Hostage in Iraq: Five days in Hell

[bemildred]

With a nod to tomfodw, who pointed it out, sort of.

From inside the workshop?s courtyard, we could not see the battle?s progress, but from the sounds of the gunfire we could plot its course. On
several occasions, the mujahedeen fighters all across the city would scream out ?Allah akbar! Allah akbar!? (God is great!) I had first
thought that these cries were in response to them downing a helicopter, but our young guard explained that they were cheering the deaths of
their own, newly created martyrs.

---

At about 800 metres distance, the gunships inexplicably banked away to the east without so much as a reconnaissance overpass of our
mysterious group of vehicles in the middle of the desert. We had to have been in plain view, but the Americans turned away. ?They always
fly the same patrol routes? explained one of the fighters, ?They see nothing.?

http://www.espritdecorps.ca/new_page_243.htm

And the AntiWar.com interview:

And so the U.S. tried to mount a limited operation
using what looked like "official" Iraqi defense forces,
but were really just Kurdish peshmergas in new
uniforms. But this strategy failed. The cannon fodder
Kurds were defeated by a well organized Islamic
resistance. In fact, the day before I was kidnapped,
they had beheaded 30 prisoners, a lot of them Kurds.


---

ST: I learned that the Iraqi police on the checkpoints
were contributing part of their salary to the
resistance's local leader, the emir. After all, they're
whacking the crap out of these police recruits all over
the place throughout Iraq, so it's partially protection
money.

http://antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=3606

[izzie]

1. I read that a few days ago and could not put it down. What a mess

---

[bemildred]

2. The pig looks different without the lipstick.

The Mosul prediction bears watching, sort of a test of the
veracity of the rest of it.