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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PartyTime who wrote (10049)	4/13/2004 7:54:48 PM
From: PartyTime	Respond to of 173976

Part Two Fallujah Gains Mythic Air Fallujah is producing a mythology of its own. In the parking lot of the former Mother of All Battles Mosque, now renamed for the sacred shrine in Mecca, Abu Idris told of a Saudi who came to Fallujah to fight. Hearing that a Marine was sniping from a minaret, the Saudi asked for a sniper rifle of his own, "and whenever a man came to stand on the minaret, he killed him," Abu Idris told the assembled crowd. The account inverts the reports from the Marine side of the front, where U.S. officers warned infantry of insurgents' efforts to draw fire to the mosque towers. But veracity may be a secondary concern in a capital preoccupied by the belief that Fallujah is undergoing an unjust collective punishment for the mutilation of four American security contractors by a handful of men two weeks ago. "It's natural that many fighters from Baghdad want to go to Fallujah and fight," said Abdulqadir Mohammad Ali, prayer leader at the modest Great Mosque in Baghdad's Washash neighborhood. A Sunni mosque in a mixed neighborhood, it displayed a Sadr poster on one wall. Ali's office smelled like a bakery, so fresh were the cookies young men poured into the dozen bulging bags that crowded the room, more food for Fallujah. The imam spoke over the din of the Koranic verses that have been booming out of the mosque's loudspeakers since the siege began more than a week ago. On a bench beside a window, an elderly man read a battered copy of the holy book and occasionally sobbed. Abdullah Hussein Othman, a 70-year-old ethnic Kurd, explained he had two daughters in Fallujah. "The exact image I want to give you is the young men heading to fight in Fallujah are more than the refugees coming out of Fallujah," Ali said. "We cannot control the feelings of the young." The fighters, he added, reject the label "fedayeen," the name for deposed president Saddam Hussein's most zealous fighters, who, like the new insurgents, favor black attire. "We say 'mujaheddin,' " he said, Arabic for sacred combatants. Slang has also evolved. Many Shiites recall a slogan they saw written on the barrel of an Iraqi tank dispatched to crush a 1991 Shiite uprising: "No more Shiites after today." In the tumultuous aftermath of Hussein's fall a year ago, new slogans went up across cities in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq: "No Baathists after today." Monday, in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, there was another variation: "No occupation after today." The resistance also recently acquired a logo. Two fingers form a victory sign over an image of Iraq on posters that appeared in Baghdad on Monday. The words "No to the occupation" appear over the date Baghdad fell: April 9, 2003. Sadr makes the same gesture in a poster of his own. "I don't think any honorable Iraqi could stand by and do nothing when he sees women and children killed," said Abu Ali, a merchant in the once avowedly pro-Hussein neighborhood of Karrada. "An Iraqi must either fight or leave the country. It is better for him to be hosted by the graves than just watching and doing nothing." How many Iraqis are volunteering to fight in Fallujah cannot be easily determined. The Baghdad man who quit the Civil Defense Corps because of Fallujah said he could name 30 friends who have joined the fight. But the man, who gave his name only as Ahmed, also spoke of Saudi fighters recently arrived in the city "to sacrifice themselves" and of word passing through the resistance that Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian blamed by U.S. officials for many suicide bombings, is sending a group into the country. "There is no number to count the army that will fight the Americans," Ahmed said. "It's so big, it's limitless." Abu Idris said some Fallujah natives insisted that they did not need help, leaving many volunteers to roam the region between the city and the capital. The area has become a no-go zone in recent days, with several journalists kidnapped and convoys attacked. "Mujaheddin are just killing the agents who are supplying the Americans," said a teenager who gave his name as Abu Hanifa. He smiled, then scampered into the back of a blue truck with the other volunteers. Calling out for a photograph, they laughed and held up two fingers in a victory sign. As the truck pulled away, the teenager called out: "We will defeat you, God willing." washingtonpost.com

To: PartyTime who wrote (10049)	4/13/2004 11:02:32 PM
From: Ron	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

For all you younger folks out there, this is just to help you get into the mood: "I wanna be an Airborne Ranger! I wanna lead a life of danger. Airborne Ranger. Blood and danger. Sound off! One Two Three Four I wanna be a paramedic. Pump that funky anesthetic. Paramedic. anesthetic. Sound off! One Two Three Four If I die in a combat zone, Box me up and ship me home. Build my coffin 4 feet wide, I fought well and I had pride. Pin my medals upon my chest, Tell my mom I did my best. Sound off! One Two Three Four ONE TWO, THREE FOUR!" (Soldiers training for Iraq combat, have doubtless added their own personal lyrics to this cadence, by now.)