Attacks, Fighting Break Out in Baghdad

[thedrifter]

Attacks, Fighting Break Out in Baghdad

By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents attacked a police station Saturday in a Sunni Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad where U.S. and Iraqi troops raided a major mosque the day before in a crackdown on Sunni militants. Iraqi officials were trying to identify four decapitated bodies found in Mosul.


Also, insurgents attacked a U.S. Army patrol Saturday in Baghdad, killing one American soldier and injuring nine others, the U.S. military said. The unit came under coordinated attack, which included roadside bombs, small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the military said.


In downtown Baghdad, a suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle, killing one civilian and injuring another, witnesses said, as a thunderous rumble of explosions reverberated elsewhere in the Iraqi capital.


American and Iraqi forces detained 30 suspected guerrillas overnight in Mosul, the U.S. military said Saturday.


In western Baghdad, heavy fighting broke out between gunmen and Iraqi National Guards and American troops. Three Iraqi National Guardsmen were killed by roadside bombs in the same area, police said.


In the nearby Khadra area, two U.S. troops on patrol were injured when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy, said policeman Ali Hussein of the Khadra police station. The U.S. military had no immediate confirmation of the incident.


Insurgents also attacked a police station in northwestern Baghdad with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire, witnesses said. On Friday, Iraqi and U.S. forces raided the nearby Abu Hanifa mosque — one of the country's most important Sunni mosques — in an operation that appeared to be part of a crackdown on militant clerics opposed to the U.S.-led attack on Fallujah.


U.S. troops discovered four decapitated bodies during military operations to purge insurgents from the northern city of Mosul, the military said Saturday.


The four decapitated bodies, whose identities have not been established, were found Thursday and have been turned over to Iraqi authorities, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman for Task Force Olympia.


Three of the bodies were found by the road in a northeastern neighborhood of Mosul; the fourth was discovered in city's southwestern section, he said.


On Friday, a statement posted on an Islamist Web site in the name of Jordanian terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group said it had "slaughtered" two Iraqi National Guard officers "in the presence of a big crowd" in Mosul. The claim included no photos or video and could not be verified.


There was no way of saying whether the bodies had been decapitated in a public manner, as the Web site claimed, said Hastings, adding that U.S. troops were "not able to identify them and say whether they were bodies of Iraqi National Guard, police or just anybody."


During raids on Friday, Iraqi commandos and U.S. forces detained 30 suspected militants, the military said. The men are in custody and undergoing interrogations.


In central Mosul, Iraq (news - web sites)'s third-largest city with more than a million residents, Iraqi commandos from the Interior Ministry arrested 23 people suspected of planning and conducting attacks against American and Iraqi troops.


U.S. soldiers detained four people after they tossed hand grenades and weapons out of a car as it approached a checkpoint. In western Mosul, U.S. troops detained three suspected members of a terrorist cell.


Back in Baghdad, clashes broke out around dawn in the Azamiyah neighborhood, and three U.S. armored vehicles were seen in flames, witnesses said. The U.S. military had no immediate comment on the incidents.


Footage by Associated Press Television News showed a smashed and burning U.S. Humvee with what appeared to be the remains of a body in the driver's seat.





"The Iraqi police is still in control, (but) we are fighting," said Khalid Hassan, police chief at the Azamiyah police station.

Smoke rose from smashed and burning shops along a commercial street and firefighters struggled to put out the blaze. U.S. helicopters circled overhead and ambulances were driving to the scene of the clashes.

The raid on the Abu Hanifa mosque occurred as worshippers were leaving after Friday prayers. Witnesses said at least three people were killed and 40 others arrested.

Congregants said they heard explosions inside the building, apparently from stun grenades. Later, a reporter saw a computer and books, including a Quran, scattered on the floor of the imam's office near overturned furniture. U.S. soldiers were seen inside the mosque compound.

American troops have raided the mosque repeatedly since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

The Iraqi government has warned that Islamic clerics who incite violence will be considered as "participating in terrorism." Some already have been arrested, including members of the Sunni clerical Association of Muslim Scholars.

U.S. troops also raided a Sunni mosque in Qaim, near the Syrian border, a cleric said Friday, calling it retaliation for opposing the Fallujah offensive. Imam Maudafar Abdul Wahab said his mosque was gathering food and supplies for Fallujah, and that the Americans took about $2,000 worth of Iraqi currency meant for mosque repairs.

U.S. and Iraqi authorities are concerned about a public backlash against the Fallujah offensive among the minority Sunni community, especially as word spreads of the widespread devastation there.

Few Shiite clerics have condemned the Fallujah operation except for followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia battled American troops in two major campaigns this year. On Friday, U.S. troops arrested an al-Sadr representative near the holy city of Karbala — the second arrest of his aides in two days, al-Sadr's office said. Both had spoken out against the Fallujah attack, which began last week.

Insurgents said to be reeling from the loss of their base in Fallujah struck back Friday with car bombings and by firing rockets or mortars at the Green Zone, the leafy Baghdad enclave that houses the headquarters of the Iraqi and U.S. leadership here. Six people were killed in one car bombing in Baghdad, police said.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20041120/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Bodies of 4 Iraqis Flown to U.S. for Autopsies in Falluja Inquiry
By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: November 20, 2004


WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - The bodies of four Iraqis killed in the insurgency in Falluja last week have been flown to an American military mortuary in Delaware for autopsies as part of a broadening inquiry into whether marines shot wounded prisoners, Pentagon officials said Friday.

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The Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which is conducting an inquiry into the videotaped shooting of a wounded Iraqi prisoner last Saturday in a mosque in Falluja, requested that autopsies be performed at Dover Air Force Base because it has more sophisticated equipment and forensic experts than are available in Iraq, two Pentagon officials said.

"It was easier to bring them back here, with all the experts there," one of the officials said.

It was unclear why four bodies were brought back and whether they were all recovered from the room in the mosque where the videotaped shooting took place or from different sites. The decision to bring back the bodies for autopsies was reported Friday in The Baltimore Sun.

The inquiry's main focus is on the shooting by the marine, whom the Pentagon has not identified. It must determine whether the marine believed he was acting in self-defense when he yelled that the Iraqi was only pretending to be dead and fired at the prone body.

"The soldier himself has an opportunity to say what happened and then judgments will be made unto whether he violated any of the rules of engagement or any of the laws of war," Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the deputy head of the United States Central Command, told reporters on Thursday.

It is unclear from watching an unedited version of the videotape whether the prisoner was moving before the shot, suggesting one reason why investigators would request an autopsy.

A Defense Department spokesman, James Turner, declined to comment on whether the military had flown the bodies of other Iraqis to the mortuary at Dover.

The military investigation will also try to determine what happened to the other Iraqis in the room at the time.

Some of them, according to the initial NBC News report, appeared to be dead or dying when Kevin Sites, a freelance cameraman working for NBC, entered with a group of marines from the Third Battalion, First Regiment, joining other marines who were already there.

Mr. Sites has suggested that the other Iraqis may have been shot just before he entered, The Associated Press reported this week.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/international/middleeast/20mosque.html?ex=1101618000&en=2a44ea2c1b7a2a29&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA1

Ellie

[thedrifter]

November 19, 2004
Coalition Fights to Destroy Remaining Fallujah Insurgents


by John Valceanu
American Forces Press Service


BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi city of Fallujah has been "liberated" by coalition and Iraqi forces who are currently fighting to destroy remaining pockets of insurgents and terrorists in the city, according to Marine Lt. Gen. John Sattler.

Sattler commands the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which has supplied the bulk of the troops for Operation Al Fajr, during which coalition and Iraqi forces have trapped the insurgents in the city and has systematically eliminated their resistance.

"The enemy right now is broken into very small groups. They don't have the means to communicate, so they're isolated into small pockets," Sattler said. "If they want to surrender, we are more than happy to accommodate them. We have close to 1,000 military-age males who have surrendered, and who are under our control right now."

In addition to captives, Sattler said that a "conservative" estimate would be that 1,000 to 1,200 enemy fighters have been killed during the battle. By contrast, he estimated that about 30 U.S. troops have been killed, and almost 300 have been wounded.

A portion of the wounded troops were able to return to duty, and Sattler said he was moved by their eagerness to rejoin their comrades in the fight. "The courage of these individuals just makes your eyes water," Sattler said. "(They say) 'I have to get back to my unit, I need to rejoin the fight.'"

The coalition forces still involved in the fight are facing stiffer opposition from the remaining insurgents in the city, according to Sattler.

"As we come down to the final fight, the last vestiges of enemy resistance that are continuing to fight have better equipment and tactics and they are prepared to fight to the death," Sattler said. "We're not surprised, though, and we're ready for it. We'll offer them the opportunity to surrender and, if they don't, they'll die in violent military action."

One of the operation's primary goals, according to Sattler, is to enable the formation of a strong civil government in Fallujah, free from the intimidation of terrorists. "The perception and reality of Fallujah as a safe haven for terrorists will be gone by the time this operation is completed," he said.

The city had been haunted by terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi and his followers, who are credited with murder and kidnapping. Sattler said Zarqawi and his organization were targeted by coalition for months before the launch of Al Fajr.

"This battle has been shaped for months. Each and every time we had someone from Zarqawi's leadership identified very precisely, we either captured him with a direct attack or killed him with a precision-guided munition," Sattler said. "We really had an impact and an effect on Zarqawi's command and control structure."

Because of this preparatory work, most of the terrorist's top leaders were already gone by the time the operation began. Though Zarqawi and his network were certainly targets, though, Sattler emphasized that they weren't the only objective.

"Our focus was on breaking the backbone of the insurgents and restoring the rule of law in Fallujah," Sattler said. "We want to give Fallujah back to Fallujah's people."


http://www.dcmilitary.com/marines/hendersonhall/9_45/national_news/32179-1.html

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marines patrol Fallujah streets <br />
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<br />
A Marine with Company I, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, aims in on anti-Iraqi forces from inside a building in Fallujah, Iraq, Nov. 9, 2004. At the...

[thedrifter]

Knoxville-based Marines get ready to deploy

November 18, 2004

KNOXVILLE (WATE) -- Ninety members of the Marines 4th Combat Engineer Battalion based in Knoxville will soon deploy to Iraq, or to assist in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

According to the battalion's web site, during war time they do such tasks as clearing minefields, constructing bunkers and and improving or repairing roads.

There are approximately 150 Marines in the battalion.

The last time the full battalion was activated was during the first Gulf War.

The Marines will leave after the first of the year for training in North Carolina.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Military Family Life Studied
Associated Press
November 20, 2004

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The military, so the saying goes, enlists a soldier but re-enlists a family. Getting families to re-up in time of war, however, is a daunting task the defense department hopes will be made easier with research by Purdue University.

"Today, more than ever, we don't go to war without the support of our families," said Lt. Col. Joe Richard, a Pentagon spokesman.

Purdue's Military Family Research Institute is getting $8 million in federal funds to study soldiers and their families. The idea is for policy makers to use the findings to keep soldiers from leaving.

From better housing to financial incentives to postwar counseling, Richard said officials recognize they have to keep soldiers and families happy if they are to maintain troop strength in an all-volunteer military.

When established in 2000, the five-year project focused on military families in peacetime. The fight against terrorism and war in Iraq obviously changed that.

"They're very concerned about redeployment," said Shelley MacDermid, co-director of the institute about 65 miles northwest of Indianapolis. "How do you bring people home and turn them around to go again?"

So far, the researchers have created an index that measures commitment among soldiers and their spouses and tracks potential attrition problems. They also helped the defense department develop a "social compact" that links quality-of-life programs and the military's readiness. The compact also lays out a 20-year plan to help the military compete for recruits with the civilian sector.


Now, the institute is looking at the help soldiers get when they come home. A Purdue team traveled to Germany this year to interview soldiers from the 1st Armored Division, which lost at least 40 soldiers during the last three months of a 15-month deployment.

Deborah Olson of West Lafayette is participating in a yearlong study examining how soldiers from the Lafayette-based 209th Quartermaster Company have adjusted since returning home from Iraq in April.

Olson's husband, Sgt. David Olson, spent a year with the close-knit Army reserve unit, which lost a member in a roadside bombing attack.

"Even my close friends couldn't imagine what it would be like to go through that," said Olson, who has two young daughters.

How the spouse views the military and the way the soldier is treated by it can determine whether the soldier re-enlists, MacDermid said.

"Spouses are not just an appendage to the member," MacDermid said. "The spouse makes his or her own decision about whether or not the family should stay in the military."

The institute is also assessing how military life affects children. Researchers recently began working with 1,000 families to find ways to ease the transition for children who move frequently.

The research is part of a larger project on how moving - a mainstay of military life - affects families. The defense department expects to issue a report to military leaders and school districts after reviewing the data.

MacDermid said the scope of the institute's work can be overwhelming.

"How do you try to address the needs of 3 million members and their families, 24-7, all over the planet?" she said. "It makes you just want to cover your head sometimes."


Military Family Research Institute: http://www.mfri.purdue.edu/

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Supplies for Marines pour in
E-mail pitch, combat photo inspire torrent of aid in West Sac.
By Steve Gibson -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Saturday, November 20, 2004
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An Associated Press photo in The Bee showing a Marine from Rocklin returning fire during a mortar attack in Iraq has prompted an outpouring of support in West Sacramento.
"This is amazing, unbelievable, the best," the Marine's father, O. John Fett III, his voice choking with emotion, said Friday at a West Sacramento Rotary Club luncheon.

He spoke as Rotarians brought in dozens of care packages for shipment to Lance Cpl. O. John Fett IV's unit in Ramadi, about 20 miles west of Fallujah.

The packages contained a mix of everything from home-baked cookies to beef jerky, gym socks, underwear, hard candy and DVDs of recent movies.

By the time Friday's luncheon session ended, 186 shoe boxes filled with goodies had been stacked up in the corner of a banquet room at Club Pheasant.

The generous response was sparked by an e-mail sent Nov. 1 by the elder Fett to seven family members and friends, including high school classmate Denise Seals, a member of the West Sacramento Rotary Club. Seals in turn forwarded Fett's e-mail to friends and fellow Rotarians who went on to send it to others.

"Can you believe this?" Fett asked. "I asked that they send a shoe box of goodies to John, and now everyone in his company is going to get something. I'm overwhelmed."

The Rotary Club called it Operation Shoebox.

"It's not unusual for me to hear from him," Seals, a past president of the West Sacramento Chamber of Commerce, said of her high school classmate's e-mail. "It is unusual, however, for him to appeal for help."

"As the war in Iraq gets tossed around like a political football," she wrote in an e-mail plea to friends and fellow Rotary Club members, "it's easy to momentarily forget that these are our country's children in battle - young people in their twenties fulfilling commitments that will impact their lives forever."

In addition to the Rotary Club's donations, the elder Fett, a loan officer, said co-workers at his employer, GMAC Commercial Mortgage, also responded to his e-mail and are mailing dozens of care packages.

The wire service photo published in The Bee on Oct. 30 showed his son firing a rifle as the Marines' forward operating base in Ramadi came under attack. Now in his second tour of duty in Iraq, the 25-year-old Rocklin man is a member of Foxtrot Company, 2nd Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment.

The younger Fett was raised in Rocklin and attended Rocklin High School for two years, then transferred to Mendocino High School in Mendocino, where he lived with his mother, Mary Geddry, and graduated in 1997. His parents are divorced.

He later attended Butte College for two years before moving back to Rocklin and working at a series of jobs, then joining the Marines on the eve of Sept. 11, 2001, said his father.

The day after the photo appeared, the Sunday morning Bee brought word that a member of his son's battalion had been killed, his father said.

"I cannot properly express to you the feelings I had ... except to say they ran the gamut from pride to tears," the elder Fett wrote in his e-mail.

"John does not share the luxury each of us has in the United States, to question why we are in Iraq. He knows why he is there. His number one reason is to protect his Marine brothers. The second reason is you.

"The most important morale booster for John is to hear from the people back home," his father wrote. "It helps his attitude and that improves his abilities. Will you please find an old shoe box and fill it with goods and a letter?"

Since the photo appeared, father and son have been in contact two or three times a week via satellite telephone.

The elder Fett said Marines in his son's unit enjoy receiving care packages containing things like small cans or plastic bottles of exotic sauces to put on plain noodles.

They like home-made cookies, quality gym socks, boxer-brief style 34-inch underwear, beef jerky, hard candy like Livesavers, DVDs of the latest movies, snacks, baby wipes, small bottles of lotion and shaving cream, and disposable razors.

Rotary Club President Andy Wallace said he will be collecting additional care packages for the Marines on Monday. He said they will be combined with donations already received, placed on a pallet and shipped to Fett's unit in Iraq.

"Unbelievable, just unbelievable," the elder Fett said.


Operation Shoebox
Packages can be dropped off between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday at the offices of Wallace Kuhl & Associates Inc., 3050 Industrial Blvd., West Sacramento.

About the writer:
The Bee's Steve Gibson can be reached at (916) 321-1085 or sgibson@sacbee.com.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

In one year, chaos consumed the Iraq she loved

By Hannah Allam

Knight Ridder News Service


BAGHDAD, Iraq -- My 26th-birthday party was perfect.

Stars glittered over the Baghdad hotel where I blew out the candles on a cake decorated by my four closest Iraqi friends. We stayed up until the dawn call to prayer rang from a nearby mosque, telling stories and debating the future of a country I'd grown to cherish.

A year later, only one of those friends is still alive. The poolside patio where they sang Happy Birthday in Arabic is empty most days because foreign guests are afraid of snipers and mortars. The hotel has become a prison, and every trip outside its fortified gates is tinged with anxiety about returning in one piece.

Baghdad has never been tougher for journalists. Treacherous roads and kidnapping squads restrict travel. "Embedding" with the military or going with Iraqi government officials is the safest way to leave the capital. Our ability to uncover and tell the truth -- good and bad -- about Iraq has suffered.

At least 36 journalists have been killed covering this war. Everyone seems to know someone who's been taken hostage. We share our nightmares of terrorists cutting off our heads. Word of new abductions brings guilty relief: Thank God it wasn't me.

I first came to Baghdad in July 2003, sweltering days when electricity was scarce but at least the targets were clear: American troops were attacked, and reporters just wrote about it. My stories from back then sound like a grim list of "firsts": the first big car bombing, the first hostage video, the first helicopter shot down, the first mosque raided.

Now we barely take note of those commonplace events. Satellite television soon arrived, beaming rap videos and Dr. Phil into our hotel rooms. Cellphones replaced crackling, unreliable satellite phones, and our jobs grew easier. We hadn't yet learned about a Jordanian militant named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, so we wrote stories about the horse track and American troops watching the Super Bowl.

Camaraderie among foreign correspondents eased the pressures of deadline and danger. We played poker with useless old dinars imprinted with Saddam Hussein's face. New restaurants opened, including a Chinese place with a karaoke bar. Even then, though, we avoided Great Balls of Fire on the song list.

Hopping in the car as the sun rose over the Tigris River, we felt like explorers. Places we'd seen only in history books became three-dimensional as we arrived in Babylon and Nineveh, Najaf and Karbala.

We were thrilled to cover the most important story in the world. Unlike for many of my colleagues, Iraq is my first war zone. I still feel indescribably lucky to get so close to history as it happens: boarding a Black Hawk helicopter with the interim Iraqi prime minister, eating beans with Shiite Muslim rebels while they were being pounded by a U.S. airstrike, strolling through Saddam's old Republican Palace with its new, American occupants.

Then there's Iraq's incredible diversity. We've met Kurdish wedding musicians trying out a new keyboard, marsh Arabs zipping by on narrow boats, Iranian pilgrims ecstatic in ornate shrines, foreign guerrillas hiding among lush orchards, oil smugglers sweating at southern ports.

This, I thought, is the Iraq I want to show our readers.

It's hard to say when it changed. By last autumn, insurgents had improved their bomb-making skills and organized themselves into sophisticated cells. Reporters waded into an alphabet soup of military terminology: VBIED, vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. RPG, rocket-propelled grenade. PSD, personal security detail.

The CPA, the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority, was derided as Can't Produce Anything. In a matter of months, the AO -- area of operations -- was unstable.

The pace and scope of attacks grew exponentially. Targets came to include foreign journalists and the Iraqis working with them. Two of the Iraqi friends at my birthday party were shot to death, point-blank, as they drove home one spring night.

Two weeks later, American soldiers opened fire on the third friend, an Iraqi television reporter who was speeding to the scene of a mortar attack. His last gasps were broadcast live on TV. I couldn't work for weeks.

The fourth friend fled Iraq after receiving death threats.

So far, we at Knight Ridder have been lucky in escaping death or serious injury. Our American and Iraqi correspondents have been shot at countless times, attacked by knife-wielding rebels and bruised by stones lobbed from angry mobs. They've been trampled by riotous demonstrators, arrested by a renegade police force, taken hostage by militiamen and burned by red-hot shrapnel.

After one bombing, a young boy shoved a severed hand in my face. Another time, I used a tissue to pick shreds of human flesh off my shoes after covering a car bombing. Gagging, I gave up and pushed the sneakers deep into the trash.

As the close calls grew, the Iraq we knew shrank. The northern mountains and southern marshes are off-limits now because the roads out of Baghdad are lined with bombs and gunmen. Even a jaunt to the grocery store is a meticulously planned affair. Do you have a radio? A flak vest? A second car to watch for kidnappers?

Some of my colleagues have left, their blond hair and pale skin too inviting for militants hunting foreigners. Other reporters plan to move inside the Green Zone, the American compound that "protects" you from the people you came to cover. Instead of gathering for card games, journalists meet to trade the latest threat reports and to brainstorm on how to free kidnapped colleagues.

We rely more on our Iraqi staff members -- courageous friends whose brown faces and local accents allow them to navigate the world outside the hotel walls. Many fledgling Iraqi correspondents have blossomed into excellent reporters and will probably remain in this nation's media long after the Western news corps has moved on. Maybe that's our contribution to rebuilding Iraq.

We added first-aid demonstrations to our morning planning meetings. After talk about an election story, for example, it's quiz time. How do you treat a friend's punctured lung? Answer: Pierce the chest with a ballpoint pen.

We rolled blast film across our windows, obscuring the view of Baghdad's minaret-speckled skyline. The film keeps glass from shattering during a bombing. The fitness-conscious don body armor and run up and down the hotel stairs for exercise. Soccer games and jogs along the Tigris are off-limits.

Knight Ridder hired a British security adviser who promptly walled off our floor with a security gate nicknamed "The Cage." He gives the staff daily safety reports, and we impatiently cut him off before his trademark ending. We know, we know: "The threat level just can't get any higher."

My mother begs me to come home. Her Oklahoma accent sounds foreign from so far away as she tries to persuade me: "Darlin', there's not another thing in the world you can do over there. ... Enough is enough. ... There is no honor in having your head chopped off, no honor in dyin' that way."

But it feels too early to leave. American soldiers -- 138,000 of them -- are still here. There are 26 million Iraqis desperately seeking security and elected leaders. A brutal dictator is awaiting trial. There are still so many stories to be told.

I just turned 27. With the war still raging and the heartbreaking absence of my four Iraqi friends, there seemed to be little to celebrate. Still, several journalist colleagues sent me inspirational messages laced with the gallows humor of our trade.

One wrote: "Keep your head up -- and on."

I'll try.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Rare blood infection detected in several servicemembers injured during war

By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Saturday, November 20, 2004

ARLINGTON, Va. — Servicemembers injured in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan are coming down with a rare blood infection that is proving very resistant to antibiotics, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The report, which was released this week, said that 102 patients at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and three other military health care sites were diagnosed with the infection between Jan. 1, 2002, and Aug. 31, 2004.

Of those infections, 83 percent cropped up in servicemembers who had been wounded while serving in the Iraq and Kuwait region during Operation Iraqi Freedom and in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, the report said.

Military researchers are concerned because such a large number of these cases is unusual, Navy Capt. Joe Malone, director of the Defense Department’s Global Emerging Infections section at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., told Stars and Stripes in a Thursday telephone interview.

The infection, Acinetobacter baumannii, is well known to doctors and has shown up in patients hospitalized all over the globe, but it is not especially common, Malone said.

In fact, the organism causes just 1.3 percent of infections reported by hospitals, according to the report.

A. baumannii, as researchers call the bacteria, has two qualities that make it difficult to control its effects.

The first is that the bacteria can live for weeks at a time on hard surfaces such as tables or doorknobs, Malone said.

The second issue is that the organism is resistant to standard antibiotics, making “treatment of infections attributed to A. baumannii … increasingly difficult,” the report said.

The report noted, “The importance of infection control during treatment in combat and health-care settings and the need to develop new antimicrobial drugs to treat these infections.”

Officials would not comment on symptoms, how they are identified or the severity of the cases.

Now that the cluster of cases has been identified, the next step is for researchers to determine why so many deployed servicemembers are coming down with the infection, Malone said.

“We’re working very hard to investigate why” these members were infected, Malone said.

Military researchers aren’t beginning from scratch in their hunt for the source of the problem, however.

During the Vietnam War, the bacteria “was reported to be the most common [bacteria of this class] recovered from traumatic injuries to extremities,” the report said.

And since the some of the more recent cases occurred in members with similar injuries, “environmental contamination of wounds” might be a potential source of the infection, the report said.

“Environmental contamination” is the medical term for some kind of virus or bacteria a person might pick up from wherever he or she is at the time.

But while some of the patients in the report had the infection when they were first admitted to military medical facilities, the report said, researchers still don’t know whether the members picked up the bacteria at the time they were wounded, during the evacuation process, or at a military medical facility in the field, the report said.

So while researchers plan to look at whether the military patients picked up the bacteria in the hospital where they were first diagnosed with the infection, the investigation will also include “detailed reviews of geographic locations where injuries occurred and reviews of the movement of injured patients through treatment facilities,” the report said.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Subject: The Sad Duty Of Bringing The Fallen Home

From good friend,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This will bring some tears. Very sad, indeed...May God continue to bless the United States Marine Corps for all it has given to the nation...

Gentlemen,

I just wanted to share with all of you my most recent Air Force Reserve trip. As most of you know, I have decided to go back into the Air Force Reserves as a part time reservist and after 6 months of training, I have recently been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and have been fully mission qualified as an Aircraft Commander of a KC-135R strato tanker aircraft.

On Friday of last week, my crew and I were tasked with a mission to provide air refueling support in order to tanker 6 F-16's over to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. We were then to tanker back to the states, 6 more F-16's that were due maintenance. It started out as a fairly standard mission - one that I have done many times as an active duty Captain in my former jet - the KC10a extender.

We dragged the F-16's to Moron Air Base in Spain where we spent the night and then finished the first part of our mission the next day by successfully delivering them to Incirlik. When I got on the ground in Turkey, I received a message to call the Tanker Airlift Control Center that my mission would change. Instead of tankering the F-16's that were due maintenance, I was cut new orders to fly to Kuwait City and pick up 22 "HR's" and return them to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

It had been a while since I had heard of the term "HR" used, and as I pondered what the acronym could possibly stand for, when it dawned on me that it stood for human remains. There were 22 fallen comrades who had just been killed in the most recent attacks in Fallujah and Baghdad, Iraq over the last week.

I immediately alerted the crew of the mission change and although they were exhausted due to an ocean crossing, the time change and minimum ground time in Spain for crew rest, we all agreed that it was more important to get these men back to their families as soon as possible.

We were scheduled to crew rest in Incirlik, Turkey for the evening and start the mission the next day. Instead, we decided to extend/continue our day and fly to Kuwait in order to pick up our precious cargo. While on the flight over to Kuwait, I knew that there were protocol procedures for accepting and caring for human remains, however, in my 13 years of active duty service, I never once had to refer to this regulation. As I read the regulation on the flight over, I felt prepared and ready to do the mission. My game plan was to pick up the HR's and turn around to fly to Mildenhal Air Base in England, spend the night, and then fly back the next day. This was the quickest way to get them home, considering the maximum crew duty day that I could subject my crew to legally and physically. I really pushed them to the limits but no one complained at all.

I thought that I was prepared for the acceptance of these men until we landed at Kuwait International. I taxied the jet over to a staging area where the honor guard was waiting to load our soldiers. I stopped the jet and the entire crew was required to stay on board. We opened the cargo door, and according to procedure, I had the crew line up in the back of the aircraft in formation and stand at attention. As the cargo loader brought up the first pallet of caskets, I ordered the crew to "Present Arms". Normally, we would snap a salute at this command, however, when you are dealing with a fallen soldier, the salute is a slow 3 second pace to position. As I stood there and finally saw the first four of twenty-two caskets draped with the American Flags, the reality had hit me. As the Marine Corps honor guard delivered the first pallet on board, I then ordered the crew to "Order Arms" - where they rendered an equally slow 3 second return to the attention position. I then commanded the crew to assume an at ease position and directed them to properly place the pallet. The protocol requires that the caskets are to be loaded so when it comes time to exit the aircraft - they will go head first. We did this same procedure for each and every pallet until we could not fit any more.

I felt a deep pit in my stomach when there were more caskets to be brought home and that they would have to wait for the next jet to come through. I tried to do everything in my power to bring more home but they I had no more space on board. When we were finally loaded, with our precious cargo and fueled for the trip back to England, a Marine Corps Colonel from first battalion came on board our jet in order to talk to us. I gathered the crew to listen to him and his words of wisdom.

He introduced himself and said that it is the motto of the Marines to leave no man behind and it makes their job easier knowing that there were men like us to help them complete this task. He was very grateful for our help and the strings that we were pulling in order to get this mission done in the most expeditious manner possible. He then said -" Major Zarnik - these are MY MARINES and I am giving them to you. Please take great care of them as I know you will". I responded with telling him that they are my highest priority and that although this was one of the saddest days of my life, we are all up for the challenge and will go above and beyond to take care of your Marines - "Semper Fi Sir" A smile came on his face and he responded with a loud and thunderous, "Ooo Rah". He then asked me to please pass along to the families that these men were extremely brave and had made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and that we appreciate and empathize with what they are going through at this time of their grievance. With that, he departed the jet and we were on our way to England.

I had a lot of time to think about the men that I had the privilege to carry. I had a chance to read the manifest on each and every one of them. I read about their religious preferences, their marital status, the injuries that were their cause of death. All of them were under age 27 with most in the 18-24 range. Most of them had wives and children. They had all been killed by an " IED" which I can only deduce as an incendiary explosive devices like rocket propelled grenades. Mostly fatal head injuries and injuries to the chest area. I could not even imagine the bravery that they must have displayed and the agony suffered in this God Forsaken War. My respect and admiration for these men and what they are doing to help others in a foreign land is beyond calculation. I know that they are all with God now and in a better place.

The stop in Mildenhal was uneventful and then we pressed on to Dover where we would meet the receiving Marine Corps honor guard. When we arrived, we applied the same procedures in reverse. The head of each casket was to come out first. This was a sign of respect rather than defeat. As the honor guard carried each and every American flag covered casket off of the jet, they delivered them to awaiting families with military hearses. I was extremely impressed with how diligent the Honor Guard had performed the seemingly endless task of delivering each of the caskets to the families without fail and with precision. There was not a dry eye on our crew or in the crowd. The Chaplain then said a prayer followed by a speech from Lt. Col. Klaus of the second Battalion. In his speech, he also reiterated similar condolences to the families as the Colonel from First Battalion back in Kuwait.

I then went out to speak with the families as I felt it was my duty to help console them in this difficult time. Although I would probably be one of the last military contacts that they would have for a while - the military tends to take care of it's own. I wanted to make sure that they did not feel abandoned and more than that appreciated for their ultimate sacrifice. It was the most difficult thing that I have ever done in my life. I listened to the stories of each and every one that I had come in contact with and they all displayed a sense of pride during an obviously difficult time. The Marine Corps had obviously prepared their families well for this potential outcome.

So, why do I write this story to you all? I just wanted to put a little personal attention to the numbers that you hear about and see in the media. It is almost like we are desensitized by all of the "numbers" of our fallen comrades coming out of Iraq. I heard one commentator say that "it is just a number". Are you kidding me? These are our American Soldiers not numbers! It is truly a sad situation that I hope will end soon. Please hug and embrace your loved ones a little closer and know that there are men out there that are defending you and trying to make this a better world. Please pray for their families and when you hear the latest statistic's and numbers of our soldiers killed in combat, please remember this story. It is the only way that I know to more personalize these figures and have them truly mean something to us all.

Thanks for all of your support for me and my family as I take on this new role in completing my Air Force Career and supporting our country. I greatly appreciate all of your comments, gestures and prayers.

May God Bless America, us all, and especially the United States Marine Corps.

Semper Fi

Z



Ellie

[thedrifter]

U.S. Marines with K-9s Search for Weapons
by Lance Cpl. Miguel A. Carrasco Jr.
Marine Corps News
November 19, 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. Marine dog handlers and their K-9s searched through buildings in Fallujah for weapon caches and explosive ordinances Nov. 14.

After houses are cleared of insurgents, the Marines, along with the K-9 unit, conduct a thorough search of each building for any weapons and explosive materials.

At the request of the Interim Iraqi Government, the Marines of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, have fought their way through the city in support of Operation Phantom Fury.

"First we make sure the area is safe for the dogs to work in," said Cpl. Bruce L. St. John, a military working dog handler with 3/5. "The dogs are used where suspicious materials are likely to be found."

The dogs, used by Marine dog handlers, are trained at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas. They are able to sniff out C-4, smokeless powder, water gel, dynamite, TNT, detonator cord, time fuse, sodium chloride and potassium chloride. Once their training is complete, they are transferred to different branches of the military for service.




During one search, the dogs were able to pick up the scent of a 20 mm round and an assault rifle through the steel walls of two different safes.

"The dogs have been big assets to the Marine Corps. The insurgents try to hide the weapons but the dogs are trained to find it no matter where it is," said Sgt. Robert C. Barham, a military working dog handler with 3/5.

The dogs were also used to secure a notorious bridge located in the heart of the city so it could be reopened. Two U.S. civilian workers were hung from the bridge March 31, it was a symbolic push in the fight against the insurgents.

The dogs and their handlers were some of the first to step across the bridge, which spans the width of the Euphrates River, in order to detect any possible improvised explosive devices.

The dogs are meant to make the searches a lot quicker and easier on the Marines. In many cases the dogs are able to get into places that the Marines cannot reach.

"The dogs will be able to help find IED and other explosives before it can injure any of the Marines," said Barham.

These well-trained dogs listen to the commands of their handlers and are trained to sit down when they pick up the scent of explosives or any weapons. There are times when there isn't anything for the dogs to find so the handlers try not to let the dogs go empty handed.

"Sometimes we have to keep them on their toes so we purposely let them find ammunition, it also makes the dogs feel good," said Barham, 25, a native of Jackson, Miss.

Although the dogs do not get paid for the job that they do, they are rewarded when they do something good.

"The dogs don't work for any money but when they make the dog handlers happy they get to play with a rubber ball that they enjoy," said St. John, 20, a native of West Palm, Fla.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

The few & the proud take Fallujah
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New York Daily News
Nov. 20, 2004

Swell work in Fallujah there, Marines - a brilliantly gung-ho job of clearing that hellhole, block by block, house by house, taking back a town that was the very nerve center of the professional terrorists who had firmly controlled it for months. While, thank God, suffering not nearly so many casualties as almost everybody was expecting. You leathernecks sure did this one right.

While Lt. Gen. John Sattler's remark that the neatly concluded Battle of Fallujah has "broken the back of the insurgency" constitutes a somewhat rosier assessment of things than some other commanders care to make, we celebrate the general's point. As long hoped, taking back the city may indeed prove to be one of the turning points in the fight for Iraq's future.

No, it's hardly the case that there will nevermore be random terrorist strikes as opportunities arise. The goons are not out of the murder business as Provisional Iraq moves on toward historic January elections. Still, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his bloodthirsty bunch have been run out of their principal sanctuary, forced to leave infrastructural organization - and, happily, tons of firepower - behind them. They were definitely the ones who came up losers here. And they sure know it.

Oh, they'll find someplace or another to settle, briefly, and then somewhere else, briefly. But they're displaced persons, on the run, their capabilities diminished, and a lot of them are already getting themselves rounded up elsewhere anyway. By anybody's count, there are a lot fewer mugs on the street now than there were a couple of weeks ago, their beheading days done. That's a pretty fair piece of backbreaking.

Are there more bad guys scuttling around out there someplace? You bet. Is Iraq still restive? Plenty. But the Battle of Fallujah measurably gave the insurgents something to think about, as the interim government continues to make it very severely plain that the elections are not off the table - and as the United States Marines continue to make it equally clear that they don't get outfought.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

November 18, 2004

Arab media replays Marine shooting; ignores British woman’s murder

By Sam F. Ghattas
Associated Press


BEIRUT, Lebanon — The chilling video of a Marine shooting and killing a wounded and apparently unarmed man in a mosque in Iraq dominated the Arab world’s media Wednesday, overshadowing the slaying of a British aid worker who had been kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents.
The U.S. military said it was expanding its investigation of the Marine shooting in Fallujah to look into whether other wounded men in the mosque were also shot and killed. The probe will try to determine whether the Marine acted in self-defense.

The shooting was played and replayed in Arab media, debated and portrayed as “evidence” of what many Arabs believe: that the United States is destroying Iraq and Iraqis.

Frames of the Fallujah shooting appeared on many newspaper front pages Wednesday and Arab satellite stations repeatedly aired the footage taken by an American television crew.

Al-Jazeera was among the stations airing the Marine shooting. The station said Tuesday it also had received a videotape showing a blindfolded woman believed to be Margaret Hassan being shot in the head at close range, but had chosen not to broadcast it.

“We don’t show acts of killing,” Jihad Ballout, Al-Jazeera spokesman, said of the decision not to show the slaying of the longtime director of CARE in Iraq. “We’ve never done it before, outside war.”

Adnan Abdul-Rahman, a 34-year-old Syrian government employee, was one of those loosely linking the two killings and placing blame for both at the feet of the United States. He said Hassan’s death was “a normal response to the crimes which the Americans are committing in Iraq.”

“Violence breeds violence,” he said.

Some Arabs portrayed the shooting by the Marine as a war crime committed by trigger-happy Americans, and the video as revealing the true face of the U.S. invasion. Others saw it as another debacle in the Iraq war that hurts America’s image and efforts to restore stability in Iraq.

One Lebanese newspaper, As-Safir, called the shooting a “cold-blooded” killing. A Saudi pan-Arab daily, Asharq al-Awsat, warned of “another Abu Ghraib,” a reference to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some of their American jailers.

Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who is an expert on Arab media, noted that at one point an anchor on Al-Jazeera “was almost having a heart attack, he was so angry,” about the video showing the shooting by the Marine.

“He said, “Where are the Arabs? Where are the Arab states, why is nobody complaining about this?” Cole noted, speaking on the Public Broadcasting Service.

The pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat cited both killings as images of what is happening in Iraq now, Cole noted, calling it unfair for the Marine, whose case remains under investigation, to be compared to those who killed Hassan.

Amman car rental clerk Youssef al-Atoum was so disgusted by the pictures of the Marine shooting that “I switched off the TV.”

“The Americans are criminals, they don’t distinguish between a mosque and their places of battle, they want to exterminate Arabs and erase Iraq and its people from the map,” the 29-year-old said.

Jordanian businessman Isa Samawi, 42, said: “Exterminating the Americans is the way to combat international terrorism.”

Both declined to comment on Hassan, saying they had neither seen nor heard news of the killing of the 59-year-old aid worker who had been an opponent of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. She was abducted in Baghdad on Oct. 19 on her way to work, the most prominent of more than 170 foreigners kidnapped in Iraq this year.

A Lebanese Shiite Muslim cleric, Sheik Afif Nabulsi, said both the killing in the mosque and the shooting of Hassan were “barbaric acts that cannot be condoned.”


Associated Press reporters Jamal Halaby in Jordan, Diana Elias in Kuwait and Albert Aji in Syria contributed to this report.



Ellie

[thedrifter]

'Million Thanks' Teenager Gets Whirlwind Washington Tour
By Terri Lukach
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19, 2004 -- The Tomb of the Unknowns sits atop a rise overlooking Arlington National Cemetery and the city of Washington. Within the white marble monument lie the unknown remains of soldiers from World War I, World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts.


The peaceful beauty of the site is stunning, its silence broken only by the tap of heels coming together as the sentry on duty begins and ends his 21-step march, and the sound of birds crying overhead as if in formal salute to the valor of the fallen.

It was to this place that 15-year-old Shauna Fleming, who for the last six months has collected more than a million letters of thanks for U.S. troops serving in America's latest war, the global war on terror, came to lay a wreath with her parents, Mike and Robin, and her brother, Ryan.

Shauna Fleming founded "A Million Thanks," a program to collect one million letters of gratitude and support from Americans all across the country and distribute them to servicemembers at home and abroad.

The program began with a challenge from Shauna's father, a marketing executive from Orange, Calif., to use the opportunity afforded by her high school community service project to do something special for the troops. The teenager's father started an annual campaign, "Valentines for the Troops," two years ago. Shauna decided to collect thank-you letters -- as many as she could. "Why not shoot for a million?" her dad asked – and she did.

In late October, with a handmade card from a high school student in St. Charles, Mo., Shauna reached her one-million-letter goal. On Nov. 17, she presented that card to President Bush in the Oval Office.

And today, Shauna wrapped up her visit with a stop at the Pentagon for the official launch of the Defense Department's "America Supports You" program at a Pentagon news conference. She was the first person to log on to the program's new Web site. After the news conference, Shauna and her family visited with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who thanked her for all she has done for America's fighting forces.

While visiting the president and other senior officials and being involved in high- level DoD activities were high points of her trip, Shauna and her family enjoyed other military and military-related events and places in Washington.

On Nov. 17, they also visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where U.S. military members wounded in combat come to heal and recuperate.

Walter Reed's program of "consolidated treatment" assembles the very best physicians and surgeons in one location. It also keeps soldiers in the company of other soldiers, a policy that fosters positive and unconditional support and strengthens servicemembers to return either to their homes and communities or back to active duty. "This helps the healing process and keeps them from withdrawing inside," said Army Sgt. 1st Class Dennis Rayburn, himself a former patient at Walter Reed.

It certainly seems to work. At Mologne House, a beautifully appointed home primarily for orthopedic patients, Shauna spoke with an upbeat Pakistani American who fought with the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad. Walter Reed would not disclose the soldier's name.

He had been in Iraq for six months when he lost a leg in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on his unit. He was evacuated first to Germany and then to Walter Reed, where President Bush granted him U.S. citizenship when he visited the hospital Sept. 23.

At Fisher House, a cozy homelike setting whose kitchen smells a lot like Grandma's house, Shauna visited with another soldier, a medic with the Army's Special Forces in Afghanistan. Although badly wounded by an anti-tank mine, he said, "All I really want is to be healed so I can return to my unit. They told me as long as I can do my job, I can get back to my team" – an eight- to 10-man squad in which he was the only medic.

Families are allowed to stay At both Mologne House and Fisher House on the Walter Reed's grounds to visit and support their loved ones while they recover.

Before visiting the hospital, Shauna and her family made a stop at the Washington headquarters of the United Service Organizations, whose Operation USO Care Package program was displayed prominently at Walter Reed. For $25, Americans can donate a "care package" to military members deployed overseas.

The package includes toiletries and other personal items, a 100-minute telephone calling card from AT&T, a disposable camera and other goodies not available in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

Everywhere they went, the Flemings dragged behind them a wheeled suitcase chock full of cards and letters of thanks to the troops. Shauna delivered some of them to every servicemember she met, telling each how much America appreciates their service and sacrifice.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Nov2004/n11192004_2004111912.html


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marines Assist Iraqis Recover Remains of Fallujah Conflict
by Sgt. Luis R. Agostini
Marine Corps News
November 19, 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq - As U.S. Marines fired their final shots in Fallujah, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment civil affairs team is helping local Iraqis begin the body recovery process in the war-torn city.

"The dead bodies in Fallujah pose religious, health and psychological concerns for everyone in the city," said Capt. Alex Hennegar, 3/5 civil affairs team leader.

With estimates of more than 1,000 insurgents killed during Operation Phantom Fury, the gruesome task of recovering the decomposing bodies throughout Fallujah following the invasion was taken by willing Fallujah natives. According to Islamic faith, Muslims must recover and bury their fellow Muslims.

Infantry companies that fought in Fallujah during Operation Phantom Fury provided grid coordinates of areas where they confirmed enemy kills. Iraqi security forces, operating in areas of Fallujah previously cleared by Marines, have also provided information on locations of dead bodies.

The Iraqi volunteers brought three trucks - two for themselves, one for the recovered bodies.




Marines escorted the 24 Iraqi workers to the former battlegrounds. They also provided them with gloves, masks, hand sanitizers, water, bodybags, paint and shovels to properly bodies had been hastily buried gathered bodies. The Iraqis documented the body recovery process with a digital camera of their own.


The Iraqi workers refused any form of monetary payment or compensation.

"They felt that it was a moral duty as faithful Muslims to carry out the task,"

During the recovery process, the Iraqi workers spotted grenades and AK-47s near the bodies of the dead insurgents. The workers unearthed several weapons used by insurgents before they were killed.

"They alerted us and didn't go anywhere near the weapons," said Hennegar.

The Marine Corps possesses the logistical capability to execute the mission, but allowing the Iraqis to follow through with their religious customs is very important, said Hennegar.

"We are grateful that they've allowed us to escort them while they perform their duties.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

In Falluja, Young Marines Saw the Savagery of an Urban War
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By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times

FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 18 - Eight days after the Americans entered the city on foot, a pair of Marines wound their way up the darkened innards of a minaret, shot through with holes by an American tank.

As the Marines inched their way along, a burst of gunfire rang down, fired by an insurgent hiding in the top of the tower. The bullets hit the first Marine in the face, his blood spattering the Marine behind him. Lance Cpl. William Miller, age 22, lay in silence half way up, mortally wounded.

"Miller!" the Marines called from below. "Miller!"

With that, the Marines' near-mystical commandment against leaving a comrade behind seized the group. One after another, the young Marines dashed into the minaret, into darkness and into gunfire, and wound their way up the stairs.

After four attempts, Corporal Miller's lifeless body emerged from the tower, his comrades choking and covered with dust, dodging volleys of machine gun fire as they carried him back to their base. With more insurgents closing in to join the battle, the Marines ran through volleys of machine-gun fire back to their base. "I was trying to be careful, but I was trying to get him out, you know what I'm saying?" Lance Cpl. Michael Gogin, 19, said afterward.

So went eight days of combat for this Iraqi city, the most sustained period of street-to-street fighting that Americans have encountered since the Vietnam War. The proximity gave the fighting a hellish intensity, with soldiers often close enough to look their enemies in the eyes.

For a correspondent who has covered a half dozen armed conflicts, including the war in Iraq since its opening in March 2003, the fighting seen while traveling with a frontline unit in Falluja was a qualitatively different experience, a leap into a different kind of battle.

From the first rockets vaulting out of the city as the Marines moved in, the noise and feel of the battle seemed altogether extraordinary; at other times, hardly real at all. This intimacy of combat, this plunge into urban warfare, was new to this generation of American soldiers, but it is a kind of fighting that they will probably see again: a grinding struggle to root out guerrillas entrenched in a neighborhood, on streets marked in a language few American soldiers could comprehend.

The price for the Americans so far: 51 dead and 425 wounded, a number that may yet increase but that already exceeds that from any battle in the Iraq war.

Marines in Harm's Way

The 150 Marines with whom I traveled, Bravo Company of the First Battalion, Eighth Regiment, had it as tough as any unit in the fight. They moved through the city almost entirely on foot, into the heart of the resistance, rarely protected by tanks or troop carriers, working their way through Falluja's narrow streets with 75-pound packs on their backs.

In eight days of fighting, Bravo Company took 36 casualties, including 6 dead, meaning that the unit's men had about a one in four chance of being either wounded or killed in little more than a week.

The sounds, sights and feel of the battle were as old as war itself, and as new as the Pentagon's latest weapons systems. The eerie pop from the cannon of the AC-130 gunship, prowling above the city, firing at guerrillas who were often only steps away from Americans on the ground. The weird buzz of the Dragon Eye pilotless airplane, hovering over the battlefield as its video cameras beamed real-time images back to the base.

The glow of the insurgents' flares, throwing daylight over a landscape to help them spot their targets: us.

The nervous shove of a Marine scrambling for space along a brick wall as tracer rounds ricocheted above.

The silence between the ping of the shell leaving its mortar tube and the explosion when it strikes.

The screams of the Marines when one of their comrades, Cpl. Jake Knospler, lost part of his jaw to a hand grenade.

"No, no, no!" the Marines shouted as they dragged Corporal Knospler from the darkened house where the bomb went off. It was 2 a.m., the sky dark without a moon. "No, no, no!"

Nothing in the combat I saw even remotely resembled the scenes regularly flashed across movie screens, but often seemed no more real.

Mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades began raining down on Bravo Company the moment its men began piling out of their troop carries just outside of Falluja. The shells looked like Fourth of July rockets, sailing over the ridge ahead as if fired by children, exploding in a whoosh of sparks.

Whole buildings, minarets and human beings were vaporized in barrages of exploding shells. A man dressed in a white dishdasha crawled across a desolate field, reaching behind a gnarled plant to hide, when he collapsed before a burst of fire from an American tank.

Sometimes the casualties came in volleys, like bursts of machine-gun fire. On the first morning of battle, during a ferocious struggle for the Muhammadia Mosque, about 45 Marines with Bravo Company's Third Platoon dashed across 40th Street, right into interlocking streams of fire. By the time the platoon made it to the other side, five men lay bleeding in the street.

The Marines rushed out to get them, as they would days later in the minaret, but it was too late for Sgt. Lonny D. Wells, who bled to death on the side of the road. One of the men who braved gunfire to pull in Sergeant Wells was Cpl. Nathan R. Anderson, who died three days later in an ambush.

Sergeant Wells's death dealt the Third Platoon a heavy blow; as a leader of one of its squads, he had written letters to the parents of its younger members, assuring them he would look over them during the tour in Iraq.

"He loved playing cards," Cpl. Gentian Marku recalled. "He knew all the probabilities."

More than once, death crept up and snatched a member of Bravo Company and quietly slipped away. Cpl. Nick Ziolkowski, nicknamed Ski, was a Bravo Company sniper. For hours at a stretch, Corporal Ziolkowski would sit on a rooftop, looking through the scope on his bolt-action M-40 rifle, waiting for guerrillas to step into his sights. The scope was big and wide, and Corporal Ziolkowski often took off his helmet to get a better look.

Tall, good-looking and gregarious, Corporal Ziolkowski was one of Bravo Company's most popular Marines. Unlike most snipers, who learned to shoot growing up in the countryside, Corporal Ziolkowski grew up in the city, near Baltimore, and was never familiar with guns until he joined the Marines. Though Baltimore boasts no beach front, Corporal Ziolkowski's passion was surfing; at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Bravo Company's base, he often would organize his entire day around the tides.

"All I need now is a beach with some waves," Corporal Ziolkowski said, during a break from his sniper duties at Falluja's Grand Mosque, where he killed three men in a single day.

During that same break, Corporal Ziolkowski foretold his own death. The snipers, he said, were now among the most hunted of American soldiers.

During the first battle for Falluja, in April, Corporal Ziolkowski said, American snipers had been especially lethal, and intelligence officers had warned him that this time, the snipers would be targets.

"They are trying to take us out," Corporal Ziolkowski said.

The bullet knocked Corporal Ziolkowski backward and onto his back. He had been sitting on a rooftop on the outskirts of the Shuhada neighborhood, an area controlled by insurgents, peering through his wide scope. He had taken his helmet off to get a better view. The bullet hit him in the head.

Young Men Acting Old

For all the death about the place, one inescapable impression left by the Marines was their youth. Everyone knows that soldiers are young; it is another thing to see men barely out of adolescence, many of whom were still in high school when this war began, shoot people dead.

The Marines of Bravo Company often fought over the packets of M&M's that came with their rations. Sitting in their barracks, they sang along with the Garth Brooks paean to chewing tobacco, "Copenhagen," named for the brand they bought almost to a man:

Copenhagen, what a wad of flavor

Copenhagen, you can see it in my smile

Copenhagen, hey do yourself a favor, dip

Copenhagen, it drives the cowgirls wild

One of Bravo Company's more youthful members was Cpl. Romulo Jimenez II, age 21 from Bellington, W.Va., who spent much of his time showing off his tattoos - he had flames climbing up one of his arms - and talking about his 1992 Ford Mustang. Corporal Jimenez was a popular member of Bravo Company's Second Platoon, not least because he introduced his sister to a fellow Marine, Lance Cpl. Sean Evans, and the couple married.

In the days before the battle started, Corporal Jimenez called his sister, Katherine, to ask that she fix up the interior of his Mustang before he got home.

"Make it look real nice," he told her.

On Wednesday, Nov. 10, at around 2 p.m., Corporal Jimenez was shot in the neck by a sniper as he advanced with his platoon through the northern end of Falluja, just near the green-domed Muhammadia Mosque. He died instantly.

Despite their youth, the Marines seemed to tower over their peers outside the military in maturity and guts. Many of Bravo Company's best Marines, its most proficient killers, were 19 and 20 years old; some directed their comrades in maneuvers and assaults. Bravo Company's three lieutenants, each responsible for the lives of about 50 men, were 23 and 24 years old.

continued.......

[thedrifter]

They are a strangely anonymous bunch. The men who fight America's wars seem invariably to come from little towns and medium-size cities far away from the nation's arteries along the coast. Line up a...

[thedrifter]

Postcards From Iraq
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By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The New York Times
Published: November 21, 2004

Of all the images I saw on a short visit to Iraq last week, two stand out in my mind. One was a display that the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, in the Sunni Triangle, prepared for the visiting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers. It was a table covered with defused roadside bombs made from cellphones wired to explosives. You just call the phone's number when a U.S. vehicle goes by and the whole thing explodes. The table was full of every color and variety of cellphone-bomb you could imagine. I thought to myself that if there is a duty-free electronics store at the gates of hell, this is what the display counter looks like.

The other scene was a briefing by Lt. Gen. John Sattler, the Marine commander in Falluja. General Sattler was explaining how well the Marines, Army, Air Force and Navy Seabees had worked together in Falluja as a combined task force. As General Sattler was speaking, I looked around at the assembled soldiers in the room. It was a Noah's Ark of Americans: African-Americans and whites, Hispanic Americans and Asians, and men and women I am sure of every faith. The fact that we can take for granted the trust among so many different ethnic groups, united by the idea of America - and that the biggest rivalry between our Army and Navy is a football game - is the miracle of America. That miracle, and its importance, hits you in the face in Iraq when someone tells you that the "new" Iraqi police unit in a village near Falluja is staffed by one Iraqi tribe and the "new" National Guard unit is staffed by another tribe and they are constantly clashing.

What unites these two scenes is the obvious fact, which still bears repeating, that we are trying to plant the seeds of decent, consensual government in some very harsh soil. We are not doing nation building in Iraq. That presumes that there was already a coherent nation there and all that is needed is a little time and security for it to be rebuilt. We are actually doing nation creating. We are trying to host the first attempt in the modern Arab world for the people of an Arab country to, on their own, forge a social contract with one another. Despite all the mistakes made, that is an incredibly noble thing. But for Iraqis to produce such a social contract, such a constitution, requires a minimum of tolerance and respect for majority rights and minority rights - and neither of those is the cultural norm here. They are not in the drinking water.

I have been to this play before, though. Fifteen years ago I wrote a book about the Arab-Israel conflict, including a chapter on the Marines in Beirut in 1982. I called that chapter "Betty Crocker in Dante's Inferno." It was my way of expressing the contrast between the truly pure intentions of those Marines trying to refashion Lebanon into a more decent, democratic polity and the harsh soil that was Lebanon of that day.

Cultures can change, though. But it takes time. And, be advised, it is going to take years to produce a decent outcome in Iraq. But every time I think this can't work, I come across something that suggests, who knows, maybe this time the play will end differently. The headlines last week were all about Falluja. But maybe the most important story in Iraq was the fact that while Falluja was exploding, 106 Iraqi parties and individuals registered to run in the January election. And maybe the second most important story is the relatively quiet way in which Iraqis, and the Arab world, accepted the U.S. invasion of Falluja. The insurgents there had murdered hundreds of Iraqi Muslims in recent months, and, I think, they lost a lot of sympathy from the Arab street. (But if we don't get the economy going on the Iraqi street, what the rest of the Arab world thinks will be of no help.)

Readers regularly ask me when I will throw in the towel on Iraq. I will be guided by the U.S. Army and Marine grunts on the ground. They see Iraq close up. Most of those you talk to are so uncynical - so convinced that we are doing good and doing right, even though they too are unsure it will work. When a majority of those grunts tell us that they are no longer willing to risk their lives to go out and fix the sewers in Sadr City or teach democracy at a local school, then you can stick a fork in this one. But so far, we ain't there yet. The troops are still pretty positive.

So let's thank God for what's in our drinking water, hope that maybe some of it washes over Iraq, and pay attention to the grunts. They'll tell us if it's time to go or stay.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Rules of war are nice, but ... <br />
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <br />
what if the other side says, &quot;What Rules?&quot; <br />
<br />
BY KATHLEEN PARKER <br />
ORLANDO (FLA.)...

[thedrifter]

Marine Killed Hours After Son's Birth
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By JOE RUFF
Associated Press Writer

Marine Lance Cpl. Shane Kielion was killed in action in Iraq not knowing that his first child had been born just hours before.

April Kielion, the Marine's widow and high school sweetheart, gave birth to a boy in Omaha on Monday, said Kielion's old high school football coach, Jay Ball.

"She's hanging in there," Ball said. "She's a strong woman. She's got a terrific family and lots of supportive friends."

The baby was named Shane Kielion Jr., said April Kielion's father, Don Armstrong. He said his daughter was "doing as well as to be expected under the pressure."

Shane Kielion, a rifleman in the 1st Marine Division of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed Monday in Al Anbar Province, the military said.

Officials at Camp Pendleton, Calif., where he was stationed, refused to comment on how he was killed. Anbar Province includes Fallujah - which American forces now control after a lengthy offensive - as well as other guerrilla strongholds.

The family is numb, said Ball. "It's time for them to do some healing," Ball said.

Kielion joined the Marines on Dec. 3, 2002, and this was his second tour in Iraq.

Ball said Kielion had come home to visit in August, and bragged about his family.

"He was excited about his baby on the way and he always told me how beautiful his wife was," Ball told KMTV News in Omaha.

He started at quarterback for Omaha South High School in 1997 and 1998. He went to Peru State College for a short time on a football scholarship, but when that didn't work out he returned to Omaha to work and joined the Marines, Ball said.

"He wanted to improve his life for his family," Ball said.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

U.S. Fights Baghdad Militants; GI Killed <br />
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By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer <br />
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BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents battled American troops in the streets of Baghdad on Saturday, killing a U.S....