Inside one day's fierce battle in Iraq

www.csmonitor.com ^ | 7/21/04 | Amy Scott Tyson

[teldon30]

BAQUBAH, IRAQ - From the roof of a gutted, four-story building, US Army Cpl. Omar Torres peered through his M-4 rifle's thermal sight onto Canal Street, a pockmarked stretch of road running alongside a muddy waterway that meanders through this volatile city.

It was 2 a.m. on June 24, and stifling hot. Corporal Torres's sniper team was looking for insurgents planting road bombs, a persistent killer in Baqubah, with scores last month alone.

From out of the shadows 500 yards below, two men with rifles slung over their backs approached the road carrying a box. One knelt down, digging in the dirt shoulder. The snipers delicately adjusted their rifle, and fired.

Through his sight, Torres watched the kneeling figure crumble. The second man quickly reached down to continue planting the bomb, only to be felled moments later.

At that early hour, Torres had no idea of the scale of the attack that was coming at dawn.

He couldn't know that these two men were among many who were preparing one of the most sophisticated attacks yet on US troops and Iraqi government forces.

Baqubah is as close to a front line as it gets in Iraq's messy, urban guerrilla war. A fiercely contested city of 292,000, it is a key stronghold and way station for insurgents headed 35 miles southwest to Baghdad and beyond. On the western edge of the Sunni Triangle, it lies just 60 miles from the Iranian border.

On June 24, hundreds of insurgents mounted a complex ambush unlike any the US military here had seen: a particularly lethal alliance between foreign Islamic extremists loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Baqubah's estimated 1,000-strong homegrown insurgency led by disgruntled Iraqi officers, Baathists, and Sunni tribesmen.

US commanders assert the bold attack backfired, leaving scores of insurgents dead and stirring a rift between local fighters and the Zarqawi network, which claimed credit.

Yet the drawn-out battle also shows the potential in troublespots like Baqubah for an unsettling stalemate between US forces unrivaled in firepower and a maturing network of insurgents able to manipulate a passive population, strike, and slip away to fight another day. US commanders acknowledge that as their troops pull back, insurgents in cities such as Fallujah, Ramadi, Samarra, and Baqubah will work to continue the cycle of violence, exploiting the weakness of Iraq's fledgling government and security forces while recruiting and intimidating the people.

[glorgau]

Actually, I see this as a net plus. The crazy Islamists are using up their resources against alert, well-armed and highly trained troops. In addition, the troops have favorable rules of engagement (they get to shoot pretty much whatever they decide is a threat). There is no better method of keeping the odds of victory in American favor other than "nuking them from orbit".
These crazy goofballs are going to come after us somewhere, somehow, and it is best to do it on the ground of our choosing rather than theirs.

[teldon30]

I figure that life is so miserable in most islamic countries...that it is easy to convince the young to throw their life away if it means they will go to some percieved paradise....it's evil.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

At midmorning, tank company commander Capt. Paul Fowler received a mission: Fortified enemy positions still threatened the main road and bridge into town, with possible reinforcements on the way. Tanks were needed to take control.

Captain Fowler and his men from Alpha Company 2-63 had slept only an hour since an all-night raid outside Baqubah. They rushed to load high-explosive rounds into their tanks' main guns.

By about 11 a.m., Fowler was riding in a Humvee in the middle of a column of six tanks and four M-113 armored personnel carriers along the same road where insurgents had battered the North Carolina guardsmen at daybreak.

Within minutes, they were hit by what Fowler later described as an almost perfectly choreographed attack. A ring of road bombs exploded, followed by well-aimed rounds of armor-piercing RPGs targeting the tanks. Then insurgents opened up with machine guns, covering fighters who ran yelling toward the vehicles in a suicidal bid to throw grenades into the open hatches. Wearing turbans and checked headresses, some fighters came within yards before the Americans shot them.

"It was a textbook linear ambush," says Fowler, initially in disbelief. "This was a well-trained, well-disciplined enemy," he says, adding: "There was definitely someone in charge."

[Cannoneer No. 4]

ping

[King Prout]

I don't really mind if Iraq remains a meat-grinder, chewing up a grist of Jihadis.
Sooner or later they will run out of useful idiots and true believers.
In the meantime, other efforts will - I hope - westernize Iraq and the region as a whole.

[Aaron0617]

Another great story. Yet, prayers to those lost and injured that day.

This was the first battle I've read where the Iraqi Police/Guard didn't run away. I hope this is only the beginning.

Thanks for posting.

[secretagent]

Worth reading the whole article + no signup.

Thanks.

[Terabitten]

If I read it right, we had a 60 to 1 kill ratio that day. Not too shabby.

[teldon30]

ping