Saturday, June 04, 2005
Insurgents take refuge in bunkers built by "allies"
American marines have discovered an elaborate series of underground bunkers used recently by insurgents in central Iraq, with heavy weapons, a kitchen and fresh food, furnished living quarters, showers and even a working air-conditioner, the military said Saturday.
The bunkers were built into an old rock quarry north of the town of Karma, an insurgent stronghold in Anbar Province that lies near the city of Falluja. The bunker system measures 546 feet by 883 feet, making it the largest underground insurgent hide-out to be discovered in at least the past year, if not during the entire war, said Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a spokesman for the Second Marine Division, charged with controlling western Iraq.
The likely provenance of the bunker is almost more interesting than the fact of its discovery:
Decades ago, Saddam Hussein and his aides began building an extensive series of underground bunkers scattered around Iraq. Mr. Hussein hired German engineers in the 1980's to work on these lairs, which included tunnels and chambers beneath palaces in Baghdad and Mosul. It is not known, however, whether the quarry bunker is part of that network.
The left likes to complain that the United States once supported Saddam, when he was thought to be the only means for containing revolutionary Iran. Their argument seems to be that the United States created the monster it then determined to slay. Of course, the French, Germans and Russians created a monster that they opposed slaying. Who is more culpable, the country that doggedly corrects its error at great cost or the country that insistently repeats it at great profit?
This bit is still more evidence of a principle that I think has long been obvious: A socialist ally will sell your enemy the rope to hang you by.
3 Comments:
By 
Gordon Smith, at
Sat Jun 04, 11:29:00 PM:
Happy travels, Hawk. Will you be coastal? Inland? I haven't been to Brazil, so I hope to learn something from your journey.
btw - is doggedly correcting our error a new justification for the war? It's one I haven't heard from the men in charge. I don't think I've heard the issue addressed at all, so I'm glad you bring it up.
What were the errors?
What is it worth to correct them?
Are we committing the same sorts of errors in other nations around the world right now?
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It's good to see the tunnels discovered, one fewer hiding place for those who take innocent lives. By your reasoning, the Germans, by not supporting the invasion, are not taking responsibility for the mistake they made in building the tunnel systems. This reasoning will, if we're willing to turn the same sort of lens on our own nation, damn us all.
By AbbaGav, at
Mon Jun 06, 02:48:00 AM:
I'm sure that Germany will be supplying us with maps and plans for all the tunnels and bunkers they've built in Iraq.
By 
, at
Mon Jun 06, 08:45:00 PM:
It is surprising that the US military has not used staellite based ground penetrating ground penetrating radar to discover more of these underground bunker sites throughout Iraq.
