Another Prediction Cometh True

As insurgents recently took over, among a lot of other cities, Mosul (see photos at Raed's blog), it is rarely noted that this was predicted - for example, by the Canadian journalist I quoted two months ago - Scott Taylor, who has been abducted by the resistance in the Iraqi Turkmen city of Tal Afar during its first siege by the US:

...I can tell you, Mosul's about to blow. The resistance can operate with impunity, and is growing, and the Americans don't have the numbers to cope … what was once 22,000 soldiers in the area with the 82nd Airborne has now been whittled down to just 6,000 soldiers with this replacement Stryker Brigade. So they're stretched too thin to deal with the coming major insurgency.

The Americans are in fact almost invisible – you don't see them on the streets of Mosul. They've ceded the underground control of the city to various factions of rebels, who are all working together, exchanging weapons, intel, hostages, etc...

Altough US propaganda and clueless journalists try to paint it as if there is a clear-cut Arab/Kurd conflict in the city, let's note that one of the strongest and most cruel fractions of the anti-occupation forces in Iraq, the Sunni fundamentalist group Ansar-e-Islam, resides in the city and is Kurdish. Now, Mosul is not a city of 300,000 but 3,000,000 - it is home to more than 10% of Iraq's population (and voters). But I don't think that will hold back the Americans from destroying this city, too. (Current 'tally': Nassiriyah, Fallujah 2x, Najaf 2x, Tal Afar, Samarrah...)

As for Fallujah, some pictures and some more [last few] at Raed - and look again at the second picture here, nothing learnt since Abu Ghraib.

As for elsewhere, noteworthy are shootings between Iraqi police and army in Karbala, curfew in Najaf, and some parts of Baghdad [first few images] openly controlled by the resistance.

Also, as Iraqi police are fired by the thousands (again via Raed), we read this euphemistic comment from a US army spokesperson on their Iraqi puppet's takeover of police recruiting and training:

The Iraqis have their own methods of recruiting police officers that might fall short of U.S. civil rights standards, but they are proving effective, according to Bradley.

'Effective', like Saddam's police...