Booman Tribune

The View from Sadiyah, Baghdad

by BooMan
Sat Oct 27th, 2007 at 11:32:14 AM EST

What the president calls 'kicking ass' the soldiers call something else.

"It's just a slow, somewhat government-supported sectarian cleansing," said Maj. Eric Timmerman, the battalion's operations officer.

That describes the situation in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadiyah, formerly a 'bustling middle-class district, popular with Sunni officers in Saddam Hussein's military.' Joshua Partlow spent some time with the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, and reported on what he saw.

The streets of Sadiyah are deserted again. To the right, power lines slump down into the dirt. To the left, what was a soccer field is now a pasture of trash, combusting and smoking in the sun. Packs of skinny wild dogs trot past walls painted with slogans of sectarian hate.

A bomb crater blocks one lane, so they cross to the other side, where houses are blackened by fire, shops crumbled into bricks. The remains of a car bomb serve as hideous public art. Sgt. Victor Alarcon's Humvee rolls into a vast pool of knee-high brown sewage water -- the soldiers call it Lake Havasu, after the Arizona spring-break party spot -- that seeps in the doors of the vehicle and wets his boots.

"When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and children walking out on the street," Alarcon said this week. "The women were in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all the hot chicks."

That was only fourteen months ago. In fourteen months the neighborhood has been totally destroyed. Everything these soldiers have tried has failed to stop the descent into hell.

American soldiers estimate that since violence intensified this year, half of the families in Sadiyah have fled, leaving approximately 100,000 people. After they left, insurgents and militiamen used their abandoned homes to hold meetings and store weapons...

The focus of the battalion's efforts in Sadiyah was to develop the Iraqi security forces into an organized, fair and proficient force -- but the American soldiers soon realized this goal was unattainable. The sectarian warfare in Sadiyah was helped along by the Wolf Brigade, a predominantly Shiite unit of the Iraqi National Police that tolerated, and at times encouraged, Mahdi Army attacks against Sunnis, according to U.S. soldiers and residents. The soldiers endured repeated bombings of their convoys within view of police checkpoints. During their time here, they have arrested 70 members of the national police for collaboration in such attacks and other crimes...

...in one instance about two months ago, the American soldiers heard that the Wolf Brigade planned to help resettle more than 100 Shiite families in abandoned houses in the neighborhood. When platoon leader Lt. Brian Bifulco arrived on the scene, he noticed that "abandoned houses to them meant houses that had Sunnis in them."

"What we later found out is they weren't really moving anyone in, it was a cover for the INP to go in and evict what Sunni families were left there," recalled Bifulco, 23, a West Point graduate from Huntsville, Ala. "We showed up, and there were a bunch of Sunni families just wandering around the streets with their bags, taking up refuge in a couple Sunni mosques in the area."

Looking back the soldiers can see that their efforts to build up a national police was doomed from the beginning.

"We were so committed to them as a partner we couldn't see it for what it was. In retrospect, I've got to think it was a coordinated effort," Timmerman said. "To this day, I don't think we truly understand how infiltrated or complicit the national police are" with the militias.

Of course, this is just a specific example that exemplifies what John Murtha, Jim Webb, and others have been saying for several years: that we shouldn't be arbitrating a civil sectarian war. And these soldiers are the people that are suffering for a hopeless strategy.

Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice -- 20 soldiers from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad -- Alarcon said no: "I don't think this place is worth another soldier's life."

Listen to the men in the field. Get them out.



Display:
No doubt it was only the "phony" soldiers that got quoted, not the real ones.  Real soldiers would recognize that what they see everyday is progress in the "War on Terra," and would have said so, or simply STFU.  Only phony soldiers would dare to speak to a leftist commie reporter at all.  That by itself is a treasonous act that clearly does not support the troops, and also defames the good name of Our Dear Leader through attacking his Glorious War of Iraqi Liberation.  I hear we've liberated over a million souls since the war started, btw.  That isn't just success, it's a catastrophic success!

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. Franklin D. Roosevelt
by Steven D on Sat Oct 27th, 2007 at 11:48:59 AM EST
Make that "liberated over a million souls from their bodies" please.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. Franklin D. Roosevelt
by Steven D on Sat Oct 27th, 2007 at 11:50:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]
And the story goes on. i gotta tell all that the human memory always sorts and campartmentalizes the goodies that are always still there and this post is a trigger. How about Fallujah? jsut for starters. We all have our favorites. Call them back up and then ask the question- For What?
the Surge is working! It just wasn't the goal that we were led to believe was the reason for it. The "6 month blocks of time"
 yet, as we watch and listen, the drum beat has started up again. This time Iran.
 One last moment- Where are our leaders? Where are the liars that were so willing to take our money while promising to turn this horror off? Where are "concerned citizens" willing to stop this insanity?
by billjpa (billjpa@aol.com) on Sat Oct 27th, 2007 at 12:24:01 PM EST
WOW !

that is a very revealing "slice of life" of what is really going on in Baghdad!

Why doesn't our Media Report Stories like this?

It sounds like Baghdad is becoming a ghost town, right before our eyes -- and what the Media Parrot?

Gen. David Petraeus' report on the progress of the "surge," the request should make it apparent that the administration has no intention of scaling back military operations in that devastated country.

This "Echo Chamber" provides the cover so that:

the president called for a $190 billion increase in spending on Iraq and Afghanistan through September 2008. It's the largest single request for those conflicts since they began.

The amount is staggering on its own; added to the half-trillion dollars already spent on Iraq, it's almost unthinkable.

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071013/OPINION01/710130337/1008
----

The Power-Brokers of Ages past would be in awe,
of Bush's "inept mastery" of his Military Empire ...

(or if they were objective, in the stunning "lack of interest" of the citizenry, and their muted "town criers"!)

Such is the result of trusting the narrow Agendas of Corporate America!

Many thanks Booman, for this eyeopening report.

by james siebert on Sat Oct 27th, 2007 at 01:19:55 PM EST
My anger seems to have gone beyond screaming and ranting at reports like this and has solidified into a huge hard lump in my chest while I sit here wondering like all of us do ..wondering what the hell else we can do to stop this madness.

'Poverty is the worst form of violence'--Gandhi
by chocolate ink on Sat Oct 27th, 2007 at 03:59:09 PM EST


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