The Writing Is On The Wall

In Baghdad, we are seeing exactly what an “affirmative action”, I mean, “legacy”, M.B.A. graduate from the Harvard Business School would produce by way of a business plan. http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/biography.html
It is a most spectacular failure since it lacks being informed by reality.

Damn, I’m used to seeing English signs in demonstrations against us all over the world — but a sign for our occupation troops? Hear this morning that Sadr is doing a more sophisticated reverse version of this, trying to get the US to knock off his Sunni enemies while his guys lie low.

I agree with http://www.angryarab.blgospot.com that the writing is probably by Americans since Arabic rarely uses acronyms.

This is a war in which we are, indeed, uniquely unqualified to fight.
The closest thing to a “mission” I’ve heard is that we are going to “Kill the killers” or something like that. Both sides are killing machines. We truly don’t know where we stand.
I also like the LOGICAL implications of this so called ‘mission’. If we kill the killers, we are ourselves killers and must, in the end kill ourselves.
Suicidal pawns. I feel for the young kids who are over there and can’t speak the language, can’t tell one side from the other, can’t tell the fighters from the victims and sure as hell don’t have anyway to get a grip on right vs. wrong. It’s all a massive bad karma generator.
Can anyone tell us what J.A.M. really stands for? or G.A.M, for that matter, since that was up there first?

In the realm of globalization, I see this as a sign equal to an auto-immune disease.

J.A.M stands for “Justified Ancients Of MuMu.” The REAL factional conflicts behind the Iraq war are finally made clear. We can only hope the Discordian Society and the Bavarian Illuminati will choose to bring this conflict to an end soon.

J.A.M. I believe stands for Jaish al-Mahdi, more or less meaning the “Messiah’s Army”, aka the Mahdi Army.
What’s weird to me is that the J and the two dots look like they are a different shade of red than the rest of the message. And also the J looks strange in other ways: the horizontal stroke at the top of the J is not aligned with the angle of the wall or other letters, and its edges are much crisper than the rest of the writing, as if it was applied with a paintbrush (or Photoshop’d in?) while the rest of the writing looks spraypainted.
I’m thinking the original message said something rather different from J.A.M.

Does the writing stop with the ‘M’?

“…the policy of evacuation cannot possibly be justified…” C.G.Gordon

I agree with trojo that there’s something odd about the J and the dots. Actually, the whole message sorta looks Photoshopped, but I suppose that’s paranoia.

I’m going to come down on the side of Mona, but for a different reason. It looks like the first letter of the acronym was originally “G” and replaced by an off-perspective “J.” There is apparently no “G” per se in Arabic, the G character having more a “ghu” sound, so to get the “zhu” sound of our J or Gi, they would use their character for J, which I can’t replicate here. This may all be shot down by an Arabic speaker, but for this reason, I think the wall was done by an English-speaking operative of some sort and when the “G” error was pointed out, they made a correction, possibly photo-shopped. Then they brought in an American in uniform to make it all look just so casual. What’s he aiming his gun at…..the wall? Sure looks like an insurgent wall to me.

I smell crap here.
That J is just too perfect for spray paint in an area where bullets fly over the least provocation.
Does anyone believe that someone would take the time to make a perfect J like that at the risk of getting shot?
I don’t.
I predict we have not seen the last of this image.

Yup. Something about the phrasing says, “written by American kids” to me.

I don’t think it was necessarily written by an American, but the “J” has been photoshopped in, perhaps for clarity. There is something rather strange about it.

“Hey Americans…,we want you to destroy the AMERICANS” – and the J and the dots were written
after that.

Actually, there seems to have been a “G” that was smeared and the “J” added, and if you look closer to the extreme right above the M there may be other letters not included in the shot – or edited shot:”GAM…”

ETS – Embrace The Suck
“PRIESTS, PROSTITUTES, psychologists, cops, jazz musicians, poker players. Every trade has its jargon and “insider lingo.”
Iraq’s Battlefield Slang
Soldier slang, however, has a peculiar appeal. That’s understandable. Waging war is a risky, all-encompassing endeavor — physically, emotionally and psychologically. War reveals humankind at its best and its worst, and war-fighter slang reflects the bitter, terrifying, sometimes inspiring hell of it.”
Embrace The Suck : Phrase heard in OIF1 (the original Operation Iraqi Freedom force). Translation: The situation is bad, but deal with it.

There is no hard G sound in Arabic; it’s a J sound. But in Egyptian dialect, they do use a hard G instead of the J – so, for example, Jamal is how the name is pronounced in pure Arabic, but Egyptians say Gamal.
“Jaish” (army) would be pronounced “Gaish” by an Egyptian, so I think that whoever originally wrote this either had an Egyptian background or learned their Arabic from one – and then someone realized that it wouldn’t be authentically Iraqi. And whoever replaced the G with a J also put in the periods, it seems.
The phrasing, and the use of acronyms, does seem American, although it could be an Arab who lived in an English-speaking country, I guess.

Hi everyone I have been very intrested in the meaning of my surname for many years and was aware of Jaish being pronounced Gaish as I spent an evening with an Arabic landlady some time age. BUT I would love to see how Jaish/Gaish is written in Arabic, can any one help with a e mailed scanned image of the Arabic for Gaish.
Many Thanks Chuck Gaish

Chuck Gaish: I’ll try to send it to you now. Jaish (pronounced “Gaish” by Egyptians) means army or military.