Frivolity Is Projection: the Iraqi Quagmire - Printable Version +- Forums (https://bb.islamsms.com) +-- Forum: ENGLISH (https://bb.islamsms.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=5) +--- Forum: Islam (https://bb.islamsms.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=19) +--- Thread: Frivolity Is Projection: the Iraqi Quagmire (/showthread.php?tid=8854)

Frivolity Is Projection: the Iraqi Quagmire - Ibn_kumuna - 04-07-2004 Salaam Alaikum! Please take heed at the current rage in Iraq: Rockets Reportedly Kill Over 2 Dozen Iraqis in Falluja By KIRK SEMPLE Published: April 7, 2004 American-led international troops in Iraq were locked today in the fiercest fighting since the fall of Saddam Hussein a year ago, waging a two-front war against Sunni Muslim insurgents west of Baghdad and a ferocious and fast-spreading Shiite uprising in the south and center of the country. American marines fired rockets at a wall surrounding a mosque in Falluja, west of Baghdad, killing more than two dozen people, news services reported, quoting witnesses who said the death toll could be as high as 40. The American military said it had used air support to breach the wall "several hundreds yards away from actual mosque structure" after the marines were fired on from the mosque complex. It said one person in the force shooting at the marines was killed and said it had no report of civilian casualties. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld announced that the United States would increase troop strength in Iraq by taking advantage of the overlap between arriving reinforcements and troops already there, some of which would be kept beyond their normal departure dates. As the violence continued today, President Bush, who was at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., conferred with senior advisers about how to respond to the widening unrest in Iraq. In Washington, Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters at a news conference at the Pentagon that the Shiite militia arrayed against Americans and their allies did not add up to more than a few thousand fighters. Speaking of the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who has rallied his followers to drive foreign troops from the country and is being sought by American and Iraqi authorities, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "We will not allow Sadr to get away with murder." The extent of American casualties in fighting that stretched from the far south to Kirkuk in the north remained unclear, though military spokesmen confirmed today that 12 American marines died on Tuesday in a seven-hour assault by gunmen on an American base in the Sunni-dominated city of Ramadi, 70 miles west of the capital. An American soldier from the First Armored Division was killed this morning when his convoy was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade near a police station in Baghdad, a spokesman for the American military said. The military issued no other reports of American or coalition casualties today, but news agencies reported that an American soldier was killed and one wounded during a clash in the town of Balad, near Baghdad, and that an American military helicopter was hit by gunfire and made a crash landing in the town of Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, where Shiite militiamen and American troops were fighting. There was no immediate word on what had caused the crash or the fate of the crew. Since Sunday, clashes across Iraq have killed more than 30 American troops, a Ukrainian soldier, a Salvadoran soldier and, according to a tally compiled from accounts of witnesses, Iraqi hospital officials and American officers, at least 200 Iraqis. Coalition troops are facing the toughest and bloodiest test yet of their resolve to put into effect an American-backed blueprint for political transition in Iraq, highlighted by the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government on June 30. This week, American and Iraqi security forces encircled Falluja, a bastion of Sunni resistance 35 miles west of Baghdad, and on Tuesday began to push inward in search of rebels and suspects connected to the killing of four American private security guards last week. Mr. Rumsfeld said today that marines fighting in Falluja had "cordoned off the city" and were "systematically moving through the city, looking for targets that are identified, that they have photographs of, and they know who they want and what they want and why they want that person. "They have engaged in a number of such raids and have been successful in at least nine that I know of," he said, without elaborating. In Baghdad and southern Iraq, American and coalition troops have also been trying to suppress an uprising by Shiite insurgents inspired by the fiery exhortations of Mr. Sadr, who demanded today that the United States transfer authority to Iraqis with no connection to the occupation authority. Frivolity Is Projection: the Iraqi Quagmire - Shereen - 04-26-2004 I wish that those Yankess juz mind their OWN business & get outta Iraq !