Fallujah: From insurgent stronghold to `safest city in Iraq' (OMG!)

[Career Prole]

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Piles of rubble still line the streets here, but a few shops have opened on the main drag, schools are finally in session and a compensation program to help families rebuild made some token initial payments this month.

Four months after the assault on Fallujah, in the center of Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, American forces working to rebuild the city say they're seeing some progress, albeit limited, in a city that's still blockaded and under a curfew.

Even a little progress is an important development in a city that's been a major test for the American presence in Iraq. On March 31, 2004, four U.S. contractors were ambushed and killed here, setting off a battle when U.S. Marines tried unsuccessfully to dislodge the insurgent forces that had taken control of the city.

The second battle began in November, when U.S. Army and Marine units moved through the city, destroying buildings and killing hundreds of opponents...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/krwashbureau/20050321/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_usiraq_fallujah_wa

Knight-Ridder, spinning like a gyroscope.
Have at it, DU. I don't believe my f'ing eyes. :grr:

[wtmusic]

1. It's extremely safe

when everyone's dead.

[Career Prole]

5. Check this out...

"A group of Iraqi men shoveling dirt and sand in a vacant lot said much about the effort. "They're making big piles into little piles," joked one Marine, as he guided a group of journalists on a tour of the city this week.

The Marines could do the job in a couple of hours with a front-end loader but prefer to pay military-age men to get it done with the tools they have - giving the men an alternative to working with the insurgents and a chance for Iraqis to lead the reconstruction effort."

Let's see...blow up a man's home, quite possibly his family, then laugh at him with the journalists while you have him shovel rubble in what used to be his town...and that helps curb his resentment how?

Freakin' idjits...I'd let him have it with the shovel if that's all I had left.

[Robbien]

7. How sick is it that the Marines don't even realize how sadistic

this is?

[Career Prole]

9. Got me stumped.

:shrug:
It'd only fan the flames if I had the shovel.

[wtmusic]

10. Oh man.

and paid at the same scale as the Halliburton guys, I'm sure... :eyes:

[Career Prole]

16. Can you imagine? 100 to one the man's not an English speaker.

They blow up his town. Maybe at one time he wanted Saddam gone, maybe he was even grateful, and even after the destruction of his town, thought to himself "It was the will of Allah...I hope the promised reconstruction starts soon...they will rebuild it."
Then they hand him a shovel, point out a pile of crap, and tell him to dig. And they laugh.
What must be going through that man's mind?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

12. "They're making big piles into little piles," joked one Marine

They used to call those forced-labor camps, but never mind.

Pyongyang is an extremely safe city too, I suppose.

[saigon68]

41. I GUESS THE DOGS HAVE QUIT EATING THE CORPSES (GRAPHIC)

this photo of a corpse eaten by dogs from Randi Rhodes Website





A stray dog feeds on an Iraqi corpse. US Marines are now hunting down stray animals grown fat on the flesh from corpses and which could harbor rabies
(AFP/File)

[Hand]

47. "...and made their bodies carrion for the dogs and the birds..."

"...but God's will was carried out!"

--Homer, Iliad, Book 1
and that was 3500 years ago... :cry:

[rocktivity]

44. Who you callin' an idjit, you goldurned flea-bitten galoot?

THEM'S FIGHTIN' WORDS!

:headbang:
rocknation

[The White Tree]

45. This truly illustrates how condenscending we are to the Iraqis

We are willing to pay them to do a job that we could accomplish in a couple of hours, but we are not willing to pay them to train them to do something more enriching and empowering like say, running the front-end loader, or building the new building.

Couple this with Rumsfelds comments about how the new Iraqi government has to be careful not to get in the way of fighting the insurgency. It's like saying - We liberated you, just don't get too upity about it, we can take you down if we have to.

[Dhalgren]

2. It's the peace of the graveyard...

[WearyOne]

3. "opponent" : new word for collateral damage

[clem_c_rock]

4. Yeah - f***ing NPR has been running this shit too

And it was just the happiest story you could imagine.

This is just mind boggling.

Napalm, chemical weapons, bombing hospitals so the death tolls don't get out and now we're patting ourselves on the back for reducing the city to a depleted uranium piece of rubble where nearly every person has had part of their family killed.

Fuck the mainstream media and everything it stands for.

[saigon68]

48. Agreed Corporate Lackys whose only function is to mislead the SHEEP

WORTHLESS

[d.l.Green]

49. I heard this on NPR and was ill. Their series on soldiers getting these

hi-tech prosthetics- which we're paying in some cases 100's of thousands of dollars apiece for- while they're cutting veterans benefits and recent veterans are even homeless- was disgusting. I'm not getting this logic.

The NPR story did quote one Iraqi as saying that Fallujah is one big prison- I'm sure he's now dead...

[LdyGuique]

6. Perhaps, this quote says it best

"We can't do business here," said Ali Muhammed Hussein, as he waited with his elderly father to receive a compensation check. "It's the safest city in Iraq because it's a prison."

There is almost a tongue-in-cheek aspect to this article. The Title was definitely ironic. The city is a pile of rubble, the reimbursement payments are slow in coming, there is virtually no infrastructure left of electicity and water, there is still a partial blockade, and there is a curfew.

[Career Prole]

8. I gotta think if it weren't for the torture

the prisons would be better accommodations than Fallujah's wreckage.
:shrug:

[HysteryDiagnosis]

17. Hey... we're turning the corner... democracy on the march, I wonder

..... I wonder how many Iraqi kids ever went into a school and shot it all to hell.... how many Iraqi kids ever took out their grandparents, how many Iraqi kids scream and yell and throw temper tantrums when they don't get their way...

I wonder how much better off they all will be when we transfect them with our unbridled consumerism and materialisticisms. I wonder how the new and improved Iraq will be in the days ahead.

I wonder if they will have proportionately the same amount of people in prison as we do (minus the ones we have massacred of course, that should thin down the herd), I wonder how the shia will accept the westernization of their country... how they will react... how they will manage the changes coming their way....

How many Iraqi kids will now be put on Prozac to blur the terror they have witnessed at our hands.. once the Pharmcos get in there and set up shop, flood their tv with toxic ads and promises of 4 hour things that go bump in the night...... I wonder what will become of their way of life, their hopes, dreams and persistent nightmares of shock and awe....

[HysteryDiagnosis]

18. Furthermore.... I wonder how many Iraqi priests/clerics

have ever molested little boys.... how many Iraqi churches have graveyards behind them, how many pedophiles Iraq has produced, mass murderers, serial killers, rapists, bank robbers, totally corrupt CEO's, how many Enrons, WorldComms, and the like, how many fake energy crisis in unfriendly sectors, steroid using sports figures, and heads of state who invade sovereign nations for NO APPARRENT REASON.

Yes... we are sooooooo much better than these people... really we are.

[meganmonkey]

11. That's f*cking disgusting

I feel ill right now

:scared:

:cry:

[drummer55]

13. Per one of the Iraqi interviewees

"its safe because its a prison"

[da_chimperor]

14. Of course it's the safest city in Iraq. They still have it sealed off

The US military controls ALL entrances to the city. It's a no-brainer that it's the safest. It's doesn't matter, because all of the insurgents left and went elsewhere. The US military can't do the same to all cities in Iraq, and it's pointless to view this as some sort of success. I don't believe it's spin, I believe it's the truth. But I also think that it doesn't matter at all.

[msongs]

15. Hiroshima was safe after the bomb, too.................BUT --->

it was probably pretty safe before the bomb, street crime wise.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

19. Tacitus said it best... Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

They sow wilderness and call it peace.

War has changed but little throughout man's history. Just the places, names, and empires.

[Hand]

20. "Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant..."

"They make a desert and call it peace."

:grr:

[Daphne08]

22. And...

Dulce bellum inexpertis.

[DulceDecorum]

24. (For Wilfred Owen)

http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/404610

The people of Fallujah erred greatly
when they killed the mercenaries of Blackwater
for
those men had upon them
the mark of Cain.

Now,
like Abel,
the blood of the people of Fallujah
stains the ground.

The deathstalkers
purr,
and sharpen their fangs
for you.

[alcibiades_mystery]

25. It's even worse

"...wherever they make a desert they call it peace."

from The life of Agricola, of course...

The full quote:

Tacitus, Agricola 30

Context: From the words of a speech put in the mouth of Calgacus, a Caledonian tribal leader, prior to his (and thousands of others') defeat by Agricola's at Mons Graupius in ca. 83 A.D./C.E..

Latin (courtesy of the Latin Library)

"Quotiens causas belli et necessitatem nostram intueor, magnus mihi animus est hodiernum diem consensumque vestrum initium libertatis toti Britanniae fore: nam et universi coistis et servitutis expertes, et nullae ultra terrae ac ne mare quidem securum inminente nobis classe Romana. Ita proelium atque arma, quae fortibus honesta, eadem etiam ignavis tutissima sunt. Priores pugnae, quibus adversus Romanos varia fortuna certatum est, spem ac subsidium in nostris manibus habebant, quia nobilissimi totius Britanniae eoque in ipsis penetralibus siti nec ulla servientium litora aspicientes, oculos quoque a contactu dominationis inviolatos habebamus. Nos terrarum ac libertatis extremos recessus ipse ac sinus famae in hunc diem defendit: nunc terminus Britanniae patet, atque omne ignotum pro magnifico est; sed nulla iam ultra gens, nihil nisi fluctus ac saxa, et infestiores Romani, quorum superbiam frustra per obsequium ac modestiam effugias. Raptores orbis, postquam cuncta vastantibus defuere terrae, mare scrutantur: si locuples hostis est, avari, si pauper, ambitiosi, quos non Oriens, non Occidens satiaverit: soli omnium opes atque inopiam pari adfectu concupiscunt. Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

Translation (Church and Bodriib - modified):

“Whenever I consider the origin of this war and the necessities of our position, I have a sure confidence that this day, and this union of yours, will be the beginning of freedom to the whole of Britain. To all of us slavery is a thing unknown; there are no lands beyond us, and even the sea is not safe, menaced as we are by a Roman fleet. And thus in war and battle, in which the brave find glory, even the coward will find safety. Former contests, in which, with varying fortune, the Romans were resisted, still left in us a last hope of succour, inasmuch as being the most renowned nation of Britain, dwelling in the very heart of the country, and out of sight of the shores of the conquered, we could keep even our eyes unpolluted by the contagion of slavery. To us who dwell on the uttermost confines of the earth and of freedom, this remote sanctuary of Britain’s glory has up to this time been a defence. Now, however, the furthest limits of Britain are thrown open, and the unknown always passes for the marvellous. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire, and wherever they make a desert they call it peace.

[Career Prole]

29. ..."escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission"

Striking. Tacitus indeed could have been describing the American neo-conservative.
That is frightening.

[Daphne08]

31. Yes, it is, but then...

this is Pax Americana.

[TahitiNut]

39. "To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of " freedom.

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.

[Hand]

46. Thanks a million!

This lapsed Classics major didn't have Tacitus' text on hand (I was more of a Seneca fan in my time), and this drives the point home even more powerfully!

I suspect past translators have nearly come to blows over the best parsing of that infamous "ubi". Some might claim it's the slightly exotic "when", although that would be pushing the envelope, sice Tacitus would likely have used the usual cum+subjunctive.

:toast: ave atque vale and all that!

[Lizzie Borden]

21. Ghost towns tend to be on the quiet side.

[Bo]

23. My brain just exploded....

[Rex]

26. big piles into little piles

So these civilians are nothing more than prisoners? Can they turn Iraq into one giant prison complex?

[lordwhorfin]

43. It's like the Man said . . .

Sometimes I think this whole world
Is one big prison yard.
Half of us are prisoners,
And the rest of us are guards.

-Bob Dylan, "George Jackson"

[daleo]

27. They created a desolation, and called it peace.

This was said of the Romans, and it sure applies here.

On edit - lots of people called this one, and were more precise with the translation. It can't be repeated enough though.

[Laurab]

28. It's hard work

spreading "freedom". So, are these the "good" things that are being accomplished that the chimp says no one ever talks about? Destroy a city, kill a lot of people, establish a curfew, and shoot without question, and I suppose it would become "safe". Useless, too, but as long as it's safe, we're supposed to think it's an accomplishment? We need to get the hell out of there - how could it be any worse than it already is?

[Career Prole]

34. It can get worse when the guy "making big piles into little piles"

in the make-believe reconstruction realizes that he was sold a bill of goods masquerading as "democracy".
When he does the math and realizes that even though one member of his extended family was killed under Saddam the rest were wiped out by the BFEE.

[Zerex71]

30. Of course it's safe. They leveled the place.

No one left to fight back!

[Carolab]

32. Exactly right. Just read the other day there's NOBODY there. n/t

[Media_Lies_Daily]

33. More propaganda from our Ministry of Truth.

[saigon68]

42. Disgusting

[Barrett808]

35. It was the safest city in Iraq when the insurgents were there

A little point that Knight Ridder doesn't want to remind people about.

[Barrett808]

36. This may be a response to the damning DIA report from last week

Both this and the pathetic NYT piece yesterday on how wonderful Haifa Street is now.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

37. If it's such a success story

why don't they allow pictures to be shown?

[0007]

38. Every dog has its day!

More fuel of hatred, and many many new recruits for the terrorist

[Dangerman]

40. You can't trust the mainstream media anymore.

Another reason I hate my mom for watch Fox "news" :puke: