The stand off continues. Negotiations in Najaf and the Marine snipers, in Fallujah, picking off anyone that moves. There are 2,500 troops ready to move in to Najaf. One hopes that everyone will come to their senses.

The first link is to another piece by one of the most amazing voices in Iraq — a 24 year old woman in Baghdad who goes by Riverbend. I couldn't find anything I wanted to leave out from her latest post, so here is the whole thing. If you haven't read Riverbend before, go read everything she has written.

Media and Falloojeh...
by Riverbend

There has been a lot of criticism about the way Al-Arabia and Al-Jazeera were covering the riots and fighting in Falloojeh and the south this last week. Some American spokesman for the military was ranting about the "spread of anti-Americanism" through networks like the abovementioned. Actually, both networks did a phenomenal job of covering the attacks on Falloojeh and the southern provinces. Al-Jazeera had their reporter literally embedded in the middle of the chaos- and I don't mean the lame embedded western journalists type of thing they had going at the beginning of the war (you know- embedded in the Green Zone and embedded in Kuwait, etc.). Ahmed Mansur, I believe his name was, was actually standing there, in the middle of the bombing, shouting to be heard over the F-16s and helicopters blasting away at houses and buildings. It brought back the days of 'shock and awe'... I know it bothers the CPA terribly to have the corpses of dead Iraqis shown on television. They would love for Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia to follow Al-Hurra's example and show endless interviews with pro-occupation Iraqis living abroad and speaking in stilted Arabic. These interviews, of course, are interspersed with translated documentaries on the many marvels of... Hollywood. And while I, personally, am very interested in the custom leather interiors of the latest Audi, I couldn't seem to draw myself away from Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia while 700+ Iraqis were being killed. To lessen the feelings of anti-Americanism, might I make a few suggestions? Stop the collective punishment. When Mark Kimmett stutters through a press conference babbling about "precision weapons" and "military targets" in Falloojeh, who is he kidding? Falloojeh is a small city made up of low, simple houses, little shops and mosques. Is he implying that the 600 civilians who died during the bombing and the thousands injured and maimed were all "insurgents"? Are houses, shops and mosques now military targets? What I'm trying to say is that we don't need news networks to make us angry or frustrated. All you need to do is talk to one of the Falloojeh refugees making their way tentatively into Baghdad; look at the tear-stained faces, the eyes glazed over with something like shock. In our neighborhood alone there are at least 4 families from Falloojeh who have come to stay with family and friends in Baghdad. The stories they tell are terrible and grim and it's hard to believe that they've gone through so much. I think western news networks are far too tame. They show the Hollywood version of war- strong troops in uniform, hostile Iraqis being captured and made to face "justice" and the White House turkey posing with the Thanksgiving turkey... which is just fine. But what about the destruction that comes with war and occupation? What about the death? I don't mean just the images of dead Iraqis scattered all over, but dead Americans too. People should *have* to see those images. Why is it not ok to show dead Iraqis and American troops in Iraq, but it's fine to show the catastrophe of September 11 over and over again? I wish every person who emails me supporting the war, safe behind their computer, secure in their narrow mind and fixed views, could actually come and experience the war live. I wish they could spend just 24 hours in Baghdad today and hear Mark Kimmett talk about the death of 700 "insurgents" like it was a proud day for Americans everywhere... Still, when I hear talk about "anti-Americanism" it angers me. Why does American identify itself with its military and government? Why is does being anti-Bush and anti-occupation have to mean that a person is anti-American? We watch American movies, listen to everything from Britney Spears to Nirvana and refer to every single brown, fizzy drink as "Pepsi". I hate American foreign policy and its constant meddling in the region... I hate American tanks in Baghdad and American soldiers on our streets and in our homes on occasion... why does that mean that I hate America and Americans? Are tanks, troops and violence the only face of America? If the Pentagon, Department of Defense and Condi are "America", then yes- I hate America.

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Mediation with Muqtada and the Limits of Tolerance
by Juan Cole

The Scotsman reports that the standoff between the American forces and those of Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf continues. Muqtada appears to be seeking a compromise. [...] Jonathan Steele of the Guardian has a thoughtful report on the negotiations. He says the Coalition Provisional Authority is trying to justify having cracked down on Muqtada on the grounds that he was planning an uprising even before the closure of his newspaper. I do not agree. Muqtada was the leader of a sectarian movement, and it was certainly proselytizing, coercing, and organizing. But all the indications are that he was being careful not to confront the CPA with violence, until he became convinced that they were coming after him. He may have planned violence or at least political coercion for next year, but we do not know that. We only know that he was organizing, including organizing a militia. In that he was no different from pro-American figures like Abdul Aziz al-Hakim (who heads the Badr Corps militia), Ibrahim Jaafari, whose Dawa Party has a militia, or even Ahmad Chalabi, whose militia was flown into Iraq by Rumsfeld on Pentagon aircraft and given perquisites by the US.

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Waco in Iraq

My friend Jean Rosenfeld, whose work I've mentioned previously, is a religious-studies researcher at UCLA who specializes in analyzing extremist religious movements and the way religion can inspire violence. She was among the scholars consulted by the FBI during the Branch Davidian standoff at Waco (her recommendations, and those of other religious scholars, were made to the negotiating team, whose work in turn was ignored by the tactical units that were in charge of the scene there). I also consulted with Jean while I was covering the Freemen standoff in Montana -- which, because the negotiating team was placed in charge, had a dramatically different outcome than that in Waco. (For details, see In God's Country.) She sees an important parallel in what is now happening in Iraq regarding the Sadrists, and is hoping that the government does not make the same mistakes there that they made at Waco. She recently penned an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times that appears to have been ignored by that paper's editors. So I'm going to publish it in full here. [...] It is worth observing, of course, that (as Atrios notes) the coalition appears determined to make this mistake, since its official stance is that "The mission of U.S. forces is to kill or capture Moqtada al-Sadr."

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Rahul Mahajan has been reporting from Baghdad and Fallujah. What he shows are war crimes.

April 14, 11:45 am EST.

Some people who have read my eyewitness reports confirming U.S. sniping at ambulances in Fallujah have written to accuse me of "having an agenda" and therefore lying about what I saw. Others have written to accuse me of being an Iraqi or of having a non-European name and therefore lying about what I saw. They are a very small minority of those who have written, but, because a picture apparently is still worth 1000 words.

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Insurgents Display New Sophistication
Campaign Leaves Bridges Heavily Damaged, Hampering Military's Push South

Insurgents fighting the U.S.-led occupation force have sharply increased the sophistication, coordination and aggressiveness of their tactics over the past week, Army officers and soldiers involved in combat here said. Most dramatically, as several thousand U.S. troops pushed south this week from the Baghdad area to this new base in central Iraq, one highway bridge on their planned route was destroyed and two others were so heavily damaged that they could not be used by heavy Army trucks and armored vehicles.

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Why are people suprised when Iraqis show they aren't stupid? Not only do they have the capability to cut off our supply lines, they can hamper any future retreat back to Kuwait.

Deaths of scores of mercenaries not reported
By Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn

At least 80 foreign mercenaries - security guards recruited from the United States, Europe and South Africa and working for American companies - have been killed in the past eight days in Iraq.

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