Posted on 07/14/2004 9:08:28 AM PDT by clamper1797
I just got off the phone with my best friend who is contracting in Iraq. he is stationed 7 miles south of Fallujah in a town called Al-Taqdum (sp?). He reports that things are ... interesting. They are taking 5-10 morter strikes a day. He said it was more than at Camp Anaconda. Also he said that the rounds come in during all hours of the day where at Camp Ana they came mostly at night. Apparently the trick that the "insurgents" use is to "ice" the morters so that the round does not drop until the ice melts giving them time to leave the are so that they are not around when the morter goes off. Since he says it's averaging in the high 120 degrees F I'm wondering how they keep the morters cold till they are set.
He reports that the locals ... almost to a person all hate us and don't want us there. What I found particularly disturbing is that they will often see a local who works at the base pacing (measuring) the area. He says they can count on a strike in that area in a few hours after spotting a "pacer" I remember what was done with these guys in Nam and I asked my friend why they didn't deal with these people in the same manner. He said because the press is always around and since they have no proof they can't do anything about it ... would'nt be PC. Especially after the prison incident.
He says that they have lost 12 people in his group in the last three weeks. Several of these were Hadji's. Apparently they caught one and hung from a bridge by his ankles and set fire to him and burned him alive. Another was blown up by a booby trapped truck that had a hand grenade wired to the steering. When he turned it pulled the pin. So he always checks any vehicle is is about to ride in first. The remaining Hadji's have since left and have gone home. Question ... how come the press has not reported these incidents ??? Is the press not telling us the whole story ... I'm shocked (sarcasm off)
He told me that there are hills surrounding the area and they are finding ammo dumps every day and they just blow them up. I asked about WMD's and his response was as follows .... He said that there are some locals that work in the motor pool ... my friend works in it too ... some speak english and brag about being on the convoys that trucked drums full of chemicals over the Syrian border while GW was dealing with the U.N. before the war started. Apparently they are laughing at us for being so stupid. Several of these people have respritory and skin ailments from handling the drums.
He finished by saying that we should not be there anymore ... but not for the reasons the Dims think. He says he see's very little hope for democracy to work there ... not now anyway ... and he says that he sees very little in redeeming qualities with the people around his area and if he were in charge he would pull everyone out now and turn the place into a glass parking lot.
Please remember that he has lost some friends lately and anger may be slanting to his opinion for the moment.
I will post more as I hear from him
Ping
Thanks for posting this.
Very unhappy report.
There are some people who need killing.
Prayers offered for your friend's protection, and safe return home.
I never heard of that. My uncle always claimed that a good mortar man could hang a half-dozen rounds and boogie before the first one hit. But that would have been a long time ago and it’s entirely possible he was exaggerating…
this is not surprising coming from the heart of the sunni triangle & is not reflective of the 85% of Iraq which is not so embedded with the remaining Baathists and Saddam loyalists.
What goes up, must come down. Ice cannot delay the fall by more than 0.32568 seconds (BC). What am I missing in the details?
That's what I figured ... that he is in the DMZ and that the rest of the country may be somewhat more friendly
sounds like its time to get all the press out of there so our military can do there job correctly. its time to get rid of being PC. this is a war. i personally dont need to know everthing are military does, all i need to know is that they are doing everything that they can, and that there hands are not tied, we could finish this operation up very quickly if we did nt have so many liberal cry babies, and nations to worry about.
I was confued about this too. I have never dealt with mortars having been in the Navy. Maybe a former or even a present mortar man can comment about this .....
I think what he's saying is that they're using a "plug" of ice around the top of the mortar round hanging at the top of the tube. When the plug melts, the round drops.
LOL. I believe that's a valid murder defense in my native Mississippi.
They position the iced mortar over the mortar tube so that when it melts, it then drops into the tube and gets launched.
We don't have to worry about liberal cry babies and nations. President Bush does. I will vote for him in November, but I will be filling in the arrow for a politician whose main objective is to be reelected. If he wasn't so concerned about that he'd blow the freaking place up and go on television and tell the public that he did it for the future safety of his children and grandchildren and for the lives of our brave soldiers serving now in Iraq. Unfortunately, that's never gonna happen and we may very well get a John Kerry presidency that will pull us out of Iraq, make us the laughing stock of the world and jeopardize all of our safety and security for many many years to come.
Perhaps wedge an ice cube or block, in the top of the tube, keeping the mortar from falling and launching. When at last the ice melts, the mortar falls and launches. Iraqi version of the old cigarette delay fuse.
Ice in the mortars is an 'urban legend'. It may melt, but not fast enough to allow a shell to fall fast enough to fire.
Dropping that many rounds is ok if you have a baseplate. Some of these tubes are hand held or just stuck in the ground and are not very stable.
Also, they have to hit and run so that they aren't detected, so very few attacks are more than three rounds ata time.
I wonder if the Iraqi's have figured out a way to make the icing thing work ????
Quite a different story than what we hear from Baghdad.
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