Posted on 10/21/2005 7:01:20 PM PDT by 1066AD
US troops fighting losing battle for Sunni triangle By Adrian Blomfield (Filed: 22/10/2005)
The mob grew more frenzied as the gunmen dragged the two surviving Americans from the cab of their bullet-ridden lorry and forced them to kneel on the street.
Killing one of the men with a rifle round fired into the back of his head, they doused the other with petrol and set him alight. Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man's body to stoke the flames.
It had taken just one wrong turn for disaster to unfold. Less than a mile from the base it was heading to, the convoy turned left instead of right and lumbered down one of the most anti-American streets in Iraq, a narrow bottleneck in Duluiya town, on a peninsular jutting into the Tigris river named after the Jibouri tribe that lives there.
As the lorries desperately tried to reverse out, dozens of Sunni Arab insurgents wielding rocket launchers and automatic rifles emerged from their homes.
The gunmen were almost certainly emboldened by the fact that the American soldiers escorting the convoy would not have been able to respond quickly enough.
"The hatches of the humvees were closed," said Capt Andrew Staples, a member of the Task Force Liberty 1-15 battalion that patrols Duluiya and other small towns on the eastern bank of the Tigris, who spoke to soldiers involved.
Within minutes, four American contractors, all employees of the Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown & Root, were dead. The jubilant crowd dragged their corpses through the street, chanting anti-US slogans. An investigation has been launched into why the contractors were not better protected.
Perhaps fearful of public reaction in America, where support for the war is falling, US officials suppressed details of the Sept 20 attack, which bore a striking resemblance to the murder of four other contractors in Fallujah last year.
Duluiya, located in the notorious Sunni triangle, is much smaller than Fallujah but no less violent, even if events here rarely make the news.
The violence here seems to encapsulate the growing difficulties the US military is facing in trying to defeat the insurgency. Pinned down by a constant stream of hit-and-run attacks from former Saddam regime loyalists, American soldiers are unable to focus their attention on the foreign extremists who pose a far more dangerous threat to the future of Iraq.
Yet it is here that the battle against the suicide bombers must be won.
The isolated towns east of the Tigris supply the foreign fighters and their allies and provide a haven where they can regroup after American offensives on their urban strongholds.
If the Americans do not close off these boltholes, it seems unlikely the war can be won.
But hopes for progress are growing more remote. The insurgency in eastern Salahuddin province is growing more intense, more deadly and more sophisticated.
Lt Col Gary Brito, the battalion's commanding officer, said that in recent months the number of roadside bombs targeting his men had increased by a third - even though journeys out of base have been cut back. They are having a more devastating effect too.
"Before only two out of 10 used to be effective," he said. "Now four or five have a catastrophic effect, blowing away a vehicle or causing casualties." In the past few months at least four American soldiers in this battalion alone have been killed. Another 39 have been wounded.
Even routine patrols are fraught with danger.
"What the hell was that," shouted Lt Chris Baldwin as a huge explosion rocked Baker Company's convoy of humvees trundling along a street in Dour, another town under Lt Col Brito's watch.
"Contact! Contact!" he bellowed into his radio as the gunners opened fire on a row of nearby houses from where the rocket-propelled anti-tank missile was fired.
As the gunfire died down, the soldiers burst into house after house, their facades peppered with bullet holes.
But, as is so often the case, the attacker had vanished down one of Dour's maze-like alleys.
Instead the Americans were confronted with sullen Iraqis, holding their terrified children to their sides. An old woman sat on her bed, clutching her heart, as the soldiers interrogated the family.
"They heard nothing, they saw nothing, same as ******* usual," said Sgt Jody Miller. Taking another deep drag from his cigarette, he turned to the company's translator.
"Tell them to tell us where the bad guys are so we stop frigging shooting up their houses," he said.
Nobody was hurt but the mutual distrust between the Americans and the local community deepened just a little bit more.
L
Disappointing to see the Telegraph turning into the Guardian.
no sh*t.
See:
The Anbar Campaign - A Flash Presentation
http://billroggio.com/archives/2005/10/the_anbar_campa_4.php
Telegraph? How about a ~reputable~ source?
Is this something that actually just happened, or is it a retelling of the last time contractors were murdered and their bodies desecrated?
If it's something new, we do the eqiuvalent of "nuking the planet from orbit... It's the only way to be sure."
Seriously, if this is something new, we need to get the friendlies out of the city, surrounding it and giving them 24 houre. Then raize it to the ground, killing everyone left there.
Mark
They've never been all that different. Sorta like the difference between the Enquirer and the Weekly World News.
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
They are lost as human beings, and must be treated as young predators that must be eliminated.
Mark
We don't have the stomach for the brutality it will take to cow the Sunnis. Besides even if we had the stomach for it the Demoncrats would have our guys in jail. I think the Dems are hoping to have a string of berka stores for their newly converted and circumsized wives and daughters. We will have to get super serious soon with bigger weaponry or just die house to house.
"How about a ~reputable~ source?"
http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/
Give them to the Kurds and the Shia. "You may spare the females if you have a use for them. The men are yours. These are the Ba'athists that made your people suffer for thirty years."
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Nape and bake, then flamethrower clean up.
Does Michael talk about these events? Doesn't appear so, from a quick review of his page.
I do like Michael Yon. He's done some quality work.
I'm confused - isn't this the story from March 2004?
Adrian Blomfield tends to be negative. Funny he doesn't talk about the positive side of what has been happening this month. http://billroggio.com/
Gee. I wonder who observed and reported on this. Does The Telegraph too have terrorists on its payroll, Ba'athist dogs like the AP's Bilal Hussein?
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
only the iraqi forces can win this phase of the war, we cannot do it for them - we can help, but there is a limit. our forces already won the phase of the war they were designed to conduct.
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