Replies

Great Job Marine, you all have our complete support. I don't know if you heard Gen. Tommy Franks today, but he said he was at a book tour and an elderly 80+ year old lady, came up and slammed her book down for an autograph and said this to him, They say we need an "Exit Strategy" we have one, it is called victory, they ask "How much will this cost" we will know when we are done. Sounds like a wise woman to me.
A question I have, and forgive me if this is over simplistic, in these areas like Sadr City, wouldn't a task force of Marines and numerous well-placed Snipers with orders to shoot everyone out of uniform with a weapon, go a long way to settling those areas...I am sure there is more to that than I could possibly think.

Wish it was that easy. What we have to remember is Sadr
City is a huge area in the city of Baghdad. What you
suggest simply would not be possible because it would
require litterly thousands of snipers to be hanging out
on equal amounts of houses and buildings, etc..
Just picture Sadr City as a area as big as Broklyn NY.,
filled with row after row of homes. Plus please remember,
we no longer in most cases control over what battle is fought where unless our guys are fired upon. It is up to the IIG (Iraqi Interim Government) to decide when our forces are required to do a "mop up". Sadr City houses
probably over a half million people. We just can't go in
and kill people. How do you tell 3PM in the morning, for
instance, what a person is carrying? You are aware I am sure that all Iraqi's are permitted to carry a AK47 rifle for self protection. So as you can see, it is not so easy
to do what you wonder about. Hope this answers your question.