If Bill Clinton finds out about "powerful vacuums sucking people in the street" he way try to hog in on all the glory.
Posted on 03/29/2003 12:36:17 PM PST by 11th_VA
KIFL, Iraq, March 29 (Reuters) - When U.S. tanks rumbled into this town on the Euphrates river, irregular Iraqi forces set up sniper nests up and down the main street, opening fire from doors, windows, market stalls and patches of open ground.
A crimson sunset painted the street red and visibility fell to less than five meters (15 feet) as a swirling sand and dust storm kicked up when the guerrilla units attacked.
U.S. officers said fighters in minivans, pick-up trucks and cars drove straight at the oncoming tanks. Others took to canoes, rowing down the river and trying to fix explosives to the main bridge.
But the guerrilla-style forces were vastly outgunned by the tanks of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division, and hundreds of Iraqis have died in this town over the last four days.
The officers said the tank unit fired two 120 mm high velocity depleted uranium rounds straight down the main road, creating a powerful vacuum that literally sucked guerrillas out from their hideaways into the street, where they were shot down by small arms fire or run over by the tanks.
"It was mad chaos like you cannot imagine," said the tank unit's commander, who identified himself as "Cobra 6" as he did not want friends and neighbours back home to know what he had been through.
"We took a lot of fire, and we gave a lot of fire," he said.
"You couldn't see anything except all those hues of red and the sound of fire from all sides. It was not earthly. I'll have nightmares about it."
Dozens of bodies still littered the streets on Saturday.
Some were wrapped in blue and black body bags, but others were still out in the open, rotting in the midday sun. Several spilled out of their charred and shattered cars and trucks, burned beyond recognition.
HIGH COST
Iraq's efforts to stall the U.S. military advance towards Baghdad appear to include putting elite officers in with irregular paramilitary or guerrilla structures at strategic points.
In Kifl, which lies north of Najaf and about 130 km (81 miles) south of Baghdad, the strategy may have slowed the U.S. forces, but only at an extremely high cost.
Some U.S. soldiers estimate that at least 1,000 Iraqis were killed here since the fighting began at dusk on Wednesday, and everyone puts the number in the hundreds.
Officers say just one U.S. soldier has died.
Sporadic mortar fire and bursts of sniper fire kept U.S. troops alert in the town late on Saturday, but officers said most of the resistance in the town had been overcome.
The main danger was now posed by an artillery unit about 16 km (10 miles) to the north.
"I'm sure there are still some knuckleheads in the town, but the real problem is what's outside," said Colonel Joseph Anderson of the 101st Airborne Division, which moved in to help secure Kifl on Saturday.
Wave after wave of Iraqi soldiers and paramilitaries had set up mortar positions at an old brick factory on the edge of town, getting dropped off from civilian vehicles at a large tree that U.S. forces here now call the "Gateway to Hell".
U.S. officers said they had destroyed up to 50 vehicles making drop-offs there, adding the brick factory, like much of Kifl, was now virtually abandoned.
The canoes lie empty on the river beds and only U.S. soldiers walk up and down the town's main streets.
Some families were still seen in their homes on the edge of town on Saturday, tending to sheep and goats as U.S. tanks and trucks rolled by with nervous soldiers looking out over the fields, their guns loaded for any new guerrilla threat.
While the guerrilla tactics appeared to have failed in Kifl, the Iraqis claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb which killed at least four U.S. soldiers on Saturday at a military checkpoint near Najaf.
Now that is a novel battle tactic!
If Bill Clinton finds out about "powerful vacuums sucking people in the street" he way try to hog in on all the glory.
Neat if true (sounds a little too good to be).
That giant sucking sound you hear is the reporter's reputation going straight down the toilet.
ENDGAME---My Perception of the "Plan"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/879184/posts
It's a new weapon, called the Oreck gun. Actually, if you put bowling balls on the front of the tank, they'll get sucked down the street behind the shell.
I suppose they are having supply problems and have run out of bowling balls.
Secondly, American tanks and artillery units do not routinely fire "depleted uranium" shells. These are the heaviest and most expensive rounds that we possess. They are used for a specific purpose -- penetrating the sides of enemy tanks or other armored vehicles. They have no other military application. In all other circumstances, depleted uranium shells are LESS effective, not more effective, for the purpose at hand.
Just to use one obvious example in urban warfare: Assume the bad guys are firing through the windows of a brick building. A DU round fired at that target will go through the front wall and then through the back wall, without harming anyone inside, unless they are directly in the way of the shell. A standard, steel-jacketed explosive shell, on the other hand, will take out the front wall, and maybe cause the building to collapse. Any of the enemy who survive that, can then be dealt with by use of 50-caliber machine gun fire.
The writer apparently read somewhere about DU shells, and therefore uses the term in his article as a "bad-*ssed" weapon. Here's how those puppies actually work. Because of their weight and density, a DU shell in a direct hit can punch a small hole -- maybe as little as a half-inch circle -- through to the inside of the armor of even the most modern and well-armored tanks that any potential enemy possesses. What comes through that hole is a small amount of liquid uranium, melted by the heat of the impact and penetration.
Although uranium requires very high heat to liquify, once it reaches that point it burns as smartly as aluminum. The inside of the tank becomes a fireball. Its own ammunition is set off, which causes the explosion that occurs AFTER the DU round has penetrated the tank. In firing on a building, all that penetrating power is self-defeating. But the dummy writing this article didn't have a clue about this, obviously.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column, now up on UPI, and FR, "The A-MAA-zing War Wizard"
The plains Indians knew how to fight, and much better than this. Man for man, they were better than our cavalry. There just were not very many of them, and they did not have our logistics support. That doomed them. Eventually, all the smart one signed treaties or surrendered. There are probably more Indian genes in America today than there were in 1870. My kids have some of them.
Then don't bring a pickup truck to a tank fight.
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