NBC News: Coalition headquarters attacked......updated

[RedEarth]

NBC News and news services
Updated: 4:34 p.m. ET April 06, 2004U.S. military officials tell NBC News that attacks against coalition forces and facilities have increased Tuesday.


The officials report that early Tuesday enemy forces attacked the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters at Kut, southeast of Baghdad. That attack was followed later by an attack on the coalition authority headquarters at Ramadi, west of Baghdad. Officials tell NBC it was not immediately clear whether the attacks were coordinated.

In Fallujah, military officials report that a U.S. attack helicopter killed at least a dozen enemy suspects who had fired on the helicopter from a large open-bed truck. The helicopter returned fire, destroying the truck.

The officials also report that one attacker hiding in a mosque fired a rocket-propelled grenade at U.S. Marines in Fallujah. The Marines returned fire, killing the assailant.

Pentagon officials said the enemy in Fallujah has suffered "significant casualties" and several suspects identified only as "high-value targets" have been taken into custody.

Battles on two fronts
Earlier Tuesday, Iraqi Sunni insurgents and Shiites loyal to a militant cleric challenged U.S.-led forces on two fronts, mounting battles across four southern Iraqi cities and taking on U.S. Marines in Fallujah, where several columns backed by tanks met heavy fire as they tried to move in.

At least 20 coalition troops, 18 of them American, and 100 Iraqis have been killed during three days of clashes, the worst fighting in Iraq since the war that toppled Saddam Hussein.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4667742/

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. I guess the Iraqis are trying to make sure

we know they want us to leave by June 30th?

[WillyT]

2. Check Out The Sub-Headline:

U.S., allied troops fighting in five Iraqi cities

Oh shit... The Iraqi Tet Offensive, perhaps???

:nuke::scared::nuke:

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. the enemy in Fallujah has suffered "significant casualties"

They will be fighting these people forever. It will never stop.
They have occupied Iraq for a year now, and it simply gets worse, never better.

The latest lie they are casting out is that this represents a small fraction of the population, everyone else is on board with the occupation. Why then, did they have to surround a city of 300,000 with a barbed wire fence and Abrams tanks? I suppose only a small fraction of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were actually the trouble makers as well.

[northzax]

7. I object to your use of the Warsaw Ghetto

as a comparison to Fallujah. Second off, your comparison would be much better to Algiers, think we can chip in andbuy the Pentagon a copy of the Battle of Algiers?

[DS1]

4. 17 days? We're not gonna last 17 hours!

:shrug:

[robertpaulsen]

13. "Game Over!"

I'm with ya.

[The_Casual_Observer]

5. "since the war that toppled Saddam Hussein"

I didn't realize that war was a "since"

[fishnfla]

9. Toppled, more death. Mission accomplished more death. Captured SH,more

great Christ!

[9215]

6. Battle of Algiers redux

This looks like the beginning of the big push to oust the US led imperial forces. It is now clear that the US has no intention of letting democracy take hold. This is all about controlling the political situation in Iraq for the benefit of the BFEE.

We should ship the whole Bush cabal, Halliburton fascist enablers, and all the security orgs that want to keep the place safe for corporations to Iraq and let the Iraqis determine punishment.

The BFEE really, really needs its assed kicked in a big way. Hopefully this will get the ball rolling to destroy that vile collection of psychopaths once and for all.


PS. I don't consider Bush the legitimate leader of the US. This degenerate drug addict needs to be behind bars or worse.

[RedEarth]

8. Here is some information on the militant cleric al-Sadr....

This information is from Juan Cole's site(History professor at U of Michigan). It's an excellent site and some in depth information on Iraq.


http://www.juancole.com/2004_04_01_juancole_archive.html#1081196989511...

2. Talking heads both from Iraq and from the ranks of the US retired officers keep attempting to maintain that Muqtada's movement is small and marginal. One speaker claimed that Muqtada has only 10,000 men.

In fact that is the size of his formal militia. Muqtada's movement is like the layers of an onion. You have 10,000 militiamen. But then you have tens of thousands of cadres able to mobilize neighborhoods. Then you have hundreds of thousands of Sadrists, followers of Muqtada and other heirs of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. Then you have maybe 5 million Shiite theocrats who sympathize with Muqtada's goals and rhetoric, about a third of the Shiite community. The Sadrists will now try to shift everything so that the 5 million become followers, the hundreds of thousands become cadres, and the tens of thousands become militiamen.

[lectrobyte]

11. exactly

and blockading the city, executing, shelling, atrocitating, etc., is only going to create more resistance. Didn't G.W. watch "Red Dawn"? Sorry, I know atrocitating isn't a word, but I couldn't resist.

[reprobate]

10. We certainly do have a large memory hole, don't we?

We have completely forgotten that most iraqis blame us for the deaths of a half million of their children during the "sanctions". We refused to give them antibiotics and their children died in masses from diseases like disintary, cholera, etc. Not to mention the leukemia that many thousand of their children died from, blamed on our DU weapons.

There are few adults over 25 who don't have a family member or friend who lost a child due to our embargo of almost everything needed to be a healthy society. To think that our invasion force would be welcomed with open arms is insane. Further proof that the neocons are working in a different reality than the rest of the world.

This is going to get more and more violent as time goes on. And remember that it is almost impossible for a military force to defeat a guerilla force when the insurgents have at least the tacit backing of the population.

You have to wonder just where the hell the leaders of this country parked their brains. Don't they read history. I guess they don't remember viet nam because most of them were in thier ivory towers at the time. And of course they never volunteered for anything remotely dangerous. Oh, I forgot. Our Captain Courageous in the white house flew jets, didn't he? Yeah, he flew a plane that would never have been sent to nam. It was obsolete even before he joined.

This is going to get really bloody.

[seemslikeadream]

15. More than 9,600 Gulf War veterans have died. - Daddy's war

www.ngwrc.org


According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, as of March 1, 2001

- 696,661 U.S. troops served in the Gulf War between August 2, 1990 and July 31, 1991 -- these are considered "Gulf War Conflict" veterans by the VA;

- Of the 696,628, 504,047 are separated from service and eligible for benefits through the VA;

- As of December 1999, more than 263,000 sought medical care at the VA;

- Of the 504,047 eligible veterans, 185,780 (36%) filed claims against the VA for service-related medical disabilities;

- Of the 171,878 VA claims actually processed, 149,094 (80%) were approved in part (note -- most claims are made up of multiple issues, if any one issue is granted, VA considers it approved);

- Of the 504,047 eligible for VA benefits, 149,094 (29%) are now considered disabled by the VA eleven since the start of the Gulf War; and

- Another 13,902 claims against the VA still pending.

- More than 9,600 Gulf War veterans have died.

- Conflict veterans are 51% more likely to have their claims denied than "theater" veterans (those who served in the Gulf since August 1, 1991)

- Veterans who served at Khamisiyah and Al Jubayl are 37% more likely to have one or more service connected conditions than era veterans. Conflict veterans are 8% more likely than era veterans to have one or more service connected conditions. Theater veterans ? those who served in the region since August 1, 1991 ? are 16% less likely than era veterans to have service connected conditions.

According to the Department of Defense, by 1999, the military revealed

- As many as 100,000 U.S. troops were exposed to repeated low-levels of chemical warfare agents, including sarin, cyclosarin, and mustard gases;

- More than 250,000 received the investigational new drug pyridostigmine bromide (PB pills) the Pentagon "cannot rule out" as linked to Gulf War illnesses;

- 8,000 received the investigational new botulinum toxoid (Bot Tox) vaccine;

- 150,000 received the hotly debated anthrax vaccine;

- 436,000 entered into or lived for months within areas contaminated by more than 315 tons of depleted uranium radioactive toxic waste possibly laced with trace amounts of highly radioactive Plutonium and Neptunium, almost all without any awareness, training, protective equipment, or medical evaluations; and

- Hundreds of thousands lived outdoors for months near more than 700 burning oil well fires belching fumes and particulate matter without any protective equipment.

- Each of these exposures took place while troops were either engaged in combat, serving in a war zone, or stationed in the volatile region for a number of months.

Other Important Statistics

- More than 1,200,000 civilians in Iraq have died since the start of the Gulf War, when Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990 (Source: United Nations and Iraq).

- An estimated 100,000 Iraqi soldiers died during Operation Desert Storm between January 17, 1991 and February 28, 1991 (Source: News Reports).


News Articles:

Lymphatic cancer twice as likely for Gulf veterans
08/05/2002





The ruins were strewn with corpses, burned black and thoroughly bloated.
Drawing / Michie Matsushima
Around 10:00 a.m., August 7, 1945
Approx. 450m from the hypocenter
Ko-machi (now, Naka-machi) ]

http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/virtual/VirtualMuseum_e/exhibit_e/exh0303_e/exh03034.html

[bluestateguy]

12. April, 2004: The Shiite Offensive

This may be remembered as the turning point when a new front in the war was opened up and the Shiite's turned against the US.

[xchrom]

14. happy now, shrub?

[Blaze Diem]

16. Bush Family Lineage..Prescott, George 1, George 2..Human life means ..

nothing when there's power and profit at stake.
Family of murderers...nothing more.