XPost: alt.conspiracy, dc.general, ma.general 
 XPost: soc.culture.jewish 
 From: nobody@mail.futureworlds.it 
  
 In the escalating crisis that is Iraq, American Marines, after days 
 of battle followed by a tenuous "truce," are deep into but not in 
 control of Fallujah, a resistant city of 300,000 in the "Sunni 
 Triangle," while the Army finds itself poised at the edge of Iraq's 
 Shiite holy cities. Our troops are toeing what the most revered 
 Shiite religious figures have termed a "red line" across which lies 
 the path to "300 Fallujahs." 
  
 This is, in fact, the very nightmare that American military leaders 
 desperately wanted to -- and initially did -- avoid as the invasion 
 of Iraq began in March 2003. This is the Iraqi "quagmire" that they 
 most feared in their still Vietnam-saturated strategic thinking. 
 After all, this is Iraq's (urban) "jungle," and from Stalingrad to 
 Hue and Mogadishu, urban warfare against a determined foe, employing 
 the house-to-house equivalent of guerrilla tactics, was known to 
 cancel out many of the advantages of overwhelming firepower and 
 advanced war technology. Fallujah has already demonstrated exactly 
 that. 
  
 Mike Davis, our resident expert on cities new and old, points out in 
 his latest piece that, since the early 1990s, facing an ever more 
 global imperial mission into the "arc of instability," the energy 
 heartlands of our planet, the American military has been in 
 preparation mode -- preparation for a grim future fighting in the 
 sprawling slum cities of the Third World. Now, it seems, that future 
 is rushing toward us. Tom 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)