The U.S. military has lost control over the volatile al-Anbar province, Iraqi police and residents say.
The area to the west of Baghdad includes Fallujah, Ramadi and other towns that have seen the worst of military occupation, and the strongest resistance.
Despite massive military operations which destroyed most of Fallujah and much of cities like Haditha and al-Qa’im in Ramadi, real control of the city now seems to be in the hands of local resistance.
In losing control of this province, the U.S. would have lost control over much of Iraq.
“We are talking about nearly a third of the area of Iraq,” Ahmed Salman, a historian from Fallujah told IPS. “Al-Anbar borders Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, and the resistance there will never stop as long as there are American soldiers on the ground.”
Salman said the U.S. military is working against itself. “Their actions ruin their goal because they use these huge, violent military operations which kill so many civilians, and make it impossible to calm down the people of al-Anbar.”
Nah, this can’t be true. Why George W, said only yesterday how swimmingly everything was going in Iraq. This is obviously some ploy by those evildoing ‘appeasers” to undermine George’s enlightened government ahead of the Congressional polls!!
Seriously, just what will it take for the idiots running, and I use the world in its extremely loosest form, this war to understand that flattening whole cities and murdering the indigenous ‘collaterals’ is no way to win hearts and minds?
Quite a lot, I think, Ian.
In his occasional sorties over at LP, Currency Lad maintains that the regime didn’t lie in the buildup to the Iraq invasion, and that it was a success and the neocons were right.
What is spooky is that CL is not regarded as a RWDB, only moderate right. Where do all the rest stand?
From an interview with former MI5 chief, Dame Stella Rimington:
Rimington spent years running covert agents and averting the plans of terrorists from Northern Ireland to the Middle East.
She was MI5’s counter-terrorism director in the 1980s
The Advertiser Review, September 2, 2006, page 11
(My emphasis)