Contrary to what the military says it believes, the back of the insurgency doesn't seem to be broken after the destruction of Fallujah. Just read throught the posts of Juan Cole's blog. It is only getting worse. Much worse.

Clash on a Street called Haifa
by Juan Cole

Guerrillas on Haifa Street in downtown Baghdad fought a running battle Monday with Iraqi police or national guards, and killed one civilian working for the US. The battle took place near the Green Zone, where the US embassy is sited. There were also attacks on an oil pipeline that supplies Baghdad from the north, and clashes in the west, in Anbar province. From Friday through Sunday guerrillas killed 5 US troops in Anbar. The CIA station chief in Baghdad has concluded that things are deteriorating in Iraq and may not get better any time soon. This breathtakingly honest evaluation was unacceptable to US Ambassador John Negroponte, who insisted it be hedged about with warnings that it was too pessimistic. Uh, John, when you have conquered a country and ruled it for 18 months, and when you have 140,000 plus troops on the ground, and when you have to forbid your embassy staff to take the 10-mile-long road from the capital to the airport because their lives cannot be assured on it-- then, John, things are deteriorating and may not get better soon. Get used to it.

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Trophy Hunting?
by Dahr Jamail

Photos dated from May, 2003 have been shown all over Jazeera today-showing Navy Seals torturing Iraqis. Up close shots of men with bloodied mouths with guns held to their heads, etc. You know the drill by now. They were put on the net by the wife of a soldier who’d returned from Iraq. John Hutson, a retired rear admiral who served as the Navy’s Judge Advocate General from 1997 to 2000, said the photos suggested possible Geneva Convention violations, as international law prohibits souvenir photos of prisoners of war. Hutson said, “It’s pretty obvious that these pictures were taken largely as war trophies.” Not too surprising, however, because there are also eyewitness reports now from refugees that some soldiers in Fallujah were tying the dead bodies of resistance fighters to tanks and driving around with their “trophies.”

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Another victory for their hearts and minds.

Fallujah as a “Model City”
by Dahr Jamail

Driving across Baghdad yesterday a GMC full of armed men races past our car, missing it by inches. Along with guns pointed out their windows at us (and all the other cars), a couple of the men hold their hands out, waving them down towards the ground in order to instruct the traffic they are pushing their way through to stay back. CIA and/or mercenaries always travel like this here. [...] Another example of the winning of hearts and minds of Iraqis is being formulated for the residents of Fallujah. The military has announced the plans it is considering to use for allowing Fallujans back into their city. They will set up “processing centers” on the outskirts of the city and compile a database of peoples’ identities by using DNA testing and retina scans. Residents will then receive a badge which identifies them with their home address, which they must wear at all times. Buses will ferry them into their city, as cars will be banned since the military fears the use of them by suicide bombers. Another idea being kicked around is to require the men to work for pay in military-style battalions where these “work brigades” will reconstruct buildings and the water system, depending on the men’s skills. There will also be “rubble-clearing” platoons. The intent of the US commanders and Iraqi leaders is to make Fallujah a “model city.” I wonder if they’ll try this in Baghdad. The goal of crushing the resistance and creating stability by destroying Fallujah has gone so well that resistance fighters here roamed freely about Haifa street today hunting for Iraqis collaborating with US forces. They executed a man they suspected as being a collaborator in Tahrir Square, and then they moved on to Mathaf Sqare, just 3 blocks from the “Green Zone” where the interim government and US embassy are located.

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We pay our slave laborers
by Steve Gilliard

This is not postwar Germany. Forced labor is a war crime. I know the US doesn't live in fear of the Hague, but considering the relative ruthlessness of the resistance, I would suggest one day of killing would end compliance with such orders. They can't even protect the National Guard, who are being executed like rats in a pantry. They don't get it. The Fallujans will resist this. Not only that, the city isn't nearly safe enough for this. Now the cowardly exiles, who spend more time in London than Baghdad, want to impose colonial methods. Except these colonists have rocket-propelled grenades and AK's. The more desperate we become, the easier we are to strike. A crowd of people seeking to comply with this are a perfect human bomb target. Mocking the Americans once again with Iraqi lives. [...] As you read about colonial warfare, keep in mind, even the Belgians had a native army. The Americans have been precluded from that by a fast-moving resistance. Cooperation with the US means death. Simple as that.

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You call this liberation
Pentagon experts have made a discovery: Muslims do not hate America's freedoms, but its policies

Who wrote this - a pop sociologist, obscure blogger or anti-war playwright? "Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic - namely, that the war is all about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is - for Americans - really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game. This perception is ... heightened by election-year atmospherics, but none the less sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims, they are talking to themselves." Actually, this is the conclusion of the report of the defence science board taskforce on strategic communication - the product of a Pentagon advisory panel - delivered in September. Its 102 pages were not made public in the presidential campaign, but, barely noticed by the US press, silently slipped on to a Pentagon website on Thanksgiving eve.

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  thanks to Antiwar.com

They love us in Fallujah
by Steve Gilliard

Stop-lossed
by Steve Gilliard