It's not working, aWol

Fallujahcide continues. From the NY Times:

Meanwhile Thursday, the United States targeted a suspected terrorist safehouse in Fallujah, killing at least four Iraqis. The military said in a statement that intelligence reports indicated the house was being used by followers of Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to plan attacks against U.S.-led forces and Iraqi citizens.

"Significant secondary explosions were observed during the impact indicating a large cache of illegal ordinance was stored in the safe house," the statement said. Explosions continued in the northeastern side of the city for hours.

At least four Iraqis were killed -- including two women and one child -- and eight wounded, said Dr. Ahmed Khalil of the Fallujah General Hospital. Witnesses said two houses were flattened and four others damaged in the strike.

American jets, tanks and artillery units have repeatedly targeted al-Zarqawi's network in Fallujah in recent weeks as U.S.-led forces seek to assert control over insurgent enclaves ahead of elections slated for January. The military says the attacks have inflicted significant damage on the network, which has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, kidnappings and other attacks.

Well, either the highlighted portion isn't true, or it is. If not true, it is just one further piece of evidence that the Bush administration and their sycophants in the military are lying sacks of Cheney. If it is true, they're still lying sacks of Cheney. Because if they have inflicted significant damage on Zarqawi's network, then that network isn't nearly as big a part of the Iraqi resistance as the Bushies try to claim. If it were, and it were experiencing significant damage, then the attacks on the US military and their quisling Iraqi stooges would be declining, which they clearly are not. The paragraphs above were taken from deep within the Times article, the headline of which was Dozens Killed in Multiple Bombings in Baghdad.

By the way, the Iraqi blogger "Riverbend" said this last week:

Our politicians are outside of the country 90% of the time (by the way, if anyone has any news of our president Ghazi Ajeel Al Yawir, do let us know- where was he last seen or heard?).

Well, he showed up on CNN recently:

In recent weeks, U.S. forces have also launched regular airstrikes on the town of Fallouja, west of Baghdad, which is controlled by Sunni Muslim insurgents. Although U.S. military operations supposedly are coordinated with Iraqi leaders, the Americans' increasing reliance on air attacks drew criticism Tuesday from the U.S.-backed interim Iraqi president.

Drawing a parallel between U.S. tactics in Iraq and Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, President Ghazi Ajil Yawer said the U.S. strikes were viewed by the Iraqi people as "collective punishment" against towns and neighborhoods.

Footage of injured and dead women and children being pulled from bombed buildings "brings to mind Gaza," Yawer said in an interview on CNN.

Sounds like the help is getting uppity, George, just like Noriega and Saddam did. What are you going to do this time, George? Re-invade Iraq?

Juan Cole remarks on Al-Yawir's statement:

Collective punishment was a Nazi tactic during World War II, and was forbidden as a tool to occupying powers in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Al-Yawir's condemnation of the US use of the tactic is the strongest to date from a high-level Iraqi politician. The comments seem likely to create a diplomatic crisis, and bode ill for Bush administration plans to pursue a scorched earth campaign against Fallujah and other cities in al-Anbar province in November. Al-Yawir is from a Sunni tribal background.

Let's hope that the sentence that I highlighted is true. I'd say that it's more likely that Al-Yawir will "regrettably" be killed by a car bomb in the near future--that is, if he ever returns to Iraq.