The Gates of Hell
"They will now celebrate their election victory by putting Falluja to the torch."
Guardian | Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook
"The serial pleas for US soldiers to sacrifice their lives in Iraq, and the preference for them to fight guerrillas by inflicting massive civilian casualties through aerial and tank bombardment of residential neighborhoods, seem to me to rest on thinner and thinner grounds."
With Iraq possessing no WMD, posing no threat to the United States and having no links to al-Qai'da, Juan Cole asks whether the U.S.'s quashing of the Sadrist uprising in 2004 differs from Saddam Hussein's 1999 crushing of the same movement. Cole then turns his attention to the 300,000-strong city of Fallujah. With close on 40 people having being killed Friday by bombs in the supposedly subdued Samarra, he questions the wisdom of killing thousands of Fallujan civilians to 'save' them and the proposed January elections from a couple of hundred foreign volunteers.
Despite Iraqi interim prime minister Ayad Allawi's whistle-stop European tour buying some time for fleeing residents and fighters leaving to regroup on the outskirts of Baghdad, the Nashua Telegraph paints a ghastly picture of the non-stop barrage of artillery fire and bombing to which all sections of Fallujah have been subjected as 12,000 U.S. Marines, backed by two 'crack' Iraqi brigades and 8,000 troops in reserve, close in.
"You're all in the process of making history. This is another Hue City in the making. I have no doubt, if we do get the word, that each and every one of you is going to do what you have always done — kick some butt."
Sgt. Maj. Carlton W. Kent
The same faceless Pentagon military planners who gave us Jessica Lynch, whitewashed Abu Ghraib and insist a static 15,000 Iraqi citizens have died since Iraq's invasion in April last year, tell us U.S. forces face some 1,200 hardcore insurgents backed by 2,000 fighters in the surrounding towns and countryside. It is also they who tell us Fallujah remains home to Jordanian-born extremist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a man elevated by the U.S. media to mythic status as Osama bin Ladin's representative in Iraq.
With his fighters killing three of the 800 British soldiers replacing 4,000 U.S. troops in the Sunni triangle, he is the same man calling for the release of CARE International head, Margaret Hassan.
Who are these 'military planners' and why should I believe them?
With the U.S. build up and the 'softening' of Fallujah taking several weeks, and absent independent media to report on it (the declaration of a national State of Emergency will further restrict reportage of any bloodbath), one can only conclude the inevitable storming and 'taking' of the city, which will inflame and unify insurgents, escalate violence, and suck the United States into all-out war throughout Iraq and perhaps the region, is designed to destroy rather than facilitate January's so-called national elections.
"The eyes of the world are upon you, and I know you won't let us down. When they're talking about the history of the Marine Corps 100 years from now, they'll be talking about this battle."
Maj. Gen. Richard F. Natonski, 1st Marine Division
Jim Lobe is no monkey. Offering real-world perspectives on the 'faith-based' fantasies of the twisted whores now grinding the globe to dust, he has spent years cultivating his macabre interest in the mental machinations of the Manichaean muddleheads now driving U.S. foreign policy. He understands them. Lobe writes:
An influential foreign-policy neo-conservative with longstanding ties to top hawks in the administration of President George W Bush has laid out what he calls "a checklist of the work the world will demand of this president and his subordinates in a second term."
The list, which begins with the destruction of Fallujah in Iraq and ends with the development of "appropriate strategies" for dealing with threats posed by China, Russia and "the emergence of a number of aggressively anti-American regimes in Latin America," also calls for "regime change" in Iran and North Korea.
The list's author, Frank Gaffney, the founder and president of the Centre for Security Policy (CSP), also warns that Bush should resist any pressure arising from the anticipated demise of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to resume peace talks that could result in Israel's giving up "defensible boundaries."
Read Jim Lobe's Neo-Con Agenda: Iran, China, Russia, Latin America...
Published Friday, Gaffney's Seven Steps to The Neocon Nirvana constitutes the first comprehensive indicators of Bush's future plans to emerge since his re-election Tuesday.
The important thing now, of course, is not simply to acknowledge past achievements, but to build upon them. This will require, among other things:
- The reduction in detail of Fallujah and other safe havens utilized by freedom's enemies in Iraq — a necessary precondition not only to holding elections there next year, but to the establishment of institutions essential to a functioning and stable democracy;
- Regime change — one way or another — in Iran and North Korea, the only hope for preventing these remaining "Axis of Evil" states from fully realizing their terrorist and nuclear ambitions;
- Providing the substantially increased resources needed to re-equip a transforming military and rebuild human-intelligence capabilities (minus, if at all possible, the sorts of intelligence "reforms" contemplated pre-election that would make matters worse on this and other scores) while we fight World War IV;
- Providing, to the fullest extent possible, for the protection of our homeland — including the adoption of sensible policies on securing our borders and contending with illegal aliens, and by deploying effective missile defenses at sea and in space, as well as ashore;
- Keeping faith with Israel, whose destruction remains a priority for the same people who want to destroy us (and for the same reasons — i.e., our shared, "moral values") — especially in the face of Yasser Arafat's demise and the inevitable, post-election pressure to "solve" the Mideast problem by forcing the Israelis to abandon defensible boundaries;
- Contending with the underlying dynamic that made France and Germany so problematic in the first term: namely, their willingness to make common cause with our enemies for profit, and their desire to employ a united Europe and its new constitution — as well as other international institutions and mechanisms — to thwart the expansion and application of American power where deemed necessary by Washington;
- Adapting appropriate strategies for contending with China's increasingly fascistic trade and military policies, Vladimir Putin's accelerating authoritarianism at home and aggressiveness toward the former Soviet republics, the worldwide spread of Islamofascism, and the emergence of a number of aggressively anti-American regimes in Latin America.
"But the enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He lives in Falluja. And we're going to destroy him."
Lieutenant-Colonel Gareth Brandl
Juan Cole continues:
"Who will be next? And how many Americans will have to die to accomplish these increasingly brutal and absurd missions? Is it really hoped that the ghetto Shiites of Sadr City can be bombed into accepting Thomas Jefferson? And what exactly did the United States expect to find in Fallujah, if not Baathists and Sunni fundamentalists?"
It looks as though Robin Cook was right on the button. As for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, John Hannah, David Wurmser, Robert Joseph, Elliott Abrams, William Luti and Paula Dobriansky, and all those driving this madness?
And I hope that you die | And your death'll come soon | I will follow your casket | In the pale afternoon | And I'll watch while you're lowered | Down to your deathbed | And I'll stand o'er your grave | 'Til I'm sure that you're dead
Bob Dylan | Masters of War
Note 11.14.2004
"...students told ABC News affiliate KMGH-TV in Denver they are performing Bob Dylan's song "Masters of War" during the Boulder High School Talent Exposé because they are Dylan fans. They said they want to express their views and show off their musical abilities. But some students and adults who heard the band rehearse called a radio talk show Thursday morning, saying the song the band sang ended with a call for President Bush to die. Threatening the president is a federal crime, so the Secret Service was called to the school to investigate."
Blowin' in the wind? Nah... Whistlin' in the dark.
