Posted on 04/16/2004 3:57:50 PM PDT by drew
Troops Blast Music in Siege of Fallujah 12 minutes ago
By JASON KEYSER, Associated Press Writer
FALLUJAH, Iraq - In Fallujah's darkened, empty streets, U.S. troops blast AC/DC's "Hell's Bells" and other rock music full volume from a huge speaker, hoping to grate on the nerves of this Sunni Muslim city's gunmen and give a laugh to Marines along the front line.
Unable to advance farther into the city, an Army psychological operations team hopes a mix of heavy metal and insults shouted in Arabic — including, "You shoot like a goat herder" — will draw gunmen to step forward and attack. But no luck Thursday night.
The loud music recalls the Army's use of rap and rock to help flush out Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega after the December 1989 invasion on his country, and the FBI (news - web sites)'s blaring progressively more irritating tunes in an attempt to end a standoff with armed members of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas in 1993.
The Marines' psychological operations came as U.S. negotiators were pressing Fallujah representatives to get gunmen in the city to abide by a cease-fire.
Six days after negotiations halted a U.S. offensive against insurgents in the city, the Marines continue carving out front line positions and hope for orders to push forward. Many are questioning the value of truce talks with an enemy who continues to launch attacks.
"These guys don't have a centralized leader; they're just here to fight. I don't see what negotiations are going to do," said Capt. Shannon Johnson, a company commander for the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment. Word of truce talks last week forced his battalion to halt its plunge into the northeast section of the city just hours after arriving to back up other Marines.
In the meantime, perhaps the fiercest enemy — everyone here seems to agree — is the boredom, and worst of all the flies that pepper this dusty Euphrates River city west of Baghdad. Marines burn them, using matches to turn cans of flammable bug spray into mini blow torches. They also try to kill them by sprinkling diesel fuel over fly colonies. They joke about calling in airstrikes.
Fallujah's front lines remain dangerous.
On Friday, insurgents fired several mortars at U.S. forces. One of the shells blasted a chunk out of a house where Marines are positioned, filling the building with dust and smoke. No one was injured.
A short time later, an F-16 jet dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on the city, sending up a massive spray of dirt and smoke and destroying a building where Marines had spotted gunmen.
"The longer we wait to push into the city, the more dangerous it's going to be," said Cpl. Miles Hill, 21, from Oklahoma, playing a game of chess with a fellow Marine in a house they control.
"They (the insurgents) have time to set stuff up." He guesses the insurgents are likely rigging doors with explosives, knowing Marines will kick them in during searches if they sweep the city.
Up on the roof, Pfc. James Cathcart, 18, kept watch from a sandbagged machine-gunner's nest Friday. His platoon commander passed along word that troops found a weapons cache that included a Soviet-made sniper rifle with a night-sight.
"A night-sight, sir?" he said, surprised that insurgents had the technology. His commander told him to keep his head down. "Everyone here wants to push forward. Here, you're just a target," Cathcart said.
The young Marine looked out over grim city blocks around a dusty soccer pitch and a trash-strewn lot, as a rain shower passed over. He said during the long hours of duty, he wonders what the insurgents are doing, how many there are and if they're watching him.
Adding to the eery feeling up, he said, are the music and speeches in Arabic that come over mosque loudspeakers.
Unable to advance farther, Marines holed up in front-line houses have linked the buildings by blasting or hammering holes through walls between them and laying planks across gaps between rooftops, a series of passageways they call the "rat line."
Lying on his stomach on a rooftop and wearing goggles and earplugs, a Marine sniper keeps an eye to his rifle sight. His main task in recent days has been trying to hit the black-garbed gunmen who occasionally dash across the long street in front of him. To dodge his shots, one of the gunmen recently launched into a rolling dive across the street, a move that had the sniper and his buddies laughing.
"I think I got him later. The same guy came back and tried to do a low crawl," said Lance Cpl. Khristopher Williams, 20, from Fort Myers, Fla.
Others have run across the street, hiding behind children on bicycles, said the sniper. In his position — reachable only by scaling the outside ledge of a building — he sits for hours with his finger poised on the trigger of a rifle that fires 50-caliber armor-piercing bullets with such force that the muzzle flash and exiting gasses from the weapon have blackened the bricks around the gun.
On the street in front of his position sits a car riddled with bullets, where the bloated, fly-infested bodies of three armed men have been left. The vehicle was shot up by Marine gunmen before the sniper set up his position.
Along the front line, Marines have been firing warning shots to scare away dogs chewing on corpses. In some cases, the troops have wrapped bodies in blankets and buried them in shallow graves.
At night, the psychological operations unit attached to the Marine battalion here sends out messages from a loudspeaker mounted on an armored Humvee. On Thursday night, the crew and its Arabic-language interpreter taunted fighters, saying, "May all the ambulances in Fallujah have enough fuel to pick up the bodies of the mujahadeen."
The message was specially timed for an attack moments later by an AC-130 gunship that pounded targets in the city.
Later, the team blasted Jimi Hendrix and other rock music, and afterward some sound effects like babies crying, men screaming, a symphony of cats and barking dogs and piercing screeches. They were unable to draw any gunmen to fight, and seemed disappointed.
They want music, do they? This one, all night, for the evening before.
Then, with the next day's sunrise, this one, followed by a B52 ArcLight strike for a percussion accompaniment.
The first tune that came to mind was Blues for Allah, followed of course by a few well placed Daisy Cutters.
For the love of pete, haven't you learned yet not to give in to peer pressure? Stand up for Richard Harris and MacArthur Park.! (And if you figure the inane lyrics out, let me know)
Hmmmmm, a version by the Four Tops, huh?..I must be losing my touch, cause I missed that one.
See what I have for you in #185, above. No, no- you needn't bother thanking me. But by all means, tell your son you have a little something for him....
I am specifically addressing the situation in Fajullah.
If you obliterate Fajullah with a nuke in the next 5 minutes, it will not affect the flow of arms from Iran.
In Fajullah, the enemy is trapped within a cordon sanitaire. Whatever happens outside of Fajullah is a separate tactical situation from what happens inside of Fajullah. The enemy inside Fajullah is not attacking any convoys as they are trapped like rats and are not going anywhere.
The question now becomes, "How are we going to kill the rats trapped inside Fajullah?"
Do we carpet bomb the city causing tens of thousands of civilian casualties in this city of 300,000 or do we allow time for the civilians to leave?
Do we try the "Hey diddle diddle. Straight up the middle!" infantry tactics used to storm a beach within an urban battlefield thereby risking hundreds of Marine casualties or do we wait a couple of weeks until the civilian population has abandoned the city and we can turn the entire urban landscape of Fajullah into an AC-130 and JDAM free fire zone thereby not risking a Marine platoon to capture a building when flattening the building with a 2,000 pound JDAM will kill the jihadis in the building just as dead?
Right now, we are "shaping the battlefield" within Fajullah to maximize our advantages so that we may kill the greatest number of Jihadis with the least number of civilian deaths and with the least number of Marine deaths. As for the Fajullah infrastructure, it's expendable.
There is little reason to have Marines die unecessarilly in house to house urban combat while fighting on the enemy's terms now when we can fully utilize our airpower and fight on our own terms in a week or two when Fajullah is populated only by the Iraqis that need killing.
That's Klingons. And that's not a very nice thing to say about them.
After all, they too have some musical ammunition to donate to this project.
Our neighborhood jerk-boy terrorized us with his POC stereo-system until he managed to total it.
*I* felt like abandoning my home...(so I could remove his claim to manhood...)
No need to thank me....
I was going to suggest AC/DC when I saw the headline but I see they already have the CD. So, if they really want to drive them nuts, play Bob Dylan over and over. It seems to have worked on Dylan.
See my Post 187.
When Patton reached Metz, the war was still in a dynamic phase. After Metz, there was still all of Germany to conquer. Time was of the essence.
In Fallujah, those jihadis aren't going anywhere. There is no time pressure.
Once the battlefield in Fajullah is shaped so that only jihadis remain, we can blast the infrastructure to rubble by air power and artillery and minimize our infantry casualties.
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