Saturday, November 13, 2004
Iraq's Tet
It's Ramadan, instead of a lunar New Year festival, but the guerrillas seem to coming out for an all-out offensive.
As the Coalition forces are now in control of some four fifths of Fallujah, battling against an undetermined, but now believed to be a small number of suicidal stay-behinds (a senior defense official: "We figured that a bunch of them sneaked out with the civilian population and left some stupid ones behind to get killed."), the insurgents go on offensive in Mosul, Hawija and Tal Afar and elsewhere throughout the Sunni Triangle.
Whenever they come out in the open to fight they get smacked down. The latest Triangle-wide offensive is likely to end in disaster for the anti-Coalition forces, with manpower degraded and sanctuaries denied. But just like the Tet offensive in 1968, the media will probably portray it as an American defeat and an insurgent victory, mistaking the process for the outcome.
Meanwhile, al Zarqawi continues to delude himself and his followers in a just released audio tape:
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As the Coalition forces are now in control of some four fifths of Fallujah, battling against an undetermined, but now believed to be a small number of suicidal stay-behinds (a senior defense official: "We figured that a bunch of them sneaked out with the civilian population and left some stupid ones behind to get killed."), the insurgents go on offensive in Mosul, Hawija and Tal Afar and elsewhere throughout the Sunni Triangle.
Whenever they come out in the open to fight they get smacked down. The latest Triangle-wide offensive is likely to end in disaster for the anti-Coalition forces, with manpower degraded and sanctuaries denied. But just like the Tet offensive in 1968, the media will probably portray it as an American defeat and an insurgent victory, mistaking the process for the outcome.
Meanwhile, al Zarqawi continues to delude himself and his followers in a just released audio tape:
"[A]l-Zarqawi urged insurgents in Falluja to resist U.S.-led attacks on the rebel city, saying victory was certain. 'We have no doubt that the signs of God's victory will appear on the horizon'."Maybe he means the mainstream media.
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