Bitter Iraqi vents anger by killing U.S. troops

[NNN0LHI]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/10/07/MN953.DTL

Deshah, Iraq -- Last of three parts.

Every day, he tries to kill American soldiers.

Sometimes, from a hideout in the rattling reeds and bulrushes of the fertile Euphrates valley, 28-year-old Mohammed and a small group of fellow guerrilla fighters launch rocket-propelled grenades at passing American vehicles. Other days, they hide in the shadowy grid of dusty date-palm forests, firing mortars at improvised U.S. checkpoints.

On the day of this interview, Mohammed, who did not give his real name, said he and his friends had fired RPGs at a convoy of two U.S. Bradley vehicles on Highway 10 outside the town of Habbaniyah, about 30 miles west of Baghdad.

"We saw their vehicles burning. We think we killed some of them," Mohammed said matter-of-factly as he sat in a white Formica chair in a friend's fragrant periwinkle garden in Deshah, a village on the outskirts of the volatile city of Ramadi, some 60 miles west of the capital.

Mohammed's damage assessment was a bit off. Lt. Kate Noble, a spokeswoman for the U.S.-led coalition force in Baghdad, confirmed an attack that day on a convoy of 82nd Airborne Division vehicles along Highway 10, known to American soldiers as "Ambush Alley." But she said that only one American soldier had been wounded.

DANGER PRESENT AND GROWING

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[underpants]

1. Yikes!

Shi'ite Muslim protesters lie down in front of a U.S. Army Bradley vehicle October 8, 2003 after hundreds marched to the Baghdad headquarters of the U.S.-led administration in Iraq (news - web sites). Iraq's Governing Council said it was trying to find a compromise to end a dispute with the U.S.-led administration over the deployment of Turkish troops to help occupying forces stabilize the country. (Akram Saleh/Reuters)

[NNN0LHI]

2. A Chinese dissident did about the same thing in Tiananmen square...

...and the cable networks must have showed that clip a million times. Haven't seen this even once on CNN.

Don

[underpants]

3. Really ? It's not on the "Loop"

I posted this article the other day. We are going to see the right wing punditriat start to gripe about the negative reporting in IRaq very soon. Just a heads up. Great series in the SF Gate.

MEDIA REPORTING FROM IRAQ IS ONE-SIDED AND FLAWED

If you rely on newspapers and TV networks for your news, chances are you have no idea that the controversial performance of Western reporters in Iraq is emerging as a big issue. The mainstream media have virtually ignored the stunning charges made by John Burns, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. But those charges are all over the Internet and carried by Fox News and conservative commentators.

The campaign to get more balance into Iraq reporting has been driven by the Internet bloggers, particularly by Andrew Sullivan (AndrewSullivan.com) and law professor Glenn Reynolds of the University of Tennessee (Instapundit.com). Reynolds deplores 'the lazy Vietnam-templating, the "Of course America must be losing' spin, the implicit and sometimes explicit sneer ..."

A strong article last week by Peter Johnson quoted this from MSNBC's Bob Arnot in Iraq: "I contrast some of the infectious enthusiasm I see here with what I see on TV and I say, 'Oh, my God, am I in the same country?'"

http://www.uexpress.com/johnleo/?uc_full_date=20030928

[Ripley]

4. Scroll on CNN this morning says...

White House going on the offensive to prove progress being made in post-war Iraq.

Does that mean they are going to tell us all this "negative" news is false?