ARAB MEDIA DEPART FALLUJAH; INTIMIDATION CITED

US Central Command ^ | Nov 3, 2004

[John Jorsett]

BAGHDAD, IRAQ – Quds Arab-language news wire service in recent days has reported that four Arab-language media outlets have been forced from the city of Fallujah by Anti-Iraqi Forces.

According to Quds, Al-Arabiya, Middle East Broadcasting Company, Lebanese Broadcasting Company and Al-Iraqiyah television were forced from Fallujah by Anti-Iraqi Forces because they were accused of providing biased coverage to Coalition forces by refusing to air insurgent stock footage of alleged civilian casualties. In discussions with Coalition officials, reporters from both Al Arabiya and MBC acknowledged threats to correspondents and indicated that some correspondents had withdrawn from Fallujah for their own safety and were reporting via phone from outside the city.

Saturday, seven people were killed and 19 wounded when a car bomb exploded outside the Baghdad offices of Al-Arabiya, the Dubai-based TV network. A web post claimed responsibility for the bombing on the Al-Izah bulletin board (http://www.alezah.com) in the name of the ‘1920 Revolution Brigades’, and another post to the Arab Dialogue Forum (http://www.hdrmut.net/vb) claimed the attack on behalf of the Jihad Martyrs Companies in Iraq.

Shootings, abductions and other acts of intimidation by Iraqi insurgents have made it difficult for journalists to operate and report freely.

-30-

[Robert_Paulson2]

Avoid the specter of large scale urban fighting where many Americans and their Iraqi allies will die.

---

Of course you realize we are going to do the 'urban thing' on them. But I would prefer no more marines die 'taking out the raghead trash.'

not my call.
the problem with the urban thing (IMO), is that it is not instantaneous in it's action, and will be drug out with truces, halts, negotiations ad infinitum. Twenty four hours of carpet bombing... would END fallujah.

while the drawn out 'urban assault method' has a tendency to demoralize our marines as well as the vast majority of Iraqis who want their freedom, their elections and for this to be over asap.

allowing the thing to go on and on, is counterproductive.

[Dark Wing]

ping

[Spruce]

Dresden.

[StJacques]

Jesus Jeff! You've put up a perfect recipe for bringing in another 10,000 foreign combatants. That is a ludicrous proposal! Insult the religious sensibilities of everyone in the Arab world, not to mention Fallujah itself, in order to pacify the city. And tarnish the Iraqi government with the brush of waging a war against Islam by its cooperation with coalition forces who deliberately insult Islamic religious beliefs. Yeah, that'll work just fine!

Fallujah is going to have to be dealt with harshly, even under the best of circumstances. Too many in the city have backed the insurgents and a price will have to be paid. But in exacting that price, the U.S., its coalition allies, and the interim Iraqi government must keep an eye on what happens after Fallujah is retaken. The interim Iraqi government must be able to claim legitimacy in the eyes of its people and your proposal will make that impossible.

[Hugin]

The military experts I have seen say it won't be a dismounted infantry attack like in Najaf. There will be heavy artillery and airial bombardment, followed by armored assault. If there is reisistance from a building, the building will be destroyed. We are ready to rebuild the city once its cleared, but there will be no fooling around this time.

[Jeff Head]

Agreed...MOABs, AC-130H's and whatever else necessary to compliment the B-52s.

[Jeff Head]

I disagree. When those 10,000 see that the price for fighting us is not heaven with 72 virigns, but that it is hell for them personally...and I do not just mean a hell of a death...I mena by their own beliefs, they will back off. Most Muslims, particularly there in Iraq, do not agree with the perversion that is going on with the Jihadists and foreign terrorists. They will not be offended...it is only the MSM and Al Jazeer that wants you to believe that.

There is historical precedence. Read your history about Black Jack Pershing and how he dealt with Jihadists. it ended it.

Sorry, but we must break the will of those fighting us and those who harbor and abett them. Going in any other way will mean more US casualities (and that's the main thing to avoid) and it will be drawn out, cease fires, peace talks, etc. The MSM and places like Al Jazeer will riducle us just as much for any collatorla damage anyway. It's time to end it.

[Jeff Head]

This is getting very close to what I am proposing and I am glad to see it.

[Enterprise]

"ARAB MEDIA DEPART FALLUJAH"

And don't let the door hit yer camel's *ss on the way out.

[kennyboy509]

How did ole Black Jack do handle the jihadi's?

No urban legends please.

[kennyboy509]

How did ole Black Jack handle the jihadi's?

No urban legends please.

[StJacques]

". . . There is historical precedence. Read your history about Black Jack Pershing and how he dealt with Jihadists. it ended it. . . ."

Jeff, I know my history far better than you ever will. Pershing's campaign against the Muslim separatists in the southern Philippines was supported by many Christians elsewhere in the islands, who accounted for a majority of the population. The southern islands were also far removed and isolated from other Islamic populations that could come to their assistance. Neither of these cases is true in Iraq.

Everything that happens in Iraq is broadcast daily on Arab television networks that reach across the Arab world. And thousands of foreign fighters from across the Arab world have gone to Iraq as a result. Do you really believe that smearing pig's blood on the people and city of Fallujah will not be known elsewhere in the Arab world? Do you really believe that it will not engender a response? Do you really believe that others in Iraq, especially the Shiites who are quietly cheering us on from the sidelines as we prepare to go into Fallujah, will not be enraged beyond belief at our deliberate insult to their religious practices?

You wrote:

"Sorry, but we must break the will of those fighting us and those who harbor and abett them."

Well here I agree. I'm ready to drop Daisy Cutters on any building in which the terrorists/insurgents hole up to resist. You break their will by killing them. And you strengthen their will by increasing their numbers, which your proposals to use pig's blood will certainly do.

I suggest that you read some history Jeff. Maybe you might understand that the French, the British, the Spanish, the Italians, and all others who have occupied the Arab world either learned to appreciate their religious sensibilities or were driven out for their failure to do so.

[Malleus Dei]

Why shouldn't they leave? They can't make any more Kerry commercials.

[Iatwttatl]

I understand we can now get Al Jazeera in Canada (on a new pay cable-channel, I believe). But we can't get FoxNews, regarding which I feel we shouldn't have to pay additional cable fees because all the English-language TV channels are one-sidedly Liberal/Left (except one channel which is business-oriented on fiscal matters). In Toronto, I can't get professional American conservative television news such as Fox produces; so much for multiculturalism up here-it's a gimmick with a decided ideological slant against the US and dialogue based on information. I should add that there's a Christian station available available in Toronto and Ottawa, but it's news offerings are not competitive and not even professional in my opinion. One TV commentator on the Christian channel is good, Mike Coren, but he doesn't give an American conservative professional approach which I want because of my cultural heritage and desire to compare; Coren filters everything thru Canadiana. I'm not against his work in anyway, but it's narrow and one nightly show on weekdays I believe. I think I'm entitled to the lead American conservative TV news as part of the free basic offerings for a cable TV line, as we get almost wall-to-wall anti-American slants on everything. I want an alternative in order to be able to compare the two slants, but the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) has rigged what we can legally watch. Besides I can't afford or rig to the landlord's roof an illegal satellite dish, and prefer not to break the law out of religious-moral conviction. In Canada's TV system run by the CRTC and supported by the state-channel, CBC, we're carefully insulated from American conservative info, news, and opinion, insulated and isolated by the state opinion-molding agencies. We're trapped in a censored media-system, but I could pay for Al Jazeera. Oh yeah, school teachers feed the one-sided slant they view on the Canada nationalist Liberal/Leftist TV system (not just CBC the state-owned and financed network), teachers feed this directly to their students, thus the hate-America ideology is extremely strong up here. Drats!

[StJacques]

"Communists are just Democrats in a hurry."

Best sig on the board. I love it!

[InterceptPoint]

they were accused of providing biased coverage to Coalition forces by refusing to air insurgent stock footage of alleged civilian casualties.

Seems like a perfectly logical application of the "either you are with us or you are with the enemy" rule. Of course it's the bad guys doing it but it is rational.

[Free_at_last_-2001]

Sounds good to me!

[F.J. Mitchell]

"The terrorists must be happy with their (Jazeera) coverage."

And why wouldn't they be? Jazeera has served the agenda of the terrorists, just as ferverently as our own MSM, serves the Dims and their candidates.

[Jeff Head]

The tale of his tieng 50 Muslim terrorists up to poles in the Phillipines and executing forty-nine of them with bullets dipped in pig fat is not necessarily an urban legend at all. Snopes themselves do not refute it...they simply indicate that they can find no clear evidence either way, but do not discount that it may have happened.

It's been a persistent story since 19911 when it occurred.

In the "Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing" by Frank E. Vandiver, Frank E. he indicates this:

Col. John J Pershing threatened the mullahs with . . . "splattering of pigs-blood on your houses and families and any who attack us and are killed will be buried in pig-skins." Consequently the mullahs made Pershing an Honorary Chieftan with little if any more trouble in his area of command.

In the 1938 book, "Jungle Patrol", the author indicates, regarding the defeat of the insurrection by the Moros,

It was Colonel Alexander Rodgers of the 6th Cavalry who accomplished by taking advantage of religious prejudice what the bayonets and Krags had been unable to accomplish. Rodgers inaugurated a system of burying all dead juramentados in a common grave with the carcasses of slaughtered pigs. The Mohammedan religion forbids contact with pork; and this relatively simple device resulted in the withdrawal of juramentados to sections not containing a Rodgers. Other officers took up the principle, adding new refinements to make it additionally unattractive to the Moros. In some sections the Moro juramentado was beheaded after death and the head sewn inside the carcass of a pig. And so the rite of running juramentado, at least semi-religious in character, ceased to be in Sulu. The last cases of this religious mania occurred in the early decades of the century. The juramentados were replaced by the amucks. .. who were simply homicidal maniacs with no religious significance attaching to their acts.

Snopes indicates it could well have happened that Pershing actually did these things. The stories regarding it are persistant and there is a lot of ancedotal accounts and evidence that is happened. I believe it did.

[genefromjersey]

The US should be expelling ALL media from the Falluja area-friendly and otherwise,and blocking all cell phone ,radio,and telephone traffic.