraid but have lost their fears through anger. Dignity is one of the few things in Iraq that is not in short supply. April 12, 1:20 pm EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Some people are calling the killing in Fallujah "genocide." That's too strong a term and shouldn't be overused. They are allowing women and children to leave, for example. They haven't flattened the whole city. Let's just call it what it is. It's an incredibly brutal collective punishment in defense of a regime, that of the occupation, that is less brutal than Saddam was but more than makes up for that with its negligence. Fewer people in the mass graves, more children dying for lack of medicine, more people being murdered on the streets or kidnapped. Hard to weigh all of the factors, but I've heard so many say, including Shi'a, that things are worse now. And Fallujah is something further as well. The Marines are corroborating my judgment, expressed previously, that the mujaheddin of Fallujah (and we're really talking about all of al-Anbar province, which includes Ramadi), are just the men of Fallujah, not some extremist faction. They don't allow "military-age males" out of town. And check out this quote from Time Magazine: In some neighborhoods, the Marines say, anyone they spot in the streets is considered a "bad guy." Says Marine Major Larry Kaifesh: "It is hard to differentiate between people who are insurgents or civilians. You just have to go with your gut feeling." [...] April 12, 1:00 pm EST. Baghdad, Iraq -- Word on the street is that the risks to foreigners are very great. I will probably not leave home in the evening any more. I will only be able to update once a day, if things go smoothly. It's even possible I'll phone in my blog updates. Going to Fallujah was very important, because literally nobody was reporting the whole story in English, but risking kidnapping day by day here is a foolish risk -- or so my colleagues have persuaded me. Everything you've seen in the press (if you're reading very widely and carefully) about how the occupation is collapsing is true. I don't mean this to predict prematurely what the outcome is, just to say that the change I sense in public opinion seems close to irreversible.

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Fallujah Gains Mythic Air

The U.S. Marine siege of Fallujah, designed to isolate and pursue a handful of extremists in a restive town, has produced a powerful backlash in the capital. Urged on by leaflets, sermons and freshly sprayed graffiti calling for jihad, young men are leaving Baghdad to join a fight that residents say has less to do with battlefield success than with a cause infused with righteousness and sacrifice. "The fighting now is different than a year ago. Before, the Iraqis fought for nothing. Now, fighters from all over Iraq are going to sacrifice themselves," said a Fallujah native who gave his name as Abu Idris and claimed to be in contact with guerrillas who slip in and out of the besieged city three and four times daily. He spoke in a mosque parking lot emptied moments earlier of more than a ton of donated foodstuffs destined for Fallujah -- heavy bags of rice, tea and flour loaded into long, yellow semitrailers by a cluster of men who, their work done, joined a spirited discussion about the need to take the fight to the enemy. They included a dentist, a prayer leader, a law student, a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi police and a man who until 10 days earlier had traveled with U.S. troops as a member of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. "Our brothers who went to Fallujah and came back say: 'Oh, God, it is heaven. Anyone who wants paradise should go to Fallujah,' " Abu Idris said.

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The US is claiming to have control of the roads, again, but it does appear to a major problem on it's hands. With a supply line as long and thin as the one they have between Kuwait and Baghdad, there really is no way to keep it open. If it's not open: no bullets and no food.

U.S. tries to regain control of supply routes as gunmen ambush convoys, kidnap drivers

Gunmen battered American supply lines Monday, torching armored vehicles and looting a supply truck on its way from the Baghdad airport. The military said about 70 Americans and 700 insurgents had been killed this month, the bloodiest since the fall of Baghdad a year ago.

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Troops in Iraq Strain to Hold Lines of Supply

American troops in Iraq are battling insurgents to keep open vital military supply lines in and out of Baghdad. The attacks on the supply lines are posing new hazards to civilian contractors who operate many of the convoys and siphoning short-handed combat forces away from the main fight against militants, senior commanders said Monday. [...] The risks to civilian contractors and military convoys moving supplies from Kuwait and around Baghdad have become menacingly clear. After the attack on the Kellogg Brown & Root convoy, military officials said Monday that they feared that the nine people had been taken hostage by militants. On Monday, a convoy of flatbed trucks carrying M-113 armored personnel carriers was attacked and burned on a road in Latifiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, according to The Associated Press. Witnesses said three people had been killed. A supply truck was also ambushed and set ablaze on Monday on the road from Baghdad's airport. Looters moved in to carry away goods from the truck as Iraqi policemen looked on without intervening, The A.P. reported. Commanders and contractors have said American forces are in no immediate danger of running low on essential supplies. Most units are said to keep at least a week's supply of fuel, food and water at their bases.

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Even if some of the convoys get through, how much longer before the civilians running the supplies decide that being in a war zone is too dangerous and go home? Apparently, if the Iraqis get serious about cutting off the supplie line, the Army can't last much longer than a week. Who's idea was it to privatize support services?

The negotiations continue and the possibility of the US going into Najaf is too scary to contemplate.

Iraqi clerics say coalition 'must pay' for crisis

As Iraq's most powerful Shiite clerics warned the U.S.-led coalition that it "must pay" for the current crisis in the country, the head of U.S. Central Command asked the Pentagon for roughly 10,000 more soldiers. In a statement issued Monday after a meeting with radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the clerics and members of the country's religious authority also cautioned the coalition against doing battle in the holy city of Najaf, and warned against any attempt to kill al-Sadr. "The current crisis in Iraq has risen to a level that is beyond any political groups, including the Governing Council, and it is now an issue that is between the religious authority and the coalition forces," the statement said. "Those who have brought on this crisis must pay for what they have done."

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Sistani Threatens Shiite Resistance if US Invades Najaf

Shiite Leaders Negotiate with Muqtada

Just two more links. One about Iran and another about similarities to Vietnam.

Rafsanjani's victory stomp
by Helena Cobban

Blind in Baghdad

Here are the reasons Iraq is not Vietnam: It is a desert, not a jungle. The enemy is not protected and supplied by major powers such as the Soviet Union or China, not to mention a formidable front-line state such as North Vietnam. The Iraqis are not, like the Vietnamese, a single culture fighting a long-term war of liberation from colonial masters. They are fragmented by religion and language, and they have been independent ever since the British left lo these many years ago. In almost every way but one, Iraq is not Vietnam. Here's the one: We don't know what the hell we're doing.

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