Posted on 05/15/2004 11:04:59 AM PDT by gandalftb
FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - The Iraqi general leading a force that controls Falluja said he had no plans to disarm insurgents, defying demands by U.S. commanders who appointed him and raising tension with Marines encircling the restive city.
Mohammed Latif, a former intelligence officer who now heads the Falluja Brigade, also told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday that U.S. forces should go home if they wanted peace.
"Weapons are not the problem. They are easy to collect," he said. "What we need to do is rebuild our country. There is no need for American soldiers. I am sure the Americans would be happy to go to their homes."
Latif's comments came after he held lengthy talks with Major-General James Mattis, the commander of the 1st Marines Division encircling Falluja.
The two appeared to have markedly different perspectives on how the Falluja operation was going.
But Mattis, repeating comments from other U.S. commanders, sounded much less at ease and said time was running out.
"We have to get done what we came to get done. I am always a bit impatient," he said. "We want it all: peace, the weapons and the foreign fighters dead or out of here. Negotiations are going fine but they can always go faster."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Attacking Al Jawlan/Fallujah was the first tactic and was about 70% successful. Bribing/hiring Latif and the ICDC deserters got us another roughly 20%. It's always cheaper to bribe all of them than to use up our Marines to kill some of them. We are watching but not manning, in force, the rebel perimeter in Al-Jawlan. The remaining rebels could drop their heavy weapons and escape past the Falluja Brigade cordon, but the twist is that they won't go. The Marines knew this and pulled out, no point staying, and the the Falluja Brigade was willing to try.
As predicted by some, now that the Brigade has 900 new pairs of boots and some money, they don't want to push it. Their refusal of Kevlar vests and helmets, early on, I think was a predictor of this. But at least they're not fighting us openly. Yes, we gave them AK's, but the Marines control the ammo.
The last 10% is tricky, Latif and the locals are clever and shifty, they don't care if we crater Al-Jawlan, they know we have $80 million to put in their pockets to rebuild it. The price of asphalt went up times 6 last week, every local smells money. Next, the rebels want to be the immortal heroes of Islam and won't run away. Latif and his money grubbers agree with them! The Marines are trying to solve this puzzle and they will, but there are no manuals on how to saddle a cat.
First there were sadr folks in Falluja, then we sent in Saddams ex soldiers under the command of saddams general now we have them all in the same town DESTROY IT AND THEM.
I told ya so... ;-)
Gimee a break.LOL
I'm with you. This current IN-action is crazy. Are we maybe hoping to take the bad guys alive?? Now THERE'S a silly concept.
Sadr's people went to Falluja just for weapons, they didn't stay. BTW most of the c-4 car bomb explosives and IED's throughout Iraq came from Fallujah. The IED ordnance was being dug up by locals from where Saddam's army buried them outside Al Taqaddum air base and sold in Fallujah. The Marines stopped all of that.
I haven't seen anything posted as FNC is just now running the story, but we evidently have a guns for cash exchange program running that has the Iraqis/whatever laughing at us. WTH?
LOL!
We clearly let up on Fallujah just as victory seemed to be at hand. At least on the surface, it seems we could have finished the job relatively easily ourselves, so why did we suddenly bring in a bunch of unproven Iraqis?
Perhaps we knew something that precluded finishing the job (heavily mined defenses assuring very high civilian casualties, WMD booby traps, whatever). Or perhaps we decided the time was not right for some other reason.
The most commonly given reason is that we bowed to political pressure from the Iraqis. However, a different explanation is possible. Perhaps we decided Al Sadr had to be dead or defanged first, thus reducing the "outrage" factor in other parts of Iraq when the job is finished in Fallujah.
If that is the underlying reason, it may succeed on the Al Sadr side, but still fail in Fallujah. Latif would not follow orders to withdraw, and getting him and his "troops" out of the way could be tricky.
Is the policy we have adopted in Falluja the start of about the same policy as we have adopted in Kosovo and Afghanistan? Surrender most of the countryside to warlords and crime factions. Hold up in fortified bases- and prop up a "democratic government" that barely has authority within it's own capital city?
That is a HUGE victory by the Marines.
I agree, your ideas seem to be part of the mix of our thinking over there.
The Marines are well aware of the "strong village" concept of Viet Nam, that concentrated our forces into sitting ducks and took away mobility. The Marines are very decentralized and are trying to do more to create a light presence all over Al-Anbar province with a heavy, rapid response if there's a flare up. Our garrisons are intentionally numerous and small with lots of patrols, a big departure from the 82nd Airborne tactics before.
Will the Iraqi general and his troops combine to resist any reoccupation? If so, they will have to be liquidated. Was the United States wise to issue additional weapons to the Iraqi volunteers, if they do in fact combine with the insurgents whenever a reoccupation is attempted by the marines? Conclusion. This is one hell of a mess and I don't see many intelligent decisions being made on our side.
this is like watching sausages being made.
come back in a month.
The goal is to hand over this pile of crap to a semi-sane non-Islamic fundie civilian authority on 6/30/04.
You’re putting the absolute best face that can be put on this pig.
You affiliated with the RNC? [smile] The goal a year ago was to defeat Iraqi/foreign insurgent resistance prior to rebuilding. We quit. Election’s coming up. Killing 100s or 1000s of Iraqis now will upset the country for several more months. Might require more troops.
Good Morning Vietnam. This is Bush’s “read my lips”, military commanders decide how to fight. BS!
He lost confidence in victory and compromised. Just like with his China appology, tax cuts, education reform, farm aid and steel tariffs. But what the hell do I know. I thought the Senate failure to prosecute Clinton after impeachment would lose us that election. Bush managed to squeak it out nevertheless. I’ll still vote for him. Anything else would be suicide.
”As Falluja goes, so goes central Iraq, as central Iraq goes, so goes the nation, " - Colonel John Coleman, chief of staff of 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (before the cease fire)”
Latif/Falluja Brigade are a concern if we go back in. We will have to fatten up their paychecks and post a watch. We gave them AKs only to make them legitimate, we control the ammo, and, this is key: they don't have kevlar.
It is a complex mess. But we got the right people on it.
Yes, indeed. This is part of the propaganda war, leveraging the threat of a return of the Ba'athists to frighten the sh*t out of the Shiites, who have been brutalized by them for decades.
Few people in America noticed when, between news cycles, a six hour bombardment proceeded our "withdrawl."
Interesting how, after that bombardment, attacks on our convoys stopped and the daily death count among our troops dropped to zero.
The special Ops guys and Marines who had carefully scouted the town for more than a week and a half located the right targets for that daisy cutters, I guess.
Don't let anyone tell you any of those who died in preparation for the pacification of Falluja, died in vain.
Pity we can't brag about our having won the Battle of Falluja. Most of those who sought to kill us are taking a well-deserved dirt nap.
In the course of History, that story will be told. Meanwhile, we must continue to the next goal, the pacification of Najif and Karbala.
Look for that victory to be just as sudden, and by all appearances, just as mysterious.
"All War is based on deception." - Sun Tzu
Our strategic error in winning the peace was to leave units like the 82nd Airborne all over Iraq to do a job they are not trained or equipped to do. We let Falluja/Al-Anbar province collect and distribute arms until the 1st MarDiv could rebuild and come back as 1MEF to do the heavy lifting. The 82nd Airborne brass decided to go to garrison and minimize casualties, so things got out of hand. The only certainty of war is confusion.
Nope. Read #18.
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