"This is the Alamo." or, the Mother of all Distractions.
Reported by Chrish - October 19, 2004 -
Attention: your previously scheduled October surprise has been re-scheduled for the first week of November.
According to retired Major General Bob Scales, speaking with Brit Hume on Special Report 10/18 (6:22 EDT), a "preparatory operation" is in progress around the Iraq city of Fallujah.
Right now Fallujah is cordoned off, allowing innocents to leave and trapping the "bad guys". He likened it to "draining a swamp and leaving just the alligators." He mentions that the US Marines were just two days away from taking the city six months ago and were called off, leaving the job to "the locals". When Brit commented that would have been a very violent and very bloody seige, General Scales disagreed, saying there were only 150-200 foreigners in there, maybe 400-500 insurgents at the time. That effort failed, and in the interim six months the city has become a center for foreign terrorists, "allowing them to establish ambushes, put in explosive devices along the roads and so forth, waiting for the Marines to come in." Scales says the likelihood of avoiding this battle is close to zero - the bad guys consider this their Alamo.
Scales estimates that a minimum of 5,000 and maximum of 10,000 troops will be needed to take the city of 500,000; 2-3,000 of the troops will be Iraqi, according to the general. He says this is not going to be easy - it is going to be a difficult operation - a lot less easy than it would have been 6 months ago.
Asked by Brit when we could expect to see movement on the city, the General said "probably a couple of weeks." Brit Hume:'About the time we go vote?" General Scales: "I'm not sure the two are connected, but yeah, that's right."
Comments: I've been looking for reporting on this since October 11, when Common Dreams forwarded the L.A. Times story "Major Assaults on Hold Until After U.S. Vote" . It appears that the Bush administration is manipulating the war and attendant media coverage to influence the election or, more likely in my opinion, to create a major distraction from the confusion and machinations that will be going on immediately after the election, as Karl Rove's army gets busy here in the homeland.
It is unconscionable that this administration would halt a military action and postpone it until it is more politically useful, but that sure appears to be what has happened. The cynical manipulation of troops is all the more disgusting and distressing because, if Major Scales is correct, the six months heads-up will undoubtedly result in more numerous and more severe casualties for US troops. It sounds like this is going to be a major battle, a bloodbath, and it will totally dominate the media, taking the focus off the second consecutive stolen election.
We will have to DEMAND full coverage of the post-election lawsuits and legislative and judicial shenanigans, regardless of what horrors our troops are being subjected to. We MUST NOT let them get away with this.
