First militant: “Remind me again how dressing as women makes us brave, Sulaymaan?”*
Second militant: “Because, my brother, dressing as women is but a means to an end. Surrounded by the Great Satan’s heavily armed paper tigers, the cagey Islamic warrior improvises to make his escape so that he can return another day to slaugher the infidel occupiers. And when he does return, he does so gloriously, in full beard, his manhood swollen and proud and pressing against his robes in the service of Allah.”
First militant: “I see, and I concur, in theory. But tell me, friend: were the Brazilian waxes really necessary?”
Second militant: “Well. The method actor uses every weapon in his aresenal, Aswad.”
****
update: Tall Dave has lots more on the Tall’Afar campaign—the tenor of which is totally at odds with the breathless defeatism of the Time piece cited in my comments.
But then, Time’s Michael Ware was never more than a younger Geraldo, anyway.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sunday, September 18, 2005
TIME Goes Inside the Endless Battle to Put Down the Iraq Insurgency
—
Almost as Soon as Battle of Tall’Afar Ended,
Cycle of Mayhem Started Anew
—
Insurgents Attempt to Slip Out of Town, Some Dressed as Women with Fake Breasts, Others Forcing Children to Hold Hands as if They Are Family
New York – The offensive in Tall ‘Afar, Iraq, which wound down last week, was this year’s Fallujah-a mass assault involving 7,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers,and hundreds of Bradleys, battle tanks, artillery pieces, all combined with AC-130 Spectre gunships, F-16 fighter jets and attack helicopters, TIME’s Michael Ware reports from Iraq. Unlike the Fallujah battle, it raged mostly unseen, with accounts of the fighting limited largely to the reports of U.S. and Iraqi officials in Baghdad, who declared that the onslaught had succeeded in driving out the bands of rebels-local
units commanded by al-Qaeda kingpin Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi-from their latest safe haven. But almost as soon as the offensive ended, the cycle of mayhem started anew.
TIME spent 10 days on the front lines of the war in Iraq, living with the U.S. and Iraqi troops as they prepared for the battle of Tall ‘Afar, one of al-Zarqawi’s biggest strongholds and, intelligence officers say, a place where he was detected in recent weeks. Across Iraq, the maddeningly elusive prize for the U.S. remains a clear-cut outcome, some indication that the U.S. is doing anything more than playing whack-a-mole with the insurgents.
TIME reports that the U.S. and Iraqi troops awake on the morning of Sept. 6 in Tall ‘Afar to the sound of messages broadcast over loudspeakers instructing civilians to leave. At mid-morning, families begin to emerge across Route Barracuda waving sad little white flags. As a family shuffles past, a Green Beret weapons sergeant bellows for them to be stopped. “Who’s that red-headed guy?” he asks. The men are sifted out, five identified as suspicious. Flashes of defiance and anger raise suspicions. “Hey, flex-cuff ‘em,” orders a Green Beret. Chemical swabs read positive for explosives on two of them. Masked informants identify three-all brothers-as snipers, the other two as an RPG team. Across the battlefield, insurgents attempting to slip out of Sarai mix with civilians. Five dressed as women are snared, one with fake breasts. Others force children to hold their hands as though they are family. Some are caught; others are not. An intelligence officer says al-Qaeda is slipping to the east and behind them to the south, and “somehow,we don’t know how,” cutting through the screen line to deploy to the west, TIME reports.
[complete story requires registration – and is your typical Michael Ware piece: the US is losing, even as Arab insurgents are dressing as women to escape being killed, etc.]
Prisoners dressed as women, with fake breasts even!
Have we learnded nothing from Abu-Grahib?
I learnded how too spel reel gud.
Wow those bunker boys have identity problems, lack of proper role models one would assume.
TW “wife”… I kid you not
All you did was spell it like it’s pronounced.
[…]
What? It’s not?
You can get fake breasts in Tall’Afar?
Hah. Aswad….
Presumably the other four had genuine breasts: Walid, can I borrow you push-up bra? I think it makes me look slimmer….
Cross dressing Jihadists. Now that’s something you don’t see everyday.
Cross dressing Jihadists. Now that’s something you don’t see everyday.
But they’ve been at it for a long time.
I remember reading of Palestinians gunmen dressing as women in order to get close to Israeli soldiers during Israel’s fight for independence.
Good god Jeff! Do Sundays make you horny?
Besides, everyone knows that you can’t engage in hand-to-hand combat with a hard-on.
Of course you can…you still have ONE free hand…
Sheesh!!…show’s how much you know about combat!
You’ve obviously never met my ex-wife.
I don’t want to ask how your ex-wife got a hard-on.
Thanks. I just spit beer on my laptop (fortunately my work machine).
It was her contention that she married one.