Monday, November 08, 2004
war storiesSo We Win Fallujah. Then What?The big question is what comes after.By Fred KaplanPosted Monday, Nov. 8, 2004, at 3:10 PM PT
So, the long-postponed offensive in Fallujah is finally under way, though it's unclear to what end. Hundreds, probably thousands, of insurgents will be killed. At best, the American soldiers and Marines will take control of the city. But then what? Fallujah isn't Masada or the Alamo, some last-ditch outpost where the rebels whoop their final battle cry, rally one more round of resistance, then pass into history when their last rifleman falls.
The problem is that the insurgents are active all over the Sunni Triangle. They dramatized this fact over the weekend. In Samarra, attacks on Iraqi police stations killed 33, including the local national guard commander, and injured 48. In Ramadi, a slew of suicide car bombings wounded 20 U.S. Marines. In Haditha and Haqlaniyah, guerrillas raided three police stations, killing 22 officers. In Diyala Province, the governor's aide and two members of the provincial governing council were killed. Bombs also exploded across Baghdad, at a Catholic church, and against U.S. convoys along the main road to the airport.
The highly coordinated attacks in Samarra are particularly disturbing, as U.S. and Iraqi forces supposedly pacified that city just last month. They might now accomplish the same feat in Fallujah; between 10,000 and 15,000 American soldiers and Marines are involved in the offensive, after all. But after the fighting is over, the siege can't be sustained for long. Residents, who have fled the city in anticipation of the battle, will want to return home; commercial traffic will once again flow; and it will be hard to block a new crop of insurgents from coming and going—especially if many of the soldiers and Marines move on to the next insurgent stronghold. As has widely been noted in many other contexts, the U.S. troops in Iraq are too stretched to run a tight occupation in one area while waging full-blown combat in another. (In the old days, "two-front war" meant fighting simultaneously in Europe and Asia. Now, apparently, it means Fallujah and Sadr City.)
And what of this campaign's immediate goal—to clear the area of insurgents so that Sunnis can vote safely in the elections this January? Unfortunately, the connection between an insurgent-free Fallujah and a trouble-free election is less than clear cut. First, many Sunni leaders, including Iraq's interim president, Ghazi al-Yawer, have spoken out against the offensive; several have threatened to retaliate with a Sunni boycott of the election. The urge to boycott will be stiffened further if the Shiites appear certain to win anyway—and that's what seems to be shaping up, given a) the population's Shiite majority; b) Grand Ayatollah Sistani's plan to coordinate the various Shiite parties in order to avoid defeat by internal turmoil; and c) the added bonus of the proposal to open the ballot boxes to exiles, almost all of whom are Shiites.
As for accomplishing the war's broader, long-term goal—crushing the insurgents and securing a stable, free Iraq—the offensive in Fallujah is at best a shot in the dark. If success is swift and civilian casualties minimal, even the operation's critics might come around or at least drop their resistance. However, urban warfare is rarely a neat affair, especially when the indigenous fighters have had six months to fortify defenses, prepare booby traps, and plan back-alley ambushes. The U.S. troops expect to face 3,000 to 5,000 insurgents, who are unlikely to give up the fight easily. A little over half of Fallujah's 300,000 residents have reportedly fled the city, but this means that a bit fewer than half have stayed. They were all warned to leave town. The offensive is going to be a massive undertaking; the city is going to be pummeled by fire from the ground and the air; it will be hard to distinguish innocent civilians from insurgent fighters; and, given the warnings and the waiting and the declared urgency of the mission, there will be little incentive to try.
In this context, it is intriguing that the U.S. forces' first move, upon crossing into Fallujah Monday, was to seize the main hospital. In part, the step was practical. The site will be needed to care for the wounded. In part, it was a political. During the offensive last spring, U.S. commanders have said, the hospital issued inflated reports of civilian casualties for propaganda purposes. Capturing the site will not only prevent a repetition, it will also allow the United States to control the message about casualties. There are almost certain to be many deaths and injuries; how many of them will be reported is another matter. How wildly the rumors of casualties will flow anyway, in the regional media and elsewhere, may shape the reaction to the battle—within Iraq, the Arab world, the United Nations (which must play a vital role in Iraq if the elections and subsequent reconstruction efforts are to succeed), and the American public.
It is no coincidence that the offensive was launched shortly after our own presidential election. Given President George W. Bush's rosy campaign rhetoric about freedom on the march and Vice President Dick Cheney's assurances that things in Iraq were going "surprisingly well," a sudden escalation of the war—especially if heavy casualties, American ones, ensued—might have dimmed their prospects at the polls.
The background of this battle is worth recalling. Late last March, four U.S. contractors were brutally killed by guerrillas in Fallujah—beaten, dismembered, dragged through the streets, set on fire, and strung up on bridge cable. Many back home invoked the specter of Somalia. The wide consensus in the Pentagon and the White House was that something had to be done to punish the perpetrators and reverse the humiliation. In April, Marines prepared to storm Fallujah—but, at the last minute, were held back. Negotiations took place with tribal chiefs. Finally, the Marines were ordered to retreat, and instead a brigade of Iraqi officers, led by a former Baathist general, went in to restore order. At first glance, it seemed a plausible solution—a Sunni army unit to keep the peace in Sunni territory while U.S. officials carried on talks with political leaders. Soon, though, it all broke down. The Sunni soldiers either fled or joined the resistance. The tribal chiefs turned out to have less authority than they claimed. The insurgents took over the town, and foreign terrorists felt free to use it as a base.
We still don't know just who these insurgents are: how many of them are foreign terrorists, how many are simply locals angered by the occupation and seeking to avenge dead friends and relatives. The lack of knowledge about such matters—about who is in charge, who's committing the violence, and thus how to go about defeating or co-opting them—explains, in part, why the United States has failed at political attempts to control the violence.
In any case, if the Bush administration wanted to retake Fallujah after last spring's failure, they could have remounted the offensive as early as June. But, again, Bush's own electoral calculus ruled against such a risky move. So the second storming was put off until mid-November, even though this gave the insurgents a half-year to prepare and allowed little leeway for a peaceful prelude to Iraqi elections.
Bush probably intends the offensive to serve as a final showdown for the insurgents, but, regardless of the immediate outcome (and I write this with no pleasure whatever), it might be a final showdown for us instead. There are two factors at work here.
First, the offensive is billed as a joint operation by the U.S. military and the Iraqi national guard, but it hasn't worked out that way. National Public Radio's Anne Garrels, who is embedded with the Marines in Fallujah, reports that of the 500 Iraqi soldiers originally deployed to go in alongside U.S. forces only 170 were still on station when the operation began. The rest had deserted—whether simply to flee for their safety or to join the other side. And these Iraqis were members of the 36th Special Operations battalion, the elite of the country's new security forces. In short, quite apart from what happens in Fallujah, the Iraqis are not remotely ready to provide defense by themselves.
Second, coupled with this grim realization, the U.S. military is finding itself increasingly alone and isolated in this war. A small story in the Nov. 4 New York Times listed the various countries that are pulling out of this "coalition." Hungary had just announced, the day before, that it would withdraw its 300 troops from Iraq. This move would come on top of withdrawals, either actual or announced, by Spain (1,300 troops); Poland (2,400); the Netherlands (1,400); Thailand (450); the Dominican Republic (302); Nicaragua (115); Honduras (370); the Philippines (51); Norway (155); and New Zealand (60). Other countries will soon reduce their troop levels— Singapore, from 191 to 32; Moldova, from 42 to 12; and Bulgaria, from 483 to 430. For the most part, these aren't large numbers—the United States has always contributed the vast bulk of the forces, with Britain, Australia, and Italy trailing far behind—but that's not the point. Their joining the coalition was presented as a show of international support; their departing will be widely perceived as an erosion of that support.
So what to do? Bush may well see the Fallujah offensive as a last gamble to turn things around. My guess is that, if it goes "well," by any stretch of a definition—and if the elections proceed with the slightest semblance of order—he might make preparations to declare victory and pull out. Such a move would almost certainly trigger chaos, but could this chaos be much more rampant than the state of life there now?Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2109360/
if
So, the long-postponed offensive in Fallujah is finally under way, though it's unclear to what end. Hundreds, probably thousands, of insurgents will be killed. At best, the American soldiers and Marines will take control of the city. But then what? Fallujah isn't Masada or the Alamo, some last-ditch outpost where the rebels whoop their final battle cry, rally one more round of resistance, then pass into history when their last rifleman falls.
The problem is that the insurgents are active all over the Sunni Triangle. They dramatized this fact over the weekend. In Samarra, attacks on Iraqi police stations killed 33, including the local national guard commander, and injured 48. In Ramadi, a slew of suicide car bombings wounded 20 U.S. Marines. In Haditha and Haqlaniyah, guerrillas raided three police stations, killing 22 officers. In Diyala Province, the governor's aide and two members of the provincial governing council were killed. Bombs also exploded across Baghdad, at a Catholic church, and against U.S. convoys along the main road to the airport.
The highly coordinated attacks in Samarra are particularly disturbing, as U.S. and Iraqi forces supposedly pacified that city just last month. They might now accomplish the same feat in Fallujah; between 10,000 and 15,000 American soldiers and Marines are involved in the offensive, after all. But after the fighting is over, the siege can't be sustained for long. Residents, who have fled the city in anticipation of the battle, will want to return home; commercial traffic will once again flow; and it will be hard to block a new crop of insurgents from coming and going—especially if many of the soldiers and Marines move on to the next insurgent stronghold. As has widely been noted in many other contexts, the U.S. troops in Iraq are too stretched to run a tight occupation in one area while waging full-blown combat in another. (In the old days, "two-front war" meant fighting simultaneously in Europe and Asia. Now, apparently, it means Fallujah and Sadr City.)
And what of this campaign's immediate goal—to clear the area of insurgents so that Sunnis can vote safely in the elections this January? Unfortunately, the connection between an insurgent-free Fallujah and a trouble-free election is less than clear cut. First, many Sunni leaders, including Iraq's interim president, Ghazi al-Yawer, have spoken out against the offensive; several have threatened to retaliate with a Sunni boycott of the election. The urge to boycott will be stiffened further if the Shiites appear certain to win anyway—and that's what seems to be shaping up, given a) the population's Shiite majority; b) Grand Ayatollah Sistani's plan to coordinate the various Shiite parties in order to avoid defeat by internal turmoil; and c) the added bonus of the proposal to open the ballot boxes to exiles, almost all of whom are Shiites.
As for accomplishing the war's broader, long-term goal—crushing the insurgents and securing a stable, free Iraq—the offensive in Fallujah is at best a shot in the dark. If success is swift and civilian casualties minimal, even the operation's critics might come around or at least drop their resistance. However, urban warfare is rarely a neat affair, especially when the indigenous fighters have had six months to fortify defenses, prepare booby traps, and plan back-alley ambushes. The U.S. troops expect to face 3,000 to 5,000 insurgents, who are unlikely to give up the fight easily. A little over half of Fallujah's 300,000 residents have reportedly fled the city, but this means that a bit fewer than half have stayed. They were all warned to leave town. The offensive is going to be a massive undertaking; the city is going to be pummeled by fire from the ground and the air; it will be hard to distinguish innocent civilians from insurgent fighters; and, given the warnings and the waiting and the declared urgency of the mission, there will be little incentive to try.
In this context, it is intriguing that the U.S. forces' first move, upon crossing into Fallujah Monday, was to seize the main hospital. In part, the step was practical. The site will be needed to care for the wounded. In part, it was a political. During the offensive last spring, U.S. commanders have said, the hospital issued inflated reports of civilian casualties for propaganda purposes. Capturing the site will not only prevent a repetition, it will also allow the United States to control the message about casualties. There are almost certain to be many deaths and injuries; how many of them will be reported is another matter. How wildly the rumors of casualties will flow anyway, in the regional media and elsewhere, may shape the reaction to the battle—within Iraq, the Arab world, the United Nations (which must play a vital role in Iraq if the elections and subsequent reconstruction efforts are to succeed), and the American public.
It is no coincidence that the offensive was launched shortly after our own presidential election. Given President George W. Bush's rosy campaign rhetoric about freedom on the march and Vice President Dick Cheney's assurances that things in Iraq were going "surprisingly well," a sudden escalation of the war—especially if heavy casualties, American ones, ensued—might have dimmed their prospects at the polls.
The background of this battle is worth recalling. Late last March, four U.S. contractors were brutally killed by guerrillas in Fallujah—beaten, dismembered, dragged through the streets, set on fire, and strung up on bridge cable. Many back home invoked the specter of Somalia. The wide consensus in the Pentagon and the White House was that something had to be done to punish the perpetrators and reverse the humiliation. In April, Marines prepared to storm Fallujah—but, at the last minute, were held back. Negotiations took place with tribal chiefs. Finally, the Marines were ordered to retreat, and instead a brigade of Iraqi officers, led by a former Baathist general, went in to restore order. At first glance, it seemed a plausible solution—a Sunni army unit to keep the peace in Sunni territory while U.S. officials carried on talks with political leaders. Soon, though, it all broke down. The Sunni soldiers either fled or joined the resistance. The tribal chiefs turned out to have less authority than they claimed. The insurgents took over the town, and foreign terrorists felt free to use it as a base.
We still don't know just who these insurgents are: how many of them are foreign terrorists, how many are simply locals angered by the occupation and seeking to avenge dead friends and relatives. The lack of knowledge about such matters—about who is in charge, who's committing the violence, and thus how to go about defeating or co-opting them—explains, in part, why the United States has failed at political attempts to control the violence.
In any case, if the Bush administration wanted to retake Fallujah after last spring's failure, they could have remounted the offensive as early as June. But, again, Bush's own electoral calculus ruled against such a risky move. So the second storming was put off until mid-November, even though this gave the insurgents a half-year to prepare and allowed little leeway for a peaceful prelude to Iraqi elections.
Bush probably intends the offensive to serve as a final showdown for the insurgents, but, regardless of the immediate outcome (and I write this with no pleasure whatever), it might be a final showdown for us instead. There are two factors at work here.
First, the offensive is billed as a joint operation by the U.S. military and the Iraqi national guard, but it hasn't worked out that way. National Public Radio's Anne Garrels, who is embedded with the Marines in Fallujah, reports that of the 500 Iraqi soldiers originally deployed to go in alongside U.S. forces only 170 were still on station when the operation began. The rest had deserted—whether simply to flee for their safety or to join the other side. And these Iraqis were members of the 36th Special Operations battalion, the elite of the country's new security forces. In short, quite apart from what happens in Fallujah, the Iraqis are not remotely ready to provide defense by themselves.
Second, coupled with this grim realization, the U.S. military is finding itself increasingly alone and isolated in this war. A small story in the Nov. 4 New York Times listed the various countries that are pulling out of this "coalition." Hungary had just announced, the day before, that it would withdraw its 300 troops from Iraq. This move would come on top of withdrawals, either actual or announced, by Spain (1,300 troops); Poland (2,400); the Netherlands (1,400); Thailand (450); the Dominican Republic (302); Nicaragua (115); Honduras (370); the Philippines (51); Norway (155); and New Zealand (60). Other countries will soon reduce their troop levels— Singapore, from 191 to 32; Moldova, from 42 to 12; and Bulgaria, from 483 to 430. For the most part, these aren't large numbers—the United States has always contributed the vast bulk of the forces, with Britain, Australia, and Italy trailing far behind—but that's not the point. Their joining the coalition was presented as a show of international support; their departing will be widely perceived as an erosion of that support.
So what to do? Bush may well see the Fallujah offensive as a last gamble to turn things around. My guess is that, if it goes "well," by any stretch of a definition—and if the elections proceed with the slightest semblance of order—he might make preparations to declare victory and pull out. Such a move would almost certainly trigger chaos, but could this chaos be much more rampant than the state of life there now?Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2109360/
if
today's papersDeluge in FallujahBy Emily BiusoPosted Monday, Nov. 8, 2004, at 3:14 AM PT
The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times lead with continued fighting in Fallujah in what everyone is deeming only the first stage of the much-anticipated battle against insurgents. On Sunday Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi declared a 60-day state of emergency, enabling the government to set curfews and detain suspected criminals, among other broad powers. Elsewhere in Iraq, more than 30 were struck dead across country by guerrilla car bombings and mortar attacks. USA Today leads with the CIA's most extensive domestic deployment in the agency's history. Dozens of officers will be working with FBI agents on terrorism investigations.
Between 10,000 and 15,000 American soldiers accompanied by Iraqi troops entered Fallujah Sunday, securing two strategic bridges and a hospital. Everyone mentions officials' hope that this battle will be more successful than the abortive mission in the city that took place in April. The paper's stories differ in their characterization of the intensity of the fight in Fallujah, though. While the NYT's headline says that "GI's open attack" and USAT's head reads, "US and Iraqi troops begin assault," the LAT plays it a little milder, reporting that "US troops advance to Fallujah's edge."
Journalists appear scarce in Fallujah: The NYT and the Christian Science Monitor apparently have reporters in the city, while the WP and LAT stories have a Baghdad dateline. The LAT cryptically credits an unnamed "special correspondent in Fallujah" who contributed to their report.
Assessing the occupation in Iraq as "ambitious" and "grim," the NYT editorial board calls for an increase of nearly 40,000 more troops in the country to meet the president's stated goals.
According to late-breaking reports, Yasser Arafat's wife accused Palestinian leaders of trying to depose her husband and forced them to cancel a trip to the Paris hospital where he is. "You have to realize the size of the conspiracy. I tell you they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive," she told Al Jazeera television, referring to her sick husband.
France sent additional troops to the Ivory Coast Sunday. One day after a government air strike killed nine French peacekeepers, government loyalists attacked French homes and businesses in the country's commercial center. While the NYT has a reporter in Senegal covering the story, the WSJ and WP run an Associated Press report that has an Ivory Coast dateline, and it paints a considerably graver picture of the violence there.
The LAT and WSJ report that Iran reached a tentative deal with France, Britain, and Germany to freeze parts of its nuclear program, according to officials on Sunday. Iran is considering suspending all activities related to enriching uranium, and accepting the deal would allow them to avoid U.N. sanctions.
The Post checks in on the government's ability to protect the United States from bioterrorism and learns it is chillingly unprepared. Among the problems: hospitals cannot accommodate widespread vaccinations after a large biological attack; the National Institutes of Health are not producing new vaccines; plans on how the government should communicate with the public after an attack are incomplete; the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services cannot decide who is in charge of preparing for bio-attacks.
The NYT fronts an eye-opening piece on the Bush administration's answer to the Supreme Court ruling on rights of detainees in the war on terror. Inmates won the legal right to formally challenge their imprisonment, but these Guantánamo prisoners do not go to court. The defendants argue their case in front of a military tribunal in a trailer on the base; they do not have lawyers and are not allowed to see most of the evidence against them because it is classified.
The "untold story of the 2004 election," says the WP on its front page, is the impressive organization of the evangelical Christian right. In many battleground states, evangelical Protestants, conservative Roman Catholics, and others took it upon themselves to mobilize voters for President Bush, often organizing without connecting with campaign officials. Ministers sermonizing on voting; organizing voting drives around same-sex marriage bans; handing out voter registration forms on Sunday—they all contributed to the crucial demographic coming out in scores for Bush.
Also in the Taking Credit for the Election Department, the LAT reports that business leaders are eager to cash in on their investments in Republican campaigns. "With his victory and better numbers in the Senate and the House, we hope we would get to some things we believe are long overdue," said Dirk Van Dongen, president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors.
Michael Scheuer, the once-anonymous author of the best-selling Imperial Hubris, is talking to the press again after being hushed up by the CIA, where he is a top counterterrorism official and the former chief of the agency's Osama Bin Laden unit. He tells the NYT that the Bush administration is mischaracterizing al-Qaida as a terrorist organization when it is in fact an evolving global Islamic insurgency. Many of the dead or captured operatives have been replaced by others, Scheuer says. He laments how much is still unknown about the group: "We still don't know how big it is. We still, today, don't know the order of battle of al-Qaida."Emily Biuso is a free-lance writer in New York.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2109343/
The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times lead with continued fighting in Fallujah in what everyone is deeming only the first stage of the much-anticipated battle against insurgents. On Sunday Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi declared a 60-day state of emergency, enabling the government to set curfews and detain suspected criminals, among other broad powers. Elsewhere in Iraq, more than 30 were struck dead across country by guerrilla car bombings and mortar attacks. USA Today leads with the CIA's most extensive domestic deployment in the agency's history. Dozens of officers will be working with FBI agents on terrorism investigations.
Between 10,000 and 15,000 American soldiers accompanied by Iraqi troops entered Fallujah Sunday, securing two strategic bridges and a hospital. Everyone mentions officials' hope that this battle will be more successful than the abortive mission in the city that took place in April. The paper's stories differ in their characterization of the intensity of the fight in Fallujah, though. While the NYT's headline says that "GI's open attack" and USAT's head reads, "US and Iraqi troops begin assault," the LAT plays it a little milder, reporting that "US troops advance to Fallujah's edge."
Journalists appear scarce in Fallujah: The NYT and the Christian Science Monitor apparently have reporters in the city, while the WP and LAT stories have a Baghdad dateline. The LAT cryptically credits an unnamed "special correspondent in Fallujah" who contributed to their report.
Assessing the occupation in Iraq as "ambitious" and "grim," the NYT editorial board calls for an increase of nearly 40,000 more troops in the country to meet the president's stated goals.
According to late-breaking reports, Yasser Arafat's wife accused Palestinian leaders of trying to depose her husband and forced them to cancel a trip to the Paris hospital where he is. "You have to realize the size of the conspiracy. I tell you they are trying to bury Abu Ammar alive," she told Al Jazeera television, referring to her sick husband.
France sent additional troops to the Ivory Coast Sunday. One day after a government air strike killed nine French peacekeepers, government loyalists attacked French homes and businesses in the country's commercial center. While the NYT has a reporter in Senegal covering the story, the WSJ and WP run an Associated Press report that has an Ivory Coast dateline, and it paints a considerably graver picture of the violence there.
The LAT and WSJ report that Iran reached a tentative deal with France, Britain, and Germany to freeze parts of its nuclear program, according to officials on Sunday. Iran is considering suspending all activities related to enriching uranium, and accepting the deal would allow them to avoid U.N. sanctions.
The Post checks in on the government's ability to protect the United States from bioterrorism and learns it is chillingly unprepared. Among the problems: hospitals cannot accommodate widespread vaccinations after a large biological attack; the National Institutes of Health are not producing new vaccines; plans on how the government should communicate with the public after an attack are incomplete; the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services cannot decide who is in charge of preparing for bio-attacks.
The NYT fronts an eye-opening piece on the Bush administration's answer to the Supreme Court ruling on rights of detainees in the war on terror. Inmates won the legal right to formally challenge their imprisonment, but these Guantánamo prisoners do not go to court. The defendants argue their case in front of a military tribunal in a trailer on the base; they do not have lawyers and are not allowed to see most of the evidence against them because it is classified.
The "untold story of the 2004 election," says the WP on its front page, is the impressive organization of the evangelical Christian right. In many battleground states, evangelical Protestants, conservative Roman Catholics, and others took it upon themselves to mobilize voters for President Bush, often organizing without connecting with campaign officials. Ministers sermonizing on voting; organizing voting drives around same-sex marriage bans; handing out voter registration forms on Sunday—they all contributed to the crucial demographic coming out in scores for Bush.
Also in the Taking Credit for the Election Department, the LAT reports that business leaders are eager to cash in on their investments in Republican campaigns. "With his victory and better numbers in the Senate and the House, we hope we would get to some things we believe are long overdue," said Dirk Van Dongen, president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors.
Michael Scheuer, the once-anonymous author of the best-selling Imperial Hubris, is talking to the press again after being hushed up by the CIA, where he is a top counterterrorism official and the former chief of the agency's Osama Bin Laden unit. He tells the NYT that the Bush administration is mischaracterizing al-Qaida as a terrorist organization when it is in fact an evolving global Islamic insurgency. Many of the dead or captured operatives have been replaced by others, Scheuer says. He laments how much is still unknown about the group: "We still don't know how big it is. We still, today, don't know the order of battle of al-Qaida."Emily Biuso is a free-lance writer in New York.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2109343/
washingtonpost.com
Judge Says Detainees' Trials Are Unlawful Ruling Is Setback For Bush Policy
By Carol D. Leonnig and John MintzWashington Post Staff WritersTuesday, November 9, 2004; Page A01
The special trials established to determine the guilt or innocence of prisoners at the U.S. military prison in Cuba are unlawful and cannot continue in their current form, a federal judge ruled yesterday.
In a setback for the Bush administration, U.S. District Judge James Robertson found that detainees at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may be prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions and therefore entitled to the protections of international and military law -- which the government has declined to grant them.
The decision came in a lawsuit filed by the first alleged al Qaeda member facing trial before what the government calls "military commissions." The decision upends -- for now -- the administration's strategy for prosecuting hundreds of alleged al Qaeda and Taliban detainees accused of terrorist crimes.
Human rights advocates, foreign governments and the detainees' attorneys have contended that the rules governing military commissions are unfairly stacked against the defendants. But Robertson's ruling is the first by a federal judge to assert that the commissions, which took nearly two years to get underway, are invalid.
The Bush administration denounced the ruling as wrongly giving special rights to terrorists and announced that it will ask a higher court for an emergency stay and reversal of Robertson's decision. Military officers at Guantanamo immediately halted commission proceedings in light of the ruling.
"We vigorously disagree. . . . The judge has put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war," said Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo. "The Constitution entrusts to the president the responsibility to safeguard the nation's security. The Department of Justice will continue to defend the president's ability and authority under the Constitution to fulfill that duty."
Robertson ruled that the military commissions, which Bush authorized the Pentagon to revive after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, are neither lawful nor proper. Under commission rules, the government could, for example, exclude people accused of terrorist acts from some commission sessions and deny them access to evidence, which the judge said would violate basic military law.
Robertson said the government should have held special hearings for detainees to determine whether they qualified for prisoner-of-war protections when they were captured, as required by the Geneva Conventions. Instead, the administration declared the captives "enemy combatants" and decided to afford them some of the protections spelled out by the Geneva accords.
Robertson ordered that until the government provides the hearing, it can prosecute the detainees only in courts-martial, under long-established military law.
Robertson issued his decision in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a detainee captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and accused of being a member of al Qaeda. Robertson's opinion is expected to set the standard for treatment of other detainees before military commissions. So far, four Guantanamo Bay detainees have been ordered to stand trial.
The unusual coalition of defense lawyers and conservative military law experts who banded together to challenge the commissions hailed the decision as a major victory in efforts to level the playing field for the detainees, some of whom have been held for nearly three years.
"We are thrilled by this ruling," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based group that represents the families of some Guantanamo Bay prisoners. "Military commissions were a bad idea and an embarrassment. The refusal of the Bush administration to apply the Geneva Conventions was a legal and moral outrage."
Kevin Barry, a retired Coast Guard judge who is critical of the Pentagon's legal justifications for the Guantanamo Bay detentions, called Robertson's ruling a "remarkable" decision that "will give heart to all who think the rule of law should apply in the Afghanistan conflict." Barry said the war on terrorism is the first U.S. war since the Geneva Conventions' adoption in 1949 in which the government has not accorded POW status to enemy fighters.
"Even the Viet Cong, who were farmers by day and fighters at night, were accorded that status," he said. "The judge got these issues right."
The government has been under pressure since June to revise other facets of its strategy for handling the cases of the more than 500 Guantanamo Bay detainees. In a landmark ruling that month, the Supreme Court rejected the government's argument that the president may indefinitely hold and interrogate alleged al Qaeda and Taliban members captured on the battlefield without filing charges or providing them lawyers.
The court ruled that the detainees were entitled to hear the charges against them and challenge their imprisonment in U.S. federal courts. Nearly 70 have filed such challenges, called habeas corpus petitions, in federal courts here.
Since the Supreme Court ruling, the government has begun holding "combatant status review tribunals" at Guantanamo Bay for each detainee to determine whether he should continue to be held. The detainees do not have legal representation at those hearings. So far 317 hearings have been held and 131 cases have been adjudicated, all but one in favor of continued detention.
Douglass Cassel, director of the Center for International Human Rights at the Northwestern University School of Law, said he hopes the Bush administration reconsiders its overall strategy in light of the Supreme Court's June decision and Robertson's ruling yesterday.
"I hope the government sits back and says, 'This is a chance to regain the high ground in the court of public opinion,' " he said. "This decision is of enormous importance to the perceived commitment of the United States to the rule of law."
But Douglas W. Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor, called Robertson "sadly mistaken" for intervening in the case at this point. He said the judge should have postponed any ruling until the military commissions had completed their work.
Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington lawyer specializing in military justice, said it will be difficult for military commissions and status review panels to decide fairly whether a detainee is a prisoner of war, after top executive branch and military leaders have declared all of them enemy combatants, not POWs.
"That's where they got into trouble," Fidell said. "The people driving the train were not people familiar with the military justice system."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
'
Judge Says Detainees' Trials Are Unlawful Ruling Is Setback For Bush Policy
By Carol D. Leonnig and John MintzWashington Post Staff WritersTuesday, November 9, 2004; Page A01
The special trials established to determine the guilt or innocence of prisoners at the U.S. military prison in Cuba are unlawful and cannot continue in their current form, a federal judge ruled yesterday.
In a setback for the Bush administration, U.S. District Judge James Robertson found that detainees at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may be prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions and therefore entitled to the protections of international and military law -- which the government has declined to grant them.
The decision came in a lawsuit filed by the first alleged al Qaeda member facing trial before what the government calls "military commissions." The decision upends -- for now -- the administration's strategy for prosecuting hundreds of alleged al Qaeda and Taliban detainees accused of terrorist crimes.
Human rights advocates, foreign governments and the detainees' attorneys have contended that the rules governing military commissions are unfairly stacked against the defendants. But Robertson's ruling is the first by a federal judge to assert that the commissions, which took nearly two years to get underway, are invalid.
The Bush administration denounced the ruling as wrongly giving special rights to terrorists and announced that it will ask a higher court for an emergency stay and reversal of Robertson's decision. Military officers at Guantanamo immediately halted commission proceedings in light of the ruling.
"We vigorously disagree. . . . The judge has put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war," said Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo. "The Constitution entrusts to the president the responsibility to safeguard the nation's security. The Department of Justice will continue to defend the president's ability and authority under the Constitution to fulfill that duty."
Robertson ruled that the military commissions, which Bush authorized the Pentagon to revive after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, are neither lawful nor proper. Under commission rules, the government could, for example, exclude people accused of terrorist acts from some commission sessions and deny them access to evidence, which the judge said would violate basic military law.
Robertson said the government should have held special hearings for detainees to determine whether they qualified for prisoner-of-war protections when they were captured, as required by the Geneva Conventions. Instead, the administration declared the captives "enemy combatants" and decided to afford them some of the protections spelled out by the Geneva accords.
Robertson ordered that until the government provides the hearing, it can prosecute the detainees only in courts-martial, under long-established military law.
Robertson issued his decision in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a detainee captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and accused of being a member of al Qaeda. Robertson's opinion is expected to set the standard for treatment of other detainees before military commissions. So far, four Guantanamo Bay detainees have been ordered to stand trial.
The unusual coalition of defense lawyers and conservative military law experts who banded together to challenge the commissions hailed the decision as a major victory in efforts to level the playing field for the detainees, some of whom have been held for nearly three years.
"We are thrilled by this ruling," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based group that represents the families of some Guantanamo Bay prisoners. "Military commissions were a bad idea and an embarrassment. The refusal of the Bush administration to apply the Geneva Conventions was a legal and moral outrage."
Kevin Barry, a retired Coast Guard judge who is critical of the Pentagon's legal justifications for the Guantanamo Bay detentions, called Robertson's ruling a "remarkable" decision that "will give heart to all who think the rule of law should apply in the Afghanistan conflict." Barry said the war on terrorism is the first U.S. war since the Geneva Conventions' adoption in 1949 in which the government has not accorded POW status to enemy fighters.
"Even the Viet Cong, who were farmers by day and fighters at night, were accorded that status," he said. "The judge got these issues right."
The government has been under pressure since June to revise other facets of its strategy for handling the cases of the more than 500 Guantanamo Bay detainees. In a landmark ruling that month, the Supreme Court rejected the government's argument that the president may indefinitely hold and interrogate alleged al Qaeda and Taliban members captured on the battlefield without filing charges or providing them lawyers.
The court ruled that the detainees were entitled to hear the charges against them and challenge their imprisonment in U.S. federal courts. Nearly 70 have filed such challenges, called habeas corpus petitions, in federal courts here.
Since the Supreme Court ruling, the government has begun holding "combatant status review tribunals" at Guantanamo Bay for each detainee to determine whether he should continue to be held. The detainees do not have legal representation at those hearings. So far 317 hearings have been held and 131 cases have been adjudicated, all but one in favor of continued detention.
Douglass Cassel, director of the Center for International Human Rights at the Northwestern University School of Law, said he hopes the Bush administration reconsiders its overall strategy in light of the Supreme Court's June decision and Robertson's ruling yesterday.
"I hope the government sits back and says, 'This is a chance to regain the high ground in the court of public opinion,' " he said. "This decision is of enormous importance to the perceived commitment of the United States to the rule of law."
But Douglas W. Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor, called Robertson "sadly mistaken" for intervening in the case at this point. He said the judge should have postponed any ruling until the military commissions had completed their work.
Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington lawyer specializing in military justice, said it will be difficult for military commissions and status review panels to decide fairly whether a detainee is a prisoner of war, after top executive branch and military leaders have declared all of them enemy combatants, not POWs.
"That's where they got into trouble," Fidell said. "The people driving the train were not people familiar with the military justice system."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
'
washingtonpost.com
Battle Rages for Control of Fallujah U.S. Marines, Army's 1st Infantry Division Lead Operation Phantom Fury
By Jackie Spinner and Karl VickWashington Post Foreign ServiceMonday, November 8, 2004; 5:19 PM
FALLUJAH, Nov. 8 -- U.S. forces entered the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah Monday, launching a long-anticipated urban offensive that is widely seen as the most significant and controversial battle since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 19 months ago.
The assault, code-named Operation Phantom Fury, was led by U.S. Marines and members of the Army's 1st Infantry Division. It followed weeks of bombing by U.S. aircraft and began about 7 p.m. local time (11 a.m. EDT), hours after Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, announced that he had formally authorized the attack.
"This is an important time in the history of a new Iraq," U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in Washington. "No government can allow terrorists and foreign fighters to use its soil to attack its people and to attack its government. . . . Success in Fallujah will deal a blow to the terrorists in the country, and should move Iraq further away from a future of violence to one of freedom and opportunity for the Iraqi people."
Army Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said he expects insurgents to fall back from positions on Fallujah's outskirts and wage a major battle in the heart of the city against roughly 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. and Iraqi government troops. He said the insurgents number roughly 3,000 and are armed with weapons ranging from AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades to heavy anti-aircraft machine guns. But he said their "weapons of choice" are roadside bombs and car bombs that they have placed around the city.
After the U.S. forces pounded a railway station just inside Fallujah with tank and machine gun fire and hammered other targets with air strikes and artillery, Marines spearheaded by tanks advanced at least four blocks into the city as helicopters flew missions overhead. Other troops, backed by Army tanks and armored vehicles, attacked in a separate thrust.
The assault appeared to be met with some resistance, with Marines coming under fire from insurgents at the railway station.
As U.S. forces prepared for the attack, two Marines were killed when their bulldozer flipped over into the Euphrates River, the military reported. A U.S. military spokesman estimated that 42 insurgents were killed across Fallujah in bombardments and skirmishes during the day, the Associated Press reported.
"I gave my authority to the multinational forces, Iraqi forces. We are determined to clean Fallujah from the terrorists," Allawi declared earlier Monday in Baghdad. "I have reached the belief that I have no other choice but to resort to extreme measures to protect the Iraqi people from these killers and to liberate the residents of Fallujah so they can return to their homes," he told a news conference.
He said he was imposing a curfew on the city starting at 6 p.m. Iraq time and closing Baghdad international airport for 48 hours.
Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim city of 300,000 about 35 miles west of Baghdad, has been controlled by a volatile mix of local insurgents and foreign fighters since April, when a Marine offensive was abruptly halted on orders from the White House. Since political authority was turned back to the Iraqis in June, the final say on major U.S. military operations has resided with the government of Allawi.
Among those said to be operating out of Fallujah is the Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose group has asserted responsibility for kidnappings, beheadings, car bombings and other suicide strikes in Iraq, including bombings inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone that recently killed three American civilians and as many as six Iraqis.
In a press conference Monday at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld said he has "no idea" whether Zarqawi is in Fallujah, and he said the battle for the city should not be seen as a final showdown with Iraqi and foreign insurgents.
"I would not think of it that way," he said. "Listen, these folks are determined. These are killers. They chop people's heads off. They're getting money from around the world. They're getting recruits."
Rumsfeld said that "no one can know" whether U.S. forces will have to wage other battles like the Fallujah assault to defeat insurgents who move to other Iraqi cities. "What we can know of certain knowledge is that you cannot have a country that is free and democratic and respectful of all the people in the country if you have safe havens for people who go around chopping people's heads off," he said. "You cannot have a country if that's the case."
The defense secretary also predicted that in Fallujah, "there aren't going to be large numbers of civilians killed, and certainly not by U.S. forces," even though U.S. commanders estimate that 30 percent to 50 percent of the civilian population remains in the city. He said that unlike an abortive U.S. operation against the Fallujah insurgents in April, he could not imagine that U.S. and Iraqi forces would stop this time without completing the mission.
"The decision to go included the decision to finish and to finish together," Rumsfeld said.
He and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played down a report that most of a battalion of about 500 Iraqis -- part of a U.S.-trained Iraqi force participating in the offensive -- failed to show up for the battle.
"I would characterize it as an isolated problem," Rumsfeld said.
Casey, the U.S. commanding general in Iraq, said in a conference call with Pentagon reporters that there are "a good number of Iraqi battalions involved in this operation."
He said an Iraqi commando unit led an attack west of Fallujah Sunday night to help isolate the city and establish government control over the Fallujah General Hospital. At the same time, U.S. Marines secured two bridges to cut off movement westward out of Fallujah, he said.
The city has become "the center of terrorist and insurgent activity in Iraq" and a "planning, staging and logistics base for foreign fighters and the Iraqi insurgents that support them," Casey said. "From Fallujah they have exported terror across Iraq against all Iraqis." Now, he said, "the Iraqi people are fighting to throw off the mantle of terror and intimidation so that they can elect their own government and get on with building a better life for all Iraqis. Elimination of Fallujah as a terrorist safe haven will go a long way in helping them achieve these goals."
U.S. Marines have been pounding the city for weeks, targeting what officials have called safe houses and meeting places for fighters loyal to Zarqawi. The pounding has reportedly sent a large proportion of the population fleeing the city in fear.
The prospect of an attack on Fallujah has been intensely controversial internationally. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan warned last week that a military offensive there could jeopardize the credibility of upcoming elections in Iraq.
In letters dated Oct. 31 and addressed to President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Allawi, Annan said using military force against insurgents in the city would further alienate Sunni Muslims already feeling left out of a political process orchestrated largely by Washington.
"I wish to share with you my increasing concern at the prospect of an escalation in violence, which I fear could be very disruptive for Iraq's political transition," Annan wrote to the three leaders.
"I also worry about the negative impact that major military assaults, in which the main burden seems bound to be borne by American forces, are likely to have on the prospects for encouraging a broader participation by Iraqis in the political process, including in the elections."
Annan's comments and criticism drew anger and frustration from U.S., British and Iraqi officials.
U.S. and Iraqi forces entered Fallujah General Hospital late Sunday night and immediately began an inventory of supplies and medical equipment, said Col. John R. Ballard, commander of the Marine 4th Civil Affairs Group based in Washington, D.C.
"We've surrounded it to protect it," Ballard said. "The key word here is to protect."
Ballard said the military had been planning for weeks to secure the hospital as a prelude to a potential battle. He said the bridges are being closely monitored to stop insurgents from using them to attack the hospital.
"We don't want bad guys using ambulances to attack our troops and innocent civilians," Ballard said.
The military stormed the hospital without firing a single shot, said 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert, a spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
But later, insurgents fired rockets at the building, and when the Marines securing the bridges tried to push forward slightly, rebel fighters launched a counteroffensive that resulted in a five-hour gun battle, witnesses said.
Allawi aides, in Baghdad, said 38 insurgents were captured in that battle. Earlier Allawi had said 38 were killed but later his aides said he misspoke.
Rafe Hyad, general manager of Fallujah Hospital, said U.S. forces locked him in a room after breaking down the doors.
They "ordered me not to go out," he said. "They searched all the rooms asking for the reason why every one of the patients is here. We have a lot of pregnant women and premature children in the hospital."
Witnesses said U.S. airstrikes also hit the UAE hospital, which was established about three months ago, funded by the former president of the United Arab Emirates.
Kamal Hadithi, general manger of Jamhooriya Hospital, which is now functioning as an alternative to Fallujah Hospital, said the facility received 14 people who had been killed in overnight fighting.
Sources in the Muhammed Army, a group of Baathist Iraqis and foreign fighters under the control of the city leaders, said seven of the 14 dead were Arab fighters who were killed in the industrial neighborhood east of Fallujah.
In other developments in Iraq:
A U.S. soldier was killed Monday afternoon when his patrol came under small-arms fire in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. No other details were immediately provided.
Explosions at two Baghdad churches and outside a hospital treating victims of the attacks left at least six Iraqis dead and dozens wounded Monday night. At least three people were killed and about 40 injured by the nearly simultaneous blasts outside the two churches, identified as St. George's and St. Matthew's, news agencies reported. Hours later, at least three and perhaps as many as five Iraqi policemen were killed when police cars outside the Yarmouk hospital came under attack. Police variously reported that the attack was carried out by a suicide car bomber or by the firing of mortar rounds.
A British soldier from the Black Watch Battle Group was killed and two others were injured when their Warrior armored vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb near their base 25 miles southwest of Baghdad, the British military reported. The battle group was redeployed near Baghdad from positions in southern Iraq at the request of the United States to free up U.S. forces for the assault on Fallujah.
A statement posted on an Internet site and attributed to Zarqawi called on Muslims to wage holy war against U.S. forces in the wake of the assault on Fallujah. "Oh people, the war has begun and the call for jihad has been made," the statement said, according to Reuters. "Despite all the agonies that we are suffering, by God, the enemies will only see things that will harm them. Let us resist them with all our might and let us spend all that is precious in fighting them. Be patient, it is only a matter of days before victory will come with the help of God."
Vick reported from Baghdad. Staff writer William Branigin contributed from Washington.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
'
Battle Rages for Control of Fallujah U.S. Marines, Army's 1st Infantry Division Lead Operation Phantom Fury
By Jackie Spinner and Karl VickWashington Post Foreign ServiceMonday, November 8, 2004; 5:19 PM
FALLUJAH, Nov. 8 -- U.S. forces entered the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah Monday, launching a long-anticipated urban offensive that is widely seen as the most significant and controversial battle since the U.S. invasion of Iraq 19 months ago.
The assault, code-named Operation Phantom Fury, was led by U.S. Marines and members of the Army's 1st Infantry Division. It followed weeks of bombing by U.S. aircraft and began about 7 p.m. local time (11 a.m. EDT), hours after Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, announced that he had formally authorized the attack.
"This is an important time in the history of a new Iraq," U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in Washington. "No government can allow terrorists and foreign fighters to use its soil to attack its people and to attack its government. . . . Success in Fallujah will deal a blow to the terrorists in the country, and should move Iraq further away from a future of violence to one of freedom and opportunity for the Iraqi people."
Army Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said he expects insurgents to fall back from positions on Fallujah's outskirts and wage a major battle in the heart of the city against roughly 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. and Iraqi government troops. He said the insurgents number roughly 3,000 and are armed with weapons ranging from AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades to heavy anti-aircraft machine guns. But he said their "weapons of choice" are roadside bombs and car bombs that they have placed around the city.
After the U.S. forces pounded a railway station just inside Fallujah with tank and machine gun fire and hammered other targets with air strikes and artillery, Marines spearheaded by tanks advanced at least four blocks into the city as helicopters flew missions overhead. Other troops, backed by Army tanks and armored vehicles, attacked in a separate thrust.
The assault appeared to be met with some resistance, with Marines coming under fire from insurgents at the railway station.
As U.S. forces prepared for the attack, two Marines were killed when their bulldozer flipped over into the Euphrates River, the military reported. A U.S. military spokesman estimated that 42 insurgents were killed across Fallujah in bombardments and skirmishes during the day, the Associated Press reported.
"I gave my authority to the multinational forces, Iraqi forces. We are determined to clean Fallujah from the terrorists," Allawi declared earlier Monday in Baghdad. "I have reached the belief that I have no other choice but to resort to extreme measures to protect the Iraqi people from these killers and to liberate the residents of Fallujah so they can return to their homes," he told a news conference.
He said he was imposing a curfew on the city starting at 6 p.m. Iraq time and closing Baghdad international airport for 48 hours.
Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim city of 300,000 about 35 miles west of Baghdad, has been controlled by a volatile mix of local insurgents and foreign fighters since April, when a Marine offensive was abruptly halted on orders from the White House. Since political authority was turned back to the Iraqis in June, the final say on major U.S. military operations has resided with the government of Allawi.
Among those said to be operating out of Fallujah is the Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose group has asserted responsibility for kidnappings, beheadings, car bombings and other suicide strikes in Iraq, including bombings inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone that recently killed three American civilians and as many as six Iraqis.
In a press conference Monday at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld said he has "no idea" whether Zarqawi is in Fallujah, and he said the battle for the city should not be seen as a final showdown with Iraqi and foreign insurgents.
"I would not think of it that way," he said. "Listen, these folks are determined. These are killers. They chop people's heads off. They're getting money from around the world. They're getting recruits."
Rumsfeld said that "no one can know" whether U.S. forces will have to wage other battles like the Fallujah assault to defeat insurgents who move to other Iraqi cities. "What we can know of certain knowledge is that you cannot have a country that is free and democratic and respectful of all the people in the country if you have safe havens for people who go around chopping people's heads off," he said. "You cannot have a country if that's the case."
The defense secretary also predicted that in Fallujah, "there aren't going to be large numbers of civilians killed, and certainly not by U.S. forces," even though U.S. commanders estimate that 30 percent to 50 percent of the civilian population remains in the city. He said that unlike an abortive U.S. operation against the Fallujah insurgents in April, he could not imagine that U.S. and Iraqi forces would stop this time without completing the mission.
"The decision to go included the decision to finish and to finish together," Rumsfeld said.
He and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played down a report that most of a battalion of about 500 Iraqis -- part of a U.S.-trained Iraqi force participating in the offensive -- failed to show up for the battle.
"I would characterize it as an isolated problem," Rumsfeld said.
Casey, the U.S. commanding general in Iraq, said in a conference call with Pentagon reporters that there are "a good number of Iraqi battalions involved in this operation."
He said an Iraqi commando unit led an attack west of Fallujah Sunday night to help isolate the city and establish government control over the Fallujah General Hospital. At the same time, U.S. Marines secured two bridges to cut off movement westward out of Fallujah, he said.
The city has become "the center of terrorist and insurgent activity in Iraq" and a "planning, staging and logistics base for foreign fighters and the Iraqi insurgents that support them," Casey said. "From Fallujah they have exported terror across Iraq against all Iraqis." Now, he said, "the Iraqi people are fighting to throw off the mantle of terror and intimidation so that they can elect their own government and get on with building a better life for all Iraqis. Elimination of Fallujah as a terrorist safe haven will go a long way in helping them achieve these goals."
U.S. Marines have been pounding the city for weeks, targeting what officials have called safe houses and meeting places for fighters loyal to Zarqawi. The pounding has reportedly sent a large proportion of the population fleeing the city in fear.
The prospect of an attack on Fallujah has been intensely controversial internationally. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan warned last week that a military offensive there could jeopardize the credibility of upcoming elections in Iraq.
In letters dated Oct. 31 and addressed to President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Allawi, Annan said using military force against insurgents in the city would further alienate Sunni Muslims already feeling left out of a political process orchestrated largely by Washington.
"I wish to share with you my increasing concern at the prospect of an escalation in violence, which I fear could be very disruptive for Iraq's political transition," Annan wrote to the three leaders.
"I also worry about the negative impact that major military assaults, in which the main burden seems bound to be borne by American forces, are likely to have on the prospects for encouraging a broader participation by Iraqis in the political process, including in the elections."
Annan's comments and criticism drew anger and frustration from U.S., British and Iraqi officials.
U.S. and Iraqi forces entered Fallujah General Hospital late Sunday night and immediately began an inventory of supplies and medical equipment, said Col. John R. Ballard, commander of the Marine 4th Civil Affairs Group based in Washington, D.C.
"We've surrounded it to protect it," Ballard said. "The key word here is to protect."
Ballard said the military had been planning for weeks to secure the hospital as a prelude to a potential battle. He said the bridges are being closely monitored to stop insurgents from using them to attack the hospital.
"We don't want bad guys using ambulances to attack our troops and innocent civilians," Ballard said.
The military stormed the hospital without firing a single shot, said 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert, a spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
But later, insurgents fired rockets at the building, and when the Marines securing the bridges tried to push forward slightly, rebel fighters launched a counteroffensive that resulted in a five-hour gun battle, witnesses said.
Allawi aides, in Baghdad, said 38 insurgents were captured in that battle. Earlier Allawi had said 38 were killed but later his aides said he misspoke.
Rafe Hyad, general manager of Fallujah Hospital, said U.S. forces locked him in a room after breaking down the doors.
They "ordered me not to go out," he said. "They searched all the rooms asking for the reason why every one of the patients is here. We have a lot of pregnant women and premature children in the hospital."
Witnesses said U.S. airstrikes also hit the UAE hospital, which was established about three months ago, funded by the former president of the United Arab Emirates.
Kamal Hadithi, general manger of Jamhooriya Hospital, which is now functioning as an alternative to Fallujah Hospital, said the facility received 14 people who had been killed in overnight fighting.
Sources in the Muhammed Army, a group of Baathist Iraqis and foreign fighters under the control of the city leaders, said seven of the 14 dead were Arab fighters who were killed in the industrial neighborhood east of Fallujah.
In other developments in Iraq:
A U.S. soldier was killed Monday afternoon when his patrol came under small-arms fire in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. No other details were immediately provided.
Explosions at two Baghdad churches and outside a hospital treating victims of the attacks left at least six Iraqis dead and dozens wounded Monday night. At least three people were killed and about 40 injured by the nearly simultaneous blasts outside the two churches, identified as St. George's and St. Matthew's, news agencies reported. Hours later, at least three and perhaps as many as five Iraqi policemen were killed when police cars outside the Yarmouk hospital came under attack. Police variously reported that the attack was carried out by a suicide car bomber or by the firing of mortar rounds.
A British soldier from the Black Watch Battle Group was killed and two others were injured when their Warrior armored vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb near their base 25 miles southwest of Baghdad, the British military reported. The battle group was redeployed near Baghdad from positions in southern Iraq at the request of the United States to free up U.S. forces for the assault on Fallujah.
A statement posted on an Internet site and attributed to Zarqawi called on Muslims to wage holy war against U.S. forces in the wake of the assault on Fallujah. "Oh people, the war has begun and the call for jihad has been made," the statement said, according to Reuters. "Despite all the agonies that we are suffering, by God, the enemies will only see things that will harm them. Let us resist them with all our might and let us spend all that is precious in fighting them. Be patient, it is only a matter of days before victory will come with the help of God."
Vick reported from Baghdad. Staff writer William Branigin contributed from Washington.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
'
News Home - Help
U.S. Launches Ground Offensive in Iraq
3 minutes ago
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. troops backed by thunderous air and artillery barrages launched a ground offensive Monday to seize key insurgent strongholds inside Fallujah, the city that became Iraq (news - web sites)'s major sanctuary for Islamic extremists who fought Marines to a standstill last April.
AP Photo
Reuters
Slideshow: Iraq
Latest headlines:
·
U.S. Launches Ground Offensive in Iraq AP - 3 minutes ago
·
Muslim Groups Urge Iraqis to Abandon Falluja Assault Reuters - 30 minutes ago
·
Bush: Fallujah offensive to assure Iraq January vote AFP - 59 minutes ago
Special Coverage
Two Marines were killed when their bulldozer flipped over into the Euphrates near Fallujah, and a military spokesman estimated 42 insurgents were killed across the city in bombardment and skirmishes before the main assault began.
Hours after starting the offensive, U.S. tanks and Humvees from the 1st Infantry Division entered the northeastern Askari neighborhood, the first ground assault into an insurgent bastion.
In the northwestern area of the city, U.S. troops advanced slowly after dusk on the Jolan neighborhood, a warren of alleyways where Sunni militants have dug in. Artillery, tanks and warplanes pounded the district's northern edge, softening the defenses and trying to set off any bombs or boobytraps planted by the militants.
Marines were visible on rooftops in Jolan. This reporter, located at a U.S. camp near the city, saw orange explosions lighting up the district's palm trees, minarets and dusty roofs, and a fire burning on the city's edge.
Heavy firing continued into the pre-dawn hours Tuesday, and residents reached by satellite telephone reported the constant drone of warplanes overhead.
U.S. troops cut off electricity to the city, and most private generators were not working. Residents said they were without running water and were worried about food shortages because most shops in the city have been closed for the past two days.
Masked insurgents roamed Fallujah streets throughout the day. One group of four fighters, two of them draped with belts of ammunition, moved through narrow passageways, firing on U.S. forces with small arms and mortars. Mosque loudspeakers blared, "God is great, God is great."
Just outside the Jolan and Askari neighborhoods, Iraqi troops deployed with U.S. forces took over a train station after the Americans fired on it to drive off fighters.
The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, predicted a "major confrontation" in the operation he said was called "al-Fajr," Arabic for "dawn." He told reporters in Washington that 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. troops along with a smaller number of Iraqi forces were encircling the city.
Overall, the main force did not appear to have moved deeply into Fallujah on Monday, the first full day of the operation. Most U.S. units appeared to be lined up at the edge of their neighborhoods with some scouts and perhaps special operators venturing inside.
The offensive is considered the most important military effort to re-establish government control over Sunni strongholds west of Baghdad before elections in January.
"One part of the country cannot remain under the rule of assassins ... and the remnants of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said. He predicted "there aren't going be large numbers of civilians killed and certainly not by U.S. forces."
A doctor at a clinic in Fallujah, Mohammed Amer, reported 12 people were killed. Seventeen others, including a 5-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy, were wounded, he said.
About 3,000 insurgents were barricaded in Fallujah, U.S. commanders have estimated. Casey said some insurgents slipped away but others "have moved in." U.S. military officials believe 20 percent of Fallujah's fighters are foreigners, who are believed to be followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Casey said 50 to 70 percent of the city's 200,000 residents have fled. The numbers are in dispute, however, with some putting the population at 300,000. Residents said about half that number left in October, but many drifted back.
Some 5,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers were massed in the desert on Fallujah's northern edge. They were joined by 2,000 to 4,000 Iraqi troops.
Rumsfeld called reports of some Iraqi recruits not showing up to fight "an isolated problem," and Casey said the no-shows "did not have a significant impact" on the operation.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who gave the green light for the offensive, also announced a round-the-clock curfew in Fallujah and another nearby insurgent stronghold, Ramadi.
"The people of Fallujah have been taken hostage ... and you need to free them from their grip," he told Iraqi soldiers who swarmed around him during a visit to the main U.S. base outside Fallujah.
"May they go to hell!" the soldiers shouted, and Allawi replied: "To hell they will go."
U.S. commanders have avoided any public estimate on how long it may take to capture Fallujah, where insurgents fought the Marines to a standstill last April in a three-week siege. The length and ferocity of the battle depends greatly on whether the bulk of the defenders decide to risk the destruction of the city or try to slip away in the face of overwhelming force. Foreign fighters may choose to fight to the end, but it's unclear how many of them are in the city.
Rumsfeld said insurgents would likely put up a tough fight. "Listen these folks are determined. These are killers. They chop people's heads off. They're getting money from around the world. They're getting recruits," he told reporters.
But the Iraqi defense minister, Hazem Shaalan al-Khuzaei, told Al-Arabiya television that he expected the resistance to crumble quickly.
"God willing, it will not be long; it will take a very short period of time," he said, adding that the insurgents might use the civilians as human shields.
As the main assault began in Fallujah, thunderous explosions could be heard across Baghdad, some 40 miles to the east. Militants attacked two churches with car bombs and set off blasts at a hospital, killing at least six people and injuring about 80 others, officials said.
A U.S. soldier was killed when his patrol was fired on in Baghdad, the military said. Southwest of the capital, a British soldier died in an apparent roadside bombing.
The prelude to the Fallujah ground offensive was a crushing air and artillery bombardment that built from the night before, through Monday morning and afternoon then rose to a crescendo by Monday night — with U.S. jets dropping bombs constantly and big guns pounding the city every few minutes with high-explosive shells.
Associated Press reporter Edward Harris, embedded with the Marines near the train station in the desert north of the city, saw U.S. forces hammering Jolan with airstrikes and intense tank fire. The Marines reported that at least initially they did not draw significant fire from insurgents, only a few rocket-propelled grenades that caused no casualties.
Earlier Monday, U.S. and Iraqi forces seized two bridges over the Euphrates River and a hospital on Fallujah's western edge that they said was under insurgents' control. A team of Marines entered northwestern Fallujah and seized an apartment building.
Capt. Jonathan Riley, spokesman for the U.S. Central Command Air Forces in Qatar, told the AP that an unmanned MQ-1 Predator plane fired a Hellfire missile at an insurgents' anti-aircraft artillery battery in Fallujah, scoring a direct hit.
The Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni clerics group that has threatened to boycott elections, condemned the assault on Fallujah, calling it "an illegal and illegitimate action against civilian and innocent people."
Arab leaders were muted in their response to the offensive. Media attention focused on ailing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites), which may explain in part why the start of the Fallujah campaign elicited none of the uproar that met the American attempt to storm the insurgent stronghold in April.
___
Contributing to this report were Associated Press correspondents Edward Harris in Fallujah; and Tini Tran, Mariam Fam, Katarina Kratovac and Maggie Michael in Baghdad.
Story Tools
Email Story
Post/Read Msgs
Formatted Story
Ratings: Would you recommend this story?
Not at all 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 Highly
Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2004 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.Questions or CommentsPrivacy Policy -Terms of Service - Copyright Policy - Ad Feedback
November 8, 2004
Despite Drop in Crime, an Increase in InmatesBy FOX BUTTERFIELD
he number of inmates in state and federal prisons rose 2.1 percent last year, even as violent crime and property crime fell, according to a study by the Justice Department released yesterday.
The continuing increase in the prison population, despite a drop or leveling off in the crime rate in the past few years, is a result of laws passed in the 1990's that led to more prison sentences and longer terms, said Allen J. Beck, chief of corrections statistics for the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics and an author of the report.
At the end of 2003, there were 1,470,045 men and women in state and federal prisons in the United States, the report found. In addition, counting those inmates in city and county jails and incarcerated juvenile offenders, the total number of Americans behind bars was 2,212,475 on Dec. 31 last year, the report said.
The report estimated that 44 percent of state and federal prisoners in 2003 were black, compared with 35 percent who were white, 19 percent who were Hispanic and 2 percent who were of other races. The numbers have changed little in the last decade.
Statistically, the number of women in prison is growing fast, rising 3.6 percent in 2003. But at a total of 101,179, they are just 6.9 percent of the prison population.
Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, said one of the most striking findings in the report was that almost 10 percent of all American black men ages 25 to 29 were in prison.
Such a high proportion of young black men behind bars not only has a strong impact on black families, Professor Blumstein said, but "in many ways is self-defeating." The criminal justice system is built on deterrence, with being sent to prison supposedly a stigma, he said. "But it's tough to convey a sense of stigma when so many of your friends and neighbors are similarly stigmatized."
In seeking to explain the paradox of a falling crime rate but a rising prison population, Mr. Beck pointed out that F.B.I. statistics showed that from 1994 to 2003 there was a 16 percent drop in arrests for violent crime, including a 36 percent decrease in arrests for murder and a 25 percent decrease in arrests for robbery.
But the tough new sentencing laws led to a growth in inmates being sent to prison, from 522,000 in 1995 to 615,400 in 2002, the report said.
Similarly, the report found that the average time served by prison inmates rose from 23 months in 1995 to 30 months in 2001.
Among the new measures were mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which required inmates to serve a specified proportion of their time behind bars; truth-in-sentencing laws, which required an inmate to actually serve the time he was sentenced to; and a variety of three-strikes laws increasing the penalties for repeat offenders.
In the three states with the biggest prison systems, California, Texas and Florida, the number of newly admitted inmates grew last year, but the number of those released either fell or remained stable, Mr. Beck said.
Several states with small prison systems had particularly large increases in new inmates, led by North Dakota, up 11.4 percent, and Minnesota, up 10.3 percent.
New York had a 2.8 percent decrease in new inmates, reflecting the continued sharp fall in crime in New York City, Mr. Beck said.
Over all, Mr. Beck said, the prison population is aging. Traditionally the great majority of inmates are men in their 20's and early 30's, but middle-aged inmates, those 40 to 54, account for about half of the increase in the prison population since 1995, he said.
This is a result both of the aging of the general American population and of the longer sentences, Mr. Beck said.
But the number of elderly inmates is still small, despite longer sentences and more life sentences. Those inmates 65 and older were still only 1 percent of the prison population in 2003.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS Help Back to Top
November 8, 2004
With Jets and Armor, Thousands of Troops Enter Rebel-Held CityBy DEXTER FILKINSand ROBERT F. WORTH
ALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 8 - American forces began an assault in Falluja today, using airpower and armor to attack suspected guerrilla targets and sending thousands of troops into neighborhoods considered to be the center of the Iraqi insurgency.
The operation started this morning with bombing by American jets, while artillery and heavy gunfire thundered across the city as American troops seized control of two strategic bridges, a hospital and other objectives in the first stage of a long-expected invasion aimed at the center of the Iraqi insurgency.
Troops backed by tanks and armored combat vehicles punched their way into the Askari and Jolan neighborhoods of the city's northern sector this evening.
Marines and army troops breached an earth berm that runs along the railroad tracks just north of Falluja and poured into the city.
A mujahedeen fighter who gave his name as Abu Mustafa said in a telephone interview that American soldiers were engaging in street fighting in at least one part of the city, the northeastern.
The invasion is code-named Phantom Fury. Conceived about a month ago, the plan grew in part from intelligence suggesting that 1,000 to 2,000 insurgents were taking cover in the small towns and rural areas surrounding Falluja, and would probably move inward in the event of an Ainvasion to try to disrupt their force.
Between 10,000 and 15,000 American soldiers and marines backed by newly trained Iraqi forces besieged the city for what American commanders said was likely to be a brutal, block-by-block battle to retake control and capture, kill or disperse an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 hard-core insurgent fighters. The battle could prove the most important since the American invasion of Iraq 19 months ago.
The forces charged with isolating Falluja and blocking any insurgents fleeing the city or attacking from the outside are equipped with M-1 Abrams tanks, armored Stryker vehicles, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and Humvees.
"We will inspect all vehicles, and we are prepared to recognize humanitarian aid and medical supplies, " said Col. Michael D. Formica, the Army commander responsible for coordinating the isolation of the city.
Military aircraft dropped leaflets on Falluja today warning citizens about the assault, and advising them to stay in their homes. As many as 90 percent of the city's residents have left, officials say, but some may not have heard about an emergency curfew imposed by the prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
Hours before the battle started, Mr. Allawi, faced with an expanding outbreak of insurgent violence across the country, formally proclaimed a state of emergency for 60 days across most of Iraq. The proclamation gave him broad powers that allow him to impose curfews, order house-to-house searches and detain suspected criminals and insurgents.
Today, he said that the American-led operation in Falluja had his full backing.
"I gave my authority to the multinational forces, Iraqi forces," he said at a news conference.
"Yesterday evening the Iraqi forces were able to take control of Falluja hospital to defeat the terrorists and armed groups so the citizens of Falluja will get help," he said.
Mr. Allawi said that four foreign terrorists were detained in a raid on the hospital and 38 people were killed, but it was not clear whether they were Iraqis. "They were barricaded in the hospital to carry out their terrorist acts," Mr. Allawi said.
For more than a week, Dr. Allawi had been saying the window for a peaceful solution was fast closing, even though no peace talks were actually taking place between leaders of Falluja and the Iraqi government. His statement this afternoon was simply the formal proclamation of a decision he appears to have settled on days, if not weeks, ago, undoubtedly with strong guidance from American commanders and the Bush administration.
The prime minister then flew via helicopter to the Marine base called Camp Falluja, on the outskirts of the besieged city, to allow the news media to see him rallying the American and Iraqi troops to battle.
"The people of Falluja have been taken hostage," he told Iraqi soldiers swarming around him, "and you need to free them from their grip."
"May they go to hell!" the soldiers shouted, to which Dr. Allawi replied: "To hell they will go."
At his appearance in Baghdad, Dr. Allawi unveiled the first measures of the state of emergency that he declared on Sunday to be in effect for 60 days. He said the Baghdad International Airport will be closed for 48 hours, and the borders with Syria and Jordan will be sealed indefinitely except to allow movement of trucks carrying food and emergency supplies.
All roads going running in and out of Falluja and the provincial capital of Ramadi, just 30 miles west, have been shut down, he said, and a round-the-clock curfew was imposed on the two cities starting at 6 p.m. today. Residents have been banned from carrying weapons.
The measures in Falluja had little practical value, since the city of 300,000 has never been controlled by the interim government. For Americans, the city has been a "no go" zone since early May, when the Marines, in the wake of a bloody and ill-fated assault, relinquished authority to an Iraqi militia made up partly of the very insurgents they had been fighting. Mujahedeen quickly seized power and installed a Taliban-like government there, and the battle now under way is aimed at setting right the huge misstep made last spring.
Dr. Allawi has said that Falluja, Ramadi and other cities rife with insurgents must be brought under control well before January, when the country will hold its first democratic elections. But the offensive in Falluja is a big gamble. Many of the guerillas might have already left and could be awaiting the withdrawal of the American troops to return. And civilians in Falluja and across Iraq, especially Sunni Arabs, who dominate the province that includes Falluja, could become so infuriated at the invasion that they boycott the elections, throwing the legitimacy of the outcome into question.
A wave of bloody attacks by guerillas over the weekend and today left scores dead and raised doubts about whether a concentrated assault in Falluja will actually dampen the insurgency.
Today, the American military said in a statement that an American soldier was killed by small arms fire when his patrol was attacked in eastern Baghdad.
Two car bombs aimed at Christian churches exploded within minutes of each other in southern Baghdad this evening. The first, at St. George Church, did not cause any injuries, but the second, less than a miles east at St. Matthew Church, drew Iraqi police and ambulances to the scene, the military said. Four people were killed and at least 30 wounded, a police official said.
Late today, a powerful car bomb exploded outside Yarmouk Hospital, the site of the capital's largest emergency room, where most of the injured from the church bombing had been taken. There was no immediate report of casualties.
In the northern city of Mosul, where the Stryker Brigade is losing ground in the guerilla war, insurgents armed with Kalashnikovs poured out into the streets at a major intersection at 3 p.m. to fire at American troops, witnesses said.
One resident, Yasir Abdul-Razzaq, said he saw small groups of fighters carrying around mortar tubes and exchanging coordinates with each other over cellphones before launching the projectiles. American soldiers fired back and called in helicopters.
A senior American military official in Baghdad said the number of roadside bombs and suicide car bombs had doubled across Iraq recently, with the biggest increase in Mosul.
News agencies reported that two suicide car bombs exploded in Ramadi today, near American convoys, though no casualties were reported. Another detonated along the perilous five-mile airport road in Baghdad, apparently next to a sport utility vehicle, the type of car favored by Western contractors. A Reuters photographer at the scene said he saw American soldiers dragging three corpses from the vehicle, though the bodies could not be identified.
Before American jets began their bombing of Falluja this morning, American troops in front of the hospital took intense fire from small arms and rocket-propelled grenades from insurgents across the river. American Bradleys and tanks began returning fire.
It was the second time in six months that a battle had raged in Falluja. In April, American troops were closing in on the city center when popular uprisings broke out in cities across Iraq. The outrage, fed by mostly unconfirmed reports of large civilian casualties, forced the Americans to withdraw.
American commanders regarded the reports as inflated, but it was impossible to determine independently how many civilians had been killed. The hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy casualties.
In Washington today, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was asked whether the battle for Falluja would continue until there was a "clear and final" victory, unlike last spring's campaign for the city.
"I cannot imagine that it would stop without being completed," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from near Falluja for this article, Edward Wong and James Glanz from Baghdad, and Christine Hauser from New York.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS Help Back to Top
News Home - Help
Troops Storm Fallujah in Major Assault
1 hour, 4 minutes ago
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - Thousands of U.S. troops, backed by armor and a stunning air barrage, attacked Sunni insurgents' toughest strongholds in Fallujah on Monday, launching a long-awaited offensive aimed at putting an end to guerrilla control of the Sunni Muslim city.
AP Photo
Reuters
Slideshow: Iraq
Latest headlines:
·
Rumsfeld says Fallujah operation will 'take time' AFP - 16 minutes ago
·
Rumsfeld Expects Few Civilian Deaths in Falluja Reuters - 34 minutes ago
·
General: 10,000-15,000 U.S., Iraqi Troops in Falluja Reuters - 35 minutes ago
Special Coverage
After nightfall, U.S. troops advanced slowly on the northwestern Jolan neighborhood, a warren of alleyways where Sunni militant fighters have dug in. Artillery, tanks and warplanes pounded the district's northern edge, softening the defenses and attempting to set off any bombs and boobytraps before troops moved in.
At the same time, another force pushed into the northeastern Askari district, the first large-scale assault into the insurgent-held area of the city, the military said. U.S. tanks and Humvees from the 1st Infantry Division could be seen inside Askari.
Marines were visible on rooftops inside Jolan. This reporter, located at a U.S. camp near the city, saw orange explosions lighting up the district's palm trees, minarets and dusty roofs, and a fire burning on the city's edge.
Some 5,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers were massed in the desert on Fallujah's northern edge participating in the assault. Iraqi troops deployed with them took over a nearby train station after the Americans fired on it to drive off fighters.
The top U.S. commander in Iraq (news - web sites), Gen. George Casey, predicted a "major confrontation" on the streets of Fallujah in the operation he said was called "al-Fajr," Arabic for "dawn." He told reporters in Washington on Monday that up to 15,000 U.S. troops along with Iraqi forces were encircling the city.
Two Marines were killed when their bulldozer flipped over into the Euphrates near Fallujah earlier Monday. A military spokesman estimated that 42 insurgents were killed across Fallujah in bombardment and skirmishes before the main assault began.
A doctor at a clinic in Fallujah, Mohammed Amer, reported 12 people were killed. Seventeen others, including a 5-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy, were wounded he said.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said he gave the green light for troops to launch the long-awaited offensive against Fallujah, aimed at re-establishing government control before elections set for January. He also announced a round-the-clock curfew in Fallujah and another nearby insurgent stronghold, Ramadi, flexing emergency powers he was granted the day before.
"The people of Fallujah have been taken hostage ... and you need to free them from their grip," he told Iraqi soldiers who swarmed around him during a visit to the main U.S. base outside Fallujah just before the attack began.
"May they go to hell!" the soldiers shouted, and Allawi replied: "To hell they will go."
Earlier Monday, U.S. and Iraqi forces seized two bridges over the Euphrates River and a hospital on Fallujah's western edge that they said was under insurgents' control. A team of Marines entered northwestern Fallujah and seized an apartment building.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said insurgents would likely put up a tough fight. "Listen these folks are determined. These are killers They chop people's heads off. They're getting money from around the world. They're getting recruits," he told reporters.
U.S. commanders have avoided any public estimate on how long it may take to capture Fallujah, where insurgents fought the Marines to a standstill last April in a three-week siege.
Commanders have estimated around 3,000 insurgents are barricaded in the city. Casey said that some insurgents managed to slip away, but others "have moved in." U.S. military officials believe that 20 percent of Fallujah's fighters are foreigners, while the rest are Iraqi residents.
Casey said between 50 and 70 percent of the city's 200,000 residents have fled the city. The numbers are in dispute, however, with some putting the population at 300,000. Residents said about half that number left in mid October, but that many drifted back into the city.
Rumsfeld said "there's nobody who knows how many people are in there," but predicted "there aren't going be large numbers of civilians killed and certainly not by U.S. forces."
As the main assault began in Fallujah, thunderous explosions could be heard across central Baghdad, some 40 miles to the east. Militants detonated car bombs in quick succession near two churches in southern Baghdad after sundown, killing at least three people and injuring 52 others, according to the U.S. military and police.
A U.S. soldier was killed when his patrol was fired on in eastern Baghdad, the military said. Southwest of Baghdad, a British soldier was killed in an incident that appeared to involve a roadside bomb, the Ministry of Defense said in London.
The prelude to the Fallujah offensive was a crushing air and artillery bombardment of the city that built from the night before, through Monday morning and afternoon then rose to a crescendo by Monday night — with U.S. jets dropping bombs constantly and big guns pounding the city every few minutes with high-explosive shells.
AP reporter Edward Harris, embedded with the Marines near the train station in the desert north of the city, saw U.S. forces hammering Jolan with airstrikes and intense tank fire. The Marines reported that at least initially they did not draw significant fire from insurgents, only a few rocket-propelled grenades that caused no casualties.
Throughout the day, masked insurgents roamed the streets of Fallujah. One group of four fighters, two of them draped with belts of ammunition, moved through narrow streets, firing on U.S. forces with small arms and mortars. Mosque loudspeakers blared, "God is great, God is great."
Early Monday, U.S. troops surrounded Fallujah General Hospital, just outside the city on the western bank of the Euphrates River. Iraqi forces swept into the facility, blasting open doors and handcuffing patients, who were pulled into the halls in a search for gunmen.
Four foreigners, including two Moroccans, were captured at the hospital, the U.S. military said.
One main goal for taking the hospital first was likely to control information. Doctors there were the main source of Iraqi death tolls during the April siege of Fallujah, and U.S. commanders accused them of exaggerating numbers and fueling public outrage that eventually forced the Marines to pull back from the city at that time.
Hundreds were reported killed in the April siege of Fallujah — and if casualties and destruction are reported high again, Allawi and his U.S. allies run the risk of a new political firestorm ahead of the January elections.
The Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni clerics group that has threatened to boycott elections, condemned the assault on Fallujah, calling it "an illegal and illegitimate action against civilian and innocent people."
Asked to comment on the start of the Fallujah invasion, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard repeated earlier comments that Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) believes force is sometimes necessary but worries that the invasion could "destabilize the country at a critical point in the preparation for the elections."
The length and ferocity of the battle depends greatly on whether the bulk of the defenders decide to risk the destruction of the city or try to slip away in the face of overwhelming force. Foreign jihadis may choose to fight to the end, but it's unclear how many of them are still in the city.
Another issue is the role of Iraqi forces fighting alongside the Americans. A National Public Radio correspondent embedded with the Marines outside Fallujah reported desertions among the Iraqis — with 255 members of a 500-man Iraqi battalion quitting over the weekend, the correspondent said.
___
Associated Press correspondents Tini Tran, Mariam Fam, Katarina Kratovac and Maggie Michael in Baghdad contributed to this report.
Story Tools
Email Story
Post/Read Msgs
Formatted Story
Ratings: Would you recommend this story?
Not at all 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 Highly
Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
}
Copyright © 2004 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.Questions or CommentsPrivacy Policy -Terms of Service - Copyright Policy - Ad Feedback
