On November 23, as this issue went to press, about 5,000 U.S., British, and Iraqi troops launched an offensive against similar forces in a swath of territory south of Baghdad referred to by many Iraqis as the “Triangle of Death.”

The same day, the World Tribune reported that the U.S. military had captured in Al Anbar province of western Iraq, bordering Syria, a top commander of the forces opposing the Iraqi interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the U.S. occupation. U.S. military officials said the senior Sunni commander, who was not identified by name, was captured in the town of Haqlaniyah along the Euphrates River.

Similar operations are underway in the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk that border Iraqi Kurdistan, in Sunni-dominated sections of Baghdad, and in a number of cities in the Sunni Triangle in central Iraq that includes Fallujah. The U.S. military is fighting the war it did not finish during last year’s invasion with the aim of smashing the best units of the former army of the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. These units dissolved but kept their weaponry and have been leading the attacks on civilian and military targets in Iraq for the last 18 months.  
 
Crack units attacked Fallujah
Meanwhile, military commanders and many U.S. politicians and pundits have been praising the crack units that took over Fallujah, which the Pentagon is not about to pull out until it has consolidated its victory. They are also publicizing their findings in the city that point to the fact that Fallujah was the center of Baathist resistance.

Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Force in Fallujah, said the offensive had “broken the back of the insurgency,” according to the November 19 Washington Post. He said the U.S. military objective is to continually disperse the Baathists, forcing them to operate in new areas where they will increasingly need to rely on less experienced people. “They’ll bring in rookies, more junior people that will, in fact, make mistakes,” Sattler said.

In a November 19 Pentagon press briefing, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command, said the evidence U.S. forces are finding in house-to-house searches in Fallujah shows the city was a haven for “former-regime elements.” He said retaking the city has deprived the Baathists and their supporters of an important command center.

Smith said, for example, that in 10 days one Marine unit had found 91 weapons caches and 93 IED’s, or roadside bombs, as they are known, in just one sector of Fallujah. That compares, he said, to 130 weapons caches and 348 IED’s found in all of Iraq in the entire month of October. Smith said large factories for making the roadside bombs have been found and that Marines would be returning to areas where house-to-house searches were conducted to take a second look and be “sure we are capturing all the information that’s available.”

About 25 suspected Baathists were killed in a firefight at one of the houses the Marines returned to. The U.S. military said the house appears to have been a headquarters of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who is the leader of Tawhid and Jihad. The group has taken responsibility for numerous bombings against U.S. and Iraqi troops and kidnappings and beheadings of hostages.

An article in the November 19 Washington Post said U.S. troops found documents in the house, including letters from al-Zarqawi with instructions to his lieutenants, medical supplies, and boxes of ammunition. A black-and-white mural painted on the wall was similar to banners that appeared in videos showing the beheading of foreign hostages. The U.S. military says it is finding improvised jails in houses throughout the city.

In one house, which was reportedly owned by a former Iraqi army officer who was killed in the fighting, Marines found a room containing a make-shift jail with three cells, according to the November 19 Atlanta Journal Constitution. One of two emaciated Iraqi survivors in the cells said his captives shot his brother in the head and cut off his cousin’s feet. In other cases witnesses said people were shot when they refused to fight alongside their captors who had been outnumbered and were retreating from the assaulting Marines.  
 
Deadliest month for U.S. troops
According to Sattler, 51 U.S. soldiers were killed and 425 wounded in the assault on Fallujah. Nearly 100 U.S. troops have been killed across Iraq in November, making it the second-deadliest month since the March 2003 invasion. The only higher figure was in April, during an aborted attempt to take over Fallujah

A November 19 Wall Street Journal article hailed the performance of U.S. troops in the latest assault on Fallujah as the “best since World War II.” It said the successes of the all-volunteer military since the end of the draft in 1973, “assures that no draft will return this side of Armageddon.”

The performance of the U.S. military in Fallujah also drew praise from an unusual quarter—the New York Times, which has focused its news coverage and opinion columns in recent months on criticisms of the Bush administration course in Iraq. The November 21 issue of the daily carried a report by correspondent Dexter Filkins embedded with a Marine unit during the assault on Fallujah. He described in gripping detail the accomplishments and loss of lives in the Bravo Company over eight days of fighting.

“Despite their youth,” he said, “the Marines seemed to tower over their peers outside the military in maturity and guts. Many of Bravo Company’s best Marines, its most proficient killers, were 19 and 20 years old…. Bravo Company’s three lieutenants were 23 and 24 years old.”

That same day, Times columnist Thomas Friedman heaped similar praise on the U.S. troops that took over Fallujah. “It was a Noah’s Ark of Americans: African-Americans and whites, Hispanic Americans and Asians, and men and women I am sure of every faith,” he said. “The fact that we can take for granted the trust among so many different ethnic groups…is the miracle of America.” By contrast, Friedman said each unit of their Iraqi allies consists of individuals from the same tribe “and are constantly clashing.”

Eight Iraqi troops were killed and 40 wounded in the assault on Fallujah. About 25 civilians have been treated by military doctors, according to Sattler, who said he knew of no civilian deaths. The International Red Cross estimated that as many as 800 civilians were killed. The U.S. military said it killed as many as 1,600 Baathists and their supporters and captured 1,052 individuals—all but 20 of them Iraqis.  
 
Lack of outcry at U.S. offensive
The lack of outcry against the current U.S. offensive stands in stark contrast to protests in April when U.S. Marines laid siege to Fallujah. Then Shiites in Sadr City, a stronghold of Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia, held demonstrations and organized a march of thousands in an attempt to deliver food and medicine. So far, al-Sadr has only said that he will not participate in elections as long as Iraqi cities are under attack. At the mosque that houses al-Sadr’s headquarters clerics give sermons at Friday prayers against the U.S. attack on Fallujah but have stopped short of proposing any actions.

Many residents of Sadr City expressed the widespread hatred across Iraq against the Baathists, who overwhelmingly came from the Sunni minority, enjoyed vast privileges under the Hussein regime, and ruled with naked brutality. “The Israelis are better than the people in Fallujah,” Mohammad Ali, a Shiite, told the New York Times. “A dog is more loyal than them.”  
 
Attacks on Baathists in Mosul
Preparations are being made for a military offensive to wipe out Baathist strongholds in Mosul. According to Al-Jazeera TV, some 1,200 U.S. troops and 1,600 U.S.-trained Iraqi troops have been assembled in the city along with air support. In the first stage thousands of former members of the Kurdish peshmerga armed militias joined U.S. forces in retaking Iraqi police stations that had been captured by Baathists in an attempt to aid their brothers in Fallujah. Now U.S. and Iraqi troops plan to “cleanse the city” of the Baathists, according to Iraqi Major Gen. Rashid Flaih.

The U.S. military said it also discovered a large weapons cache in a village near Mosul, according to the Associated Press. It included an anti-craft gun with 15,000 rounds of ammunitions, 4,600 hand grenades, 144 grenade launchers, 25 surface-to-air missiles and small number of rockets, mortars, and artillery rounds.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops continued to call in airstrikes against armed groups of Baathists in fighting in Ramadi and Baqubah, using 500-pound bombs in the latter.  
 
Sunni mosque raided in Baghdad
There was heavy street fighting, initiated by Baathists, against U.S. and Iraqi troops the day after a November 19 raid on the revered Sunni Muslim Abu Hanifa mosque. Simultaneous clashes broke out in at least five Baghdad neighborhoods, according to AP.

Iraqi troops, backed by U.S. soldiers, attacked the mosque in Baghdad just after Friday prayers. Four worshipers were killed in the attack. Muayed Adhami, the prayer leader, was among 40 arrested. The Abu Hanifa mosque is the most prominent building in the central square of the Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad. Saddam Hussein was seen being cheered by crowds there just before he went into hiding. The mosque was the center of one of the last firefights in the battle to take Baghdad in 2003.

U.S. troops arrested leading officials of the Iraqi Islamic Party in Baghdad and Baqubah. It is the largest Sunni-led political party and recently quit the interim government in protest over the assault on Fallujah. A group of 47 parties led by Sunnis and a handful of Shiite-led parties said they would boycott upcoming elections in protest.

The U.S. military said a number of “high-interest individuals” were among 32 armed opponents of the Allawi regime and U.S. occupation arrested in an offensive by a combined force of U.S., Iraqi, and British troops in a region south of Baghdad known as the “Triangle of Death.” Dozens of Iraqi police and National Guardsmen have been executed by armed groups in the area, said the Washington Post. One Iraqi reporter who visited the area said the burning bodies of four Iraqi policemen whose car was set afire after they were killed remained in the road for a day. More than 5,000 troops were involved in the action dubbed “Operation Plymouth Rock,” an apparent reference to its proximity to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.  
 
January election date not assured
Under the circumstances, it is not clear that the projected Iraqi elections will take place as planned early next year.

The Iraqi election commission has set January 30 as the date for elections. But just a few days earlier a summit of Iraq’s major political parties urged the government to postpone the elections until “order is restored” in the Sunni Triangle, said the International Herald Tribune.

During a November 19 press briefing, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, was asked whether the elections could be considered legitimate if Iraqis in the Sunni Triangle were not able to vote due to the fighting. He said many Sunni candidates are likely to be included in slates put up by Shia-led parties across the country. The results, he said, “would be adequate representation by Sunnis to feel or look like it was legitimate representation for all the parties involved.”

During a November 22 summit of foreign ministers from Arab countries in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, a number of government representatives from the Middle East indicated they will not back an Iraqi election if it is not assured that residents from the entire country can take part, including the Sunni Triangle.

A two-day meeting of representatives of all political parties in Iraq failed to agree on a joint list of secular candidates for the elections. “We decided to enter the elections on individual lists,” said Nashirwan Mustapha, a senior official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, reported the Financial Times.

Meanwhile, Washington got another boost in its campaign to legitimize its occupation and the transition it projects to a “democratically elected” Iraqi government. Jean-Pierre Jouyet, president of the Paris Club, said it has agreed to forgive up to 80 percent of Iraq’s foreign debt. The Paris Club is a group of the wealthiest imperialist creditor nations. Baghdad’s debt will be reduced from $38.9 billion to $7.8 billion. The plan will be implemented in three steps over four years. Paris led efforts for an eight-year debt forgiveness plan. U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow had insisted on a faster time frame and for forgiving 90-95 percent of Baghdad’s debt.  
 
 
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