Posted on 04/26/2004 6:17:40 PM PDT by blam
Gunships level minaret as US cancels assault
By David Rennie in Washington and Toby Harnden in Baghdad
(Filed: 27/04/2004)
An American assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah was postponed yesterday after local commanders said bloody urban warfare could provoke retaliation across the country and protests throughout the Muslim world.
The commanders, citing progress in political negotiations on Saturday night, agreed to extend the threadbare "ceasefire" for at least two more days despite residents' failure to surrender heavy weapons as demanded.
US army vehicles wrecked by an explosion in Baghdad
But yesterday morning a fierce battle left marines "fighting like lions" for their lives.
In a potential propaganda disaster, the marines called in helicopter gunships to level a 60-ft mosque minaret allegedly being used as a firing platform by insurgents.
The decision to step back from an immediate assault was taken after President George W Bush and senior aides held a video conference with Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority chief, and Gen John Abizaid, the senior US commander in the region.
One senior official told the New York Times Mr Bush and his aides decided that even if an invasion of Fallujah later became inevitable the delay would allow them to say they had given talks every chance. "No one is eager for the alternatives. There's not much risk in giving this more time, except that the humanitarian situation worsens every day," the official said.
Brig-Gen Mark Kimmitt, the US military spokesman in Baghdad, accused insurgents of provoking marines to open fire when they knew cameras were present, as part of a propaganda war.
A plume of smoke rises over Fallujah as fighting continues
He said: "Many times it would appear that these provocative actions on the part of the enemy are intentionally inspired for the purposes of trying to get a tank into the camera lens, an airplane in the camera lens."
Brig Gen Kimmitt said the latest fighting in Fallujah began when marines were attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire from the mosque.
A search of the minaret found "a significant amount of expended shell casings".
Two hours later, marines were pinned down by more firing from the mosque and called in a quick-reaction force of air support and tanks. These "directed suppressing fire on the mosque, killing eight enemy fighters and damaging the infrastructure". One American was killed.
In Baghdad, cheering Iraqis looted burnt Humvee vehicles and carried away guns and radios yesterday after two American soldiers were killed and five wounded when a house exploded as they searched it for "chemical munitions". A woman soldier with severe burns to the face and chest was seen being taken away on a stretcher and dozens of people, mainly youths, smashed four Humvees which had been set ablaze, stripping them of weapons and equipment.
A boy climbed on top of one of the vehicles and beat it with a stick. Another youth, wielding an American rifle, denounced Mr Bush and Mr Bremer. "This is for the madman Bush, for the madman Bremer," he shouted.
Eight Iraqi civilians were injured in the blast.
Brig-Gen Kimmitt said the house was surrounded after intelligence that its owner was "suspected of producing and supplying chemical agents to insurgents". He would not specify what type of "chemical munitions" were thought to have been there.
About 200 soldiers and military policemen entered the flashpoint city of Najaf - the Shia holy site where the radical young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is holed up with armed militia fighters - moving into a base due to be vacated by Spanish and Latin American forces soon.
Loud explosions echoed through the city last night as fighting erupted between US forces and Sadr's militia between Najaf and nearby Kufa.
Mr Bremer said an "explosive situation" was developing. Militants were stockpiling weapons in mosques, schools and shrines.
You got me convinced. Are we really contemplating sending in patrols accompanied by Iraqi security guys we don't trust? I'm hoping somebody in the press got this wrong. Those aren't current urban tactics anyway, and for good reason - if the enemy's smart your risk is eight guys and his is one sniper at a time. Even I can do that math.
By repeating what you hear rather than what's being said, you've mangaged to nail the problem perfectly.
You are changing the subject like a good little liberal always does. I said we bombed the hell out of Dresden to break the Germans will to wage war. In the process the Frauenkirche got destroyed -- holy site or not. I was told it was because we didn't have precision weapons -- the implication that we would not have destroyed it if we could have helped it. I pointed out that when Germans hid in Monte Cassino we destroyed it as well. We didn't NOT destroy it because it was a holy site -- we destroyed it anyway regardless. Najaf and the Mosque in Fajullah fall under the same rules. There is no reason to hold back because a site is a "holy site" if it is being used as an ammunition dump, military command post, or sniper's nest. It didn't matter when the site was Christian and it shouldn't matter when the site is Muslim.
The military tactics of a particular battle is a whole different argument. This argument is over the politically correct titty suckers who would allow the terrorists a time and place to regroup, re-arm, re-equip and re-engage our Marines simply because the enemy is claiming something or someplace has a special status as a "holy site." That argument didn't hold water in 1944 and it shouldn't hold water in 2004.
Keyword: "promised." We never delivered.
They actually selected a coal dump in Hanoi for bombing. A pile of coal! After it was bombed it was still a pile of coal -- just spread out a little differently.
If my memory serves, much of Iraq was similar to Fallujah while Saddam was in power. People may have secretly been glad the U.S. was coming to liberate them, but dared not let it be known, lest they end up dead.
Many of the people in Fallujah live their daily lives in fear that if their ruler decides they didn't seem loyal enough they and their families will be tortured or killed. Even if nearly everyone in the city were to know and believe that if the rebels didn't surrender the U.S. would simply level the city and kill everyone in it, they'd hardly fear such a thing. After all, it would hardly be any worse than the reality they face every day.
Fifty years ago, there wasn't any way to incapacitate dictatorial leaders without harming those who were under his thumb. Today, however, we can target attacks much more narrowly, thus taking out the dictators and their apparatus while mostly leaving civilians alone.
If we were to just slaughter everyone in the cities that oppose us, we would put the civilians in those cities between a rock and a hard place: if they support us, their leader has them killed, and if they don't, we do. While it's sometimes unavoidable that innocents will become victims of war, such an outcome should be considered unfortunate and to the extent possible we should work to prevent it. Doing so may cost money and take patience, but it's the only way to achieve a real victory.
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