In Iraqi Town, U.S. Feels Push Toward an Exit (Mega Hurl Alert)

Washington Post ^ | August 4, 2006 | Ann Scott Tyson

[balch3]

HIT, Iraq -- Lt. Col. Thomas Graves wasn't expecting trouble as his convoy rolled toward this embattled Euphrates River town at midday recently, on a mission to monitor Friday prayers at mosques.

Local officials had assured Graves, the top U.S. commander in the area, that Hit was "going through a period of peace and quiet," he said shortly before leaving his camp.

But just as Graves reached the edge of town, the road in front of his Humvee exploded in a cloud of dust and debris. An insurgent hiding in a nearby palm grove had detonated two buried artillery rounds, narrowly missing the colonel.

"Welcome to Hit! It's a peaceful little town -- sorta," Graves told a reporter traveling with him.

So it goes here in western Iraq's Anbar province, a center of Sunni resistance. In Hit, U.S. forces and their Iraqi counterparts are the target of most of the two dozen attacks -- road bombs, shootings and mortar fire -- each week. Residents are quick to argue that the American presence incites those attacks, and they blame the U.S. military rather than insurgents for turning their town into a combat zone. The Americans should pull out, they say, and let them solve their own problems.

Increasingly, the U.S. military seems eager to oblige.

[balch3]

More MSM cut and run.

[coconutt2000]

Residents are quick to argue that the American presence incites those attacks, and they blame the U.S. military rather than insurgents for turning their town into a combat zone.

MSM is interviewing "insurgents" again.

[Rockiette]

Right out of the alQeada handbook, make sure to weaken the United State's war on terror. The MSM in America and Europe have knowingly supported terror while castigating Israel. Iran is successfully taking the scrutiny from their nuclear programs and telling the leftist morons that Israel is the center of evil. It is difficult, almost impossible, to understand the lack of concern for consequences the media and anti-war (really only anti-American and anti-Israel) exhibited by the dangerous left and Democrats. These people are every bit a danger to the US as the terrorists. What will it take to warn the American people to the WOT and the goals of radical Islam, the takeover of all nations by the murderers of freedom and innocents.