“Late Saturday, dozens of insurgents attacked the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, resulting in a clash that lasted about 40 minutes, 1st Lt. Adam Rondeau said. He added that it was unclear if the clash was aimed at helping prisoners escape, although the militants were unable to penetrate the prison's walls and no detainees were set free.
"This was obviously a very well-organized attack and a very big attack," Rondeau said. (emphasis added)
On Sunday, U.S. military officials raised the casualty toll from 20 to 44 U.S. soldiers and Marines wounded. Officials said 13 battleprisoners were also injured. Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill said one attacker was killed in the clash, but that none was detained. He didn't give further details. Officials refused to say whether the insurgents carrying out the attack were arrested or suffered casualties.The United States is holding about 10,500 prisoners in Iraq; 3,446 are at Abu Ghraib”
Insurgents Attack Iraq's Abu Ghraib Prison April 3, 2005
The following is an article that I wrote three weeks ago in which I maintained that we should be expecting Resistance operations on the scale of the above one, and now we would be expecting more of the same:"Even before the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I had publicly stated my unequivocal conviction that "rivers of blood" will flow in Iraq, to the consternation of several American radio stations that curtailed the interview claiming I was threatening the sensitivities of the American listeners.
Back in August of 2002 Vice President Dick Cheney cited the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami (who is not Iraqi) predicting that after "liberation" the streets in Basra and Baghdad are sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans. When an American soldier was shown on television raising the American flag, just a few days after the invasion, on a building in Um Qasr port south of Basra, I turned to my friends and predicted that that gesture by itself will cost hundreds of dead American soldiers.
Unlike Ajami and Cheney, and for that matter their "Iraqi" chorus of Chalabi, Allawi, and their ilk, I am more attuned with the dignity, and the indignities, of my people.
The US has not won this war.
A report by the US Army official historian (Maj. Isaiah Wilson, published in WorldTribune.com on March 7, 2005) claims that the US military lost its dominance in Iraq shortly after its invasion in 2003.
"In the two to three months of ambiguous transition, US forces slowly lost the momentum and the initiative gained over an off-balanced enemy," the report said. "The United States, its army and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since."
The failure to stabilize Iraq in 2003 was primarily due to the "failure of army planners to understand or accept the prospect that Iraqis would resist the US forces after the fall of the Saddam regime".
Pointedly, the Iraqi resistance (and here I exclude the five percent Salafis and the "terrorist" acts of foreign intelligence agencies, near and far) has also aimed at the Achilles heel of the neoconservative construct for occupying Iraq. More than 215 successful attacks on the Iraqi oil pipeline infrastructure have occurred over a period of one year and a half, and will continue unabated until the departure of the occupiers. And despite the illicit grab of the large income from the oil sector by Bremer's irregular monetary policies, Iraqi oil is not covering the US occupation costs, as wished by its planners, but is, instead, augmenting the tailspin dive of the US economy.
In a typically "managerial" attitude of waging a war, stripped from any moral considerations, the defeat in Iraq is forcing top Pentagon planners to rethink several key assumptions about the use of military power and has called into question the vision set out nearly four years ago that the armed forces can win wars and keep the peace with small numbers of fast-moving, lightly armed troops. The Pentagon, instead, became bogged down in an old-fashioned, costly and drawn-out war of occupation. As one senior Pentagon official was quoted as saying by the LA Times on March 11, 2005, "there are smarter, more efficient ways to do regime change and occupation.... One of those ways is to rely much more on our friends and allies to do the back-end work." This is the ultimate abject bankruptcy of a colonial occupation.
The above relates to the "totality" of the US defeat in attempting to occupy Iraq. What will unfurl on the ground is more probably several devastating attacks on large concentrations of occupiers' locations that will hasten their decision to withdraw from Iraq. The attack on the Jizani US military camp near Mosul on December 21, 2004 and the attack on the foreign mercenaries' al-Sadeer hotel on March 9, 2005 are but miniscule examples of that.When it was becoming clear, by July-August 2003, that the resistance was spreading, several radio stations again called to ask for an opinion on what course of action is best for the Americans. My response, even then, was for the withdrawal of the occupation forces, adding that when wounded, the saliva applied by licking and cleaning the wound is the best medicine. In other words, the Iraqi people can best take care of their tragedy by themselves, once the American occupation is ended and the Iraqis are left to tend to their own affairs. The recent determination and dignity of the election turnout (and not its legitimacy), whether participating in or boycotting it, is a vindication of that. My faith in the Iraqi people and their core capability to surmount our present predicament, according to our own traditions, culture and history, is deep and wide.
The Iraqi people will prevail. "
The abject bankruptcy of a colonial occupation by Imad Khadduri, March 12, 2005 Published 17/3/2005 (c) bitterlemons-international.org
Assume for a moment that you, the reader, are one of the 3,446 prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
Can you conjure your feelings as felt by these prisoners when they were listening to the exploding rage of the battle around them?Get Out - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - If and when you can