The “civilian contractors” weren’t exactly civilians. They were former US special operations troops who worked for a North Carolina company that hires out their guys to provide security for “soft” operations, such as the delivery of food, restoration of pipelines, etc. Those four guys were as qualified to be in Fallujah as any active duty soldier or Marine, so what I’m struggling with is “how did they allow themselves to be caught like that?”
As of this morning, their employer had refused to identify them by name out of respect for their families.
That’s what I thought. How did you find that out? I looked for info or a story but couldn’t find anything.
“how did they allow themselves to be caught like that?” I agree, I think they were lured or baited into going there, that is why cameras were there so fast and the crowd grew so fast.
I watched a lot of the coverage and you hit it about as well as the experts. I have to say that my initial response was not so rational, vengence seems right early on.
Those people on the bridge were smiling. A few thousand pounds of FAE and HE would wipe the smile off their faces. -
I don’t mean to condone the dastardly act, but I’ve read on some news sites that US soldiers opened fire in a civilian crowd a few weeks ago in that city and killed 15 people. The others vowed revenge (which is what happened in this case).
This doesn’t make it right (an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind - Gandhi) but I find it hypocritical that so much coverage is given to 4 US people killed and next to none to the 15 Iraqi civilians killed beforehand.
I also can’t seem to find any authoritative sources for the numbers of civilians killed during the whole ‘overthrow-Saddam’ operation, but my money is on this number being very significant.
What really sucks is that most of our forces are getting wasted by roadside bombs, and assorted explosive traps. You don’t read about many of our guys being killed in offensive operations; search and destroy, etc. To me this seems like bad tactics on the part of the US Command. Here’s an example; Remember the helicopter that was shot down a few months ago killing about 17 soldiers? The very next day the brass said helicoper pilots would start employing “special flight tactics” to avoid SAM’s. Why wasn’t that the plan from the very beginning?
But remember, this conflict has “devolved” into guerilla warfare. What made those 15 people “civilians” anyway? Why was that label placed on them? Probably because they were dressed in civilian clothes, and no weapons were found on their bodies.
Now, put yourself in the position of a guerilla. You’re up against a huge foe who is militarily invincible in this conflict. But, you know that in the past this foe has been very vulnerable to *politics. *
So, you find a crowd of civilians that is confronting US soldiers. You disperse a few heavily armed guys and/or girls into that crowd. You have your people open fire on the soldiers from within the crowd.
What happens? The soldiers return fire at the source of the incoming rounds, but that source is within a mass of civilians. Civilians are killed. Now, the soldiers and the US are perceived as inept at best, and hated by the indigenous population at worst.
Cause your foe to waste a few of your human shields, and tip the political scales against him. Classic guerilla ops.
why is it that you assume that all of those 15 ‘civilians’ were agitators while not really questioning whether the US people that were killed were?
In any case I agree, this is guerrilla tactics 101, trying to get the average population to think that the ‘invaders’ are really bad news: fact is that the US should’ve known that this was going to happen BEFORE even going into Iraq and should have had contingency plans to deal with it instead of the gung-ho attitude of ‘overthrow Saddam first, sort out mess later’.
Personally I think things will get worse before they get better but maybe that’s just the cynic in me (and my bet is also on a fundamentalist-style state coming up as soon as the US leaves the area).
Any way you slice it the situation is very messy and there aren’t really any easy ways out: innocents (on both sides) are gonna die, as is usually the case when conflicts arise
Tom there are still a lot of good people there trying to make a difference in building a country. You can’t really rebuild something that was never built.
My initial reaction is the same, but I would be more interested in hunting down the people in these videos and, to use something from another posts, working some of these guys over with a pillow case full of door knobs until I found out who was behind the attack.
Don’t forget you also have to look at the media that was covering it. You can’t tell me they didn’t know something was coming. I know it is against Geneva Convention rules, but I could fill a morning workout up with getting some answers.
SAMOK tread lightly with that minimize timing/number of rotation of troops. This isn’t a conflict like most wars. It is a low intensity conflict where you are never completely sure who your enemy is until he starts shooting at you. Combined with the constant threat of 107mm rockets, RPGs, and car bombs that are constantly going off and you have an environment for these soldiers where the screws get tightened a little more each day. There is only so much a person can take and there is only so much room in the Green Zone for R&R.
I concur that they need to stay out of local disputes like the Brits but there parts of Iraq are like Disneyland compared to the sh#% sandwich we dealt ourselves. It is just going to take time to seek out and destroy the cancerous guerilla cells and restore order.
‘Contractors’ - yeah, okay! Yesterdays attack bears a striking resemblance to the way the body of a slain American servicemen Bill Cleveland was dragged through the streets of Somalia in October 1993! Seems to me that the ‘insurgents’ in Fallujah are trying to test the staying power of the United States. The men that were killed were not repairmen - they were well trained ‘security’ personnel that ‘officially’, provided security for food convoys lest the Iraqis steal them blind, but I am pretty certain that was only a part-time job for those guys.
Where these guys operate, there are very few US troops
Us troops will not use deadly force to protect property but those ‘contractors’ will!
These security guys use Kurdish rebels in the same manner as Montagnyards (sp?) were used in Viet Nam, and for that reason the situation is always tense.
If you saw the images and looked at the crowd and the way they are posed, almost looks set up or staged. Look at the faces, no women, few adults, just a bunch of punk teenagers…
The way I see it, you’re screwed either way. As long as you remain in Iraq you’ll be taking casualties. As soon as you leave you’ll end up with a Shia government, closely aligned with Iran. Sunnis & Kurds will be pissed off and the likelihood of a civil war is medium to high.
So, what it basically boils down to is this: How many American lives are you prepared to sacrifice to create another Islamic state in the Middle East?
“Those people on the bridge were smiling. A few thousand pounds of FAE and HE would wipe the smile off their faces.”
Yes, it would have. And it would have created 10,000 NEW guerrillas/enemies who would kill yet more Westerners and US soldiers. The question I would ask is WHY those people on the bridge were smiling. Why have we become targets in Iraq? Why in the heck are we there? Protecting petrol for our SUVs? And most important, WHY are we hated so much by so many people in so many places around the world? (and we are–I have seen it myself).
These are unpleasant questions that few people have the stomach to ask. This is not to justify anyone’s indiscriminate killing. But taking a truly unbiased look at the reasons for such bloodthirsty actions usually helps us develop a more effective, powerful, focused, and, if necessary, lethal response. Right now we seem to be killing ants that are crawling up our legs with a shotgun–gets the ants not so well and sure does a hell of a job on own legs. We can do better, a lot better.
Well I think that history will tell us that we are in a very delicate position, this close to being untenable. We lose one GI per day, on average, and its not entirely clear that we’re winning hearts and minds here. The problem is that our recent history with the use of the military for civilian and guerrilla suppression is not at all good. We didn’t do it too well in Vietnam, in Beirut, or in Somalia. I’m just not sure its something the military is well-suited to doing. Special forces perhaps, but not regular army.
That said, pulling out now would show that we haven’t learned a single lesson from those conflicts. While Bush II is clearly showing that he’s twisting in the wind, politically (for a variety of reasons), there is a real risk that he won’t devote the necessary resources to getting the job done. In addition, his Cabinet has already publicly staked out the position that the reformation of Iraq wouldn’t take the numbers of troops that it looks like it would take. Unfortunately, part of this legerdemain might explain the broad use of private security forces (read: mercenaries) like those killed in Fallujah this week.
Basically, we’re between a rock and a hard place. These roadside bombs appear to be rather efficient ways to kill soldiers with little traceability. We can’t pull out because we’ll look like cowards, not to mention leave the country to tear itself apart in sectarian violence, but its not clear that we have the political will to step in with the full resources that it needs to fix it, especially given the specious nature of argument used to draw us into this mire.
American revolutionaries rebelling against British rule = patriots. Iraqi guerillas attacking an invading force = terrorists? “The winner writes the history”.
Iraq was “created” in the 1920’s or 1930’s out of a mess of British colonialism. Three groups who have no interest in being in the same country are lumped together into one. Can democracy work when forced upon those who do not neccessarily want it? It has been shown that democracy can work with people of differing religion, ethnicity, etc, if those people come together in a neutral or new situation (America). How do you convince a people that have lived in the same area for millenia that they cannot rule themselves alone but must conform to a democracy which may put themselves at a disadvatage (Kurds)?
Has anyone actually WON a war since WWII? Maybe the Falklands war? War has gone the way of low intensity conflict, where the invader/oppressor almost never wins.
The United States has wasted a golden opportunity. In the wake of 9/11, we had more international good will than in decades. That good will was lost when we invaded Iraq. Think of the advances that could have been made against terrorism had we NOT gone into Iraq. Think of all the potential terrorists that have been created because we went into Iraq.
There were no WMD’s in Iraq. Remember the rationale for this war. Changing the rationale after the fact is not acceptable.
The reason why we are there is simply because: it is about the oil. We have liberals/democrats in this country that have forced extreme envrionmental policies upon us. These policies prevent us from being energy independent. But then again, most liberals were born without the economic literacy gene. Everytime I see a Lib spaz out about gas prices, especially here in CA, I say “look in the mirror”. There is not one democrat alive today that has voted for the USA to develop more of its own resources. When the ANWR discussion comes up, libs say “we need to save it for future generations”. Ask the average working family what is higher on the priority list; 1: A trip to Alaska in a few years? 2: Filling up the gas tank in the family sedan today? The middle east is a shit hole. We don’t have to be there. The solution is simple. In the meantime we have to keep kicking ass. GW is not free from criticism either. Gas prices have gone up 50 cents a gallon and he has not said one Fv*ckn word about it to reassure the American people what he is doing to address the problem!! He should also remind the Saudis that they need us far more than we need them.
Over 2 years after 9/11, Al Quada retains the ability to strike at will against targets of opportunity anywhere in the world. If the time, energy, and money that has been spent on Iraq had been spent on finding and eliminating these terrorists, it’s entirely possible that events like Madrid would never have happened. Imagine what $87 billion (the tip of the iceberg in Iraq) could have done to help eliminate terrorists.
It is pretty obvious that when you try and fight two “wars” (Al Queda/Iraq), neither effort will be as strong as if you concentrated all your efforts into one war. To put it in triathlon terms, if you train 15 hours a week for triathlon, breaking your training up into three disciplines, you will not be as strong in any three of those as if you had trained for 15 hours in one discipline. Here are some brief examples:
We have limited surveillance capabilities. While engaging in war with Iraq, resources such as predator drones, which could have been searching Afghanistan for Bin laden, were re-deployed to Iraq, causing gaps in intelligence. The same goes for satelite surveilance.
We have limited special forces who are particularly good at hunting terrorists in places like Afghanistan. Many were re-deployed into Iraq, many to search for non-existant WMD’s. Would their time have not been better spent in Afghanistan?
We have limited capabilities (due either to time/equipment/man hours) to try and decode and/or evaluate electronic intelligence such as e-mail, cell phone intercepts, etc. Spending money to increase staffing, training, equipment in these areas could help find a sleeper cell, but that may never happen if the money isn’t spent.
Look, I could write a million examples like this…if you want to have an intelligent discussion, perhaps you should tell me HOW invading Iraq is HELPING to get Al Queda? And please, don’t use the tired line that Saddam was supporing Al Queda…he wasn’t.
