Something In The Water posted by Richard Seymour

Having intentionally destroyed Iraq's water supplies, the United States may have cause to regret what febrile disease charges unchecked through Iraqi pipelines, because it's turning parts of Iraq even Iraqis have never heard of into hot-beds of revolution :

Five US Marines were killed and nine wounded in Iraq when hundreds of guerrillas attacked American forces near the Syrian border, a sign that the rebellion is spreading to regions which have hitherto been peaceful.

The pitched battle on Saturday started when the marines were ambushed in Husaybah, 240 miles west of Baghdad, according to a reporter from the St Louis Post-Dispatch, who was with the Marines. A doctor at the nearby city of al-Qaim said 10 Iraqis were killed and another 30 wounded, including guerrillas and civilian bystanders. The Husaybah police chief, Imad al-Mahlawi, was reportedly killed by a Marine sniper.

In order to combat this growing problem, the United States have decided that those who could previously only be controlled with an iron fist will be so again - or so General Sanchez told the press :

"Well, the fact of the matter is
that some of them did very well and some of them did not...And in the
south, a number of units, both in the police force and also in the ICDC
[Iraqi Civil Defense Corps], did not stand up to the intimidators of the
forces of Sadr's militia and that was a great disappointment to us...With
regard to the new Iraqi army, I think we can look for better performance in
the future once we get a well-established Iraqi chain of command. The truth
of the matter is that until we get well-formed Iraqi chains of command, all
the way in the police service from the minister of interior to the lowest
patrolman on the beat in whatever city it may be, and the same for the
army, from private to minister of defense, that it's going to be tough to
get them to perform at the level we want. The good news is, we're working
on those chains of command, and I'm confident that with work on our part
and work on their part, we'll have better performance. .... It's also very
clear that we've got to get more senior Iraqis involved, former military
types involved in the security forces. And in the next couple of days
you'll see a large number of senior officers being appointed to key
positions in the Ministry of Defense and in Iraqi joint staff and in Iraqi
field commands." (My emphasis).

Iron Fist.

Perhaps another solution is to ensure that Iraqi journalists don't get any funny ideas - by blowing their brains out . Another good way to punish the bastards is to close their hospitals :

When the United States began the siege of Fallujah, it targeted civilians in several ways. The power station was bombed; perhaps even more important, the bridge across the Euphrates was closed. Fallujah's main hospital stands on the western bank of the river; almost the entirety of the town is on the east side. Although the hospital was not technically closed, no doctor who actually believes in the Hippocratic oath is going to sit in an empty hospital while people are dying in droves on the other bank of the river. So the doctors shut down the hospital, took the limited supplies and equipment they could carry, and started working at a small three-room outpatient clinic, doing operations on the ground and losing patients because of the inadequacy of the setup. This event was not reported in English until April 14, when the bridge was reopened.

In Najaf, the Spanish-language "Plus Ultra" garrison closed the al-Sadr Teaching Hospital roughly a week ago (as of yesterday, it remained closed). With 200 doctors, the hospital (formerly the Saddam Hussein Teaching Hospital) is one of the most important in Iraq. Troops entered and gave the doctors two hours to leave, allowing them to take only personal items -- no medical equipment. The reason given was that the hospital overlooks the Plus Ultra's base, and that the roof could be used by resistance snipers. Al-Arabiya has also reported that in Qaim, a small town near the Syrian border where fighting recently broke out, that the hospital had been closed, with American snipers positioned atop nearby buildings.

Add to this the sight of US soldiers shooting at ambulances and perhaps it is no longer a particular mystery why there is an uprising in Iraq, and why it is spreading to parts unknown. Even Andrew Sullivan is having trouble keeping tabs on which place is in uproar and where and why:

SADR CAPITULATES: I'm unnerved by the presence of Iranians helping to broker some kind of deal with al Sadr, but heartened by the fact that the extremist revolt in Fallujah seems to have been quelled – largely by Marine force and by moderate Shiite realism.

Sullivan: "I Wish I Was As Good As Hitchens".

As Justin Raimondo points out, "Sadr is in Najaf, not Fallujah, which is Sunni, not Shi'ite. And somebody ought to tell those rebellious Fallujans they've been 'quelled,' because they don't seem to have realized it as yet." In the meantime, the media can't seem to see the massacre for the bodies . Must be something in the water.