The hastily improvised plan to send a small Iraqi force into Falluja, led a former general in Saddam Hussein's army is a last-ditch effort to avert a violent and politically charged urban battle, senior Pentagon officials and American commanders said Friday.... The Iraqi force will be under the command of the Marine Corps, which will keep more than 3,000 troops around the city and remain poised for a major offensive should the Iraqi force fall apart under attack, senior military officials warned.... (Eric Schmitt, "SIEGE: Falluja Choices Exhausted, U.S. Turns to Iraqi Officer", NYT on the Web, 01 May 2004)

FALLUJAH, Nov. 8 -- U.S. forces entered the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah... 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. (Jackie Spinner and Karl Vick, "U.S. Forces Launch Attack on Fallujah: U.S. Marines, Army's 1st Infantry Division Lead Operation Phantom Fury", Washington Post Foreign Service (washingtonpost.com)... November 8, 2004; 11:50 AM) ~ [Fallujah] has been controlled by the insurgents since early May.... Shortly before the invasion began, Col. Michael D. Formica, the Army commander responsible for cutting off access to the city, seemed jubilant as he congratulated his commanders in a radio conference call. "We're going to see a great attack tonight as we set this country on a path to liberty," he said. (Dexter Filkins and James Glanz, "Wild Firefights as U.S. Soldiers Swarm Northern Edge of City", NYT on the Web, 09 November 2004)

...[W]hen six armed men stormed into their sons' primary school this month, shot a guard dead, and left fliers ordering it to close, Assad Bahjat knew it was time to leave. "The main thing now is to just get out of Iraq," said Mr. Bahjat, standing in a room heaped with suitcases and bedroom furniture in eastern Baghdad. In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country.... It is more than just the killing that has sapped hope for the future. Iraqis have waited for five months for a permanent government, after voting in a national election in December... some Iraqis say the amount of haggling it took to form it makes them skeptical that it will be able to solve bigger problems. Abd al-Kareem al-Mahamedawy, a tribal sheik from Amara in southern Iraq who fought for years against Saddam Hussein, compared the process to "giving birth to a deformed child."... "At the beginning we said, 'Let's wait, maybe it will be better tomorrow,' " Mr. [Falah] Kubba said. "Now I know it is time to go." (Sabrina Tavernise, "As Death Stalks Iraq, Middle-Class Exodus Begins", NYT on the Web, 19 May 2006)[fn.118]

---

	"The failure to make a serious effort at nation-building after driving out the despicable Taliban has resulted in an Afghanistan that borders on complete anarchy. The abject failure to plan after Saddam is a policy disaster." (Albert R. Hunt, "The Faux Foreign Policy Leadership", The Wall Street Journal, OpEd piece, 14Aug03, p.A13) China's surging economy... [is] "making progress because we're invisible and distracted; or bull-headed when we do show up," said Robert L. Suettinger... a member of the National Security Council during... the Clinton administration. (Jane Perlez, "China Is Romping With the Neighbors (U.S. is disracted)", NYT, 03Dec03, pp.A1,A4)				SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Aug. 11 -- In much the same way as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan stirred an earlier generation of young Muslims determined to fight the infidel, the American presence in Iraq is prompting a rising tide of Muslim militants to slip into the country to fight the foreign occupier, Iraqi officials and others say. (Neil MacFarquhar, "Rising Tide of Islamic Militants See Iraq as Ultimate Battlefield", NYT on the Web, 13Aug03. See my: Quote #127, Quote #209) A classified cable sent... late last month [i.e., November 2004]... by the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief in Baghdad has warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound any time soon...." (Douglas Jehl, "2 C.I.A. Reports Offer Warnings on Iraq's Path", NYT on the Web, 07Dec04) Rumsfeld stressed that soldiers who are heading to Iraq should not believe those who say the insurgents cannot be defeated or who otherwise doubt the will of the military to win. ("Troops Put Tough Questions to Rumsfeld", NYT on the Web, 08Dec04, AP, Filed at 10:44 a.m. ET)
		....  And nobody does it better Makes me feel sad for the rest Nobody does it half as good as you Dubya, Dubya, darlin', you're the best  ....   --Carly Simon (*)

Hail to the Chief !!

01May03: Mission accomplished!

---

Email me what you think!   Return  to George W Bush (November 2000 U.S. Presidential election). Return  to How to fight the new global terrorism? Return  to quote about Bush administration suspending American citizen's civil liberties.   Discover how "one bullet" could have averted the whole 2003 Iraq war! Learn  George W Bush's belated second thoughts (May 2006) about some of his early Iraq braggadocio.   Know  your enemy! (U.S. DoD Spring 2003 Iraq war "Iraqi most wanted" playing cards).

---

Ask:  Is George W Bush a Loose cannon on the deck of The Ship of State?

 
Read: Bush declares self and USA trifecta winners!
Read about Bush's fraidy-cat stealthy Thanksgiving 2003 visit to the troops he sent to Iraq!

News  story I posted here more than a year before it happened: George W Bush hunts for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.   Go to website Table of Contents. Return to Brad McCormick's home page. Return to site map.

---

http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/GeorgeWBush5.html Copyright © 2003 Brad McCormick, Ed.D. bradmcc@cloud9.net 26 May 2006CE (2006-05-26 ISO 8601) v04.25

George W Bush: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." ("Interview of the President by TVP, Poland", White House Press Release, 29May03 14:28EDT) "Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials say. The classified findings by a majority of the engineering experts differ from the view put forward in a white paper made public on May 28 by the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which said that the trailers were for making biological weapons.... Since the white paper was made public in May, new information suggesting that the trailers might have been used for making hydrogen has come from Iraqi officials interrogated by American military officers in Iraq, a military officer said today." (Douglas Jehl, "Iraqi Trailers Said to Make Hydrogen, Not Biological Arms", NYT, 09Aug03, pp.A1,A6) "The White House confirmed today that the search in Iraq for the banned weapons it had cited as justifying the war that ousted Saddam Hussein has been quietly ended after nearly two years, with no evidence of their existence.... A White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, insisted today that the war was justified. He rejected the suggestion that the administration's credibility had been gravely wounded in ways that could weaken its future response to perceived threats." (Brian Knowlton, "Search for Illicit Weapons in Iraq Ends", International Herald Tribune, NYT on the Web, 12Jan04)		BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 19 [2003] -- A suicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives at the United Nations compound here today, killing at least 17 people, including the top United Nations representative in Iraq, and injuring at least 100, in a direct attack on one of the principal agencies in charge of rebuilding Iraq. The bomb demolished the three-story converted hotel, filled with United Nations workers, scattering the wounded and their remains across a wide swathe.... President Bush, speaking in Crawford, Tex., condemned the bombing as the work of "enemies of the civilized world." He said: "The terrorists who struck today have again shown their contempt for the innocent. They showed their fear of progress and their hatred of peace." (Dexter Filkins and Richard A Oppel Jr., "At Least 17 Killed in Bombing of U.N. Headquarters in Baghdad", NYT on the Web, 19Aug03)
"It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting 'invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq'" (Richard A. Clarke, Bush adm. counterterrorism coordinator, from: Quote #207)

GWB: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - [5] - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - ? - 0