Gyroscope

A newsletter for those unmoved by spin.
No. 56, December 27, 2004

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by John Nordin
Falluja, part 3: Forward to defeat

Last time we discussed the April 2004 partial invasion of Falluja. After that invasion, US forces left the city alone for months while it acquired a reputation for being a haven for the insurgents.

Rumblings of an invasion to "take" the city were heard for months.

When should we invade?
  The operation had been put off until the US presidential election was over so that the specter of casualties would hang less heavily over President Bush. (Toby Harden, Alec Russell, The Weekly Telegraph (UK) p.6, Nov. 12.  

I'm not necessarily outraged over making military tactics await politics. If the optimum time to invade from a purely military point of view was two weeks prior to the election, then waiting a week after the election is not a big problem. If the optimum time to invade was July, then this delay put the lives of soldiers at risk.

And certainly, the invasion was telegraphed way in advance.

  In the tents ranged across the bleak military camp, everyone knows the battle for Fallujah is imminent. After months under insurgent control, the city is due to be invaded any day now by a 10,000-strong combined force of US marines and US army. It is likely to be the biggest military engagement of the Iraq war.

At least three quarters of its population have fled the ravaged city, once home to 280,000 people, 30 miles to the west of Baghdad on the banks of the Euphrates river. It has been bombed almost every night for weeks.

... Military intelligence officers estimate that more than 3,000 insurgents are ready to defend the city; a mixture of Sunni nationalists, former Ba'athists and a dedicated hard core of foreign fighters. (Daily Telegraph, UK, Nov. 6)

  
  Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Sunday that he was getting closer to authorizing major military action against insurgents in the restive city of Falluja. (CNN, October 31st)  

One might think that surprise would be a good idea, however, any sort of surprise against insurgents is rather tough to get as all the Iraqi's working for the US are a porous source of intelligence for the guerillas.
Objective One: Take that hospital!

A city full of insurgents, the nerve center of the opposition. Thousands of weapons, booby-traps, narrow streets, civilians. Surely, the operation must be carefully prepared. The opening moves will be critical: a need to pin down the enemy, disrupt communications, put them back on the defensive. Speed and precision is of the essence. And our military rose to the occasion.

 

The assault against Falluja began here Sunday night as American Special Forces and Iraqi troops burst into Falluja General Hospital and seized it within an hour. ... Iraqi troops eagerly kicked the doors in, ... Patients and hospital employees were rushed out of rooms by armed soldiers and ordered to sit or lie on the floor ... In less than an hour, the compound was secure. Most of the Iraqis had their cuffs snipped off and were sitting up along hallways in the hospital's main building. Doctors were back to attending to the most seriously ill, watched by Iraqi and American troops. There were broken doors and windows but little in the way of more severe damage.

... [American Forces ] have made little secret of their irritation with what they contend are inflated civilian casualty figures that regularly flow from the hospital -- propaganda, they believe, for the Falluja insurgents.

. (Richard A. Oppel, New York Times, 11/8/04)

  

So we put solders at risk by giving priority to a propaganda issue rather than attacking military objectives? And by the way, the "inflated" figure reported by the hospital was 800 civilian casualties, as contrasted with the general estimate of 600 and the confirmed body count (which would be low) of 271.

And the military strategy worked. We heard little of civilian casualties in the Falluja invasion. Reporters were generally not "embedded" this time either, and so we learned little about the battle. Out of sight, out of mind.
Our perfect invasion
 

Meanwhile, Rumsfeld is making his asinine remarks again,

"There aren't going to be large numbers of civilians killed and certainly not by U.S. forces,"

No- there are only an 'estimated' 100,000 civilians in Falloojeh (and these are American estimations). So far, boys and men between the ages of 16 and 60 aren't being counted as 'civilians' in Falloojeh. They are being rounded up and taken away. And, *of course* the US forces aren't going to be doing the killing: The bombs being dropped on Falloojeh don't contain explosives, depleted uranium or anything harmful- they contain laughing gas- that would, of course, explain Rumsfeld's idiotic optimism about not killing civilians in Falloojeh. Also, being a 'civilian' is a relative thing in a country occupied by Americans. You're only a civilian if you're on their side. If you translate for them, or serve them food in the Green Zone, or wipe their floors- you're an innocent civilian. Everyone else is an insurgent, unless they can get a job as a 'civilian'.

So this is how Bush kicks off his second term. More bloodshed.

"Innocent civilians in that city have all the guidance they need as to how they can avoid getting into trouble,"

How do they do that Rumsfeld? While tons of explosives are being dropped upon your neighborhood, how do you do that? Do you stay inside the house and try to avoid the thousands of shards of glass that shoot out at you from shattering windows? Or do you hide under a table and hope that it's sturdy enough to keep the ceiling from crushing you? Or do you flee your house and pray to God you don't come face to face with an Apache or tank or that you aren't in the line of fire of a sniper? How do you avoid the cluster bombs and all the other horror being dealt out to the people of Falloojeh?

. (Baghdad Burning "Girl Blog from Iraq", 11/29)

  

(For information on how the insurgents had militarized the city, see here.)

By the time of the invasion, the actual population in the city turned out to be much less than 100,000 - I read estimates of 5,000. In other words, almost all of the 280,000 people who lived in the city had fled and become refugees.
Oh, yes, those annoying people who live there
 

"Can you help us?" they asked. "We are from Fallujah, we need so many things ..."

Their faces were etched with lines of stress; their eyes were desperate, their clothes were thin and dirty.

"Please, when we left it was warmer and now it is so cold and we have no heater."

Inside International Relations Manager, Mr Mazin Salloum told us that Red Crescent staff estimate that more than 200,000 people from Fallujah were now 'internally displaced'.

... He said a large number had sought refuge in four or five towns around Fallujah, many had swam across the river or traveled by foot to get to the towns. Others found their way to Baghdad.

Mr Salloum said the accommodation in these towns ranged from sleeping on the ground under trees, to make-shift tents to the floors of mosques, schools and empty buildings.

... "When they left Fallujah it was still warm. Now it is cold and they have no warm clothes or blankets to cope with the temperatures," he said.

... Red Crescent staff report that dogs are still eating the decomposing bodies that litter the streets. Raw sewage is flowing through neighborhoods. There is no power or running water. People are starving, one family forced to eat flour for three days.

... When I asked Mr Salloum to share more stories from inside Fallujah, he hesitated.

"I don't want to make a problem. There are many stories, but telling these stories publicly has caused trouble for us.

"Trouble?" I asked.

"We cannot risk losing the cooperation of the military..."

. (Donna Mulhearn, Electronic Iraq, 12/20)

  
 

Another example of the winning of hearts and minds of Iraqis is being formulated for the residents of Fallujah. The military has announced the plans it is considering to use for allowing Fallujans back into their city.

They will set up "processing centers" on the outskirts of the city and compile a database of peoples' identities by using DNA testing and retina scans. Residents will then receive a badge which identifies them with their home address, which they must wear at all times.

Buses will ferry them into their city, as cars will be banned since the military fears the use of them by suicide bombers.

Another idea being kicked around is to require the men to work for pay in military-style battalions where these "work brigades" will reconstruct buildings and the water system, depending on the men's skills. (Dahr Jamail, Electronic Iraq, 12/6, (c) 2004 Dahr Jamail)

  
 

"Given my druthers, I'd love to have two more months to rebuild the city to turn it into one of those things that you see about a model city, about trees with a little sign and 'Welcome back to Fallujah' -- but we never intended to do that," said Col. John Ballard, a Marine civil-affairs officer.. (Nick Wadhms, Seattle Times, Dec. 21, p.A16)

  

There is no running water, a curfew is in effect. Cars are not allowed. Dead animals litter the streets.

 

Some 900 residents of a particular city neighborhood of Fallujah were allowed to return on Thursday, passing through a strict identity check. AFP writes,

' The returnees were entering an apocalyptic backdrop of flattened city blocks and bullet-scarred homes, where wild dogs and cats have feasted on corpses and the sour smell of the dead filled the streets for weeks. '

Guerrillas and Marines clashed in northern Fallujah, however, and the US bombed the city. Some of those hoping to return instead turned around and went back to their temporary shelters elsewhere. The Marines were fingerprinting and doing retinal scans of military-age men who returned, to begin building a data base of potential guerrillas. They turned by 16 men, apparently on suspicion of being connected to the guerrilla resistance.

(Juan Cole, Informed Comment, Dec. 24)

  
So, did it work?
 

The senior US Marine commander in Iraq said Thursday that the U.S.-led offensive in Fallujah has "broken the back of the insurgency" by seizing their main base of operations.

"We feel right now that we have, as I mentioned, broken the back of the insurgency. We've taken away this safe haven," Lt. Gen. John Sattler told reporters at the Pentagon in a video teleconference from Fallujah.

He said that assessment was based on what US officials found in records uncovered in insurgent command posts inside Fallujah. Sattler's conclusion is far more optimistic than an assessment made shortly before the offensive by Marine intelligence officers, who said the insurgency would rebound if US troop levels in the area were significantly reduced after the offensive.

Sattler made no mention of the intelligence assessment. (SF Gate, quoting AP, Nov. 18)

  

As was often observed after this comment was made, we're not fighting an animal with a backbone, we're fighting an octopus.

 

This morning we are reading reports of insurgents moving back into Fallujah just weeks after being routed by US Marines. After that bloody battle, the President and Pentagon were warned by an internal Marine report that without additional boots on the ground, terrorists would slip back into Fallujah and launch more deadly attacks on Americans and Iraqis who support freedom instead of terror.

. (Joe Scarbourough, Dec. 14)

  
 

The US military seems strangely unaware of the realities of insurgencies. It seems to think there are a limited number of "bad guys," who can all be killed or captured. The possibility that virtually all able-bodied men in Fallujah supported the insurgency, and that many are weekend warriors, does not seem to occur to them.

(Juan Cole, Informed Comment, Dec. 24)

  
 

In insurgency warfare, taking real estate – mountain or city – means zilch. Long-term winning is all about getting the people over to our side. As a Marine sergeant wrote last week from Fallujah, “ ... for every one killed five more are recruited.”

(Col. David Hackworth, ret. Fallujah: Saved for Democracy?, 11/15)

  
Hiding behind the troops

Meanwhile the optimism from the super-patriots continues unabated. Why, we don't need history, political analysis or our own common sense. We have 18 year old solders to tell us how the empire is working.

 

... we are trying to plant the seeds of decent, consensual government in some very harsh soil. We are trying to host the first attempt in the modern Arab world for the people of an Arab country to, on their own, forge a social contract with one another. Despite all the mistakes made, that is an incredibly noble thing. .. And maybe the second most important story is the relatively quiet way in which Iraqis, and the Arab world, accepted the US invasion of Falluja. ... Readers regularly ask me when I will throw in the towel on Iraq. I will be guided by the US Army and Marine grunts on the ground. ... Most of those you talk to are so uncynical -- so convinced that we are doing good and doing right, even though they too are unsure it will work. (Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 11/21/2004, p.A13)

  

Why, look, everything is working! No one at the club was upset about Falluja, no one at the golf course complained! I talked to an 18 year old who couldn't find Iraq on the map before he got here and he told me that our geopolitical policies were effective!
One more time: we've been here before.
 

“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster. Our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad but the responsibility, in this case, is not on the army which has acted only upon the request of the civil authorities.”

(T.E. Lawrence, The Sunday Times, August 1920, quoted here)

  
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