Posted on 04/14/2004 3:54:46 PM PDT by saquin
FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. warplanes strafed gunmen in Fallujah on Wednesday, and more than 100 guerrillas with rocket-propelled grenades pounded a lone Marine armored vehicle lost in the streets — a sign of heavy battles to come if Marines resume a full assault on this besieged city.
Meanwhile, an Arab network reported Wednesday that it has a video showing the killing of one of four Italian hostages being held by militants in Iraq. Al-Jazeera broadcast footage of the four sitting on the ground, but said it did not show the death because it was too graphic.
With a truce crumbling and President Bush calling for a key U.N. role to keep the country's political transition moving amid the violence, a top U.N. envoy proposed an Iraqi caretaker government in a formula that abandons a U.S.-favored plan.
With at least 22 foreigners kidnapped and 87 U.S. troops killed halfway into April, the unprecedented violence has largely eclipsed the political process. Negotiations were being held on both fronts — at Fallujah in central Iraq and at Najaf in the south — but the U.S. military has warned it will launch new assaults if talks do not bear fruit.
In the south, the country's top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, persuaded radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to drop defiant negotiating demands — including that U.S. troops withdraw from all Iraqi cities. An Iranian envoy was also getting involved in the mediation with al-Sadr, an aide to the cleric said.
Still, al-Sadr militiamen appeared to be preparing for a fight, moving into buildings and onto rooftops on Najaf's outskirts, said Col. Dana J.H. Pittard, head of the 2,500 U.S. troops amassed outside the city, ready to move in against al-Sadr.
"Najaf is a holy place," said Kaysal Hazali, spokesman for al-Sadr. "If they attack it, God knows the results: It is not going to be good for the occupation."
The U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, said respected Iraqis should lead a caretaker government — with a prime minister, president and two vice presidents to run the country after the handover of power by the Americans on June 30 and until national elections in January. He did not say who would select them.
Under the Brahimi plan, the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council would be dissolved June 30, rather than expanded to form an assembly as called for in an earlier proposal U.S. administrators promoted.
However, the formula would also give Washington a way to dissolve the fractious and unpopular 25-member council.
The White House thanked Brahimi for his plan, but it wasn't clear whether U.S. officials would embrace it.
"We appreciated the United Nations' help in moving forward on our strategy to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqi people by June 30," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
In Fallujah, Marines and insurgents were fortifying their positions in preparation for more fighting.
In abandoned homes a few blocks into the city, Marines punched bricks out of walls to make holes through which to fire, and knocked down walls between rooftop terraces to allow movement from house to house without descending to the street. They spread shards of glass across doorsteps to hear the boot of an approaching insurgent.
Insurgents were also organizing. Gunmen were believed to be digging tunnels under the houses they hold to allow them to move without being targeted by Marine snipers, Marines said.
A 4-day-old truce in the city was crumbling amid nightly battles in which gunmen in larger groups have been attacking U.S. troops with increasing sophistication. Wednesday night the fighting began again, with AC-130 gunships over the city battering targets below.
The top Marine commander in the Fallujah area suggested time for negotiations was running out before U.S. forces call off their halt in offensive operations.
"I don't forecast that this stalemate will go on for long," said Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division. "It's hard to have a cease-fire when they maneuver against us, they fire at us."
Tuesday night, insurgents launched near simultaneous attacks on several positions of a company of Marines controlling a few blocks in the northeastern edge of the city. In one attack, the gunmen sent up flares to light up the American position, then unleashed heavy, continuous gunfire, Marines said.
In another intense battle that lasted nearly five hours the same night, one of two armored vehicles sent to resupply a front-line Marine position got lost during an ambush and ended up nearly half a mile inside the southern part of city.
The vehicle, with 20 Marines inside, came under an even larger ambush. At least 100 gunmen opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades, hitting it at least 10 times, knocking out its communications and its engine and paralyzing it.
"They've been preparing for this the whole time. ... We definitely stumbled into the wasp nest," said Captain Jason Smith, who was at the position meant to be resupplied.
The Marines in the armored vehicle fled into a nearby building, where they waited to be rescued. They threw back grenades that insurgents tossed over the wall and listened to gunmen whisper outside.
A rescue force, backed by four tanks, wandered the streets in search of the beleaguered vehicle, finally finding it by following a plume of black smoke. "We were firing in a 360-degree radius," said Lt. Joshua Glover, part of the team that reached the vehicle. While F-15 warplanes strafed the area for cover, the stricken armored vehicle was hooked to a tank and dragged away.
Elsewhere in the city, gunmen wore police flak jackets looted from Iraqi police stores.
"We fought for every one of these streets," Col. B.P. McCoy, 41, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment said during a dangerous, zigzagging trot through a northern neighborhood to inspect Marine positions. The streets were empty. A few scorched cars littered roads.
Still, Marines were sticking to their halt in their advance into the city, Mattis said. "We've got to be patient, but not too patient."
In southern Iraq, U.S. troops scoured the area around Najaf, combing through mangroves, villages and the desert in search of al-Sadr's militiamen.
A U.S. attack on Najaf, the holiest Shiite city, would likely outrage Iraq's Shiite majority, a community that — aside from al-Sadr's militia — has so far shunned anti-U.S. violence.
Meanwhile, Russia announced that it will evacuate its citizens from Iraq following the wave of kidnappings.
A kidnapped French journalist was freed, but there were reports that two Japanese were abducted — in addition to three Japanese already held captive by gunmen threatening to kill them.
U.S. officials and the top U.S contractor in Iraq, Halliburton, were trying to determine whether four bodies found belonged to seven Americans missing since gunmen attacked their convoy outside Baghdad on Friday. One of the seven, Thomas Hamill of Macon, Miss., is known to have been kidnapped, and his captors threatened to kill him.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined comment on whether the bodies were mutilated, saying only that it may be several days before the remains can be identified. Unconfirmed reports sent through official channels on Tuesday said the bodies had been mutilated.
Someone explain to me again why we've given the insurgents in Fallujah nearly a week to fortify their defenses.
I have been so upset this week. I have come to the conclusion that Islam is the creation of Satan. Any religion that breeds killers that hack people up, burn people alive, etc. in the 21st century is evil. Just like the Nazi's, this religion should be outlawed. It is a cult, and does not deserve world wide respect. It makes my blood boil everytime someone gives it any solace.
Then my good man, get your filthy a$$es out of there and into the streets to meet your maker without bringing his house down upon your lunatic sheetheads...
If you refuse -- and use your "holy" place as a place of aggression -- then YOU will be responsible for the ultimate destruction of your treasured "holy" place....
We have NOT forgotten all the Christian and Jewish holy places the Islamists have attacked and destroyed throughout the world, for THOUSANDS OF YEARS...
Why must YOUR places be immune?
Guess what sheethead....that concept is so pre 9-11...Finished!!!
Semper Fi
I've had that argument with myself now for the last few years. When I think about the troubled areas in the world, Islam, "the official religion of Peace" almost always seems to be there instigating. It's becoming harder and harder to argue against the "creation of Satan" conclusion.
I admit that we are an occupying force and that might explain some of the fighting in Iraq, but not the events of 9/11. It doesn't explain the murder of innocent women and children by suicidal bombers or suicidal hijackers all over the world.
Yes, America and the rest of Western society has its share of decadence, but the idea that you can murder and commit suicide so that you can be rewarded with an eternity with however many virgins seems far more decadent to me.
Yeah, the more I look at Islam and the events around the world, the more it sounds like a Satanic cult to me. Or at least, a religion that has been co-opted by Satan.
All we are doing with this pause is educating them as to our tactics. This is what the Israelis did in the lead up to Jenin and the result was that Pali's were able to rig homes in the area with explosives so that when the Israeli troops attacked by trying to move from building to building by using sledgehammers and whatnot, the Palies turned each building the Israelis attempted to enter into bombed-rigged boobytraps that ended up killing a significant number of Israelis.
The U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, said respected Iraqis should lead a caretaker government — with a prime minister, president and two vice presidents to run the country after the handover of power by the Americans on June 30 and until national elections in January. He did not say who would select them. Under the Brahimi plan, the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council would be dissolved June 30, rather than expanded to form an assembly as called for in an earlier proposal U.S. administrators promoted. However, the formula would also give Washington a way to dissolve the fractious and unpopular 25-member council. The White House thanked Brahimi for his plan, but it wasn't clear whether U.S. officials would embrace it.
This reeks of media bias. for all its faults, the IGC represents a lot of different Iraqi factions. A single president cant do that. They ought not dissolve the governing council, but expand it with locally elected leaders.
Who am I kidding? The UN ruins everything they come into contact with.
Speaking of "Holy," perhaps Najaf may wind up as one giant crator.
Semper Fi
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