[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

[Wall Street Journal]

Fallujah Is a Key War-on-Terror Battleground
The Wall Street Journal
George Melloan


As U.S. Marines patrol the streets of Fallujah, inviting a major engagement, it's important to keep their role in mind. They are fighting a war against terror, not against Iraq. In Fallujah, they have engaged an assemblage of terrorists from key viper nests around the Middle East. No place better represents the kind of battleground the Bush administration had in mind when it vowed to confront the international terrorist scourge on its home turf.

The remnants of Saddam's Baathist regime and other local tough guys have been joined by foreign jihadists. There are reportedly radical Saudis of the Osama bin Laden stripe. There may be Hezbollah, an Iranian-supported terrorist group that has been harassing Israel for years. Abu Nidal, a particularly murderous bunch, may be represented. Fanatics of this ilk were responsible for the grisly deaths recently of four American civilian security specialists and the triumphal war dance around their corpses.

The invasion of Iraq last year deposed one state sponsor of terrorism, the Saddam regime, and put a well-trained, high-tech military force in a position to threaten other state-sponsors in the region. But it was overly optimistic to believe that the war was mostly won at that point. The other terrorism sponsors clearly were chastened by the display of U.S. might, but that didn't mean they weren't prepared to fight back. The method they have chosen is the one they know best, the hit-and-run tactics of terrorists and guerrillas.

Governments of the region have mostly conducted themselves with diplomatic circumspection. But as the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has dragged its feet in establishing a representative government in Iraq, some neighbors have taken advantage of the political vacuum by backing infiltrators equipped to create chaos, kill Americans and discredit the occupation forces.

Saudi Arabia's monarchy has problems of its own with bin Laden's followers, as recent bombings in Riyadh and other Saudi cities have made clear. So it is not very well equipped to control infiltration across the long border with Iraq. Syria and Iran are a different problem. There is every likelihood both of them encourage groups trying to drive the Americans out of Arab lands.

Syria controls Lebanon, the haven from which Hezbollah launches most of its attacks on Israel. But as Hezbollah increases in strength and influence, there is a question whether Syria controls Hezbollah, or the other way around. At any rate, the Syrian government, like the one in Riyadh, is happy to see these dangerous people engaging themselves in the useful work of trying to expel the infidels in Iraq.

Iran has taken a more subtle approach. The mullahs who run that place have offered to help mediate the conflicts in Iraq. But at the same time there are reliable reports of their fighters and political agents, also Hezbollah in some cases, setting up shop in southern Iraq. The Iran-based Voice of the Mujahedin, run by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), broadcasts hatred of the U.S. and Israel to Iraqis. The young radical "cleric" Muqtada al Sadr, now wanted for murder by the coalition forces, reportedly has Iranian backing.

Like 60% of Iraqis, Iranians are Shiite Muslims. That didn't prevent Iraq and Iran from fighting a bloody war in the 1980s, but Iran has a community of Arab Shiites with family connections in Iraq.

According to an enlightening article in the April 26 issue of The New Republic, some 10,000 Iranians have been infiltrated into Iraq since the invasion. That's the number given by Iraqis to the author, Michael Rubin. A former official of the CPA, he had the gumption to forsake the CPA's air-conditioned offices in the relatively safe Green Zone of Baghdad and travel around the country to meet Iraqis. He writes that, "The Iranian security apparatus, having sparred with American forces in Bosnia and Afghanistan, was well prepared to challenge the United States in Iraq.

"Almost a month before the opening salvos of the war, the Islamic republic began broadcasting Arabic-language television across the border. As U.S.-led coalition forces fought Saddam Hussein's fedayeen in Basra and advanced on Najaf in March 2003, units of the Badr Corps poured into northern Iraq from Iran, where SCIRI was based, provoking a strong warning to Tehran by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld."

He reports that by January, the Badr Corps, trained and financed by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, had established a large office on Nasariya's riverfront promenade. In Basra, SCIRI and Hezbollah had established a joint office. "A large Lebanese Hezbollah flag fluttered in the wind."

Analysts believe the Iranians have a long-range strategy. They don't want to identify themselves with the remnants of the Saddam regime, who are, at any rate Sunni Muslims. But they want to bring subtle influence to bear in the Shiite cities of the south, with the hope of eventually fomenting the kind of militant uprising that allowed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to overthrow the shah of Iran in the late 1970s.

So far, there is little evidence that the Iraqi Shiites are interested in setting up the kind of oppressive theocracy that has exercised supreme authority in Iran for over a quarter century. Clerics have not fared well in local elections in Iraqi cities. Iraqis were immunized at least somewhat both against tyrannical rule and radical theology during the Saddam regime.

But the main task of the coalition forces at this point is to defeat the terrorist forces. As long as the jihadists and Baathists are killing Iraqis and coalition soldiers, efforts to set up a stable governing structure in the country will be delayed. Reconstruction work and the enormous task of gathering up the tons of conventional arms stored around the country will be thwarted by armed resistance. Iraqis will be intimidated from cooperating with the American efforts to establish a democratic government.

That's what is at stake in Fallujah. The agreement by the Marines to conduct joint patrols with Iraqis is a holding action designed to prevent excessive bloodshed and destruction. But the sooner the remaining enemies are confronted and defeated, the less danger there will be that the whole operation will fail.

[666UK]

UK activism sites infiltrated by Fascist Monarchial Agents fighting US, and threatening our Freedom, side by side with the Islamist fascist terrorists.

what are you going to do about the UK propaganda? They are working with the Islamists on a propoganda campaign against US in Iraq!

ie: now they are calling Falluja a massacre of Iraqis by US!!!! and publish polls on : iraqis vote for US forces to leave Iraq! (sadr pole more likely!)

The Fascist Activism of EU rooted in LONDON is now also a Threat to Iranian Freedom Movement. Because it is so firmly backing the ayatollahs and their terrorists and links worldwide!

I CAN'T SIT HERE AND WATCH THESE EU FASCISTS USE THEIR 'ACTIVISM' TO TIGHTEN THEIR GRIP ON IRAN OIL USING AYATOLLAHS AS THE BLOODY HANDS OF FASCISM IN MIDDLE EAST.

TELL THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE, THAT IRANIANS DO NOT WISH TO CONTINUE THE DIRTY TRADES WITH EU -UK!

LET THEM KNOW THAT ALL THESE DIRTY BLOODY TRADES WHICH COST US OUR LIVES AND FUTURE ARE N. U . L . L . E . D . AS FAR AS IRANIANS ARE CONCERNED!

TELL THEM THAT WE CHOOSE TO GO BACK TO OUR TRADES WITH AMERICANS BECAUSE THEY ARE LESS LIKELY TO STEP ON OUR FREEDOM AND CULTURE TO GET TO THE OIL.

THAT WE REMEMBER VERY WELL THE PROSPEROUS YEARS PRIOR TO 79 WHEN USA WAS IRAN'S MAIN TRADE PARTNER.

TELL THE WORLD WHAT HEAVY PRICE WE ARE PAYING FOR DIRTY TRADES WITH EU EVER SINCE 79 RISE OF FASCISM IN IRAN!

LET EUROPEANS KNOW HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT EU FASCIST GRIP ON OUR MOTHERLAND.


WHY ARE YOU QUIET?

I WANT YOU TO TELL THE EUROPEANS AND THEIR FASCIST ACTIVISTS AGAINST AMERICANS AND IN FAVOR OF ISLAMIST FASCISTS, THAT THEY BETTER NOT STAND ON OUR WAY TO REGIME CHANGE IN IRAN, OR ELSE!

SHOW THE WORLD WHAT EUROPEAN FASCISM MEANS:

US-IRAN TRADES BEFORE 79 . VS. UK-IRAN TRADES AFTER 79

http://tahavol.free.fr/Before-After.htm

[lled]

FREEDOM NOW!!!!

[asher]

Thanks for posting that great WSJ article!

http://asher813.blogspot.com/