[link|http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1119/p06s03-woiq.html?s=hns|Intel to help wipe out the terrorists, and a weapons cache they won't be dipping into anymore]

Excerpts:

Found along with a laptop computer, stacks of CD-ROMs, and a number
of telephones in an insurgent safe house Thursday, the trove is just one
of many intelligence finds in Fallujah that are shedding light on the
insurgency.

Those finds - along with that of a vast weapons cache and safe house
operating under the cover of an Islamic medical charity, which contained
flags of Al Qaeda affiliate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - are one reason US
marine commanders want to keep pushing the offensive...

The scale of the weapons cache discovered Wednesday by Bravo Company at
the suspected Zarqawi charity was the largest found in the city so far
- and stashed in such a nondescript collection of buildings that US
troops passed by several times without taking a closer look.

With an estimated 1,000 pounds of explosives, it could have caused
damage up to six city blocks away, if detonated all at once. "Not all
this stuff was being used for Fallujah - a lot was being exported out,
and used as IEDs and car bombs in Ramadi and elsewhere," says Colonel
Tucker at the downtown site, just 200 yards from the central Hadra
Mohamadiya mosque. "This was the central location for planning."

..."On the surface, it looks real, with the Red Cross," says an Arabic
speaker who went through the documentation. "But their real job is
something different.... It's like a front company. This is a medical
facility to help insurgents."

Ledgers listed big ticket, Iraqi donors. More ledgers were for those
receiving cash or food. Outside, garbage sacks were full of car alarms
- a favorite for rigging command-detonated car bombs and explosives.
Homemade RPGs lay in the dirt, not far from scores of Iraqi-made RPGs,
oiled and stacked like cordwood.

Antitank mines and mountains of rockets and mortars of every size and
description choked the buildings. An initial explosion of larger
ordnance - including 14 SA-7 surface-to-air missiles- - sent a cement
mixer flying 120 yards through the air.

[link|http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=vn20041118040837363C574817|Torture rooms discovered and put out of business. And a Syrian connection unearthed]

Excerpts:

Fallujah, Iraq - Hostages have cried out and prayed their precious
final moments away in an underworld of secret prisons discovered by
United States (US) marines as they swept through the former rebel
enclave of Fallujah the past week.

A major US-Iraqi assault on the city uncovered at least two prisons and
multiple execution rooms, where people had rotted or had their heads
chopped off.

Fallujah's death row was not a sprawling penitentiary but the living
rooms and bedrooms of its middle-class homes, where religious extremists
set up shop, installed iron-bar jail cells and unloaded bullets into the
back of prisoners' heads, if not worse.

Islamic insurgents have kidnapped more than 150 foreigners in Iraq since
April, when a US Marine assault on Fallujah was aborted after a shaky
ceasefire was reached.

At least 30 hostages have been executed in that time, including most
recently the British-Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan, according to a
video...

Just before the marines left the building, they found a man in a
bathroom. He was from a wealthy Baghdad family and had a $250 000
(R1,5-million) ransom on his head.

"He told us 'I want to go back to Iraq', and we told him that he is in
Iraq. He was really surprised because his kidnappers were Syrian," said
a staff sergeant with Bitanga.

At least 10 bomb-making factories and another 10 operation hubs had been
found in the north-western section of Fallujah, US officers said.

Bitanga also said his troops recovered the Syrian driver of kidnapped
French journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, who had been
running around Fallujah after being set free by his captors.


I say:

This is a disaster for Islamist terrorism, and also for their fellow
travellers, the Left. Once again we go in against all insincere
objections, discover the truth, and put the lie to the Left's rhetoric.
How can they cope? By resorting their old tried and true weapon:
propaganda. That's why you're hearing so much [link|http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=54740&d=20&m=11&y=2004&pix=opinion.jpg&category=Opinion|hysteria about security rounds].
But it won't help. They can't win this war in the court of public
opinion. We're wise to that trick. They did their worst in the last US
election, and it just wasn't enough.

There's an election coming up in Iraq, scheduled for late January. The
terrorists are trying to prevent this. The Left are cheering them on
(Minutemen, Michael Moore calls them) and giving what aid they can with
their propaganda and lies. They may manage to delay the election, but
it's unlikely they can stop it. We won't let that happen. And that will
make four elections in a row that have not gone their way. In Australia
and in America, voters chose to stay the course. In Afghanistan, and
coming up in Iraq, the elections defeat the enemy's goals simply by
taking place at all.

Democracy marches on, and there's nothing they can do about it. They've
already tried everything. Slander, misdirection, hysteria, and even
voter registration fraud. What have they got left?

Europe is a worry, though. The Spanish voters have shown fatal
weakness, and the French are simply too French to resist effectively.
Sweden is also likely to succumb to Islamism. But the Dutch reaction to
van Gogh's murder gives us reason to hope that western Europe isn't
utterly beyond redemption.

[link|http://www.blogger.com/app/publish_status.pyra?blogID=8523262&inprogress|Comment at blogger.com]

[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/iraq.html#20041119|Angelfire link] (turn off Javascript to avoid popups)

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