-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 19, 2004
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

PENTAGON HAMMERS NAJAF, RESISTANCE SPREADS

By Leslie Feinberg

There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction. No Saddam Hussein 
government 
in power. Yet the U.S. military machine is once again unleashing open 
warfare in Iraq. There's no room for any misunderstanding as to who it's 
aimed at: the Iraqi people who are trying to defend the gains of their 
anti-colonial revolution half a century ago.

Dark smoke has billowed up from Najaf since Aug. 5. U.S. fighter 
aircraft, helicopter gun ships and armed drones have pummeled the city 
with ordnance from the sky above, while on the ground a pounding siege 
by artillery, tank and heavy machine-gun fire from Marines and U.S. 
Cavalry units have reduced much of the old city to rubble.

Yet Iraqi insurgents, vastly outnumbered and outgunned, have battled 
back. And this blaze of resistance has ignited in other parts of the 
country as well.

Some 5,000 troops carrying out the fierce assault on Najaf include 2,000 
members of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, additional U.S. Cavalry 
units and some 1,800 collaborating Iraqi troops. An additional force of 
1,000 GIs is being prepared.

This military force has targeted a vast, ancient cemetery in the heart 
of the old city, putatively to deprive the resistance of an operational 
base.

U.S. commanders confirmed Aug. 9 that Marines had formed a tight 
military cordon around the gold-domed Imam Ali mosque--one of the 
holiest shrines in Shia Islam.

The same day, in the midst of heavy fighting, Shia cleric Moqtada al-
Sadr appeared publicly to demand an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. 
Speaking from inside the Imam Ali shrine, he vowed: "I am staying in 
Najaf and I will not leave. ... I will stay until the last drop of my 
blood is spilled."

The next day a U.S. fighter jet bombed an inner-city hotel only 300 
yards away from the mosque, setting off a raging inferno.

Pentagon forces have also reportedly cut off all electricity and water.

The Aug. 10 Guardian Unlimited reported on conditions faced by the 1,200 
people arrested: "In Najaf's main police station officers showed off a 
room crowded with around 300 Mahdi army prisoners, each sitting cross-
legged and facing the wall. In one corner there were several plastic 
water bottles filled with urine.

"Before they opened the door the sound of screaming had been coming from 
inside."

Najaf's Police Chief Ghalib al-Jazairy explained that some of the people 
who were now prisoners had recently been trained by the occupation force 
as police officers and were stationed in Basra and Amara--but had 
defected to join the militia defending Najaf from the U.S. assault.

FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION

The monopolized media industry in the United States is pumping out the 
spin that U.S. military commanders are acting under orders from the "new 
Iraqi government." But it's the Allawi grouping that salutes the 
Pentagon brass hats, not vice versa.

The imperialist generals also claimed on the fourth day of fighting to 
have killed 360 insurgents in Najaf alone. But, noted the Guardian, 
there is no evidence to back this up.

During the Vietnam War the Pentagon routinely inflated the body count of 
Vietnamese killed to boast of its military prowess and demoralize 
military resistance.

Representatives of al-Sadr report that the number of their fighters 
killed was closer to 40. Of the 35 wounded, they said, most were hurt by 
cluster bombs. (sundaytimes.co.za)

An Aug. 9 casualty report from Hussein Hadi, deputy director of Najaf's 
main hospital, was much closer to that of the Mahdi spokespeople. Hadi 
"said that 23 people had been killed since the fighting started last 
week and 98 had been injured, mostly civilians. Among the dead were five 
Iraqi police and four Iraqi army soldiers, he said." (Guardian 
Unlimited, Aug. 10)

Al-Sadr spokespeople also charged Pentagon commanders with under-
reporting GI casualties--which the U.S. command put at four killed and 
22 wounded in the first four days of fighting. (www.freep.com, Aug. 9)

This kind of media spin will become even more dominant after "Prime 
Minister" Iyad Allawi, a CIA darling, acted as a marionette for 
Washington when he ordered the closure of Al Jazeera's Baghdad news 
bureau on Aug. 7. Al Jazeera's broadcasts are a thorn in the imperialist 
side because they are an independent source of news about the 
imperialist occupation for millions of Arab viewers.

The old fig leaf for the imperialist war and occupation, Ahmad Chalabi--
handpicked by the Pentagon--has now been indicted on counterfeiting 
charges. His nephew Salem Chalabi, a lawyer prosecuting Saddam Hussein, 
is now wanted on murder charges. Both men are outside the country.

RESISTANCE SPREADS

While the U.S. forces have battered Najaf, fighting has spread.

Intense fighting has erupted in Sadr City, five miles from the heart of 
Baghdad. Sadr City, like Falluja, is completely in the hands of the 
Iraqi resistance. (New York Times, Aug. 11)

Insurgents using a rocket-propelled grenade shot down a U.S. military 
helicopter over the impoverished neighborhood on Aug. 8.

On Aug. 9, insurgents repeatedly hit a U.S.-protected district council 
hall with mortars, a barrage of bullets and rocket-propelled grenades. 
Four Iraqi guards were killed, and nine other people, including three 
U.S. soldiers, were wounded.

Even a U.S.-imposed curfew that night did not quell some outbreaks of 
resistance. And the next day, a roadside bomb wounded two GIs in central 
Baghdad.

In the Baquba area, a suicide car bomb exploded on Aug. 9 in Balad Ruz--
40 miles northeast of Baghdad--wounding the assistant governor of Diyala 
province and 17 others, and killing seven police. 
(newssindependent.co.uk, Aug. 10)

An insurgent group vowed Aug. 9 to begin targeting offices of 
"government" collaborators in Baghdad.

Another Marine was confirmed killed in fighting in western Iraq in the 
Anbar province on Aug. 9.

Two Jordanian and two Lebanese hostages were freed by insurgents on Aug. 
9 after their company agreed to end its operations in Iraq.

In the southern city of Diwaniya, militia surrounded the police station 
and governate.

RESISTANCE HALTS THEFT OF OIL

Insurgency also broke out in the southern port of Basra. Ninety percent 
of Iraq's oil is exported through Basra.

In one incident on Aug. 9, a British soldier on patrol died and five 
more were wounded when their Land Rovers burst into flames after being 
hit by RPGs.

The militia seized control of the city's main intersections.

The resistance temporarily shut down oil output in the south--almost 2 
million barrels a day--sending oil prices higher on the world market. 
"Iraq's other export line--from the north to Turkey--is already out of 
operation," reported the Aug. 10 Globe and Mail.

The "Oil Ministry," a front for the imperialist theft of Iraqi wealth 
said the threat of attacks by the resistance remains high. (New York 
Times, Aug. 11)

This neocolonial plunder is generating Iraqi fury.

One local militia leader, Latif al-Khalisi, who reportedly welcomed the 
U.S. invasion at the onset, observed, "All the rich people in the west 
came and started taking money and contracts in this country." (The 
Guardian Unlimited, Aug. 10)

- END -

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