Must-read of the day: INDC in Fallujah
Allahpundit
How do you reclaim a country that’s so dangerous, firefighters are afraid to emerge from their station? Bill considers that question in his new piece for the Examiner. The can’t-miss, though, is the post he’s put up at INDC to complement it, an interview with a local civil servant named “Yusef” about the protection rackets being run by the jihadi mafia to fund the insurgency and what locals can do to stop them. Answer: follow the Patriquin plan.
I’m loath to blockquote any of it because it’s important enough that I want you to read it all. But:
We then discussed my camera, and whether I was going to take his picture. All Iraqis in civil positions shun pictures and cover their faces in public, lest the revelation of their identity cause them and their families to be killed.
Yusef: “Go ahead and take my picture, I’m not afraid, I’ve lost everything in Iraq. (The insurgents) killed my family, they killed my father in one spot, they killed my brother. They chopped my brother’s head off. So there is no more to lose.”
And: ...
Reading a Warzone: Bloggers in Iraq
Mary Katharine Ham
Iraqi army, Iraqi police, Shiites, Sunnis, U.S. troops, local tribes, insurgents, and how to win. Bill of INDC is in Iraq, and puts them all into one dispatch for the Examiner:
The radio crackled: a M1A-1 Abrams tank was hit by a large IED while patrolling a notoriously active downtown street. The typically invulnerable behemoth was immobilized and set afire by a bomb laden with fuel accelerant, a fiery addition to the explosive arms and tactics race between terrorist insurgents and Coalition forces. The crew escaped the vehicle and made it safely to other tanks before getting burned or sniped in the ambush...
With a cordon established and satisfied that the tank’s ammunition would not explode, Marines at the JCC radioed the Fallujah Fire Department to put out the remains of the blaze around 12:30.
But with the scene a mere 800 meters from the fire station, the Iraqis refused.
The firemen had heard reports of anti-Iraq forces in the area, and were afraid that insurgents would kill them at the scene or later retaliate against them for working with American and Iraqi government forces. ...
