All wrapped up by Saturday. Wait today is Saturday.

(AFP)

US forces aim to take full control of Fallujah by Saturday morning despite facing fiercer fighting as they push deeper into the restive city.

We control about 75 percent of the city. The more we go in the more we find the fight is becoming fiercer," Major PJ [Bats in the bellfry] Batty said Thursday.

"We planned to take this city in 108 hours and we are right on schedule," he told AFP, referring to the major US-Iraqi offensive launched on Monday evening.

Mosul.

As we all keep hearing the U.S. has control of about 80% of Falluja, even the areas they said were secured two days ago, but are still being fought over.

In Mosul, the insurgents apparently have decided to trade Falluja in for a new city. They seem to be in total control.

You know, when the U.S. starts launchiung ariel bombing raids you've got their attention.

Naturally, it's all under control, but:

(AP) The provincial governor called for massive reinforcements to supplement the Mosul police force, which splintered under a wave of insurgent attacks on at least five police stations Thursday.

"We asked the central government in Baghdad, and God willing they should arrive today," said the provincial governor, Duraid Kashmoula. [He doesn't sound too desperate.]

Brig. Gen. Carter Ham the American commander, said in an interview with the BBC that "some police did not perform as well as we might like." He told CNN: "It's fair to say there are some with ties to the insurgents. We'd be kidding ourselves if we thought that was not the case."

Iraqi National Guard units [On their way to desert.] were being rushed to the city from three directions, as were Kurdish forces from Irbil to the south, the Associated Press reported.

The offices of Kurdish political parties were among the buildings attacked in Mosul on Friday.

...the situation was deemed sufficiently difficult that an Army light-armored unit was peeled away from Fallujah to reinforce the U.S. force in Mosul. [Yeah, because it all over there. Just a little mopping up to do.]

How much worse can it get?

Syed Saleem Shahzad of Asia Times spoke to Pakistan's retired former director general of Inter-Services Intelligence, Lieutenant General Hamid Gul.

He was one of the masterminds of the International Muslim Brigade, a force raised in Afghanistan to fuel the independence movements of Muslim-occupied territories. This later evolved into Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front. Gul spoke to Asia Times Online by telephone from Rawalpindi.

An excerpt:

ATol: I was in Iraq after the war and I asked a US commander in northern Iraq who was behind the attacks on US forces. His immediate reply was Iraqi military and para-military troops. My question is, how can a conventional army become a successful guerrilla force?

Gul: If they have support in villages and among tribes these soldiers can unleash a guerrilla fight. Saddam had a force called Fidayeen-i-Saddam, which was trained specifically for guerrilla operations. It numbered about 35,000. Suppose today this is even 25% of its original strength, it is a big number when local support is available. At the same time, there is no dearth of new recruits. I think a flood of fighters will be coming to Iraq.

ATol: How big could the resistance be?

Gul: About 40,000 to 50,000, including former Ba'ath Party members, Fidayeens, other military and para-military forces, and foreign fighters. In addition, the number of foreign fighters will grow immensely and Iraq will be the hub of an anti-US movement. You know, there is a new phenomena emerging in which a man is himself a weapon. No military can withstand this.

You have to keep in mind the nature of Arab fighters. They do not surrender or retreat easily. Afghanistan is a case in this regard. At Qila Changi and other places the Taliban decided to retreat, but Arab fighters refused to do so and they fought till their last. So, I think, the resistance movement will increase multifold in the coming weeks.

What did they ever do to us?

The BBC Paul Wood:

How many civilians have been killed - people who either have not left through choice or have been unable to leave - is the crucial question.
I suspect we will have to wait for a definitive answer until the smoke has literally cleared.
As an embedded reporter, I see literally what the military sees.

It is not particularly that the marines want to censor me but I am stuck with one unit and that is all I can see.

When we went through south of the main road last night, the streets - no surprise here - were absolutely deserted, the shops were shuttered.
One can only imagine the plight of the civilians.
I have questioned many times senior officers here about the use of heavy weapons because they have been using 155mm artillery in Falluja, they have been dropping 2,000 pound bombs.

The bullets that they fire are high velocity. The buildings are of poor construction here - the bullets travel through the walls.
And when they see what they believe to be militants - and these marines are incredibly calm under fire, they are almost unflinching - they do wait until they see a guy with a gun but when they see that, they open up with everything they have got and the question is, how much collateral damage is there going to be?

At the moment we simply do not know.

Almost two years into this mess...

AP

With no sign of the Iraq insurgency ending soon, the Army has again raised its goal for replacing regular Humvee utility vehicles in Iraq with armored Humvees, the Army's top civilian official said Friday.

Les Brownlee, the acting secretary of the Army, said in an Associated Press interview that the Army recently doubled its requirement for "up-armored" Humvees in Iraq from 4,000 to 8,000.

Brownlee said that at the current production rate of 450 a month he believed the Army could meet the goal of having 8,000 armored Humvees in Iraq by March 2005. He did not say how many already are there, but he said the goal of 4,000 was met in September.

In May 2003, after the fall of Baghdad but before it was clear to U.S. officials that an insurgency was developing, the Army had 235 armored Humvees in the country and they were being produced at a rate of 15 per month, Brownlee said. By September the requirement was raised to 1,000.

Brownlee said the Army also is adding armor to its truck fleet because soldiers in supply convoys are often attacked by insurgents.

He said this was an illustration of how much more deadly the insurgency has proven to be than anyone in Washington believed possible in 2003.

"No one ever anticipated we'd be up-armoring our truck fleet," he said. "Nobody anticipated that we'd have to do that." [hmm.imagine that. Better lat than never.]

Global Security says, by their count U.S. wounded stands at : 22,005

Dead: 1,175 (38 so far this month)

Proud Americans for Bush.

Before the election, the Guardian offered their readers the chance to write to American voters in Clark County, Ohio urging them not to vote for Bush. Here are some very thoughtful letters the good people of Ohio wrote back to the Guardian.

KEEP YOUR FUCKIN' LIMEY HANDS OFF OUR ELECTION. HEY, SHITHEADS, REMEMBER THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR? REMEMBER THE WAR OF 1812? WE DIDN'T WANT YOU, OR YOUR POLITICS HERE, THAT'S WHY WE KICKED YOUR ASSES OUT. FOR THE 47% OF YOU WHO DON'T WANT PRESIDENT BUSH, I SAY THIS ... TOUGH SHIT!
PROUD AMERICAN VOTING FOR BUSH!

Real Americans aren't interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions. If you want to save the world, begin with your own worthless corner of it.
Texas, USA

Keep your noses out of our business. As I recall we kicked your asses out of our country back in 1776. We do not require input from losers and idiots on who we vote for in our own country. Fuck off and die asshole!!!!!
Knoxville, Iowa

[And there's a lot more. We should all be very proud that these mouth breathers are presenting our best face to the rest of the world.]

Iraq interuptus

A.P.

The Dutch cabinet has decided to bring home the 1,350 Dutch troops in Iraq in March next year, confirming a decision first made in June, the Dutch news agency ANP cited Defense Minister Henk Kamp as saying on Friday.

Iraq's interim administration wants to hold elections in January despite mounting violence, and the Netherlands has come under increasing U.S. and British pressure to keep its troops there after March.

Foreign Minister Bernard Bot recently suggested that might be possible in unforeseeable circumstances, but Kamp said the cabinet had ruled that out.

[See my musings on the issue of us pulling out at Non Sum Dignus {Nov. 12)]

More wounded and here come the Kurds.
From the Guardian:

Planeloads of injured soldiers have been flown to the US military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, and doctors were bracing for a further influx as the Falluja battle culminates.

Two aircraft carrying 102 injured soldiers arrived yesterday. Another 125 injured arrived earlier in the week and more were expected today.
Only seriously injured soldiers are evacuated from Iraq to Landstuhl, the biggest American military hospital outside the US.

"This is one of our peak periods," a hospital spokeswoman, Marie Shaw, told Reuters. "We are very busy. It is more than we have seen in the last couple of months because we used to admit about 30 patients a day."

Most of the patients had bullet wounds, although some had more serious injuries. "We've had more cases of bullet wounds than usual, though some have also suffered blast wounds from rocket-propelled grenades," said Lieutenant Colonel Richard Jordan, a physician at the hospital's deployed warrior centre.

Several soldiers needed intensive care, with brain or spinal injuries or limb amputations, including at least eight of yesterday's arrivals.

While we're busy in Falluja, the insurgents are busy stirring up the Kurds. (Guess what? We don't have anywhere enough troops to deal with an Iraqi civil war involving the Kurds.)

U.S. Troops were drawn into a new offensive in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday to tackle a tide of insurgency unchecked by the military assault on Falluja.

In Baghdad at least 17 Iraqis were killed in a suicide car bombing as gunmen set up checkpoints on roads in the west of the capital and fought battles with US troops.

Rebels also took to the streets of the northern town of Baiji, home to Iraq's main refinery, clashing with security forces.

The violence suggests the four-day operation in Falluja [and the month long heads up on our invasion plan] may have cleared out the most important insurgent stronghold in Iraq, but has done little to curb the burgeoning militant movement.

"The [insurgent] activities have now spread to the borders with the Kurdish self-rule area, and are threatening Kurdish and other minorities in the region," said the official.

The Kurdish governor of Kirkuk, a disputed city to the north-east, survived an assassination attempt yesterday when a car bomb exploded as his convoy passed.

Abdulrahman Mustafa was not hurt, but six members of his personal security detail and eight civilians were hurt, according to Arif Qurbany, the director of a local TV station.

The deployment of Kurdish fighters in Kirkuk would be sensitive (Classic British understatement.}

Last night Kurdish leaders in Arbil and Sulaymaniya, inside the Kurdish self-rule region, said they were preparing Kurdish troops in the national guard to restore order in Mosul and Kirkuk in coordination with the US military. [Who are too busy elsewhere and won't be coordinating with anyone.]

"We cannot stand by and let minorities be attacked, as they were under Saddam," said a military commander in Sulaymaniya. But the deployment of Kurdish fighters in Kirkuk would be sensitive. [Think things are bad now? Just wait.]

More wounded.

The numbers of wounded Landstuhl is recieving from Falluja should be added to the 44 on average the hospital gets everyday from the rest of Iraq.

How many troops have been wounded anyway?

Here's some idea of the numbers from last year:

The largest estimate of the number of medical evacuations from Iraq is to be found in a December 30 article by retired US Army Col. David Hackworth, "Saddam's in the slammer, so why are we on orange?"

Hackworth writes, "Even I...was staggered when a Pentagon source gave me a copy of a Nov. 30 dispatch showing that since George W. Bush unleashed the dogs of war, our armed forces have taken 14,000 casualties in Iraq--about the number of warriors in a line tank division."

The former colonel adds that the figure "means we've lost the equivalent of a fighting division since March. At least 10 percent of the total number" of available personnel--135,000--"has been evacuated back to the USA!"

Lt. Col. Scott D. Ross of the US military's Transportation Command told Hackworth that as of Christmas his "outfit had evacuated 3,255 battle-injured casualties and 18,717 non-battle injuries," a total 21,972 servicemen and women. Ross, however, cautioned that his figure might include some of the same service members counted more than once.

The major categories of "non-battle" evacuations included orthopedic surgery, 3,907; general surgery, 1,995; internal medicine, 1,291; psychiatric, 1,167; neurology, 1,002; gynecological (mostly pregnancy-related), 491.

Hackworth concludes that "it's safe to say that, so far, somewhere between 14,000 and 22,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have been medically evacuated" from the war zone in Iraq.

More wounded

FRANKFURT, Germany (APAP) - A steady stream of wounded from Iraq, mostly from fighting in Fallujah, has begun arriving at the U.S. military's main hospital in Europe, an official said Thursday.
Two planeloads with around 90 wounded who could not be treated in Iraq were expected later Thursday at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, said spokeswoman Marie Shaw.

"We are very busy," Shaw said. "We have seen an increase of patient arrival since the outbreak of the Fallujah conflict."

She said 38 injured soldiers arrived on Monday, 23 more on Tuesday, and 64 on Wednesday.