It appears "Ron Harris" is embeded at the Syrian border. Here's an earlier story by him:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/World/EC976A67F58BE63186256E760014BF23?OpenDocument&Headline=Commemorating+the+life+of+a+comrade HUSAYBAH, Iraq - Out here on the farthest reaches of the U.S. military effort in Iraq, they are calling it "The Silent War," the one where Marines are mortared and maimed, bombed and blown up, ambushed and killed, and almost nobody but they and their families know about it.
Out here on the western perimeter, a few hundred yards from the Syrian border, a battalion of Marines, spearheaded by the embattled Lima Company, has been fighting for nearly two months to forge stability on a piece of territory that the Army's 82nd Airborne carved out before them, also in relative anonymity. They don't make the headlines, not like those in Fallujah or Baghdad, but they still bleed and die, still mourn the loss of their comrades.
This week, they gathered to commemorate the lives and deaths of two of their brothers, Lance Cpl. Christopher Wasser and Lance Cpl. Elias Torres. Wasser was killed Thursday when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb next to his vehicle. Torres died after a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into his vehicle during a late-night ambush on Friday.
...
....
Out here, the 1,000-plus men and women of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, under the command of Lt. Col. Matthew Lopez, work in relative obscurity. Their commander is Lt. Col Matthew Lopez, who jokingly calls himself "a Mexican from Chicago" and who is credited with working wonders in turning around the town of Karbala last year.
Now he and his Marines are trying to create the same sort of turnaround in Al Qaim, a region about the size of Bermuda with 230,000 residents located in the Al Anbar province. Al Qaim is populated largely by Sunni Muslims, many of whom prospered under Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. It's a much nastier place.
"Karbala was a lot safer," said Lance Cpl. Craig Carp, 20, of Celina, Tenn., and a close friend of Wasser. "This is a hellhole."
At the "tip of the spear" is Lima Company, nearly 200 Marines who are taking the brunt of the action. The unit is headed by Capt. Rich Gannon, a slight, soft-spoken Marine whose men describe him as "tough as a $2 steak."
The battalion's No. 1 mission is civil affairs - building schools, improving roads, fixing sewers, cleaning up trash, repairing soccer fields, installing lighting, developing a police force.
But in Lima Company's area of operation, those things have been put on the back burner. They are in a fight.
Since arriving in late February and taking over eight buildings that had once been a trading post between Syria and Iraq, the unit has been bombed and mortared almost incessantly. On one night, they counted more than 20 mortar rounds fired into their area. Three Marines have been killed and nearly 40 members of Lima have been wounded.
"Make no mistake about it, we're here in a battle," Gannon told the men of Weapons Platoon during a meeting last week. "I want you to go out and paint a school, like we did before. But right now, we're going to go out and kill some people, because there is some killing that needs to be done."
Gannon was surprised when he saw the heavy casualty reports from the 82nd Airborne, which had been there before the Marines.
"I was, like, 'Whoa, why haven't we been reading about this?'" he said while sitting in the small office that is his command center. "What's been going on here? Have they been having some kind of silent war? And, sure enough, they had been."
..."We've had more contact here in a week than we did in the entire first phase of the war," said Lt. Isaac Moore of Wasilla, Alaska, who fought with Lima last year and now is with Weapons Company.
Cpl. Matt Nale, 32, of Seattle, said he has seen it all, from mines to bombs to small-arms fire.
"I don't think there's a day that we've been out that we haven't been hit," he said.
Most of the injuries have been relatively minor. Fewer than 10 Marines have been taken out of commission.
"Still," said Navy Corpsman Justin Purviance of Denver, "if we keep getting wounded at the rate we're going, one of every three men in the unit will be injured before we get out of here."
All around the base, which is bounded by massive, 7-foot-tall barriers filled with sand, there are signs of enemy assaults. There are holes in the sand where mortars have fallen, a shrapnel-ridden makeshift toilet where one Marine was injured and the mess hall ceiling, which is pockmarked by holes from shrapnel that rained down on it one night.
"We wait every day thinking, who's going to be the next person who's going to be hit?" said Lance Cpl. Richard Laventer, 22, of Old Fort, N.C. "It's a shame that I've actually been practicing my Medivac request to make sure that I've got it right when we get hit."
It seems almost every Marine here has a story to tell.
....
....
The Marines know that their fight is largely underreported, far away from where most media concentrate.
"It's like, we're out here in the middle of the desert on our own," said Lance Cpl. Mischu Brady, 22, of Boise, Idaho.
"I guarantee you that people don't understand what we're going through," said Lt. Dan Carroll, 27, of Sugarland, Texas. "Sometimes, you walk right by a bomb, and there's just nobody there to push the button."
....
Great find on the Forgotten, but not for long, Syrian front.
It appears "Ron Harris" is embeded at the Syrian border. Here's an earlier story by him: He is. I know him from my St Louie newspapering days, though he works for what was my competition. But he's sharp, agressive and is, or was, in my opinion, one of the good guys.
Post-Dispatch 'embeds' discuss Iraqi war coverage, May 8
By Gerry Everding
Photo by Andrew Cutraro / Post Dispatch April, 6, 2003 -- Embedded Post-Dispatch Journalists Andrew Cutraro, right, and Ron Harris pose after filing stories with the Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines in Salman Pak, Iraq.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalists Ron Harris and Andy Cutraro will discuss their experiences covering the war in Iraq as correspondents embedded with a U.S. Marine battallion during a special evening forum at 7 p.m. May 8 in Room 100, Brown Hall on the Hilltop Campus of Washington University in St. Louis.
Free and open to the public, the program is sponsored by the Communications and Journalism and International Affairs programs of University College, the evening and continuing education division of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. For more information, contact University College at (314) 935-6759.
Harris, a reporter, and Cutraro, a photographer, covered the war as a team of journalists embedded with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines. Their reports and photographs appeared frequently in the Post-Dispatch as the battalion fought its way from Kuwait to Baghdad. Their presentation, which will include stories and photographs from the war, will be moderated by Repps Hudson, a reporter and editor at the Post-Dispatch and co-coordinator of the Communications and Journalism program at Washington University.
I was just going to post this also - This story just puts it all together. I sure hope we start being a little more "offensive" to the enemy soon.
(see #20)
This is not the way you win a war. This is the way, the exact way we lost a war. We are fighting according to the way the enemy wants us to fight. Are men are sitting ducks. There is no fire and movement, there is no use of our superior air power.
That desert city should be told to evacuate in 24 hours, because it will be leveled the next day by bombers. Set the example. These scumbags are getting supplies and troops from Syria. We should take out Syria's dams and bridges. Make Syria boil. Overthrow that terrorist supporting government - give the Israelis a free hand.
This war on terror is not a war on just Iraq. We need to kill all the governments that sponsor terror = Syria and Iran. Now. Time is on the Islamist side. Once the start employing WMDs they will by killing 60 then 200 Marines at a time.
We can't fall into another quagmire. We need to learn from history.
You can bet the enemy will have no pity on US if we allow them the time to acquire hi tech threats against our troops.
Look at Shermy's post 20......some background..