This Tragedy is Inevitable When Press is so Concentrated

10 Marines Killed in Fallujah Blast
Incidents Temper View of City's Progress

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 3, 2005; 7:48 AM

BAGHDAD, Dec. 2 -- Ten U.S. Marines died Thursday when a makeshift bomb blasted their foot patrol outside the western city of Fallujah, the military reported Friday. It was the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in almost four months.

Eleven other Marines were wounded by the explosion, which came from a device made up of several large artillery shells, the military said. Seven of the injured Marines returned to duty.

Several Fallujah residents said the only large explosion in the city Thursday was a nighttime attack on a U.S. convoy near a cement factory, east of downtown. It appeared to be a car bomb, according to Abdul Karim Salah, a factory worker on the night shift who said he witnessed the explosion. The military later denied that an attack took place near the factory but declined to provide any further details about the incident in which the Marines were killed.

A little more than a year ago, thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops leveled much of Fallujah -- which had become Iraq's main insurgent stronghold -- in the largest offensive since the 2003 invasion. During two weeks of fighting, they established a strict cordon around the city, 35 miles west of Baghdad, establishing four heavily guarded entry points equipped with metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs.

Following the assault, according to local politicians and military commanders, Fallujah had gradually become one of the safest and most stable cities in Anbar province, which spans the vast desert west of Baghdad to the Syrian border and is considered the heartland of the country's Sunni Arab-led insurgency. In August, 14 Marines were killed by a roadside bomb that tore apart their armored personnel carrier in the Anbar city of Haditha, but Fallujah has experienced little heavy fighting and few large-scale attacks in recent months.

The city's police force, disbanded before the offensive last year, has returned to duty and numbers about 1,200, local officials said. A pair of Iraqi army battalions now patrol much of the northern half of the city, together with a single battalion of U.S. Marines. And while turnout in Anbar for Iraq's October constitutional referendum was only about 40 percent, it topped 90 percent in Fallujah, a city of about 250,000.

"One year ago, major combat operations in Fallujah. And in the referendum, 200,000 folks voted in Fallujah," the main U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said at a news conference this week. "Great improvement."

On a visit to the city this week, the provincial governor, Mamoun Sami Rashid, spent the first half of a 10-minute speech praising the city's progress. "The first thing that came to my mind when I entered Fallujah is the stability," said Rashid, who rarely leaves the violence-plagued provincial capital, Ramadi, and has survived at least seven assassination attempts since taking office on June 1. "What you had before the invasion is what we have in Ramadi now."

But insurgents retained a strong presence and continue to operate in Fallujah, according to soldiers and Iraqi politicians and civilians interviewed there this week.

"We knew al Qaeda wouldn't leave the city, and it happened. They came back," said Khalid Muhsin, a preacher in a local mosque. "Now they attack in different ways. They kidnap and assassinate people. People in the city are tired of the fighting and want to rest."

On Tuesday, gunmen in a silver BMW shot dead Hamza Abbas city's mufti, or top religious cleric, as he was leaving an evening prayer service. Asawi was considered an ally by U.S. forces. A day later, two Marines were killed by small arms fire, the military reported.

It is highly probable that a great many of these attacks would cease if the press was moved out of Bagdad. It is only natural that those seeking to make a statement by blowing themselves and others up, will concentrate on those areas where the press is located. If I was the Iraqi provisional government, I would expell the press. This would serve two purposes, it would remove the incentive for the bombers to blow themselves up, and it would lessen the anti-Iraqi democracy propaganda. The lessening of press coverage would weaken the terrorists recruiting ability, and by lessening the negative reporting coming from Iraq, lower the tenor of the debate in America. There is nothing like eliminating the press to reduce politicians interest in trying to score points.

Full Story: Sadly, Tragedy Follows Press

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