Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
Ultimately it's real hard to just roll over when someone walks into house and declares it to be theirs. Especially when you're seeing them sell all your furniture.
If this is added to the Israeli raid on Syria, no one will be able to deny that shit has officially started. All those folks waiting for The Rapture must be thrilled.
October 7, 2003
FALLOUJA, Iraq -- "Commander A," a hawk-nosed, stubble-bearded former Iraqi intelligence officer who says he leads anti-American guerrillas in this area, sat in a car on a deserted country road screened by seven-foot reeds Monday and laid out his vision for driving U.S. forces out of Iraq.
Slowly, he said, the "resistance" has been building its strength, accumulating stores of weapons and collecting money from residents. Former supporters of Saddam Hussein and observant Muslims alike are rallying to the cause, he asserted. Thousands are willing to die to evict U.S. forces from the country, and attacks are now being centrally coordinated, he said.
Although the two reputed resistance fighters were boastful and prone to exaggerated assertions of their effectiveness, their knowledge of recent operations, their wariness and their connections to Hussein's intelligence service lent some credence to their claims.
They said that the guerrillas are preparing to expand beyond the so-called "Sunni triangle"; that their group aims to abduct U.S. servicemen and give them to Osama bin Laden to barter for the Al Qaeda prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and that they are starting to develop into a full-fledged underground army that could take over as soon as they drive U.S. forces from Iraq.
In line with the U.S. assessments that the resistance is mainly made up of former regime loyalists, both men were security officers under the Baathist government and said they want to restore Hussein to power.
At the same time, they said, they have now embraced the call for a holy war against the United States espoused by groups such as Al Qaeda, and they also consider themselves fighting for Islam as well as for their country and Hussein. "And our symbol will be the virtuous sheik, Osama bin Laden," Commander A declared.
The Iraqi journalist who brokered the meeting -- and whose sympathies lie with the resistance -- said the two men led a cell of about 25 fighters that had been attacking the U.S. Army with roadside bombs and ambushes.
Attacks Increasing
Although U.S. officials have played down the military significance of the guerrilla activity, the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, acknowledged last week that attacks are becoming more frequent and are showing greater sophistication.
U.S. intelligence sees little evidence that the disparate opposition forces are coalescing around a common Islamist agenda or leadership structure, but officials do not rule out the possibility of some limited coordination.
"There may be limited cooperation in some instances in terms of carrying out attacks, although there certainly isn't definitive evidence pointing in that direction," a U.S. official said Monday in Washington. "They do have some ideological differences. But one of the reasons that would cause them to cooperate to some extent is mutual hatred of the United States and interest in trying to get the U.S. out of Iraq."
Posted by P6 at October 7, 2003 09:46 AM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1882