Cheney should stand to make a few more million with the new
reconstruction contracts being generated in Fallujah.
I hear Mosul is beginning to place calls to Haliburton too ...
"I think it has been a remarkable success story to date, when you look
at what has been accomplished overall. I think the President deserves
great credit for it. The other credit -- most of the credit, a good part
of the credit, needs to go specifically, as well, to the men and women
of the United States Armed Forces. They've done a superb job."
-US VP ***** Cheney
*Sigh*
---------------------------------------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52675-2004Nov15.html
Fallujah Battered And Mostly Quiet After the Battle
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 16, 2004; Page A13
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 15 -- Even the dogs have started to die, their
corpses strewn among twisted metal and shattered concrete in a city that
looks like it forgot to breathe.
The aluminum shutters of shops on the main highway through town have
been transformed by the force of war into mangled accordion shapes,
flat, sharp, jarring slices of metal that no longer obscure the stacks
of silver pots, the plastic-wrapped office furniture, the rolls of
carpet. These things would be for sale, except there are no traders, no
customers, hardly any people at all in the center of Fallujah.
U.S. Marines searching for insurgents in the Jolan neighborhood in the
northwestern side of the city on Monday did see two elderly men emerge
from a pile of rock. The men, who looked too old to fight, pointed to
their stomachs. They were hungry. They were given brown, plastic pouches
of military rations and disappeared back into the rocks, the Marines
recounted.
Black smoke rose from buildings across the city as U.S. artillery
continued to bombard insurgent positions and weapons bunkers a day after
commanders declared that the city had been liberated.
On a cinderblock wall near the Othman bin Afan mosque on the main
east-west highway that divides the city, someone had scrawled: "Islam
came back again." But there was no one to welcome right now, and no one
to receive it.
And if the brave holy warriors are living long lives, as another
graffiti scrawl proclaimed, they were not doing it at the deserted Arch
of Victory Square, its metal monument arch and painting of Saddam
Hussein crumpled months ago by a roadside bomb aimed at a U.S. convoy.
Eight days ago, U.S. and Iraqi forces barreled through a defensive mud
wall thrown up around the city. Using tanks and Bradley Fighting
Vehicles, they charged through the center and sides of the
insurgent-controlled city. Most of the 250,000 residents had fled in
anticipation of the attack, the largest operation since the U.S.-led
invasion of Iraq in March last year.
U.S. commanders say they now control the city except for a few pockets
of resistance, mostly in the southernmost part. There, the crack of
gunfire could still be heard on Monday, as American forces battled the
last of the fighters.
Elsewhere in the city, it was mostly quiet.
"Everything is calming down," said Lance Cpl. Joshua Williams, 21, of
Sherman, N.Y., who was cleaning his M-16 rifle on a cot in a warehouse
the Marines had taken over.
Artillery was very important in this battle, and the central highway
through town bears the singed, pockmark evidence. To minimize danger to
ground troops, artillery batteries struck suspected insurgent targets
before the infantry went in. Airstrikes and mortar fire added to the
pressure.
Whole blocks were battered this way. Broken glass, furniture, pipes and
other debris are piled up on the sidewalks.
Iraq's Red Crescent Society sent seven truckloads of food and medicine
to the city, but U.S. forces stopped the convoy at the main hospital,
the Reuters news agency reported. Marine commanders said there was no
need for humanitarian relief inside the city because so few people remained.
Fallujah looks like a city from which everyone has walked away.
A fruit and vegetable stand near the Arch of Victory Square was
abandoned, but it still had brown woven baskets neatly arranged on a
rack of shelves. The city smelled like dust, ash -- and death.
A few blocks from the fruit stand, the decaying, burned corpse of a
bearded man in a black tribal robe lay on the street, the arms extended.
U.S. armored vehicles took up position at the end of some city blocks,
while soldiers and Marines on foot skirted booby-trapped buildings and
unexploded bombs and mines to search every house, every building,
looking for insurgents.
As Brig. Gen. Dennis J. Hejlik, deputy commander of the 1st Marine
Expeditionary Force, was touring a western neighborhood near the neck of
a bridge that crosses the Euphrates River, a firefight erupted between
Marines conducting the house sweep and insurgents hiding on a narrow street.
The sound of the skirmish intensified, and Hejlik walked toward the
crack of guns and bang of mortars. His security detail and aides
followed behind him, guns at the ready. Hejlik watched for a while and
then returned to his vehicle.
Asked how the battle was going, Hejlik looked out at the deserted
street. "This is what we do," he said. "This is what we do well."
Later, as the sun set and he prepared to return to a military outpost
outside the city, Hejlik said he was pleased with the outcome of the
battle and the way American troops were taking care of the city until
its residents could return.
"What I saw out here is a bunch of professional Marines and soldiers who
were protecting the property of the Iraqi people," Hejlik said. "But
they continue to whack the bad guys."
In the distance, an artillery shell whizzed through the air and landed
with a bang, a sound that honking vehicles might have drowned out had
there been any traffic. Instead, there was only silence. After the sun
set on the purple horizon, there was nothing to see at all.
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