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thedrifter
08-26-05, 08:49 PM
Fighting unseen enemy creates psychological pressure on troops
By Tom Lasseter, Knight Ridder Newspapers

HIT, Iraq - The inability of U.S. forces to hold ground in Anbar province in western Iraq, and the cat and mouse chase that ensues, has put the Marines and soldiers there under intense physical and psychological pressure.

The sun raises temperatures to 115 degrees most days, insurgents stage ambushes daily then melt into the civilian population and American troops in Anbar find themselves in a house of mirrors in which they don't speak the language and can't tell friend from foe.

Most Marines and soldiers in Anbar live behind massive concrete barriers, bales of concertina wire and perimeters guarded by sniper towers and tanks.

Despite their overwhelming military might, they must watch every alleyway for snipers and each patch of road for mines or bombs, which can send balls of flame through their vehicles. That happened earlier this month south of Haditha, when an explosion killed 14 Marines in an amphibious assault vehicle.

Officers worry about the enemy while trying to make sure their men don't crack under the pressure.

"I tell the guys not to lose their humanity over here, because it's easy to do," said Marine Capt. James Haunty, 27, of Columbus, Ohio. "I tell them not to turn into Col. Kurtz."

Haunty was referring to a character in Joseph Conrad's novella, "Heart of Darkness." It became the basis for the Vietnam War movie "Apocalypse Now," in which Kurtz has a mental breakdown and murders suspected Vietnamese double agents.

Asked for an example of the kind of pressure that could cause Marines to crack, Haunty talked about the results of a car bomb: "I've picked up pieces of a friend, a Marine. I don't ever want to see that s--- again."

Sitting with his men at a morning meeting in the town of Hit, Marine Maj. Nicholas Visconti said he was up late the night before, unable to sleep in the heat, when a call came from a patrol requesting permission to shoot an Iraqi man. The man, the patrol leader said, was out past curfew and appeared to be talking on a cell phone. Visconti intervened and told the patrol leader not to shoot.

Looking at his young lieutenants and sergeants, Visconti said, "If he's a bad guy, if he's running the (car bomb) factory, I'll put the gun in his mouth and kill him myself ... but first let's get a f------ security check."

With a worried look, Visconti, 35, of Brookfield, Conn., continued: "There's killing bad guys and there's murdering civilians. Let's do the first and not the second. Murderers we're not, OK?"

Chief Warrant Officer Mike Niezgoda nodded in agreement. The next day, a roadside bomb knocked Niezgoda unconscious and broke his arm.

"It's a lot like it was in Vietnam, when the VC's (Viet Cong) would come out and pretend to be your friends," said Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Vidler, 23, of Syracuse, N.Y. "You're fighting an enemy on his home ground and you don't know who's who."

After a recent meeting with local tribal sheiks in Fallujah, Marine Lt. Col. Jim Haldeman walked to the back of the room and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

The gathering was supposed to be an exercise in civic empowerment but quickly degenerated into the Iraqis demanding that they get identification cards designating them as sheiks, which would bar local security forces from arresting them on the streets.

"All of these guys are f------ muj," Haldeman said, using the Arabic term for "holy warriors," mujahedeen, which American troops frequently use to describe the insurgents.

Haldeman took a deep drag from his cigarette.

"I've never been so nervous around a group of men," he said. Haldeman, 50, of West Kingston, R.I., later added that he was sure that a lot of the men in the crowd would have slit his throat if they'd had the opportunity.

Walking down an alley in Hit a few days earlier, stepping over pools of sewage, Lance Cpl. Greg Allen had watched the Marines around him. They were picking through garbage, tugging on wires and kicking boxes, looking for bombs and mines and hoping that if they found one it wouldn't go off.

"They (insurgents) are doing a hell of a job fighting this war. They know they can't take us head on but they can do a lot of damage with bombs," said Allen, 19, of Syracuse, N.Y. "There's no one out here to fight."

The men in Allen's squad stopped at a grocery to buy water and sodas. As they walked away, several of them wondered if they'd just given money to an insurgent sympathizer.

On a recent patrol through southern Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, Sgt. 1st Class Tom Coffey, 37, of Burlington, Vt., looked through the thick bulletproof windows of his Humvee. Children were peeking at him from behind a half-closed garage door.

"I'd love to play soccer with them but we'd have to stage gun trucks and then we'd still end up being a large soft target," he said.

After he went back to the base to pick up some supplies, a call came: A roadside bomb had hit one of his Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

A description of a vehicle possibly driven by the triggerman came over the radio. "The guy's already gone," Coffey said. "We're just p------ in the wind now."

Later, he and his men walked along the Euphrates River, looking for a metal stake that an informant said marked a weapons cache. The sun burned, and palm trees and crops formed a lush green swath along the riverbank.

"There's been reports of a .50 (caliber) sniper rifle out there. Maybe they called this in just to get us out here and take a shot. A .50-cal would go straight through our (body armor) plates," Coffey said, looking at the buildings across the river. "Why do I feel like I'm in a f------ Vietnam movie?"

Ellie

thedrifter
08-27-05, 04:32 AM
August 27, 2005
Top U.S. officer faults leaders on terrorism war stakes
By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. military officer faulted U.S. political leaders on Friday for failing to get across what he portrayed as the huge stakes in Iraq and elsewhere in the U.S.-declared global war on terrorism.

"The most important thing we have ... right now in this kind of conflict is our will and our resolve," Gen. Richard Myers, outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Pentagon, adding the U.S. public does not get the stakes.

"I think it's incumbent on the national leadership, writ large, to help communicate this to the American public," said Myers, reporting on a 10-day, 18-base tour that included Iraq, Afghanistan and bases in Asia and Europe.

"The soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen engaged in this fight are the reason we are winning. Their successes are the untold story of the global war on terrorism, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom," he said.

He contrasted the national mood with World War II, when Americans planted "victory gardens" of vegetables and took part in scrap metal and paper collection drives to boost the military effort.

"And that of course is not the case today. And so I think it's easy for people that don't have individuals indirectly or directly involved in this to forget for a minute that we are a nation at war," he said.

Myers' remarks came two days after a poll showed President George W. Bush's popularity continuing to fall amid growing unease over the Iraq war. The Bush administration's initial justification for the war was that Iraq posed a threat because it had weapons of mass destruction. None was found. The president has now tied staying there to the need to fight terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite lack of evidence linking prewar Iraq and Sept. 11.

Myers described U.S. military morale as "very high" but said troops' main question was "what's going on back home?"

"This military can do anything as long as they have the will and resolve of the American people," said the general.

"Our troops overwhelmingly want reassurance that they will be allowed to finish what we began four years ago," he said.

Myers stopped short of blaming media coverage of bombings and death in Iraq for growing opposition by Americans to the war, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has done.

But he said good things were happening in Iraq and "we can do a better job of explaining that - and we will."

Myers said he was concerned about a "growing gap" between perceptions in the United States of a potential "broken Army" similar to the one that emerged from the Vietnam war.

The Army is expected to meet or top its monthly recruiting goal for August but is likely to miss its annual goal for the fiscal year that ends next month amid one of the most difficult recruiting environments since it became an all-volunteer force, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, said on Thursday.

(additional reporting by Charles Aldinger)

Ellie

thedrifter
08-27-05, 04:40 AM
Posted on Fri, Aug. 26, 2005 <br />
Iraqi forces may need years of preparation <br />
BY TOM LASSETER <br />
Knight Ridder Newspapers <br />
<br />
HIT, Iraq - (KRT) - American Sgt. LaDaunte Strickland, sweat pouring...

thedrifter
08-27-05, 06:05 PM
Saturday August 27, 9:24 PM
Sunni infighting involving al Qaeda erupts in Iraq

RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - Two Sunni Arab tribes, one loyal to al Qaeda and the other to the government, clashed in western Iraq, killing at least 20 people and wounding scores, clerics and hospital officials in the town said on Saturday.

The tribes fought months ago and violent confrontations erupted again on Friday and Saturday near Qaim, where U.S. Marines launched several offensives to root out insurgents from May to July.

Clerics in the town say members of the Karabilah tribe -- allied to al Qaeda -- attacked homes of the rival Albu-Mehel tribe -- many of whom are members of Iraq's new security forces in their province of Anbar.

Witnesses from the town said the tribes were involved in intense firefights and mortar attacks in the streets. The U.S military confirmed that two tribes were fighting but had no information on casualties.

Sheikh Nuri al-Rawi, the preacher of the town's main mosque, was wounded when gunmen shot him twice outside his mosque, his aide said.

Hospital officials say they have received 20 bodies in the past day but that the death toll is likely to be much higher as tribes often perform quick burials and the hospital is in the control of al Qaeda -- leaving Albu-Mehel to send their casualties elsewhere.

The Sunni infighting comes only a few days after two Shi'ite militias battled in several Shi'ite cities including areas of Baghdad.

(Reporting by stringers in Anbar)

Ellie

thedrifter
08-27-05, 06:20 PM
US jets target Zarqawi hideout
28-08-2005
From: The Sunday Telegraph

US jets launched multiple air strikes yesterday against a "terrorist safe house" in Iraq's western Al Anbar province, destroying the building where up to 50 al-Qaeda militants were believed to be hiding.
A statement said the coalition ground forces were alerted by local residents that a number of terrorists had gathered in an abandoned building north-east of the Husaybah, located on the Syrian border about 320km west of Baghdad.

There were reports that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the second most-wanted terrorist on the US list after al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was in the area.

"Iraqi citizens reported that approximately 50 terrorists were in the building at the time of the air strike," the statement said.

The "known terrorist safe house" was destroyed by Marine F-18D Hornets using a combination of precision-guided bombs and rockets, it said. There were no immediate reports of the number of casualties inflicted by the attack.

The strikes come amid reports of plummeting morale among US ground forces.

Their inability to hold ground in Anbar province in western Iraq, and the cat and mouse chase that ensues, has put the Marines and soldiers there under intense physical and psychological pressure.

The sun raises temperatures to more than 40C most days, and insurgents stage ambushes daily then melt into the civilian population.

US troops in Anbar find themselves in a house of mirrors in which they don't speak the language and can't tell friend from a deadly foe.

Most Marines and soldiers in Anbar live behind huge concrete barriers, bales of concertina wire and perimeters guarded by sniper towers and tanks.

Despite their overwhelming military might, they must watch every alley for snipers and each patch of road for mines or bombs, which can send balls of flame through their vehicles.

That happened earlier this month south of Haditha, when an explosion killed 14 Marines in an amphibious assault vehicle.

Officers worry about the enemy while trying to make sure their men don't crack under the pressure.

"I tell the guys not to lose their humanity over here, because it's easy to do," said one Marine captain.

Ellie

thedrifter
08-29-05, 06:07 AM
Marines engaged in war of attrition

By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder Newspapers

FALLUJAH, Iraq — Insurgents in Anbar province, the center of guerrilla resistance in Iraq, have fought the U.S. military to a stalemate.

After repeated major combat offensives in Fallujah and Ramadi, and after losing hundreds of soldiers and Marines in Anbar during the past two years — including 75 since June 1 — many U.S. officers and enlisted men assigned to Anbar have stopped talking about winning a military victory in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland.

Instead, they're trying to hold on to a few population centers and hit smaller towns in quick-strike operations designed to disrupt insurgent activities temporarily.

"I don't think of this in terms of winning," said Col. Stephen Davis, who commands a task force of about 5,000 Marines in an area of some 24,000 square miles in the western portion of Anbar.

His Marines are fighting a war of attrition, he said.

"The frustrating part for the [American] audience, if you will, is they want finality. They want a fight for the town and in the end the guy with the white hat wins," Davis said.

Long insurgency seen

That's unlikely in Anbar, he said. Davis expects the insurgency to last for years, hitting American and Iraqi forces with quick ambushes, bombs and mines. Roadside bombs have hit vehicles Davis was riding in three times this year.

"We understand counterinsurgency ... we paid for these lessons in blood in Vietnam," Davis said. "You'll get killed on a nice day when everything is quiet."

Most of Iraq is far quieter than Anbar. But Anbar is Iraq's largest province and home to the Arab Sunni minority, which dominated the government under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. It's the strategic center of the country and failure to secure it could thwart the Bush administration's hopes of helping to create a functioning Iraqi democracy.

Military officials now frequently compare the fight in Anbar to the Vietnam War, saying that guerrilla fighters, who blend back into the population, are trying to break the will of the American military — rather than defeat it outright — and to erode public support for the war back home.

"If it were just killing people that would win this, it'd be easy," said Marine Maj. Nicholas Visconti, 35, of Brookfield, Conn., who served in southern Iraq in 2003. "But look at Vietnam. We killed millions, and they kept coming. It's a war of attrition. They're not trying to win. It's just like in Vietnam. They won a long, protracted fight that the American public did not have the stomach for. ... Killing people is not the answer; rebuilding the cities is."

Minutes after he spoke, two mortar rounds flew over the building where he's based in Hit. Visconti didn't flinch as the explosions rang out.

Fighters gain strength

During three weeks of reporting along the Euphrates River valley, home to Anbar's main population centers and the core of insurgent activity, military officials offered three primary reasons that guerrilla fighters have held and gained ground: the enemy's growing sophistication, insufficient numbers of U.S. troops and the lack of trained and reliable Iraqi security forces.

They described an enemy who's intelligent and adaptive:

• Military officials in Ramadi said insurgents there had learned the times of their patrol-shift changes. When one group of vehicles comes to relieve another, civilian traffic is pushed to the side of the road to allow the military to pass. Insurgents use this opportunity to drop homemade bombs out their windows or through holes cut in the rear floor.

• The insurgents have figured out the different viewing ranges of the optics systems in U.S. tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Humvees.

"They've mapped it out. They go into the road and try to draw fire to see what our range is and then they make a note of it and start putting IEDs that far out," said Army Maj. Jason Pelletier, 32, of the 28th Infantry Division, referring to improvised explosive devices, the military's term for homemade bombs.

• Faced with the U.S. military's technological might, guerrilla fighters have relied on gathering intelligence and using cheap, effective devices to kill and maim.

Marines raided a home near their base in Hit and found three Sudanese insurgents with a crude map they'd drawn of the U.S. base, including notes detailing when patrols left the gate, whether they were on foot or in vehicles and the numbers of Marines on the patrols.

The three men also had $11,000 in cash in an area in which insurgents pay locals $50 to plant bombs in the road.

The guerrilla fighters in Hit have used small, yellow and pink, Japanese star-shaped alarm clocks — similar to those popular with little girls in the United States — as timers to detonate rocket launchers and mortar systems aimed at Marine positions.

They frequently use sawed-off curtain rods planted 50 or so yards away to calibrate the ranges to nearby bases. One of the two Marine positions in the city receives mortar fire almost daily. Patrols from the other base are hit by frequent roadside bombings.

Instead of referring to the enemy derisively as "terrorists" — as they used to — Marines and soldiers now give the insurgents a measure of respect by calling them "mujahedeen," an Arabic term meaning "holy warrior" that became popular during the Afghan guerrilla campaign against the Soviet Union.

Military commanders in Anbar hope to combat the insurgency through a multipronged strategy of political progress, reconstruction and training Iraqi security forces.

Little political progress

However, there's been less political progress in Anbar than in Iraq's Kurdish north and Shiite Muslim south, the violence there has stymied progress in rebuilding towns destroyed in the fighting and Iraqi forces are still a long way from being able to secure the province.

U.S. officials hope that a strong turnout in national elections in December will turn people away from violence. They expressed similar hopes before January's elections. However, while those elections were a success in many parts of the nation, in Anbar the turnout was in the single digits.

"Some of the Iraqis say they want to vote but they're worried there'll be a bomb at the polling station," Marine Capt. James Haunty, 27, of Columbus, Ohio, said recently. "It's a legitimate fear, but I always tell them, just trust me."

Less than five minutes after Haunty spoke, near the town of Hit, a roadside bomb down the street produced a loud boom followed by a funnel of black smoke.

Many Sunnis in Anbar say they'll vote against the constitution in October, as they've felt excluded from the process of drafting the document.

While fighting has severely damaged many towns and precluded widespread reconstruction efforts, Marines in Fallujah are working to make that city a centerpiece of rebuilding. Fallujah residences sustained some $225 million in damage last November during a U.S. assault aimed at clearing the city of insurgents, according to Marine Lt. Col. Jim Haldeman, who oversees the civil military operations center in Fallujah.

Homeowners have received 20 percent of that amount to rebuild homes, and will get the next 20 percent in the coming weeks, Haldeman said. Families are walking the streets once again and shops have reopened. The sound of hammers is constant, and men line the streets mixing concrete and laying bricks out to dry.

Even so, of the 250,000 population before the fighting, just 150,000 residents have returned. And the insurgency has come back to the area.

Iraqis are still a long way from being able to provide their own security in Anbar. As with much of the province, Fallujah has no functioning police force. Police in Ramadi are confined to two heavily fortified stations, after insurgents destroyed or seriously damaged eight others.

The Iraqi national guard, heralded last year as the answer to local security, was dissolved because of incompetence and insurgent infiltration, as was the guard's predecessor, the civil defense corps.

The new Iraqi army has participated in all the Marines' recent sweeps in Anbar, in a limited way. While the Iraqi soldiers haven't thrown down their weapons and run, as they have in the past, many of them are still unable to operate without close U.S. supervision.

Ellie

thedrifter
08-30-05, 09:41 AM
US says kills Iraq al Qaeda fighters; 47 said dead
By Sebastian Alison1 hour, 34 minutes ago

U.S. warplanes launched strikes in western Iraq on Tuesday which the U.S. military said killed an al Qaeda militant named Abu Islam among other fighters, and which a hospital source said killed at least 47 people.

"Intelligence leads Coalition forces to believe that Abu Islam and several of his associates were killed in the air strike," a U.S. military spokeswoman said in Baghdad.

A hospital official in Qaim, near the Syrian border, told Reuters at least 47 people died in the U.S.-led strikes. Mohammed al-Aani said 35 people died in one house and another 12 in a strike on a second house.

The U.S. military said in a statement it had carried out three separate strikes, initially dropping four bombs on a house in Husayba, near Qaim.

"At approximately 6:20 a.m. (0220 GMT), two bombs were dropped on a second house in Husayba, occupied by Abu Islam, a known terrorist," the statement said. "Islam and several other suspected terrorists were killed in that attack."

A U.S. spokeswoman said some of Abu Islam's associates then drove around six km (four miles) to a house in Karabila.

"Around 8:30 a.m., a strike was conducted on the house in Karabila using two precision-guided bombs. Several terrorists were killed in the strike but exact numbers are not known," the statement said.

Abu Islam is an alias used by several known Islamist militants.

Qaim lies in the Euphrates valley, which U.S. forces say serves as a route into Iraq from Syria for foreign Islamist fighters.

U.S. marines have launched several ground offensives against insurgents in the area in the past four months but residents and local officials say Islamist insurgents remain a significant force in several towns along the river.

The region is home to two Sunni Arab tribes, one loyal to al Qaeda and the other to the Iraqi government. They clashed on Saturday, killing at least 20 people and wounding scores, clerics and hospital officials in the town said.

The tribes had fought months ago, and violent confrontations erupted again on Friday and Saturday near Qaim.

Tuesday's air strikes came as U.S. and Iraqi forces battle a Sunni Arab insurgency against the Shi'ite and Kurdish-led government in Baghdad.

(Additional reporting by Mussab Al-Khairalla)

Ellie