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 ...
how many soldiers have been killed in combat so far in May, as compared to March and April? I believe we lost 3 today, but what do the figures look like for the first half of May?
Just freak’n let the Marines fight the way they want to fight and finish. Jesus,… No need to send in starship enterprise or the Moab worshiping fringe until that fails. Just do the obvious before the radical. Just let the Marines resume the attack on Fallujah the way they want. No help from the audience…
It was very bad until the battalion was brought up, then another battalion. Fallujah was not a planned assault. A few Army Cobras and some seriously hard core, no surrender Marines, prevented them from being overrun.
Forward units lived off local food and water for days. I mean chasing down chickens under covering fire and saving them in empty sand bags.
I posted the letter from my son's chaplain then. Very grim time. So after a month of this the boys were really tired, weapons breaking down, and most of the enemy were dead. Saleh and Latif come along, lots of pressure from CentCom/Bremer, your're tearing up too much, blah, blah, fricking blah, etc.
So that's why the decision was made. Like I say, it ain't over.
Being Jewish I know fully what it takes to break Hamdi's will..and do so with a messsage that careens thru his squallor lands.
Israel broke Egypt and Syria by airpower...yes a 2 day tank battle breakthru in Sinai did start the massacre..but clearly..airpower did Hamdi in.
Up in the Golan..Israel was pasting them with Napalm and cluster munitions....Egypt and Syria haven't been back since.
You can't peicemeal fight Islamic armies..they just reform and come again.
you have to anhillate them..crush them..send them reeling in derision,
Like the FAE of Gulf War 1...the hiway from Kuwait to Bugdud.
U.S. has chosen the minimal collateral damage route....thats a costly concept..too costly..and does not end a matter..does it.
By my count we've lost 26 in the first two weeks. I don't have the monthly figures handy but, at this rate, I believe that May will be high on the list of bad months.
I got the May hostile death count total from: CentCom Casualty Reports. Note that the list includes reports from both Iraq and Afghanistan. It also includes deaths from accidents.
That’s a gross fraud.
The assault on Fallujah lasted 7 or 8 days. The “month” was a semi-cease fire under ridiculous rules of engagement ordered from above.
What kind of crap are you trying to promote here? You’ve been parroting the RNC line from post one here newbie. Now this is another step beyond. This is fantasy.
Excise me if I put my trust in the USMC rather than you or our wobbly administration.
Learn form Vietnam. Don't tell them how to fight, or at least don't change in mid stride.
One of my Family members U.S....A Gulf war 1 ...A-10 pilot...an F-16 Pilot assigned to the elete fighter squadrons in South Korea.
Now..a LT Col...assigned to the Joint Cheifs of Staff.
In the past years prior to the Iraq war..he wrote thinktank for the War College...wrote protocals for the Multi theatre concept of *Deep Strike[His forwards..Penatgon reports are available on PDF file]
Much of what has occured in Iraq was forseen in the Pentagon....but ignored by the present admin.
The Marines and other U.S. forces have done exceedingly well in combat....that is....when they have clearence to do what they do best.
The 4 contractors were killed on 3/31. Fox Company, 2/1 Marines, led by Capt. Kyle Stoddard went into Al-Jawlan at midnight 4/4. They were the first company to lose a Marine. They were in continuous contact with the enemy until 5/1. 3 days short of a month, pardon me. You can contact 1stLt Eric M. Knapp at: KnappEM@1mardivdm.usmc.mil if you don't believe me and think you should waste his time and confirm my suspicions that you're good at tossing crap but not good at catching it.
Good post, I'll have to see that movie.
“Continuous contact” is what occurs with the restrictive rules of engagement that they were under (for all but the first eight days).
I don’t doubt that the Fallujahn attack started out misguided and that some units were initially in the desperate conditions that you mentioned, although I suspect any chicken chasing was more a result of Marines acting out from their restrictions rather than starving. (All that's irrelevent to the single point that I'm making.) The idea that they were in such desperate conditions from their own doing for a month is ridiculous. After 8 days, they were not allowed to fight the way they were prepared.
The significance of that is profound. It’s the clearest example to date of forcing restrictions on people, who should be setting those restrictions, that “coincidentally” favor the short term goals of politicians here and in Iraq rather than the long term victory that Marines suffered and died for. They didn’t die for this. This is verging on betrayal.
You want to call driving that point home to people unwilling to recognize it “tossing crap”? Brilliant…
Maybe you could enlighten us with current Marine Corps urban warfare doctrine to explain how the Marine Corps "really" wanted to fight in Fallujah.
I’d be ashamed to keep posting to someone who told me he wouldn’t read anything I wrote on this issue after being dishonest and name-calling. You’re like a jilted girlfriend who keeps driving by and honking.
But my last post to you is entirely relevent to this thread and should allow you the opportunity to explain your claim that the Marines haven't been allowed to do the job the way you think they should.
Now, regarding your post: The Marines went into Falluja more unguided than misguided. Their packs didn't come up for three days and they had no MRE's with them at all for most of that, so they scrounged. I didn't say they were starving, there was a lot of rice, beans, and flour in the homes they occupied along with cooking gear, etc. These are some young, ballsy Marines and a chicken dinner made sense to them, maybe not to us.
It is a matter of record that they took casualties nearly every day of that month, remember, the "ceasefire" started on the 14th after 10 days of heavy fighting. There was continuous contact until 4/26 when Echo Company of the 2/1 Marines had a KIA and 12 more wounded in an all day battle, some ceasefire. That was the day they dropped a minaret and cratered a mosque. The Marines had all the firepower they needed by then, it was just plain hard fighting all the way.
By the way, in the month of fighting Echo company had 47 wounded out of 140 in the Company. And, Marines always fight the way they're prepared.
What's "brilliant" (your term to me) is your own obscure responses when you're pinned down, and your labeling as "irrelevent" a discussion you don't want to continue. Again, I ask you to make your point rationally, back it up, and don't trivialize someone else's point by turning a cheap phrase.
Amen.
Fair enough. I’ve been condescending. I apologize.
I’ve sensed that you’re promoting only one side of the battle. I’m not challenging the Marines positive performance, their hardship or even their tactical results on a body count level. That’s why I call some of your descriptions “irrelevant”. They don’t relate to the issue that I’ve been promoting like a broken record.
They were not allowed to continue the assault in a combined arms fashion. Yes, that is the primary way they prepare to fight, and it was crippled.
In all I’ve read, after a few days the destructiveness of the battle was considered too costly by the Iraqi governing counsel, and I strongly suspect by the administration as well.
Can we agree that the Marines were ordered, or at least overwhelmingly pressured, to restrict combat into a kind of semi-ceasefire mode? I.e., don’t shoot until fired upon. No artillery armor or air other than in defense? I know that was not strictly adhered to, but it was certainly restrictive.
That is the root of what I’m upset with. You seem to have an inside track on the battle through your son. Do you disagree with that?
The point of the battlefield descriptions was to make my point that witholding or ignoring or avoiding intel created casualties and is part and parcel of the political and tactical ambush the Marines walked into.
I never disagreed with you here, I was just more focused on the effects of politics in place before the Marines arrived rather than what happened after the battle began.
I haven’t heard some of the Fallujahn stories that you mention. If you come across something else that's public, I’d appreciate being copied.
We’re not likely to get good intelligence on insurgents from areas we’ve never patrolled. It doesn’t look like the Fallujah Brigade as currently led will be sufficiently on the side of the upcoming Iraqi Government for their intell to be any good either. I think Al-Jawlan’s looking like a future safe-haven for bomb making plants and people like al-Zawahiri.
I don’t believe people are really fearful of the martyr factor in Fallujah. It’s just too convenient an excuse for politicians being unwilling to pay the price of victory, instead leaving them wringing their hands about how to “manage” that last 10%.
I don’t see how an image of an Alamo can be created after the images the world saw of charred civilian bodies suspended from a bridge. We briefly had justification to do whatever necessary to defeat the insurgents there and elsewhere. It’s over. Can’t attack a “quiet” city. If I lost a leg or an eye for that, I’d feel betrayed.
I think Fallujahn may be quiet for years, but not Iraq. Perhaps we’ll get to leave in a year or two, but because there will still be places like Al-Jawlan, there’ll continue to be frequent incidents like the killing of Saleem today dominating the news. This of course limits us in effectively holding Iraq up as an example for reform in the region.
What do you think of the latest Latif statements that seem very enlightened and progressive? I agree the Alamo scenario is bogus to us, the problem is we have so many "sensitive" types pushing policy that we worry too much about giving traction to the martyr concept. Why didn't the media publish the charred body hanging from the bridge, that didn't go any where.
I can't seem to get any notice of my Black Death post and the statements by the very fundamentalist Sunnis recognizing the Shia's founding martyr Hussein. I think it's a major phase shift and no one sees the sizzle.
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