Shirin (and HC) on Falluja
by Helena Cobban

According to the reports I am hearing the Americans are aerial bombing Falluja during the night and attacking from the ground during the day, meaning this "charmless town" of 300,000 souls is under virtual 24 hour a day attack. I also heard today that, just as they did last spring, they are not allowing Iraqis to leave the city, thereby imprisoning them - men, women, children, infants, elderly - in a death trap they, the Americans, have created. Families who attempt to leave the city are, as they were last spring, turned back at check points, or attacked from the air or the ground as they attempt to escape the bombardment of their city. As I said yesterday, Falluja has never been the "hotbed of Ba`thists and Saddam supporters" the propagandists would have us believe - far from it, in fact. In truth, the so-called "privileged Sunni triangle", and the "Shi'ite south" and the "Kurdish north" and everything that flows from that myth is ignorant nonsense (including the manufactured spectre of sectarian/ethnic civil war), but that's another discussion for another time...

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Iraq's Barbed Realities
A Reporter Reflects on How the U.S. Got Caught in a Trap of Its Own Making

In a city where residents often began conversations with diatribes against the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, Hassnawi was a refreshing exception. Although he appeared to come from central casting, with his prominent nose, weathered face and checkered headscarf, he talked for much of the afternoon -- over Dunhill cigarettes and takeout from Haji Hussein -- about how Fallujah could be saved with the help of the U.S. military. The Americans, he said, needed to find a way to employ the legions of former soldiers and other disaffected young men milling about the city. Unlike Shiites in the south, who had grown accustomed to unemployment and poverty, Sunnis in Fallujah had thrived on government contracts, smuggling and graft. Postwar joblessness was a new, embarrassing -- and dangerous -- phenomenon. "Either you put them to work," Hassnawi said, "or they will turn to the resistance." Late last month, as I was packing my possessions and preparing to return to Washington after 18 months as The Post's bureau chief in Baghdad, Naseer came to my hotel room and tried to call Hassnawi so that I could say goodbye. As Naseer kept redialing, it became clear how much my life as a journalist in Iraq had changed over those months, and how much things had changed for Iraqis. The telephone had become the only way for me to contact Hassnawi, who was holed up at home, too afraid to venture out. Like Hassnawi, I too had become a prisoner in my home -- the inhospitable Ishtar Sheraton Hotel -- unable to roam a country I had grown to love, forced to call people I once used to visit.

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  thanks to Cursor

Here are two reports from another reporter in Iraq.

October 18, 2004
My Friend, the Kidnap Victim

My friend, John Martinkus, was the one kidnapped Saturday and held for 24 hours. He was very lucky to be freed. I had to be circumspect yesterday because of security concerns, but John is now out of the country and the embargo has been lifted. Here's the story as he related it to us:

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October 19, 2004
Bugged Out

AMMAN -- Well, as you can see from the dateline, I'm out of Baghdad. I evacuated after we learned of further threats against journalists. And just this afternoon, upon landing at Queen Alia International Airport, I learned that Margaret Hassan, the top CARE official in Iraq, has been kidnapped. She was taken while driving to work.

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Iraqi forces may need five years, report says

The US-led coalition may need to spend another five years in Iraq before the country's own security forces are able to take over and guarantee security, a London thinktank said today. And even then, success in Iraq is not a foregone conclusion, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said in its annual report.

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Bad leaders, reluctant troops

Bad outfits – military or civilian – are all about bad leadership: the top being out of touch with the bottom, not setting the example or leading from the front. It’s a major reason why we lost the Vietnam War, why we’re in such a mess in Iraq, and why most of our senior Army leadership stinks – and, incidentally, why so many of our country’s corporations are going down the drain.

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Robertson: I Warned Bush on Iraq casualties
President's response: 'We're not going to have any'