Posted on 03/31/2004 11:03:39 PM PST by Happy2BMe
ALLUJA, Iraq, March 31 — Four Americans working for a security company were ambushed and killed Wednesday, and an enraged mob then jubilantly dragged the burned bodies through the streets of downtown Falluja, hanging at least two corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River.
Less than 15 miles away, in the same area of the increasingly violent Sunni Triangle, five American soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb ripped through their armored personnel carrier.
The violence was one of the most brutal outbursts of anti-American rage since the war in Iraq began more than a year ago. And the steadily deteriorating situation in the Falluja area, a center of anti-American hostility west of Baghdad, has become so precarious that no American or Iraqi forces responded to the attack against the civilians, who worked for a North Carolina company.
American officials said the civilians were traveling in two sport utility vehicles although some witnesses in Falluja said there were four. "Two got away; two got trapped," said Muhammad Furhan, a taxi driver.
It is not clear what the four Americans were doing in Falluja or where they were going. But just as they were passing a strip of stationery stores and kebab shops around 10:30 a.m., masked gunmen jumped into the street and blasted their vehicles with assault rifles. Witnesses said the civilians did not shoot back.
There are a number of police stations in Falluja and a base of more than 4,000 marines nearby, but even as the security guards were being swarmed and their vehicles set on fire, sending plumes of inky smoke over the closed shops of the city, there were no ambulances, no fire engines and no assistance.
Instead, Falluja's streets were thick with men and boys and chaos.
Men with scarves over their faces hurled bricks into the blazing vehicles. A group of boys yanked a smoldering body into the street and ripped it apart. Someone then tied a chunk of flesh to a rock and tossed it over a telephone wire.
"Viva mujahedeen!" shouted Said Khalaf, a taxi driver. "Long live the resistance!"
Nearby, a boy no older than 10 ground his heel into a burned head. "Where is Bush?" the boy yelled. "Let him come here and see this!"
Masked men gathered around him, punching their fists into the air. The streets filled with hundreds of people. "Falluja is the graveyard of Americans!" they chanted.
Several news crews filmed the mayhem. The images of a frenzied crowd mutilating bodies were reminiscent of the scene from Somalia in 1993, when a mob dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu. That moment shifted public opinion and eventually led to an American pullout.
The White House blamed terrorists and remnants of Saddam Hussein's former government for the attack. "This is a despicable attack," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, told reporters, adding that "there are some that are doing everything they can to prevent" a transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30.
American military officials said the violence in Falluja, however chilling, would not scare them away. "The insurgents in Falluja are testing us," said Capt. Chris Logan, a marine. "They're testing our resolve. But it's not like we're going to leave. We just got here."
Captain Logan, who is stationed at a large walled base on the outskirts of the city, said Falluja was becoming "an area of greater concern." Last week, a contingent of marines, who recently took over responsibility for Falluja from the Army, fought gunmen in a battle in which one marine, a television cameraman and several Iraqi civilians were killed.
"This is one of those areas in Iraq that is definitely squirrelly," Captain Logan said.
Many people in Falluja said they believed that they had won an important victory on Wednesday. They insisted that the four security guards, who were driving in unmarked sport utility vehicles, were working for the Central Intelligence Agency.
"This is what these spies deserve," said Salam Aldulayme, a 28-year-old Falluja resident.
Intelligence sources in Washington said the four were not working for the C.I.A. They worked for Blackwater Security Consulting of Moyock, N.C., providing security for food delivery in the Falluja area, according to a statement from the company. The occupation authorities have hired hundreds of private security guards for a range of duties.
Witnesses in Falluja said several of the men had Defense Department badges, though such identification is common for contractors working for the occupation. A senior military officer said the four were retired Special Operations forces — three Navy Seals and one Army Ranger. American officials declined to immediately identify the dead men.
In the last three weeks, more than 10 foreign civilians have been killed in Iraq, though no attack provoked the spasm of brutality that followed this one.
Since the war in Iraq began, Falluja has been a flash point of violence. Of all the places in Iraq, it is where anti-American hatred is the strongest. The area is predominantly Sunni Muslim. Many families remain loyal to the captured dictator, Mr. Hussein, who is also a Sunni Muslim. Over the years, Mr. Hussein cultivated a network of patronage and privilege among the tribes and elders of Falluja. Many became top army officers. Some ran big companies. When Mr. Hussein was ousted last April, the people here lost their jobs, their businesses and their power.
That set off a cycle of killing and responses, a bloody feud between a clannish society and occupiers from thousands of miles away. Last April, American soldiers killed more than 15 civilians at a demonstration in Falluja. In November, an American helicopter was shot down outside the town, killing 16. Townspeople danced on the wreckage.
In February, insurgents mounted a brazen daylight attack against a convoy carrying Gen. John P. Abizaid, the American commander in the Middle East. He escaped unscathed. But two days later, gunmen blasted their way into a Falluja jail, killing at least 15 police officers and freeing dozens of prisoners.
Last week, the First Marine Expeditionary Force formally took control of the city, population 300,000, which sits on a desert shelf about 35 miles west of Baghdad. Marine commanders said they were going to try a different approach from the Army, which had basically pulled back to bases ringing Falluja and left policing up to the locals.
"We're doing work outside the wire," Captain Logan said. "We're running patrols. We're rebuilding things. We're working with Iraqis."
Most of the Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad, has become so unsafe that American forces stick to their bases, their movement usually limited to heavily guarded convoys.
Around 7 a.m. on Wednesday, an Army convoy passing through the town of Habbaniya, west of Falluja, rolled over an I.E.D., or improvised explosive device. The bomb was buried in the road and blew up under an armored personnel carrier, killing five soldiers. Roadside bombs are everyday occurrences in Iraq. But few have claimed as many casualties. "It was a very large I.E.D.," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director for the occupation forces.
A few hours later the men from Blackwater Security drove into downtown Falluja. After they were shot, the scene turned grisly. A crowd of more than 300 people flooded into the streets. Men swarmed around the vehicles. Some witnesses said the Americans were still alive when one boy came running up with a jug of gasoline. Soon, both vehicles were fireballs.
"Everybody here is happy with this," Mr. Furhan, the taxi driver, said. "There is no question."
After the fires cooled, a group of boys tore the corpses out of the vehicles. The crowd cheered them on. The boys dragged the blackened bodies to the iron bridge over the Euphrates River, about a mile away. Some people said they saw four bodies hanging over the water, some said only two. At sunset, nurses from a nearby hospital tried to take the bodies away.
Men with guns threatened to kill the nurses. The nurses left. The bodies remained.
AMERICA'S ISLAMIZATION
CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) spokesman Ibrahim Hooper indicated in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he wants to see the United States become a Muslim country.
Before Americans start pitying the poor Brits (who truly deserve a good bashing from Islam), they should checked their own neighborhoods! Besides Louis Farrakan's Nation of Islam, the Black Panther and New Black Panther Parties with all their black wanna-be Muslims, there are also REAL Muslims and their communities are springing up everywhere. In 1970 there were an estimated one-hundred thousand Muslims in the United States. Today, a mere 34 years later, the number is approximately 7-10 million! More than a quarter of a million people of Arab descent live in southeastern Michigan, making the area the second-largest Arab community outside the Middle East (after Paris, France). One frightening example of their prolific growth in American is Dearborn, Michigan. Of a total population of
90,000 Dearborn residents, 25,000 are now Arabs! And of all the Dearborn children under the age of 18, a full 58% are Arab children! Other developing centers of Arab/Muslim growth are Florida, Texas, New Jersey and California. God Bless America!
Every year huge numbers of Arabs/Muslims from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kuwaitis, Syria, Egypt, Albania and dozens of other ethnic Muslim states who hate America swarm into the United States and add to the already increasing numbers of Arab/Muslim. And every year hundreds of mosques, which preach the extermination of all non-Muslims and the Islamization of America, are being added to the thousands already pointing their minarets skyward. The vast majority (80%) of American mosques are funded with Saudi Arabian money and most subscribe to 18th century Wahhabism that calls for the spread of Islam through violence. Many mosques, "Islamic Learning Centers" and Arab/Muslim Student Unions are distributing large numbers of pamphlets and leaflets attacking Judaism, Christianity and other non-Muslim religions and urging young Americans (esp. angry black Americans) to convert to Islam! Not surprisingly, a large number of African-Americans convert to Islam while in the prison systems! The National Islamic Prison Foundation, which coordinates a campaign to convert inmates to Islam claim an average of 135,000 such conversions per year. And if thousands of self-hating, Leftwing Jews hadn't already converted to Buddhism, they too might be targeted!
The nerve of these evil people to exploit the freedoms given to them here in America and other democracies when their goal is to extinguish ALL freedom!
Many Arabs in America are a disloyal fifth column. They work relentlessly to undermine the U.S. struggle to survive in the face of the growing Muslim terrorist threat. The huge Muslim birthrate, Muslim immigration, the massive expansion of Muslim religious and educational institutions that convert Christians to Islam and the purchase of major U.S. companies by Muslim oil sheiks are all also part of their strategy. America's great friend (???), Saudi Arabia, from whose land came fifteen of the nineteen September 11th Arab hijackers (who flattened the World Trade Center, a portion of the Pentagon and made a very big hole in a Pennsylvania field), has for some time been spear-heading the spread of Islamic doctrine. The Saudis have wholly or partly financed some 210 Islamic Centers (check out this one in Boca Raton, Florida!!!), more than 1,500 mosques and 202 colleges and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, Asia, South America, Canada, Australia and America. Check out the mosque near you and look for Islamic propagandists exalting the virtues of Islam to appear soon in YOUR kid's school. Speaking of schools, watch them try to infuse Islam and Islamic rights INTO school systems! Did you know that some Islamic schools in America are teaching hatred toward American Jews and Christians? And what about regular North American colleges and universities? Check out one of the so-called "social activities" of the M.S.A. (Muslim Student Association)! And don't forget to pick up the U.S. Postal Service's new 34 cent Eid-il-Mubarak stamp!
Note: For a better appreciation of the colonization of Arab/Islamic terror squads arrive, colonize and flourish in America and how they interconnect, recruit, raise money and use the American freedoms and legal system as a cover.
Falluja religious and community leaders are just posturing for the world media. The PA has this down to an art form. The PA situation is different, as the Arab dominated UN, the EU, and our own State Department have the Israelis coerced and intimidated into inaction (for now).
I don't think the furtive attempt at playing the same political games by these Jihadis is going to fly, here. No matter how skillful the linquistical gymanastics of the Bush Administration, there is no way to put this in a positive light. Bush knows this barbarity is another Somalia scenario. It would be out of established Administration character to not respond in a very loud, high-profile way; or, he can just surrender now because it's all downhill after this incident.
But I don't think so.
Fallujah is going to reap the Whirlwind. And it's going to be flying a Marine Corps flag....
I agree, Bush can't "Religion of Peace" this one into forgetfullness.
But when our special forces ask for C-130 Death ships this time, I promise you, they won't have to ask a second time.
In English or in Arabic?
Thankfully for everyone involved, the hatred of the radical Islamics does not typify the feelings, positions and opinions of the majority. I pray we as a country do not lose sight of that.
This is not between Isalmists and the west, not between Saddam loyalists and America this is between good and evil, light and darkness and I can’t sit and watch or explain anymore. You can say, “Nuke Mecca” or “nuke Fallujah” and you can chose the Spanish government’s attitude and submit to terror, or you can join us (Iraqis and coalition) in fighting dictatorship, terrorism and their-no less evil and damaging- propaganda machine. I call for serious measures upon such channels that provoke hatred and celebrate terror and show it as a heroic action. I say, “‘nuke’ Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia, the terrorists and all dictators in the world. It’s either us or them”. The evil TV channels should be prevented from entering Iraq and spew their poisons into the minds of simple people. They’re more dangerous than the terrorists themselves and no rigid concepts such as ‘freedom of speech’ should stop us here. This is not journalism, its terror propaganda.
I don't think there's a need to change the coalition strategy in Iraq in a radical way, it's a very good one, but needs some fine adjustments. I think what should be done is that we go on with our plans to build a new free and democratic Iraq and show the people the benefits and beauty of freedom, but at the same time we should deal firmly with those who act only in response to hatred and fear and have no respect for any law or human values, in other words people who made it necessary that every country should have an efficient law system supported by a powerful police to make sure that law is respected and to punish, and even eliminate when it’s necessary, those who don’t fit in the society.
From the Thursday, April 01, 2004 entry entitled "Crime and punishment" on http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/
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