The trauma from the 2004 attacks remains visible everywhere. military personnel have scanned your retinas and taken your fingerprints. Such a card can only be obtained after U.S. How could it be otherwise, given the amount of effort that went into its destruction and not, subsequently, into rebuilding it? It’s a place where a resident must still carry around a U.S.-issued personal biometric ID card, which must also be shown any time you enter or exit the city if you are local. Unemployment is rampant here, the infrastructure remains largely in ruins, and tens of thousands of residents who fled in 2004 are still refugees. As one of the few visible signs of reconstruction in the city, that street-largely destroyed during the November 2004 siege-is slowly being torn up in order to be repaved. bombs, artillery, or mortar fire back then still line Fallujah’s main street, or rather, what’s left of it. The shells of buildings pulverized by U.S. military assaults in April, and again in November 2004, and more than four years later, in the “new Iraq,” the city continues to languish. At least 70% of that city’s structures were destroyed during massive U.S. The New Fallujah Up Close and Still in Ruinsįallujah, Iraq-Driving through Fallujah, once the most rebellious Sunni city in this country, I saw little evidence of any kind of reconstruction underway. It’s the only way a “tourist” is likely to be welcomed in this part of Iraq. So slip into a well armored BMW with him and check out the scene for yourself. In the end, according to the New York Times, the generals hope to leave one third of American troops, almost 50,000 of them, in Iraq for an undetermined period (and that number, of course, doesn’t including private security contractors) after the combat troops are withdrawn.ĭahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone and TomDispatch regular, is now back in Iraq and, in his typical, incisive way, he offers another view of just what “success” has meant for Americans, at least in Iraq’s Sunni heartland. They would, Robert Burns of the Associated Press writes, be “redesigned and reconfigured as multipurpose units to provide training and advising for Iraqi security force” and so would “be considered noncombat outfits.” What’s in a name, after all? Oh, and in the bargain, the generals are evidently also planning to re-label some of those withdrawable combat forces among the still staggering 144,000 troops in Iraq-the American invasion force of 2003 was only about 130,000 strong-as non-combat “support troops” or advisors. Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service indicates that a “network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilizing public opinion against Obama’s … If Obama does not change the policy, according to the source, they hope to have planted the seeds of a future political narrative blaming his withdrawal policy for the ‘collapse’ they expect in an Iraq without U.S. President Obama has yet to show any sign of agreeing to this, but the pressure is evidently only beginning.
“Odierno and Petraeus have said that we really need 23 months to do this without jeopardizing the security gains that we’ve secured,” was the way one typical anonymous official put it. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, favor the 23-month approach. One is reportedly 19 months long, the other 23 months long, and-here’s a shock-the two top generals in charge, Centcom commander David Petraeus and U.S. military planners” have come up with two alternate scenarios to Obama’s 16-month plan. Recently, according to military leaks to the media, “U.S. stuff now embedded there out-and that’s without even taking into account the political situation in that country.
Over the last two years, numerous military figures have claimed that, as fast as they got into Iraq, it would be hell just getting all the U.S. Bush’s) generals are showing visible evidence of dragging their combat boots in the sand on the subject. “combat troops.” Now, his (and, of course, George W. The Obama plan, restated many times during the presidential campaign, involved a 16-month schedule for withdrawing not all U.S. Subscribe to our print magazine.Īlready it’s begun-the endless non-departure from Iraq.
#SHEIKS BEVY FREE#
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