Marines Encircle Fallouja (Operation Valiant Resolve commencing)

The Marines have .50 cal Barrett rifles now, right?

an offer to negotiate a peaceful settlement by the tribal Sheikh of Fallujah, Hatim al-Alwani, had been rejected by the Marines.

Let's hope Israel does just that and soon.

The guys who ambushed the car, build and deploy the roadside bombs and level RPG attacks are remnants of Saddam's professional assassins. They are NOT Fallujahians in armed revolt. These guys are professional killers.

There are several, perhaps many ... local residents who have knowledge of their location and activities. They are menacing strangers, and somebody is going to step up for money or country and give them up. That's how we've nailed all these creeps to the wall.

We're now facing the worst of the worst. Soulless animals who, if captured, would hang at the end of a rope for their evil crimes. They don't intend to hang, their last best desperate try is to create events that would cause America to overplay her hand and react with violence that kills innocents and destroys their cities. It's the same gambit the Shi'ite cleric is waging. His power and standing is to create a religious rift, bait America into a response that entails civilian death, and exploit the event to fracture Shi'ite support for a democratic Iraq.

They understand the June 30 date, they are hoping to create religious, ethnic or nationalistic strife, and Bush will not let it happen. Our measured, rational reaction to the outrageous murder and desecration of last week IS sending a message to Fallujihans. We are to be trusted.

Sorry, you don't get your pound of Fallujahian flesh. The lives and future of 290 million Americans, 25 million Iraqis and freedom loving citizens of the civilized world take precedent over indiscriminate revenge.

We're not Sonny Corleone in an emotional rage passing through the tollbooth. We, our CIC, operate like Michael.

But .. if we go in there and just start shooting up everything, how many women and children will be killed??

Also, keep in mind that there will be women and children shooting at us, most likely.

And remember how the Iraqis ran when confronted with US firepower. They're only brave when they're not being shot at. Maybe some foreign terrorists are also in the city, but I expect they've already melted away. What's left are some hardcore terrorists...Shiites?...backed up by the jerks in that picture...barefoot or in flipflops, and women and children.

I think they will start picking them off one by one with the Barrett....I mean, seeing your local jihadi cut in two with your own eyes will make you think twice....

"The Barrett 50 cal Sniper Rifle may have been the most useful piece of equipment for the urban fight – especially for our light fighters. The XM107 was used to engage both vehicular and personnel targets out to 1400 meters. Soldiers not only appreciated the range and accuracy but also the target effect. Leaders and scouts viewed the effect of the 50 cal round as a combat multiplier due to the psychological impact on other combatants that viewed the destruction of the target.

“My spotter positively identified a target at 1400 meters carrying an RPG on a water tower. I engaged the target. The top half of the torso fell forward out of the tower and the lower portion remained in the tower.” 325th PIR Sniper

"There were other personal anecdotes of one round destroying two targets and another of the target “disintegrating.”

Well .. in that area .. you're probably right!

Iraqi Shi'ite supporters of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr celebrate near a burning U.S. Army truck in the Shuala neighborhood of Baghdad April 5, 2004. A U.S. soldier and a Marine were killed in separate attacks by guerrillas in Iraq, the U.S. army. It said the Marine was killed in the tense area west of Baghdad. The soldier was killed by a car bomb in the northern city of Kirkuk Sunday. (Ceerwan Aziz/Reuters)

An Iraqi Shi'ite supporter of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr celebrates near a burning U.S. Army truck in the Shula neighborhood of Baghdad April 5, 2004. U.S. helicopters blasted targets in Baghdad as a showdown intensified with radical Shi'ite militiamen challenging America's postwar blueprint for Iraq. (Ceerwan Aziz/Reuters)

Radical Shiite militiamen shout from the top of the governor's house they occupied in the southern city of Basra, Iraq, Monday April 5, 2004. About 150 men occupied the building in a dawn invasion, in protest over coalition actions against radical Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr, seen in poster. (AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani)

Yes I'm pissed at the world. I look like an over stuffed pig. Pig I tell ya. I've been cursed.

Loyalists of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr take position in western Baghdad, Iraq, district of Shula, Monday April 5 2004, following a fight against US forces. The top U.S. administrator in Iraq declared the radical Shiite cleric an 'outlaw' Monday after his supporters rioted in Baghdad and four other cities. (AP Photo/Samir Mizban)

A U.S. Army officer negotiates with a local official in charge of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's office in the Baghdad suburb of Shuala April 5, 2004. The officer agreed to withdraw his troops to lessen tensions in the neighborhood. REUTERS/Ali Jasim

Amnesty Wants Rights Laws on U.S. Troops in Iraq

By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. troops in Iraq should be subject to international law once the occupation ends if Washington wants to win the confidence of the Iraqi people, the head of Amnesty International said on Monday.

The legal status of Washington's forces in Iraq will become an issue when the U.S.-led occupation ends on June 30 and sovereignty is turned over to an interim Iraqi government, Irene Khan, Amnesty's secretary-general told Reuters during a visit to the United Nations.

In similar missions around the world, the Bush administration has insisted that its nationals -- whether soldiers, U.N. peacekeepers or other U.S. personnel -- be shielded from prosecution under international law as well as the laws of any other nation.

Khan said in the interview London-based Amnesty intends to press Washington to agree to subject its forces in Iraq to international law after the occupation.

The Bush administration argues that no court should have jurisdiction over American citizens performing an official mission overseas without U.S. consent.

Washington has signed bilateral agreements with dozens of countries who have promised not to prosecute U.S. citizens and efforts to negotiate such agreements with other nations are ongoing. The United States has withheld some aid from governments that have refused.

'A DIFFICULT DEBATE'

Washington is expected to insist that its forces in Iraq be similarly exempted from prosecution by other nations as well as by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

It has yet to be decided whether to pursue this through a U.N. Security Council resolution or through a legal pact known as a Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq's new interim government, U.S. officials said.

Whatever the form, "it is going to be a difficult debate," acknowledged one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

However, Khan said: "We will certainly campaign on those issues, because we think that at the end of the day, human rights is about justice and for people to have a sense of justice, the same rules must apply on both sides.

"There has been a tendency for the United States, on international law issues, to seek exceptions and to opt out, and the question is, what impact this is now having generally on the political solution (for Iraq), but also on respect for human rights."

Khan contended that an exemption from international law would undermine Iraqis' confidence in the U.S. mission because it would raise questions about whether American troops intended to abuse Iraqis' human rights.

She said it might also encourage Iraqi insurgents to ignore international law, as happened last week in Faluja, when four U.S. contractors were murdered and their charred bodies paraded through the streets.

"A large part of the sense of anti-American feeling that exists is the notion that Americans are not applying the same standards to themselves as they expect of others," said Khan.

"You are not going to fight this kind of situation, whether it is the war on terror or whether it is this type of very brutal insurgency, without winning the support of the people, and to win the support of people, you have to win their confidence."

Thanks for the numbers clarification. Fox has now said, 300,000 population and 1200 military.

Well, that's funny. Tell Amnesty International they have to wait until Iraq is completely free before anybody can qualify for amnesty, but we'll certainly entertain their requests when it is.

"you need to stand down and catch a breath"

Thank you! I thought you'd never ask!

Let's look at some of our own history, specifically the Southern and Border States between 1890 and 1930, when thousands of blacks (and some others) were lynched, in some cases with a level of brutality and mutilation that matched what happened in Fallujah. (There were also race motivated lynchings in non-Southern states like Indiana, Arizona, and Delaware. It was not exclusively a Southern problem.) For instance, in at least one case, the victim was skinned alive and several rednecks later tanned the skins to make razor strops. These lynchings sometimes did put a swift end to the lives of criminals, but too often killed blacks who violated the unwritten sexual and cultural codes of the South or who were wrongly accused of violating those codes. In many cases, the lynchings were sanctioned by local officials and local elites. Some lynchings were public affairs, with picnickers and commemorative postcards. In one case (Tulsa in 1921), white violence degenerated into an anti-black pogrom, with much of the African American section of that city burned to the ground and several hundred people, mostly black, killed. The police and the state militia took no action until the violence had played out.

That the lynching party was relatively small and the witnesses in many cases were few does not eliminate the complicity of local officials and elites. Jail guards went off duty before the lynchers came, or did not put up a fight. State and local officials usually did not investigate the lynching and seldom prosecuted the lynchers.

There was an ideology that motivated the Southern (and other) lynchers: white supremacy combined with a redirection of Southern anger toward their failed secession attempt onto the African-Americans. The white supremacist beliefs derived from a form of Darwinism that applied the biologist's evolutionary principles to racial differences. This ideology, in a more virulent form, motivated the German Nazis. Until the 1920s, most Americans, even those who thought lynchings were horrible, believed that whites, especially Nordic whites, were the superior race.

Had Theodore Roosevelt or Calvin Coolidge sent Federal troops into the South to stop lynchings and protect black civil rights, they would have provoked a second civil war. In Coolidge's time, with the Ku Klux Klan having several million members in the Northeast, Midwest and West, as well as the South, the civil war would have had combat zones from Maine to California. Catholics, Jews, blacks, Indians, union members, and white liberals (both old style liberals like H.L. Mencken and Robert Taft and socialistic modern liberals) would have been arrayed against a probable majority of white Protestants. With tanks, machine guns, and warplanes, such a civil war would have made the 1861-65 troubles look like a barroom brawl.

The end of lynching and equal rights for African Americans had to await several decades as public opinion, even in the South, was swayed to oppose at least the crudest manifestations of white supremacy. After the 1920s, theories of the genetic superiority of Europeans were largely debunked by science. Southern politicians and businessmen recognized that the virulent racism of prior decades hurt the region's economy, keeping investment out. Losing millions of blacks to Northern cities diminished the South's labor pool and created a voting bloc in the Northern industrial states that pushed Northern politicians for Federal action against segregation. The horrors of Nazi Germany, the ultimate race based regime, disenchanted many from racist views. From the late 1920s through the 1950s, the number of lynchings declined dramatically. Those that occurred mostly took place in small towns, not in Dallas or Atlanta, and usually happened under cover of darkness.

By the 1950s, the South had changed sufficiently so that when Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson sent Federal troops and lawmen into the region to end school desegregation and arrest white supremacists, there was no general uprising as there likely would have been at the height of the lynching era. Orval Faubus, Ross Barnett, and George Wallace blustered and proclaimed their support of segregation, but they did not order their respective states' National Guards to resist the Federal authorities. Neither did they call for armed uprisings in Little Rock or Birmingham. (There was one small insurgency at Oxford, Mississippi, where several thousand segregationists, led by retired Army General Edwin Walker, fought a force of Federal marshals attempting to desegregate Ole Miss. However, regular Army units soon routed the Rebel wannabes.)

Times changed, but it took over 30 years to do so.

I have used this discussion of American history to lead into consideration of the issues of a police-type response vs. a military response to the outrages at Fallujah, Iraq. This particular part of Iraq is a stronghold of anti-American sentiment. Do we really have the luxury of many years to win the hearts and minds of those Iraqis motivated by either Baathist or Muslim extremist ideology to abandon those beliefs? It appears that half-hearted measures, like sending Federal marshals into the South in 1924, would be futile. The only solution is a massive exercise in force to make the Iraqi elite and masses realize, as did the Germans post V-E Day, that resistance is signing one's death warrant.

In the immediate days after World War II, Nazi diehards, called werewolves, tried an underground resistance. The werewolves, when captured, were shot on the spot by Americans, Britons, and Russians alike. Resistance soon ended. Those Germans who were pro-Nazi, but not as fanatic as the werewolves, soon learned their lesson.

There is no substitute for victory.

"Also, keep in mind that there will be women and children shooting at us, most likely."

There's no evidence to support that.

The Fallujah Sunni sect is ultra conservative. They are strict adherents to tenets of the Quran. They do not recognize any cleric as arbiter and final authority on interpretation of the work. For their loyalty, industry and tribute, Saddam provided them protection of their worship from radical Muslims, state sponsored jobs and community investments.

Women in Fallujah won't show their faces or bodies in public as a gift of their modesty.

You think they're going to take up weapons? For a regime and a dictator who is in American jail?

These people are devoted to their faith and works. They were protected by Saddam. They returned loyal service and deference. But they aren't Baathists, and there is no Sunni jihad at work.

It's about trust. They need to trust our intentions and commitment more than they fear the Baathists now and in the future.

We've maintained overwhelming control of a country of 25 million, heavily armed Muslims, while taking less than 500 KIAs. Nearly all of which were result of ambush attacks on poorly protected supply convoys and patrol vehicles.

Iraqis are not taking potshots at our soldiers from the windows of their homes. There's no Iraqi Underground or Viet Kong guerilla movement bubbling in Baghdad.

We're under attack from a small group of Baathist assassins and assorted Fedayeen, Iranian disrupters and Jihad martyrs. Terrorists.

We're not occupying a hostile population. Women and children are not taking up arms against us. We are not at war with Iraq, but rather with the remnants of the Saddam regime and all agents of international Islamist terror.

We will prevail, the June 30 deadline will be met and the geopolitical dynamic of the Muslim world will be altered with Iraq's success. That makes Americans, and the World, safer.

We're going to locate, assault and kill the vermin who have been killing our soldiers around Fallujah. They may be in league with one or two Fallujah policemen. Maybe a cleric. No matter, we'll find them and bring them to justice. The perps. Not a half million innocent townspeople who are not attacking our soldiers and civilians. As Rummy would say, that would be "unhelpful". We can't afford "unhelpful" strategies.

;

They were in bed with the terrorists. They knew where and when it would happen, were there with cameras ready. The town was shuttered, no one on the streets, gasoline in position at several crossroads. Everyone knew. They should be shot. We can't afford to worry about media bias, nor should we. If we let the media or the rest of the world dictate what we do and how we do it, Iraq's lost, as well as the rest of the Middle East and the war on terror.

.

Could the AP's rumored involvement be the reason Bush asked the AP reporter who addressed him simply as "sir" at today's news conference, "Who are you talking to?" Bush forced the reporter to address him as "Mr. President."

I saw that. I thought it was great!

I think Iraq is going to work because the vested interest of all parties to share the resources, protection and investment the new Iraq will garner trumps any benefit of religious or ethnic purity.

Iraq has long been a secular state. Any movement to impose Sharia, through legislative initiative, will fail. Any movement to impose it through revolution will also fail.

Why would the Kurds, protected and involved through a Constitution, choose to declare an independent state? A state with no economy, resources or national security? Why would Basra residents forego the commerce Iraq provides when they are free to worship as they wish? Would Fallujahians demand that women shield themselves in burkahs and veils throughout Iraq, if they are permitted to do so as a choice?

It's a win win for all involved.

Regarding the lynchings, TR should have sent the Marshals down to arrest and imprison those involved in conspiracy to kidnap and murder. If Southerners wanted to fight a Second Civil War to assert their right to deprive Black Americans of their Constitutional rights, that's a fight worth having and winning. He shirked his obligation.

I can't believe that Southern states and citizens would seceed if Roosevelt summoned Federal power to ensure Black Americans were not kidnapped, judged, sentenced and hung as a States rights prerogative.

I know this ... the South would have lost, and they would not get their states and citizen rights back. This time, you'd see a map with Charlotte, Leesurrenders; Atlanta, SouthLincoln; Charleston, St. Sherman; Birmingham, Carpetbaggia; Biloxi, Abolitionia; Knoxville, Federalisti; Roanoke, New Appomatix; Little Rock, Integrationa; Shreveport, Yankeeville.

I can't get behind an insurrection founded on the principle that Black folk can be seized, accused, judged, sentenced and hung from a tree till dead. Guaranteed, 30 minutes or less.

No way will American soldiers be judged by them.