Posted on 04/02/2004 3:34:45 AM PST by kattracks
Town leaders in troubled Fallujah denounced the gruesome murder of four American contractors here, as imams decided to devote Friday prayers to condemn such acts considered sins in Islam.Police and paramilitary forces were deployed across Fallujah, setting up checkpoints at main entrances to the dusty town west of Baghdad, with many anticipating the harsh retaliation vowed by the US Army.
In an apparent move to ease tensions and avoid escalation, town leaders rushed to denounce Wednesday's grisly killings as residents headed to mosques for Friday weekly prayers expected to issue similar condemnation.
"The City Council held a meeting late last night to condemn the acts of mutilation of the bodies," council president Saadallah al-Rawi told AFP.
"We will distribute a statement to that effect later today," he said.
Rawi also said "imams across Fallujah have decided to make a unified Friday sermon today that will condemn the mutilation of the bodies, based on the holy Koran and the teachings of Prophet Mohammed, which prohibit them."
Many Fallujah residents expressed dismay at the mutilation of the bodies which they considered against Muslim teachings, although some justified the acts as a reaction to army raids on homes and mosques in the town.
On Thursday, the army recovered remains of the four slain Americans, after police officers gathered dismembered body parts from various locations around the town, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Baghdad.
The four were killed in an ambush by armed insurgents in downtown Fallujah, located in the so-called Sunni Triangle region where insurgents are leading a battle against US-led occupation forces.
Following the attack charred bodies were dismembered and publicly paraded by jubilant residents in this town located in the so-called Sunni triangle where insurgents are waging a fierce battle against US-led occupation forces.
Graphic pictures and footage of the macabre killings and mutilation filled airwaves and newspapers, shocking viewers around the world and prompting Iraqi officials to issue stern condemnations.
Iraq's interim Governing Council denounced the killings as a "savage" act that did not represent the Iraqi people.
Council member Samir Sumaidai said "what happened in Fallujah represents the worst of savage behaviour."
"What happened is very far away from the nature of Iraq and Islam," said Rosch Schaways, deputy to Kurdish leader and council member Massoud Barzani.
US officials have vowed a forceful response to the murders.
Speaking at a graduation ceremony at Baghdad's police academy on Thursday, an angry Paul Bremer, the US overseer in Iraq, said: "Their deaths will not go unpunished."
Top US military spokesman Mark Kimmitt said "we will respond. It is going to be deliberate and precise and it will be overwhelming.
"We will re-establish control and will pacify that city," he added. "It will be at the time and place of our choosing."
Replaying scenes from Fallujah, US televisions noted the similarities with the abuse meted out to the corpses of American soldiers killed in Somalia in 1993 in an ill-fated raid depicted in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."
Pictures of a dead US serviceman being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu aired constantly on US television at the time, and led to the eventual evacuation of US forces from Somalia.
Amen to that!
I am totally convinced that there are people and cultures that MUST be stamped out -- exterminated, exactly as one would want to exterminate vermin...
Militant Islam - is such a case.
To do otherwise, would be to expose Western Civilization and Democracy to eventual extinction..
Semper Fi
What a load of rotting carp. If we were invading infidels they would all be dead, their women raped, their children enslaved. Instead we're trying to establish their utilities, schools, and hand over the governing. They are just savages.
Okay, let's get this straight, they're going to condemn the mutilation of the bodies, but not say anything about the mass murders? A big "Eff You" to those raghead preachers.
Your way of thinking was shared by the BJ Clinton administration -- and it led directly to 9/11.
Sounds like the same approach taken in Vietnam...
"Some targets good, Some targets bad"....It didn't work!
This city of Fallujah, has been a hotbed of support for the lunatics we went there to destroy...
If the city "fathers, leaders, police and Imams" can not HALT the violence, and surrender the murderers - then the city must pay the consequences...
I do agree, the shotgun approach is not the appropriate technique or weapon....
I believe we should focus DIRECTLY on Fallujah - and use a weapon far more effective and destructive that a shotgun.
Up to this time...we have given the "citizens" of Fallujah no incentive to walk the straight and narrow --- they need to see disastrous consequences for supporting and celebrating the murder of coalition forces.
NOW, is the time to set that example..
Semper Fi
Prayers for our troops and the heartbroken families of these brave men.
First, in Saddam Hussein's world, nobody would have the balls to attack him or his loved ones the way these savages attacked and mutilated the four Americans. Saddam was a savage and ruled by doing this type of thing to innocent people, to ensure that nobody would have the balls to try similar with him and his people.
When I was a kid, my dad taught me how to make a fist ("the right way"); and he instructed me to fight back when somebody hit me. He said, "You don't just hit him one time, because he's going to come back and hit you again. You hit him, and keep on hitting him until you are damn sure he's not gonna get up." I was his first daughter; he had three more after me, and he taught us all the same.
If somebody wants to kill you, as these people have shown is their goal, you can't sit around a campfire and sing Wo-He-Lo with them. If their aim is to kill you, your aim better be to kill them first.
But I'm not a graduate of Georgetown or American University's School of Foreign Service, so this is probably not an approved method of diplomacy.
I suppose it's also a good thing that the tgslTakomas of the world are not in charge of America.
You've nailed it.
The Shia and the Kurds will make their lives miserable.
I couldn't be happier, except for that moment when the pigs are flushed our of the stye at the point of Marine Bayonets.
There is a lot of anger being posted here, and well it should be. But getting down to brass tacks, there is not going to be any nuclear bombs, MOAB's, public executions, etc. No more than there was in Afganistan when we went in.
Plain and simple, what I think is going to happen is that the military will move in, troops, tanks, C-170's, A-!0's, Apache's and all, and there is going to be one big shootout. Sort of like there was in the battles in Afganistan. With all those terrorist fighters taking their guns to town, and those already in town, they won't be able to not shoot at our guys. Then all hell breaks loose.
That will be the overwhelming part. This won't be one hummer with four guys, or a lone convoy, but a mass movement into town. And no backing down. A irresistable force moving through town, with the tanks and air supports that Mogidishu did not have when the Blackhawk Down incident occurred. The tanks had been there a month earlier, but Clinton had them withdrawn (see Ralph Zumbro's -a.k.a. "zippo" - Tank Aces for a nice supplement to Mark Bowden's book). Withdrawing the tanks won't be the case now.
Every terrorist/homicide bomber in town gets his day (?more like nanosecond) in the cross hairs. Picking out faces from pictures of the earlier celebrations will be more a question of identifying bodies - what's left of them. The rest might get turned in towards the end, but I kinda think they'll all fight to the bitter end. Even if we don't find all the perps, 10 to 1 payback won't be all bad.
This way too, there aren't the difficult questions of who to kill. Just shoot the ones who shoot at you. End of screening process.
Exactly.
why give them lead warning?
why go and risk the close proximity detriments
Personally..I would **Not go in right now.
Instead.. Target their tribal leaders and power players like Israel..do them from above with missiles.
let them collapse into confusion.
most likely..the murderers will hide at home..while their family lies to cover for them.
The important types may allready be wisked out of dodge to the tribal leaders other homes in outlying regions.
To much talk..lead warning.
this is a strange war.
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