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| Iraq-Jordan |
| In Najaf, Human Shields and Militants Await Tanks |
| 2004-08-17 |
| With his militants and human shields holed up inside one of Shi'ite Islam's most sacred shrines, radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is playing a shrewd waiting game before an expected American-led offensive. Sadr's militiamen were inside the Imam Ali shrine and positioned along alleyways and on rooftops with a seemingly endless supply of AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades intermittently fired at U.S. troops in a nearby cemetery. But it was about 2,000 impassioned Iraqi civilian "volunteers" cheering Sadr in the marble-floored courtyard of the mosque who made the biggest show of force Monday. Traveling to Najaf from across Iraq, they are swelling the ranks of Sadr's supporters and could be another reason why U.S. troops may think twice before storming the shrine. "These people are a deterrent to the Americans because they are civilians. They are here so that the Americans won't attack the Imam Ali shrine," said Sheikh Ahmed Shaibani, a senior Mehdi Army commander and top aide to Sadr. The longer the Americans wait to launch any offensive, the more time Sadr has to gain new supporters and entrench them inside the sprawling mosque. Any serious damage to the shrine would enrage millions of Shi'ites around the world, including those who make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population. The volunteers said they had no serious military training. But they seem ready to pick up an AK-47 rifle or use any means to try to block an advance by U.S. tanks positioned in neighborhoods near the shrine. "I will lie on the ground in front of the tanks, or I will kill the Americans to defend Sadr and Najaf," said Fadil Hamed, 30, standing among a group of men who said they walked to Najaf from the southern city of Basra. Last week, thousands of Iraqis staged pro-Sadr protests in several cities and called for the downfall of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Some marched to Najaf and are in the shrine with many of Sadr's Mehdi Army militiamen, who are posing the biggest challenge to Allawi since the U.S.-led occupiers handed power to Iraqis in late June. Beside a makeshift emergency clinic inside the mosque, a woman in a black veil comforted a man who lay on the marble floor with wounds to his right leg and arm. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #36 So, gas it is, eh? I hate being this right. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-08-18 1:06:17 AM |
| #35 It's too late to play games. Put a cordon of razor wire around the mosque as close as we can. We give them 30 minutes to start surendering, or we start pumping in laughing gas. Tons of the stuff, with huge fans to make sure it's blown in the right direction. Pipe it in using 2" PVC pipe, from every direction. Back it up with the world's worst acid rock played at 250dB on the world's largest sound system. When the dumbsh$$$ start falling into the wire, we can either a) shoot them, or b) handcuff them and turn them over to the Iraqi army so THEY can shoot them. If any of them are Iranian, we march them to the nearest border crossing, shoot them just on this side of the border, and make the Iranian border guards haul them across. I don't think laughing gas is against the Geneva convention - it's basically an asesthetic. But a bout of uncontrolled giggles would be more humiliating to these "supermen" than anything else that could happen to them. IF it also makes them crap their pants after they pass out, who the he$$ cares? |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-08-17 11:31:17 PM |
| #34 Tibor, Bulldog, thank you both for making some sort of honorable replies as opposed to merely carping. Days ago I mentioned sealing off the mosque's perimeter and starving them out. I'm also sure we're all keenly interested in how the hell water trucks made their delivery in an unperforated and undrained state. It's precisely this endless dithering that is murdering all hope of any swift resolution. I feel we have succumbed to the sort of moral quailing that Peters outlined in his article. We have permitted the foe to cross line after line drawn in the sand while our own soldiers remain crouched on the starting blocks. I've yet to feel any confidence in the ING's ability to sweep this mosque. I'm also concerned that Qom based Iranian agents are the ones who have mined the shrine. This is why I've previously advocated displacing the building's breathable atmosphere with CO2 or using sleep gas. Another solution of using audio-visual disruption (low frequency red strobe lights and sound) might work, but it allows too much time for anyone with their finger on the switch to blow up the place. It seems pretty clear that the Iraqis have neither the expertise or backbone to resolve this themselves. Their constant "negotiations" and amnesty offers all send the exact wrong message and Sadr's thugs can only be emboldened by it. I see the greatest problem as being how it is so important that American troops are not those who enter the shrine. It is why I previously mentioned the administration's damaging overemphasis on religiosity. Once our troops have been killed at the hands of those hiding in the mosque, it's fair game. Perhaps not for destruction, but most certainly for invasion. We cannot help it if people desecrate their own religious monuments. It is they who have chosen to do so and by all measures we are doing the Iraqi people a favor in disposing of them. Too bad that we do not already have hardened surveillance robots with defensive mechanisms (i.e., high voltage, piercing sound etc.) to enter the place and begin scouting for us. What we really need is a particle beam that can penetrate the shrine's masonry walls and fry these maggots in place. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-08-17 7:55:50 PM |
| #33 Just play a loop of 'Its a small world after all!'.... |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2004-08-17 7:30:21 PM |
| #32 kill em all |
| Posted by: smokeysinse 2004-08-17 6:48:57 PM |
| #31 Tibor's on to something...I vote for endless reruns of Hello Larry. |
| Posted by: Rex Mundi 2004-08-17 6:47:41 PM |
| #30 Also, we should also be using psyops. Bombard them with high volume Scandanavian death rock, Christian folk songs, midget porn, John Kerry speeches, whatever. |
| Posted by: Tibor 2004-08-17 6:39:35 PM |
| #29 Zenster, I doubt these clowns have gas masks or respirators. My solution is not to fire a bunch of tear gas cannisters and to sit and wait for them to come out. It's to fire the tear gas and have the ING go in. Maybe that's what the ING has been training to do these last few days. I am most worried about Sadr and his blackshirts blowing up the Shrine and blaming it on the US. There should be US cameras trained on the Shrine 24-7 and friendly Iraqi media types ready to print "It was all Sadr's fault" stories. Any assault must have the public backing of the interim Iraqi government and perhaps the Iraqi National Conference delegates as well. I am sympathetic to Ralph Peters' arguments, but I think we can't afford to undermine the legitimacy of the Iraqi government. If Allawi is willing to allow us to put the hammer down, I am confident the Marines will be up to the task. However, our PR and political machines better be prepared to deal with a sh*tstorm of criticism from the Dems, LLLs, our "allies," the Muslim world, etc. |
| Posted by: Tibor 2004-08-17 6:36:29 PM |
| #28 Optimal solution (don't know if possible) - close down to all but the mosque itself and nail a safe perimiter, then go in with special forces after reducing as much of the defence with snipers as possible. Perhaps send in a few of those 'gun droids' too :) . |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2004-08-17 5:33:22 PM |
| #27 Zenster, I don't think the talking heads would blink, let alone blush, at deliberately overlooking the fact that technically sleeping gas isn't a WMD. It's a gas - that'd be good enough. If there were no fatalities, there mightn't be much fuss (there might even be some praise), but if there were, you can bet images of the dead would be more reproduced than those from Halabja... Besides, I'm sure there would be fatalities when the troops went in (those less affected holding out; those who might be rigged with explosives a la the black widows of the Moscow theatre seige), which might well be protrayed as gas victims - which would no doubt sucker many in the Muslim world, if not the West. My solution? Something more conventional. IMO even restrained use of HE would be safer. After all, Saddam used HE on that very mosque back in '91. It's been patched up before. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2004-08-17 5:29:32 PM |
| #26 Interesting points, Bulldog. Now, what's your own solution? PS: Sleep gas is not a WMD, nor would there be any corresponding casualty count to bear out such falsehoods. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-08-17 5:21:02 PM |
| #25 If Bush sacntioned the use of gas, there would be hell to pay. If fatalities resulted, you could only begin to imagine the consequences of "the only WMDs in Iraq having been used by Bush" (to anticipate the entirely predictable response of the LLL, the MSM and every foreign commentator under the sun). In that kind of public opinion storm, Bush would find winning the election much harder and jihadees would be more determined to use unconventional agents themselves. It would be a recruitment dream for the bad guys. Far, far too much to lose for it to be worth the risk. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2004-08-17 5:07:07 PM |
| #24 Tear gas is not the answer. It can be defeated by respirators. We need to knock these suckers out cold so they have less chance of damaging the mosque. Observers should be kept on hand to witness the evacuation and revival of the occupants. So f&%king what if one or two people die? There's many more people who are going to die, American troops included, if we do not end this Mexican standoff pronto. What's your solution, Tibor? We've got to find one d@mn soon and all the other options look like sh!t. Gas the suckers and be done with it. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-08-17 4:45:00 PM |
| #23 Zenster, we can use tear gas, but if we used some kind of sleeping agent and 1 person died, the left, the Islamic street, etc., would explode with cries of "The US is gassing the Iraqis." Given the WMD claims we made going in, there is no room to give the @sshats an opening like that. |
| Posted by: Tibor 2004-08-17 4:32:44 PM |
| #22 Are you suggesting something like what they tried in the Moscow Theater? The good thing would be is that there are few "hostages" in the Ali Mosque. Of course, there are the stories about tunnels. . . Yes, BigEd. I'm confident that we have better formulas that what the Russians used. If a few people end up overdosing, that's the breaks. Let's first do a circumvalent patrol with deep side scanning radar to detect any tunnels. Flood all that we find (or pump gas through them) and then gas the mosque. We do not have the luxury of sitting around hoping for some elusive break. The Iraqis are justifiably losing both respect and confidence in our ability to impose order and Sadr is the core of this problem. We need to be seen dragging his somnolent carcass out of the Imam Ali shrine along with all his militia and their weapons. Then we need to document and detail any explosives these bastards rigged inside to make clear who the Shi'ites are really cheering on. By using sleep gas (preferrably a noncombustive aerosol of some sort), we will show a determination not to damage the stinking mosque but demonstrate our resolve to win. Blowing down the mosque just isn't an option. Like Ralph Peters and myself have been saying: "And then there is the bogus issue of mosques, which our leaders approach with superstition, not sense. While Najaf’s Imam Ali shrine truly is a sacred place, the fact is that there are mosques and there are mosques. Our unwillingness to target even a derelict neighborhood mosque packed with ammunition, weapons and terrorists is not only militarily foolish — it’s based upon the assumption that Muslims are so stupid that they don’t know the rules of their own religion. That’s nonsense. They know that mosques aren’t supposed to be used as bunkers. But they’re not going to shout it from the rooftops to help us out. Were we to destroy a series of local mosques used by terrorists throughout Iraq, there would be an initial outcry — which the media would exaggerate. But it would blow over with remarkable speed. The only lasting effect would be to put the terrorists on notice that we won’t let them make the rules any longer." Long ago we should have started leveling minor mosques that were being used as bunkers. This would have correctly sent the message that all religious sites tainted by military use were off the safe list. I firmly believe that the tragic overemphasis placed on religiosity by the White House has literally crippled our ability to properly engage those who hide behind religion while they conduct war against us. The routine pull backs of our troops while they were on the verge of victory is a complete betrayal of our soldiers and the blood they shed in our name. GAS THE D@MNED MOSQUE AND BE DONE WITH IT! |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-08-17 3:55:58 PM |
| #21 Z: Are you suggesting something like what they tried in the Moscow Theater? The good thing would be is that there are few "hostages" in the Ali Mosque. Of course, there are the stories about tunnels. . . |
| Posted by: BigEd 2004-08-17 3:33:37 PM |
| #20 Hmmm... We need a munition that sows salt, heh - would follow on nicely with Shep's menu. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-08-17 3:29:57 PM |
| #19 fuckin obliterate the wretched shine thing with a bunker buster followed by a daisy cutter followed by cluster munitions with anti personnel bomblets inside.once the dust has settled move the troops in |
| Posted by: Shep UK 2004-08-17 3:27:16 PM |
| #18 ONE MORE F&%KING TIME: SLEEP GAS. Pump the d@mned mosque full of it and be done with this stinking charade. There is no other way of successfully terminating this fiasco. Sadr has to go and we really need to avoid demolishing the shrine. Fine, pump it full of knock-out gas and clean house. Does anyone else have a workable solution they'd like to present? Because, I'd sure like to hear it. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-08-17 3:12:24 PM |
| #17 sigh...at this point I'd be happy to hear spin...at least that's better than NOTHING!!! WHAT'S HAPPENING!!???!!! |
| Posted by: B 2004-08-17 2:51:47 PM |
| #16 Who in the hell is letting people into this area? What the Hell is ABC doing reporting when all reporters have been told to leave. Since is sounds as if they have been in the shrine they must be embeded in the terrorist forces. I never watch ABC anyhow. |
| Posted by: Flamebait93268 2004-08-17 2:17:53 PM |
| #15 Very shortly we're going to be calling them "the dead guys." |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-08-17 1:24:05 PM |
| #14 First of all this is ABC news. Who the hell knows what is really going on? Also, they are not 'civilians' they are militants. We here at rantburg call them 'tater-tots'. Doesn't the marines call them 'targets'? |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2004-08-17 12:44:17 PM |
| #13 If the US withdraws its tanks from Najaf without using them to assault the Sadrites in the Shrine, I would love to hear a late night TV show use Maggie's line to Danny Noonan in Caddyshack -- "Tanks for nuttin!" |
| Posted by: Tibor 2004-08-17 12:36:16 PM |
| #12 What a POS! This is practically a love letter to Tater. |
| Posted by: Rex Mundi 2004-08-17 11:21:43 AM |
| #11 if all of the reporters have left the city, how did abc get this report? |
| Posted by: B 2004-08-17 11:12:58 AM |
| #10 Wouldn't it be great if that water had something wrong with it... |
| Posted by: Anonymous6098 2004-08-17 11:04:02 AM |
| #9 Sadr will become a permanent resident of the mosque, like Arafat in his HQ, or will be allowed to leave with his militia. Then he'll do it all over again, until we learn. |
| Posted by: virginian 2004-08-17 10:57:55 AM |
| #8 Frank G: Let me rephrase that: "Who the HELL let those water trucks in?" |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2004-08-17 10:57:04 AM |
| #7 What jackass broke up the double cordon? Fuck. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-08-17 10:56:09 AM |
| #6 "Human shields? I don't see no human shields." |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2004-08-17 10:55:43 AM |
| #5 Let's not forget that "militant" = "terrorist". Bombs away! |
| Posted by: Chris W. 2004-08-17 10:55:12 AM |
| #4 Naw -- "collateral damage" refers to people and things you don't want to kill but that are too close to a legitimate target. "Human shields" are violating the laws of war, and thus become legitimate targets themselves. Any that survive the attack should be summarily executed for being unlawful combatants. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-08-17 10:53:59 AM |
| #3 "collateral damage" and "chlorine in the gene pool" work as well... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-08-17 10:49:15 AM |
| #2 The proper term for "human shields" is "war criminal", although, "legal target" and "casualty" are both acceptable. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-08-17 10:47:51 AM |
| #1 who let the water trucks in? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-08-17 10:45:01 AM |
