US Forces Conduct Missile Strike At Fallujah Mosque Complex

by Steve

Well, we have now managed to missile-strike a mosque during afternoon prayers in Fallujah, killing at least 40. Our military claims that they were pursuing insurgents who were firing at our soldiers, on the same day that the same military leaders vowed to destroy Sadr’s militia. All of this is coming from a strategy designed to have our military go into Fallujah and pursue the killers of four contract workers last week, instead of allowing the Iraqis and Ayatollah Sistani, who allegedly abhorred the attacks last week, to deal with those who killed the workers themselves and immediately. As a result, we have placed our soldiers into the position of starting a military campaign in one of the worst parts of the country and making a hero out of a relatively low player (Sadr), who should have been arrested months ago if we had sufficient evidence to get a warrant.

And now we are bombing places of Islamic worship. From a military perspective, if your mission is to suppress and control a growing security problem, then the military offensive and insertion of our troops may make some sense, notwithstanding the poor timing and the logic behind it in the first place. If your mission was to simply pour gasoline on a poorly managed situation to foreclose the transfer of sovereignty and to stir things up, then this campaign is a raging success.

But you can’t detach the military objectives from the PR and religious debacle of a mosque attack. And our troops have been placed right into the middle of it by a misguided and incompetently-managed policy and administration.

Update: CNN is reporting (thankfully) that our forces aimed their bombs at a wall surrouding the mosque complex and kept the mosque itself free from attack.