Fallujah leaders condemn gruesome murders amid US threats of revenge

AFP | 4/02/04

[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.

[SunStar]

I think it's high time to bomb and destroy Al-Jazerra's studios and satellite offices.

[eureka!]

Well said, especially on the political cost to the area's 'leaders' with the upcoming transition. This area will be on the sh*tlist for the new administration. I was also surprised by the strength, make that foreboding sound, of the comments from the military and W on this. Methinks the malefactors will regret their day in the sun and seeming adoration and Mogadishu agitprop by the leftist press...

[Publius6961]

Thank you for sharing. I also have an opinion:

If you reward animalistic behavior because you are "above it" you can expect more of the same. There is a time and a place for everything.

I believe you are wrong.

[hgro]

The first priority of the Imams who have been preaching hate is to round up all of those participants in the killings and mutilations and hang them.

[Valin]

Who said anything about rewarding this act?

[Publius6961]

Who said anything about rewarding this act?

Let's parse words: You ridicule Tammy Bruce's suggestions, without presenting an alternative means to punish the barbarity. This might lead the reasonable person to conclude that doing nothing is your solution of choice.

Doing nothing is a form of reward.
See? It's not rocket science.

[Yardstick]

"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..."

It wasn't our TV sets "noting" this. It was our Rat-voting defeatist media "noting" this. Zogby comes to mind immediately. It's the media that's hoping for a Tet offensive, not the TV.

Let's hear it for evasive anthropomorphism.

[Robert_Paulson2]

Notice fallujah city fathers decry the "way the corpses were defiled" and NOT the KILLING itself?

Iraqi officials condemned the killings... and the desecration.

fallujans know these perps.
heads or hydes by special delivery or we are coming in to get them. any mosque or citizen aiding or abetting the desecrators or killers.... will be shot on the spot.

AND their families, extended, AND their mosque, AND their imam and HIS family...

That should give us a body bag count of about.. 1500-2500...
end of THIS op... end of fallujah's "terror leadership".

[Robert_Paulson2]

First Marine Division is getting ready for cordon and search operations along the lines of the MOUT exercises at Quantico.

---

got a brief description of that kind of operation for us uninformed and ignorant ones?


M. O. U. T.?

[myself6]

If your PC can handle it, download "Americas Army" (developed and distributed by the US army) and play the MOUT Mckenna level. That should give you some idea what MOUT is all about.


You will need at least:

1 ghz CPU
256 M ram
good video card ( no less than 64M video ram) I use the radeon 9800 128M video card (it rocks!)
broadband connection is not necessary but recommended.

[Jon Alvarez]

Peace activists defame the dead...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1110204/posts

[MJemison]

AS Major Bob said this morning, there must be Iraqi policeman (backed up by US forces) going house to house, interviewing the town leaders & tribal heads for the identities of the perps. He said they have to be area policeman, to make the point to the Fallujah people, that this will not be tolerated. (Unsaid, that these policeman would mete out their own form of barbaric punishment).
Major Bob also stated that if things are not handled this way, it would be the second largest mistake made in Iraq.

[GigaDittos]

Yes, they CONDEMNED the murders before they CHEERED for them. Fullujahians for Kerry.

[eureka!]

Absolutely. Work to end the "occupation" mentality. In time, self governance will take total hold...

[RightWhale]

Apparently the murders were okay, but the mutilation was not.

[Broadside Joe]

Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT).

[Robert_Paulson2]

thanks joe.
NOW it makes makes sense to me.

mout them out!
(like the old laundry DETERgent... Shout!)

[Robert_Paulson2]

get help RW....
you and I are thinking alike... see post 88.

rofl.
Since we know how THEY think.
I am concerned about staying sane.

[cmak9]

They leave us wondering whether there are ideas on earth which cannot claim the protection of tolerance and democratic space.

I don't wonder any more. Islam will have to go one day.

[RightWhale]

If there was a mistake made it was in not following the guidelines of Machiavelli's The Prince. Tyranny 101: if one is ruthless in the beginning, then one can become benevolent and be much loved. If one is benevolent in the beginning that won't be seen as benevolence but as weakness, and if one has to become ruthless after being benevolent one is seen as despotic.