Mary Mostert
Bush won't run from Al Jezeera's "grisly pictures" or John Kerry's attacks
By Mary Mostert
A "shaken" Mansur, a reporter of Al-Jezeera, the Arab network that reports news for the Arab world, reporting from inside Fallujah, reported today "as US warplanes swooped over the area and fired rockets" and "intense gunfire could be heard from the streets."
"The residents of Falluja are asking," Mansur said, "where is the (US-appointed) Iraqi Governing Council? They are asking why the Iraqis are not protecting them. Residents of Falluja call on the Arab world to intervene and lift the siege on this town of 300,000. They ask where are the Arab leaders in this time?" he said before throwing himself to the ground as a plane flew overhead.
My advice to Mansur and the residents of Falluja is to not hold their breath waiting for the Arab world to take on the US Marines who are cleaning out Fallujah after four American contractors were slaughtered there, their bodies gleefully burned and dragged through the streets as its residents cheered. The charred remains were then proudly hung on the city's bridge over the Euphrates River as a warning to the Americans.
I say this based on a conversation I had Sunday with my son Guy Grooms, who was the battalion surgeon in Desert Storm for the 1st Battalion of the Marines, the first ground troops to be sent to Saudi Arabia after Saddam Hussein's August 2, 1990 seizure of Kuwait to add its oil wells to Iraq's in a move to bring the Western world to its knees by controlling three-fourths of the world's oil supply. Hussein had already called upon the Saudis to rise up, follow him and take control of Saudi Arabia's government — and oil wells. The Fallujah Marine operation is under the command of Guy's old commander, Maj. Gen. James Mattis, now the 1st Marine Division commander, who, Guy said, "is the best of the best." The Washington Times reported that his forces were "still were fighting insurgents that included Syrian mercenaries along a one-mile front." And General Mattis understands what works on Syrian mercenaries.
Writing from the Saudi Desert in 1990 on Thanksgiving Day, 3 months before his battalion moved across the border to drive out Saddam's army in Kuwait, Guy wrote, "I m really getting to dislike the Middle East. The Arabs are really an incredibly brutal people. There's talk about the 'friendly' Arabs turning against us if Israel is involved in this conflict. It's pretty hard to accept the idea of American giving their lives to protect an ally so untrustworthy that we have to seriously be concerned that they would turn on us. After this is over, I wonder if Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will return to the unethical practice of price fixing oil through OPEC. That would be ironic, after we save their countries they return the favor by gouging us with the price of oil."
And, of course, that's exactly what they did.
Guy went on to say, "Just think of how many despots there are in this region. Saddam Hussein is not the only one who is the moral equivalent of Hitler. There's President Assad of Syria, Rafsanjani of Iran, Yasser Arafat of the PLO, Qaddafi of Libya."
Guy also told of a massacre of Syrian civilians by Assad, the father of the current Syrian despot. A reporter asked Assad if it was true that "6000-7000 civilians were killed by your government's troops." Assad quickly and proudly corrected the reporter by saying it was not a mere 6000-7000 who died but 38,000 who died for defying him. The point Guy made was that the culture of the Arab people admires power — and force, even when they are the ones getting killed.
Al-Jezeera's reports which I try to follow clearly bear out Guy's observation. While the American media generally did not print the horrible pictures taken by Al-Jezeera's reporters of the slaughter, mutilation and hanging of the charred bodies of the four American contractors, they were proudly and prominently and repeatedly shown to the Arab public by Al Jezeera. The April 1st Al-Jezeera report, which showed the charred bodies of the American's, was titled "Grisly Falluja pictures shock US viewers."
It gave a complete report to its readers on how successful the same tactic was during the Clinton Administration. Al Jezeera stated, "The gruesome pictures of the charred, mutilated bodies of four Americans killed in an ambush in Iraq, reminded viewers of the grisly scene surrounding the deaths of US servicemen in Somalia a decade ago." The report ended with, "Pictures of a dead American serviceman being dragged through the street aired constantly on US television, and led to the eventual evacuation of US forces from Somalia."
A few days later the smug Al Jezeera reporters inside Fallujah were shaking with fear and dodging bullets from a determined US Marine operation while whining about the Arab world not "intervening" to make those pesky Marines go away. Instead, they are faced with a knowledgeable and determined American president who responded to the grisly Fallujah attack with:
"We were tested in Fallujah. And the desire for those who do not want there to be a free and democratic Iraq is to shake our will through acts of violence and terror. It's not only our will, it's the will of other coalition forces and it's the will of the Iraqi people. As you know, that many Iraqis have been targeted. As a matter of fact, the al Qaeda affiliate Zarqawi made it clear that part of the strategy was to turn Shia on Sunni by killing innocent Iraqis.
"And we've got to stay the course, and we will stay the course. The message to the Iraqi citizens is, they don't have to fear that America will turn and run. And that's an important message for them to hear. If they think that we're not sincere about staying the course, many people will not continue to take a risk toward — take the risk toward freedom and democracy."
Al-Jezeera, please note. That doesn't sound like "eventual evacuation" regardless of WHAT you are hearing from John Kerry and others have convinced you that that is America's only solution.
© Mary Mostert
A "shaken" Mansur, a reporter of Al-Jezeera, the Arab network that reports news for the Arab world, reporting from inside Fallujah, reported today "as US warplanes swooped over the area and fired rockets" and "intense gunfire could be heard from the streets."
"The residents of Falluja are asking," Mansur said, "where is the (US-appointed) Iraqi Governing Council? They are asking why the Iraqis are not protecting them. Residents of Falluja call on the Arab world to intervene and lift the siege on this town of 300,000. They ask where are the Arab leaders in this time?" he said before throwing himself to the ground as a plane flew overhead.
My advice to Mansur and the residents of Falluja is to not hold their breath waiting for the Arab world to take on the US Marines who are cleaning out Fallujah after four American contractors were slaughtered there, their bodies gleefully burned and dragged through the streets as its residents cheered. The charred remains were then proudly hung on the city's bridge over the Euphrates River as a warning to the Americans.
I say this based on a conversation I had Sunday with my son Guy Grooms, who was the battalion surgeon in Desert Storm for the 1st Battalion of the Marines, the first ground troops to be sent to Saudi Arabia after Saddam Hussein's August 2, 1990 seizure of Kuwait to add its oil wells to Iraq's in a move to bring the Western world to its knees by controlling three-fourths of the world's oil supply. Hussein had already called upon the Saudis to rise up, follow him and take control of Saudi Arabia's government — and oil wells. The Fallujah Marine operation is under the command of Guy's old commander, Maj. Gen. James Mattis, now the 1st Marine Division commander, who, Guy said, "is the best of the best." The Washington Times reported that his forces were "still were fighting insurgents that included Syrian mercenaries along a one-mile front." And General Mattis understands what works on Syrian mercenaries.
Writing from the Saudi Desert in 1990 on Thanksgiving Day, 3 months before his battalion moved across the border to drive out Saddam's army in Kuwait, Guy wrote, "I m really getting to dislike the Middle East. The Arabs are really an incredibly brutal people. There's talk about the 'friendly' Arabs turning against us if Israel is involved in this conflict. It's pretty hard to accept the idea of American giving their lives to protect an ally so untrustworthy that we have to seriously be concerned that they would turn on us. After this is over, I wonder if Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will return to the unethical practice of price fixing oil through OPEC. That would be ironic, after we save their countries they return the favor by gouging us with the price of oil."
And, of course, that's exactly what they did.
Guy went on to say, "Just think of how many despots there are in this region. Saddam Hussein is not the only one who is the moral equivalent of Hitler. There's President Assad of Syria, Rafsanjani of Iran, Yasser Arafat of the PLO, Qaddafi of Libya."
Guy also told of a massacre of Syrian civilians by Assad, the father of the current Syrian despot. A reporter asked Assad if it was true that "6000-7000 civilians were killed by your government's troops." Assad quickly and proudly corrected the reporter by saying it was not a mere 6000-7000 who died but 38,000 who died for defying him. The point Guy made was that the culture of the Arab people admires power — and force, even when they are the ones getting killed.
Al-Jezeera's reports which I try to follow clearly bear out Guy's observation. While the American media generally did not print the horrible pictures taken by Al-Jezeera's reporters of the slaughter, mutilation and hanging of the charred bodies of the four American contractors, they were proudly and prominently and repeatedly shown to the Arab public by Al Jezeera. The April 1st Al-Jezeera report, which showed the charred bodies of the American's, was titled "Grisly Falluja pictures shock US viewers."
It gave a complete report to its readers on how successful the same tactic was during the Clinton Administration. Al Jezeera stated, "The gruesome pictures of the charred, mutilated bodies of four Americans killed in an ambush in Iraq, reminded viewers of the grisly scene surrounding the deaths of US servicemen in Somalia a decade ago." The report ended with, "Pictures of a dead American serviceman being dragged through the street aired constantly on US television, and led to the eventual evacuation of US forces from Somalia."
A few days later the smug Al Jezeera reporters inside Fallujah were shaking with fear and dodging bullets from a determined US Marine operation while whining about the Arab world not "intervening" to make those pesky Marines go away. Instead, they are faced with a knowledgeable and determined American president who responded to the grisly Fallujah attack with:
"We were tested in Fallujah. And the desire for those who do not want there to be a free and democratic Iraq is to shake our will through acts of violence and terror. It's not only our will, it's the will of other coalition forces and it's the will of the Iraqi people. As you know, that many Iraqis have been targeted. As a matter of fact, the al Qaeda affiliate Zarqawi made it clear that part of the strategy was to turn Shia on Sunni by killing innocent Iraqis.
"And we've got to stay the course, and we will stay the course. The message to the Iraqi citizens is, they don't have to fear that America will turn and run. And that's an important message for them to hear. If they think that we're not sincere about staying the course, many people will not continue to take a risk toward — take the risk toward freedom and democracy."
Al-Jezeera, please note. That doesn't sound like "eventual evacuation" regardless of WHAT you are hearing from John Kerry and others have convinced you that that is America's only solution.
© Mary Mostert
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