"The locals said they wanted to take charge of Saddam City and we said: 'Roger that'," Lieutenant-Colonel Lew Craparotta, commander of a Marine unit that moved back from the fringes of the suburb, told Reuters.

Awesome! "Roger that", hahaha!

Great news. This is exactly what we wanted to happen.

The more they do it themselves, the more the freedom is really theirs. They are definitely ready to run the country on their own. They must have been waiting for this for a long time. Go get'm guys!

I expect that we will soon see news stories and opinion pieces chastising the Coalition forces for not 'protecting the rights' of the "mujahideen". All backed up with rather nasty footage of the local shia people taking their revenge the old fashioned way...

Jack
You are so right. The media, the UN and the leftys will attack us on every turn throughout the rebuilding of Iraq.

Add another classic line to the storied history of the US military "Roger That" YES!!!

"I expect that we will soon see news stories and opinion pieces chastising the Coalition forces for not 'protecting the rights' of the "mujahideen". All backed up with rather nasty footage of the local shia people taking their revenge the old fashioned way..."

That possiblity and this quote:

"Stephanie Schaudel.... said the "richness of culture" in Iraq is going to be subjected to Americanization"

Raises an interesting question. Is their culture only worthy of preservation to these people, if they dont have to understand what it means?

PS, that quote is from an article posted 10 minutes before this one.

The media is going to say these are revenge killings.

All killing is revenge one way or another...

dumbasses!

This brings to question just who are the "foreign invaders" here.

In an earlier post, a local Iraqi works manager told a US officer who had a bunch of engineers ready to re-start a water pumping station "We'd rather do it ourselves" and the officer was quite relieved to be able to say "Roger that".

We are not forcing them to bow down to us, or even our way of doing things, we want to help but not rule. France, and even Britain, cannot seem to get this.

Iraq has a very substantial middle class and educated elite. There will be a lot of "self-help" over the next days, weeks and months.

This country really is not like Afghanistan. Most of the infrastructure is intact (thank you RAF, USN, and USAF!) so once the non-soiled Iraqis come back to work things are likely to be up and running much faster than the naysayers believe.

As to the locals going after the fedayeen foreigners...right on. The foreigner problem is going to turn into a minor issue in a matter of weeks. You cannot be a successful guerilla unless the people support you...which they clearly do not.

This is also why it important for us to continue to act and say that we aren't going to rule Iraq. If the Iraqis do things themselves they won't spawn homegrown terrorists...

This is all going to work out well...

Hmmm, maybe the National Rifle Association ought to open up an office in Iraq.

This will work out much better, because the Fedayeen etc. can surrender to us. They can't surrender to the locals - they'll just kill them.

"This is for my two brothers you killed!"

"This is for my father you tortured!"

"This is for my cousins who disappeared!"

"We're not sure how many of them there were, but they opened fire and now they're dead," he said.

Heh heh heh.