Posted on 04/04/2003 4:01:28 PM PST by Ooh-Ah
BRITISH soldiers today stumbled across the biggest haul of weapons discovered so far in the two-week campaign against Iraqi militia insurgence in Al-Zubayr.
Corporal Andy Lambert, 28, was on a routine patrol with Delta Company of the Black Watch regiment when he spotted rocket-propelled grenades near a bus shelter in the east of the town just before first light.
He halted his warrior fighting vehicle and found nine boxes of lethal warheads beside the launchers. He then ordered a search of the adjacent building.
Inside a walled compound, he and his men broke into a freight container holding an arsenal of brand new arms which included grenades, Russian and Chinese machine guns, automatic carbines and almost a tonne of ammunition.
Corporal Lambert, hailing from the northeastern English city of Newcastle, then used a sledgehammer to smash his way into the main house within the compound and found it stacked from floor to ceiling with additional firearms, helmets, uniforms and other military equipment.
"It was obviously some kind of militia or Baath headquarters. In one room of the two-storey building we found a scale model of the town. It was probably used to plan ambushes on our patrols," he said.
"There was also a large meeting room lined with chairs. It had hand-drawn maps of the area plastered over its walls."
A local resident approached the patrol shortly afterwards and told them that the house was abandoned last week, confirming intelligence reports that many of the local militia commanders had decided to give up the fight and flee towards Basra.
Captain Campbell Close, company second in command, said most of the serviceable weapons recovered in the raid were taken away for storage to be kept and maintained to equip a post-war Iraqi army.
"Despite everything, when this is over we will need some kind of local force to help maintain internal security and to reduce the peacekeeping burden on other nations," Close said.
"The fact that the armoury was undefended backs up our local intelligence on the whereabouts of some of the guys we'd like to talk to. Most of them seem to have done a runner about a week ago after the Black Watch imposed its presence on the town.
"We are even seeing some radical militia members queuing for food and water at our distribution points. They appear to have laid down their weapons and gone back into civilian mode.
"The 51st Division, the only regular (Iraqi) soldiers in our sector, took off their uniforms, left their firearms in barracks and deserted more or less en masse."
Yeah, and I hope that the US Army Ordnance department stamps highly visible service marks on both sides of the receiver on these weapons so that the Israelis know where the sudden influx of arms into the West Bank is trickling in from.
I'm sure this surprises nobody. Instead of the usual token bitching, we need to seriously take Russia and China to task. Thank God we have a president that has the guts to do it instead of just selling out the country for his own personal gain like Klinton.
I've never heard that expression before. I like it.
Maybe back into civilian mode, or gathering their strength for further mischief? "
All of which should--should, I say--be made available to the public at a fair price.
Yeah, that'll happen.
They should be made available to the American public...
Say what?
Not a whole lot of mischief without weapons or ammunition. I doubt there would be much of a resistance plan that wouldn't have dispersed and issued the arms cache before going into hiding.
Can't. They're full auto. Banned by Reagan back in '86.
However when they find the WMD that is a different story.
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