Antiwar.com Blog

Fallujah insurgents besieged by US and Iraqi troops have invited journalists to “embed” with them to report their side of the war.

“All media will be allowed into Fallujah to witness the crusade against Islam and see the real face of America. US media will not be excluded,” said a statement by the Fallujah Mujahideen Shura (council), composed of insurgent leaders, tribal chiefs and Sunni Muslim clerics.

“We will protect and transport them to the location of the events. There will be a special building for the journalists.”

Every journalist who has ever written the line “precision strike on a Zarqawi safe house” should be sent into Fallujah to take the mujahideen up on this offer.

Buried down toward the bottom of this news roundup of the current situation in Iraq is this tiny but devastating blurb:

An Iraqi company commander who had received a full battle briefing on the expected Falluja assault has deserted a military base where U.S. and Iraqi troops are preparing. Officials discovered the commander, a Kurdish captain, was missing on Friday. Marine officials believe the man took notes from the battle briefing Thursday and and are worried he may pass the information to insurgents.

Sunday: It has come to my attention that CNN has pulled all reference to this story, including removing that tiny but devasting blurb. However, the Australian media has not, and here is the complete article:
Iraqi officer deserts with Fallujah plans

There will be international condemnation, as there was the first time; but our government won’t listen to it; aside from the resistance, all the people of Fallujah will be able to depend on to try to avert or mitigate the horror will be us, the antiwar movement.

We have a responsibility, that we didn’t meet in April and we didn’t meet in August when Najaf was similarly attacked; will we meet it this time?

Rahul Mahajan

Fallujah and the coming cataclysm.

From Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches, Spiraling into Occupied Iraq

Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles are perched along the road, with their weapons aimed directly at us and other cars as we pass…this is occupied Iraq. We drive perilously close to a huge Bradley with its growling treads and I point to it thinking Abu Talat may not see how close he is. He laughs and says, “This is our daily life…you know this. How do you think Americans would like to have tanks on their streets aiming guns at them? For us, this is normal.”

With very little publicity, on Nov. 2, US Marines arrested the Chairman of the Nasar Wa Sulaan City Council (a suburb of Baghdad) and an unknown number of other council members. The only report of it is part of an Associated Press photo caption accompanying their Nov. 2 news feed (see the photo on this page).

Iyad Allawi graduates with honors from the Emperor George the Divine Skool of International Diplomacy.