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| Iraq |
| Ramadi remains Iraq's most dangerous city |
| 2006-05-22 |
| It's another sweltering afternoon in the most dangerous place in Iraq, and the men of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, are looking to pick a fight. First Lieut. Grier Jones splits his 30-odd-man platoon into two squads and sets them loose on the streets of Ramadi. They run block to block, covering one another as they sprint across intersections. Insurgents bob their heads out of homes to catch a glimpse of the Marines--"turkey peeking," as the troops call it--a sign that they are preparing to attack."We come out here every day, and we get shot at," Jones tells an Iraqi woman who speaks American-accented English. "Where are the bad guys?" She falls silent. Outside, a blue sedan peels away. "Watch that car," a Marine yells, sensing a possible ambush. His instincts are right. At the next intersection, the Marines duck into a house. Suddenly a machine gun lets rip, spewing bullets around them. "Where's it coming from?" a Marine yells. Immediately, shooting opens up from a second direction. Jones gets his men to the roof to repel the two-sided attack. "Rocket!" screams a grunt, unleashing an AT4 rocket at one of the insurgent positions. Men reel from the blast's concussion. The shooting from the east stops. But as Jones peers over a cement wall to locate the second ambush position, a 7.62-mm round whizzes by. "Whoa, that went right over my head," he says, smiling. As the Marines on the roof fire at the insurgents, Jones orders a squad to push toward the enemy position. Then the enemy weapons go quiet; the insurgents are apparently withdrawing to conserve their energy. Jones radios back to his commanders. "We saw the enemy do a banana peel back, then peel north." He chuckles. "This is every day in Ramadi." There's no reason to believe that the Americans' battle against Iraqi insurgents is going to get better. With U.S. support for the war sinking, the Bush Administration is eager to show that sufficient progress is being made toward quelling the insurgency to justify a drawdown of the 133,000 troops in Iraq. The U.S. praised the naming of a new Iraqi Cabinet last week, even though it includes some widely mistrusted figures from the previous government. And even as commanders try to turn combat duties over to Iraqi forces and pull U.S. troops back from the front lines, parts of Iraq remain as deadly as ever. At least 18 U.S. troops died last week, raising the total killed since the invasion in March 2003 to 2,456. Nowhere is the fighting more intense than in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and for the moment the seething heart of the Sunni-led insurgency. The city remains a stronghold of insurgents loyal to Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who U.S. intelligence believes is hiding in an area north of the city. In recent weeks, the soldiers and Marines in Ramadi have come under regular assault, forcing commanders last week to order reinforcements to the besieged city. In the past year, the Army's 2/28th Brigade Combat Team, the unit the Marines are attached to, has lost 79 men in Ramadi--yet the brigade's commander, Colonel John Gronski, says, "The level of violence remains about the same." TIME spent a week with Kilo Company, the 120-person unit that goes head to head with the insurgents every day. The goal is to lure al-Qaeda into attacks, which Kilo Company has been doing successfully: in a single week, five men were wounded, three foot patrols were ambushed, and there were unrelenting attacks from small-arms fire and mortars. The experience of the Marines in Ramadi illuminates some of the shortcomings of the U.S. strategy for defeating the insurgency. The commander has only one brigade to secure the town, even though U.S. officers say privately that at least three are needed. Among the troops, frustration is growing: many officers say that the U.S. is too lenient in its dealings with the enemy, allowing too many captured insurgents to go free, and that soldiers can do little more than act as international police. Others claim that superiors are overlooking their reports about conditions on the ground. If the U.S. and its Iraqi allies are making progress in eroding the appeal of the resistance, the men in Ramadi don't see it. Says an American officer: "This s___ ain't going anywhere." From the instant Kilo Company set foot in Ramadi, the Marines knew they were in the middle of an insurgent hotbed. Lance Corporal Jose (Syco) Tasayco was on the unit's earliest patrol outside the wire in March. "The first day was an eye opener. We got contact, that first patrol. It was like, wow, we couldn't believe it, but we got outta there good. Nobody got hit," he says. The Marines are based in the battle-scarred Government Center in the middle of Ramadi, a magnet for al-Qaeda attacks--one of the few ways the Marines can find their enemy. The precarious outpost also protects the nascent local government, which operates out of its confines. Sitting sentry in the center of town, the Marines are a ripe target for insurgent assaults. On April 24, mortars begin crashing down on the compound, and the shuddering impacts force the grunts to take cover in their rooftop bunkers. From an alley in the northeast, an insurgent fires a rocket-propelled grenade that slams a wall along the narrow mouth of a sandbagged gun pit. Shards of hot metal penetrate the opening, hitting Corporal Jonathan Wilson. Blood pours down his neck. "Corpsman up, corpsman up," he cries--asking for a medic to head to the roof. He runs downstairs and collapses into the arms of a sergeant. Meanwhile, shrapnel has shredded the left thumb of Lance Corporal Adam Sardinas. But he keeps his finger on the trigger of a grenade launcher, and it's not until another Marine arrives to relieve him that he finally turns for the slit doorway. "Let me get outta here," he says. "I'm hit pretty bad." But the battle goes on: below the Marines' outpost, al-Qaeda fighters toting AK-47s dart in and out of view. As blood from Sardinas and Wilson pools at his feet, Sergeant William Morrow grips the grenade launcher. A fellow Marine spots an insurgent in the open. "Waste his ass," Tasayco urges as they open fire on the enemy below. Despite heavy losses among the insurgents--112 were killed in one week in April--they have proved resistant to the U.S.'s onslaughts. Intelligence officials increasingly refer to them as a "legitimate local resistance," but it's al-Qaeda that drives them. Long ago, al-Zarqawi's network settled in Ramadi and, in essence, hijacked the homegrown fight. Although Iraqi groups have bucked al-Zarqawi's authority periodically--most notably in last year's referendum and December election, when they opted to vote, forcing him to stand idly by--al-Qaeda maintains its grip. U.S. efforts to woo Iraqi groups were beginning to pay dividends, as the city's tribal and insurgent leaders gave their approval for young Sunnis to join the new police force. Recruitment mostly ran at about 40 a month, though in January, 1,000 showed up to join. But al-Qaeda responded by sending a chest-vest suicide bomber into the queue of applicants, killing about 40 Iraqis, wounding 80, and killing two Americans. When the recruits returned days later, al-Zarqawi followed up with a wave of seven assassinations of tribal sheiks. "That hurt us a lot," says Gronski. Given the ability of al-Zarqawi's men to melt into the city, Kilo Company has few options but to search for the insurgents on block-by-block foot patrols through the worst areas. It's perilous work. On one morning this month, Tasayco and Corporal Nathan Buck take their squad out to commandeer a small shopping complex, which will give cover for the rest of the platoon to push east. On the roof, Buck, his helmet emblazoned with the words DEATH DEALERS in thick letters, warns his Marines to stay alert. When Tasayco sees movement in a nearby window, Buck rises to check it out. An insurgent sniper fires at his head, cracking a round into the lip of the cement wall in front of him. "I should be dead right now," Buck says to Tasayco with a laugh. It's not long before another round flies over their heads, this time from a little farther to the east. The sniper is moving, hunting them. Minutes pass with no more firing. But Tasayco is uneasy. The order comes over the radio to move back to base. "Be careful, we're gonna get hit," a Marine says as the men drop to the pavement. It's only 150 yards back to the Government Center, but every inch is hard won. Lance Corporal Phillip Tussey pauses on the edge of a small alley. With another Marine covering him, he makes a dash to cross the five yards of open ground. He doesn't get more than a couple of steps when a shot rings out. He's cut down mid-stride, hit in the thigh. The men around him open fire. Within seconds, insurgents start shooting from the opposite direction. A Marine tries to drag Tussey by a leg toward a humvee but gets stranded out in the open. Tasayco bolts forward and grabs the wounded man by the arm. Someone else joins him. Still firing, they shove him into the vehicle. Tasayco takes cover and looks for the shooter. "Where the hell is this guy at?" he hollers. No one answers. "C'mon, everybody, let's go. Pick it up. Get the f___ out of here, man," Tasayco shouts. All his men can do is run. So why does Ramadi remain beyond the U.S.'s control? Part of the problem, many officers say, is that the troops' authority to act is constrained by politics. Soldiers cannot lock up suspected insurgents without first getting an arrest warrant and a sworn statement from two witnesses. And those who are convicted often receive jail sentences that are shorter than a grunt's tour of Iraq. "We keep seeing guys we arrested coming back out, and things get worse again," says an intelligence officer. The bigger problem, though, is one that few in the military command want to hear: there aren't enough troops to do the job. "There's a realization, as every military commander knows, that you cannot be strong everywhere," says Gronski of Ramadi. "In the outlying areas, we think in terms of an economy of force where we are willing to accept risk by not placing as many troops." But while Gronski says his fighting strength is "appropriate," other commanders bristle at the limitations. "I can't believe it each time the Secretary of Defense talks about reducing force," says a senior U.S. officer. War planners in Iraq say just getting a handle on Ramadi demands three times as many soldiers as are there now. Several U.S. commanders say they won't ask superiors for more troops or plan large-scale operations because doing so would expose problems in the U.S.'s strategy that no one wants to acknowledge. "It's what I call the Big Lie," a high-ranking U.S. commander told TIME. To be fair, gains are being made in Ramadi with the Iraqi army, the police and the young provincial government. A brigade intelligence officer says that "we are not getting excited because this is a long process--though we are winning. The tide is turning." But for those in the midst of the battle, that can sometimes be hard to see. "No matter what they say about the rest of the country, it ain't like this place," says a battalion officer in the thick of the fight. "It's the worst place in the world." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #23 One of my pet peeves is foreigners providing US "news". Their loyalties do not lie with America. Their press, where they cut their teeth, are much more to the left of the US press. Nor do they even give lip service to the credo of a "disinterested press", but explicitly act as a propagandist for "their" side. |
| Posted by: ed 2006-05-22 19:09 |
| #22 You notice somehting about Ware? He NEVER goes back out with a unit after he has written about them, other than the Fedayeen Saddam and Al Qaeda. I guess Ware is a smart guy after all. He knows he'd get zero breaks in the field with a unit he just portrayed as incompetent, screaming crybabies who were losing the battle for Iraq. They are anything BUT that. And he is anything BUT a reporter. This editorial content passed off as reporting has got to stop. Somone needs to hold Time and Ware accountable for the lies of omission and comission in that article. Tell you one thing, I ever meet him, I'm going to smash him dead in the mouth with my walking stick. It'll be worth it to take a charlatain like him to task in the only way he can apparently understand things. |
| Posted by: Oldspook 2006-05-22 16:49 |
| #21 Oldspook nailed it. As I said this before is agitprop. Some facts are there if you dig rally hard. So this is the "reality" someone less discriminating gets while they read this in their Dr Office waiting room. Crap with little basis in reality. "Blame Bush." "the war is going badly." These people ought to be held to account for their sedition and treason. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-05-22 16:26 |
| #20 I must be getting old. I did the same thing as IntrinsicPilot! Graph 3! Mmmm. I hate the smell of b277sh5t in the morning. |
| Posted by: OregonGuy 2006-05-22 16:16 |
| #19 We're killing them at a rate of 10:1 or 20:1, and things aren't getting better? BS! |
| Posted by: Chuck Simmins 2006-05-22 15:23 |
| #18 I stopped reading as soon as I got to paragraph 3. It started "There's no reason to believe that the Americans' battle against Iraqi insurgents is going to get better." Then I checked the link and it made sense. Another anti-American opinion piece from Time. Trying to pass this propoganda as news again. Their game is up tho. They only have a small circle of kooks that believe anything they write. |
| Posted by: Intrinsicpilot 2006-05-22 15:08 |
| #17 In a way this is a 'set-up' piece for the one to come on Haditha as soon as the investigation report is released (assuming that report is even remotely similar to what Murtha has been saying.) |
| Posted by: glenmore 2006-05-22 12:45 |
| #16 theres some spin here (nothing showing things will get better, contrasted with the final paragraph) but the reporter is definitely not hiding in the Green Zone, and seems to be hearing what the Marines are telling him, both the frustration with not enough troops, AND with the constraining ROE. Sounds to me like Centcom has made the strategic decision that the Baghdad must be made better at all costs, and that all they can do in Anbar, given the resources available, is hold, and keept things from getting much worse. Things will get better in Anbar when A. The new govt peels part of the insurgency away B. There are more trained IRaqi troops and police available and C. The situation in Baghdad quiets down enough to release more US forces for Anbar. Given that the insurgency in Ramadi is heavily AQish, i think the hope is more on B and C than on A. Good luck to these Marines. Whether they "cry" corpsman, or "yell" corpsman, these guys are brave, and doing a very hard job with not enough resources to do it. I salute them. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-05-22 12:43 |
| #15 I do love a good fisking; well written, Oldspook. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-05-22 12:20 |
| #14 I just checked the author. Micheal Ware. Figures that rat bastard would be the turd that would churn out a 4 page spin-o-rama piece of shit like this. And that Time would buy it. Remember folks, this is they guy who reported favorably on the AlQaueda terrorists - by teaming up with them and going on ops with them for MONTHS. He has repeatedly taken up the bad guys side in this, and now this article is just aotner continuation of the same. Not to mention his personal politics flavor everything he does - he is a lefty, and hates the US and Bush. He is a mouthpiece for murderers. Ware is a grade A asshole - the Marines should have done the world a favor and shoved him out the friken window into the middle of the ambush. |
| Posted by: Oldspook 2006-05-22 12:19 |
| #13 Awesome knockout series of uppercuts and haymakers, OS. *standing ovation* |
| Posted by: random styling 2006-05-22 12:15 |
| #12 This thing is so packed with spin that you could use it to generate a tornado. Never reports on success, none on the improvments, none of the battlefield kills of the bad guys, etc. Just a contonuous and relentless negative spin on things right out of the liberal Vietnam press playbook. Repeatedly portrays the Marines as passive, waiting on the enemy to do things to them, then helpless and ineffective in the response. Just word choice alone betrays the HUGE amount of author's bias in this article. "Rocket!" screams a grunt. Screams? Wounded scream. Victims scream. Soldiers and Marines YELL. There's no reason to believe that the Americans' battle against Iraqi insurgents is going to get better. Oh really? Seems a LOT of better informed people think so, including the people fighting the battle, as long as you dont spin the story and selectively quote them. In other words: PROVE there is NO reason... The highlighted above sentence is pure unsupported OPINION -- its editorializing, not reporting at all. It had no place in the article without some independently verifieable facts to support it. As an addendum - this article was written at the HEIGHT of an attempt by Al Qaeda to disrupt the formation of the first freeley elected constitutional government of Iraq - as of now (May), the attacks have tapered off dramatically, as has the casualty rate - showing that the author of this article was flat out LYING. Anyone want to bet Time never prints a retraction or correction? At least 18 U.S. troops died last week, raising the total killed since the invasion in March 2003 to 2,456. Again the numbers game. One thing - not all 18 casualties were from Ramadi like the biased wuthor implies. Nor were all incurred while on combat patrol and abushes. It is IEDs that do a lot of that. And the other error is that number is not the total "killed" - its total fatalities - including heart attacks, suicides, car accidents, and even the Marines who drown when they flipped their tank off a bridge into a canal (which has happpened several times). So another disingenuous statement and an attempt to spin. The goal is to lure al-Qaeda into attacks, which Kilo Company has been doing successfully: in a single week, five men were wounded, three foot patrols were ambushed, and there were unrelenting attacks from small-arms fire and mortars. Notice that the ONLY thing reported were US casualties? Nothign at all about how many enemy were killed captured and wounded in these actions, nothing about the effects on the neighborhoods (as seen elsewhere in Iraq, when engaged, the Jihadi's tend to die a LOT and the neghborhoods turn and support the US and ISF). So there you go - more spin - only US casualties mentioned, none at all for the enemy, and no reported effects of the combat other than casualties. Goes with the reporter's mem of "we are marching our troops into ambush and gettign them killed for nothing - its Vietnam" - severe bias well illustrated. Others claim that superiors are overlooking their reports about conditions on the ground. Followed by ... Sitting sentry in the center of town, the Marines are a ripe target for insurgent assaults. On April 24, mortars begin crashing down on the compound, and the shuddering impacts force the grunts to take cover in their rooftop bunkers Yep - Officers that arent listening, brass that is oblivious, and our guys are just sitting ducks. The following was particularly bad - not the use of "cries" - I've NEVER heard a marine CRY for the Doc. "Corpsman up, corpsman up," he cries--asking for a medic to head to the roof. He runs downstairs and collapses into the arms of a sergeant. Ah yes -the poor Marine as a victim, swooning like Scarlett O'Hara into his Sgt's arms, after crying. Christ on a crutch - the reporter should report it as it is, not some damned pussified report. Marines *yell* "CORPSMAN UP". They don't *cry* it. And "collapsing in the arms of" is bogus as well, he probably went into a shoulder carry by the SGT to get him to the Doc. This reported is a biased asshole - and a disgrace to the men he is reporting about. Get the f___ out of here, man," Tasayco shouts. All his men can do is run. And there we go with another obviously one-sided portrayal. If you read that, our marines cannot fight this uber enemy, they can do nothing but RUN AWAY. . Intelligence officials increasingly refer to them as a "legitimate local resistance," The Marines are based in the battle-scarred Government Center in the middle of Ramadi, a magnet for al-Qaeda attacks--one of the few ways the Marines can find their enemy. OK, now the build up the enemy, by obliquely referencing some unnamed anonymous source, and then stating that we CANNOT find the enemy except by waiting for them to come out and hit us. BULLSHIT. But straight out of the Press playbook in vietnam, and more spin from Time. "It's what I call the Big Lie," a high-ranking U.S. commander told TIME. OK now he's finally got the last of the old Vietnam horseshit out: the command is lying to the troops and the middle commanders are lying to the Command - the "Big Lie" has now come into play. Its pretty obvious that if this guy cant find a Vietnam+Tet he will use his words to MAKE one - and fool the American people into giving up so the reporter's side will win - that's the Democrats and cut-n-run Kos kids, and unfortunatley, the terrorists win too. Thats a cost the reporter and his ilk are willing to accept - to them, their politics are more important than national survival and freedom. He slants his article, words and draws such a desolate one-sided picture that you'd think that all was lost over there. Good thing one-sided spinning half-truth biased assholes like the moron who wrote that for time no longer have a monopoly on the news - and that the troops in contact can tell their won stories without such slant, spin and bullshit as this guy adds with his omission and his choice of words to load and shade the meaning of EVERYTHING in this article. This wants a news piece - this was pure propaganda aimed at derailing the will to fight by drinaing the support and mis-representing the actinos of our troops in Iraq. Ho Chi Minh would be proud of that author, and of Time Magazine for serviing as a propaganda organ for Al Qaeda and the Islamofascists. |
| Posted by: Oldspook 2006-05-22 12:09 |
| #11 So why doesn't the new Iraqi gov 1) empty the town 2) burn it 3) salt the ground. |
| Posted by: mojo 2006-05-22 11:19 |
| #10 When the newspapers edit for length, they lop off the bottom part, (usualy just filler in the bottom third) it was put there deliberately knowing that many papers/media would exise it without reading it. The propoganda is always in the top of the articles so it will remain behind, the truth is put at the bottom deliberately. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2006-05-22 10:39 |
| #9 It takes until about 99.5% of the article is done until you get this section, "To be fair, gains are being made in Ramadi with the Iraqi army, the police and the young provincial government. A brigade intelligence officer says that "we are not getting excited because this is a long process--though we are winning. The tide is turning." It must have cause Time Warner much pain to write these words. |
| Posted by: mhw 2006-05-22 10:02 |
| #8 "widely mistrusted figures" that would be anything the MSM reports. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2006-05-22 09:46 |
| #7 Good story however a few areas seemed painfully propopanga-ish in the beginning no reason to believe, Bush Administration is eager to show that sufficient progress, even though it includes some widely mistrusted figures, the shortcomings of the U.S. strategy |
| Posted by: Jesing Ebbease3087 2006-05-22 09:01 |
| #6 Agreed, NS. |
| Posted by: lotp 2006-05-22 08:17 |
| #5 This post shows why there is reason to believe we've done it properly in Ramadi. These aren't modern Germans or Japanese we're dealing with, either. So it should come as no surprise that it is taking a while to clean things up and make them modern. The payoff will come down the road when we change the middle east. And if not, we'll be justified in whatever we then have to do. We're trying to change the whole middle east, not conquer it. Drogheda didn't solve England's problems in Ireland. It's unlikely a repetition would work now in the ME. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-05-22 08:09 |
| #4 Yup, and that approach had to be tried. If it fails over the next few years, now that there is an elected Iraqi government (no matter what their struggles about filling the defense and interior minister slots), the clock is ticking on our willingness to support the slow, painful way to change. |
| Posted by: lotp 2006-05-22 07:56 |
| #3 In another war, in another time and place, a city like Ramadi would have been handled much differently - but although Berlin or Dresden treatment would quickly end the Ramadi battle it would seriously set back the efforts to stabilize and unify Iraq, and to modernize and integrate the 'moderate' Muslim world. |
| Posted by: glenmore 2006-05-22 07:53 |
| #2 Time is doing a bit of agitprop here. It's telling the truth but it's also twisting and embelishing it to promote it's own agenda. An agenda that is happy each time a US Soilders is killed and pushing the story to make sure that George Bush and "his war" look bad no matter what. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-05-22 04:18 |
| #1 Since Broadhead6 knows al Anbar, really knows, I'd rather hear what he has to say than rely on Time. I'll agree with one thing in this piece - the Law Enforcement approach does not work, anywhere, and is a dead end - for good people. |
| Posted by: random styling 2006-05-22 01:43 |