tmpphphoxwln.jpgGeorge swooped into Iraq today on his way to Australia to hold a "war council."

This expensive little PR stunt was designed to highlight the great "success" claimed by George in Anbar governate which is being touted as "quiet" these days. This so-called "success" is also being used to convince junketing Congresscritters that they should back off from holding the administration to deadlines for withdrawal from Iraq. Of course, the congressional visitors - and George today - never leave the safety of American mega-bases. But we can get a more accurate view of Anbar's "successes" through last week's report by Ali al-Fadhily of Dahr Jamail's IPS:

Fallujah is quiet these days. After all the fighting and destruction of 2004, U.S. and Iraqi forces call this success. Many residents are not so sure.

Fallujah, 60km west of Baghdad, produced some of the strongest resistance yet to U.S. forces and their Iraqi collaborators. These forces led two severe assaults on the city, in April and November of 2004. Three-quarters of the city was destroyed, massive numbers of people were killed.

There has been little by way of reconstruction.

The city sees no more of the kind of resistance attacks of old, and no more of the 2004 kind of crackdown. "We are so happy that our city is peaceful and quiet after all the battling that killed thousands of our citizens," a captain in the local police force of Fallujah, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "We can patrol the streets without fear now, and arrest any person that we suspect to be a terrorist."

There has been a good deal of this, residents say. Hundreds of suspected resistance fighters are now held at the Fallujah police station. Many have been killed on the streets; the police speak of finding "unidentified bodies".

Several of those found dead had been arrested earlier, eyewitnesses and families of several of the men killed have said.

"This is fascist behaviour that shows the brutality of the Americans and the so-called Iraqi government," a former member of the Fallujah city council who asked to be referred to as Mahmood told IPS. "Those young guys were executed without any trial. This brutality was not known in our city before this occupation began."

Journalists inside the city are also quiet after a few of them were arrested and held for several days.

(snip)

Residents speak of other reasons why the city is relatively quiet.

"But of course the city is quiet," Rahemm Othman, a high school teacher, told IPS. "They are banning car movement, and that would make it as quiet as the dead. We are being subjected to slow death here, and the world is so happy about it." The local police and the U.S. military banned car movement in May.

(snip)

"To say Fallujah is quiet is true, and you can see it in the city streets," said Shiek Salim from the Fallujah Scholars' Council. "The city is practically dead, and the dead are quiet."

One after another, residents spoke of Fallujah finding the quiet of the dead.

(snip)

But resistance has not died altogether. Five U.S. soldiers were killed when their helicopter was shot down Aug. 14 near al-Taqaddum airbase on the outskirts of Fallujah.

At least 20 U.S. soldiers were killed in al-Anbar province to the west of Baghdad in July, several of them in Fallujah area. According to the U.S. Department of Defence, 1,257 U.S. soldiers have died in al-Anbar province, more than in any other Iraqi province.