Stare down the barrel of the "Evil Satan" and see who is terrified!
Posted on 11/11/2004 8:54:42 PM PST by hemi dawg
THE MARINES Black Flags Are Deadly Signals as Cornered Rebels Fight Back By DEXTER FILKINS
FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 11 - The stars began to glimmer through a wan yellow-gray sunset over Falluja on Thursday evening. The floury dust in the air and a skyline of broken minarets and smashed buildings combined for the only genuine postcard image this country has to offer for now.
Sitting on a third-story roof, Staff Sgt. Eric Brown, his lip bleeding, peered through the scope of his rifle into the haze. Moments before, a lone bullet had whizzed past his face and smashed a window behind him. "God, I hate this place, the way the sun sets," Sergeant Brown said.
Sgt. Sam Williams said, "I wish I could see down the street."
But these marines did see a black flag pop up all at once above a water tower about 100 yards away, then a second flag somewhere in the gloaming above a rooftop. And the shots began, in a wave this time, as men bobbed and weaved through alleyways and sprinted across the street. "He's in the road, he's in the road, shoot him!" Sergeant Brown shouted. "Black shirt!" someone else yelled. "Due south!"
The flags are the insurgents' answer to two-way radios, their way of massing the troops and - in a tactic that goes back at least as far as Napoleon - concentrating fire on an enemy. Set against radio waves, the flags have one distinct advantage: they are terrifying.
The insurgents are coordinating their attacks at a time when they have nowhere left to run. American forces have pushed south of Highway 10, the boulevard that runs east to west and approximately bisects Falluja. American intelligence officers believe that many of the insurgents have retreated as far as the Shuhada, a relatively modern residential area that is the southernmost neighborhood in Falluja.
But beyond Shuhada is only the open desert, patrolled by the United States Army. So the insurgents are turning and fighting. And at night, they are setting up deadly ambushes in the moonless pitch blackness of Falluja's labyrinthine streets.
Going straight up the gut in the center of the American advance on Thursday was Bravo Company, First Battalion, Eighth Regiment of the First Marine Expeditionary Force. Those marines, including Sergeants Brown and Williams, started their day by getting mortared in a building they had captured at Highway 10 and Thurthar Street.
The building's windows were blown out. Parts of the ceiling had collapsed. The mortars drew closer and closer and then stopped, as if the insurgents were temporarily short of ammo. "I thought, 'This is it,' " said Senior Corpsman Kevin Markley.
At about 2 p.m., the company walked 100 yards east along the highway, then turned south into the Sinai neighborhood, with its car garages and fix-it shops as well as concealed weapons caches and bomb-making factories.
Immediately, shooting broke out, pinning down the marines for an hour. Finally they moved south to a mosque with the stub of a blasted minaret. An armored vehicle drove up from the rear and dropped its hatch. Out walked a group of blinking, disoriented Iraqi national guardsmen. They had been brought in only to search mosques.
Meantime, the marines went to the rooftop, saw the flags and got into a firefight. It was silenced when they called in a 500-pound bomb from above onto a house where some of the insurgents had concentrated. The strike was so close that the marines had to leave the roof or risk being killed by shrapnel.
The Iraqi guardsmen left the mosque and trooped back into the vehicle, which drove off. Soon the marines were headed south again, through a narrow alley between deserted houses.
"Enemy personnel approaching your position in white vehicle with RPG's," someone said over a radio, referring to rocket-propelled grenades. A few seconds later, the same voice said: "More enemy personnel approaching your position from the south."
The alley exploded with gunfire and RPG rounds. Somehow the company commander, Capt. Read Omohundro, got two tanks in place to fire down the alley. They let loose with a volley and a building crumbled.
Captain Omohundro turned to a lieutenant and said, "Are they dead?"
"They must be, sir," came the reply.
But the insurgents had gotten off an RPG round and disabled one tank; the other tank mysteriously stopped working as well.
The company had moved 500 yards south. They regrouped in the pitch blackness and pushed on at about 11:30 p.m. without the tanks, trying to keep up with the rest of the front, but after moving 25 feet they were attacked again in what appeared to be a well-organized ambush.
Two more tanks came in, but one had a problem with its global-positioning system unit. There was an hour's delay. The 50 or so men of the First Platoon, which had taken casualties, started bickering. Then they moved forward, behind the tanks.
At 1:30 a.m., now roughly 700 yards south of Highway 10, they stopped and entered a house, intending to find a place to sleep. There was a huge boom inside. "Oh no! Oh no!" someone shouted. "My leg!" someone else screamed. "My leg!"
They looked further around the house and found tunnels underneath. They retreated and a tank fired rounds into the house, which caught fire.
They looked for another place to sleep.
And one distinct DISADVANTAGE: they are visible to the naked eye, and thus make just dandy targets.
Stare down the barrel of the "Evil Satan" and see who is terrified!
Please use the actual article title.
Black Flags Are Deadly Signals as Cornered Rebels Fight Back
Sorry. How do I edit?
You have to ask the admin moderator, that's why I included him (her?) in the reply.
oh. well, i got the date wrong also, so why don't we just let him/her fix it all if he/she wants to. What is a media mole? You some kinda spy or somethin? Cause I like MY title better! ;o)
Kinda a spy in the midst of the MSM -- well a little tiny backwater of the MSM.
Just put your title in parentheses -- it is pretty accurate.
The NYT seems to think that the Marines are killing hundreds of islamofascists by accident since the jihadis are so much more skilled.
This just in....the NYT is reporting that Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo.
Yeah, I wonder if they'll write an article tomorrow from the perspective of a soon-to-be-dead insurgent.
I'm sure they'd be much more generous on NYT access.
I mean, they ARE on the same side.
You FREEPERS are jaded--you've put up with this sh*t for so long, you're used to it.
I'm telling you--it's SICK. It's WRONG.
Our boys are fighting and dying for a-holes at the NYT??
I've got to do something, I just don't know what...
Anyone know how to start a news organzation? Or end one?
I read a few months ago about a new RPG round that can take a tank out. The russians have to make a buck you know.
All the RPG has to do is knock a tread off or damage the engine. The crew will be uninjured but the tank can't move and can't be fixed under fire.
"You FREEPERS are jaded--you've put up with this sh*t for so long, you're used to it.
I'm telling you--it's SICK. It's WRONG.
Our boys are fighting and dying for a-holes at the NYT??
I've got to do something, I just don't know what... Anyone know how to start a news organzation? Or end one?"
Hi Hemi.
No, I'm not putting up with it, and neither are FReepers.
Doesn't the word "Rathergate" ring a bell?
My post was meant as an undertow to help undermine the credibility of the MSM by pointing out their hypocrisy.
If you try a loud clarion call, the left calls you a loud hateful nutcase, instead of addressing the substance of your allegations.
Think of this as emulating the famed 'consciousness raising' by the left in the 60s and 70s--a longer term approach but ultimately more effective.
Cheers!
I'd didn't mean to pick on you, whiskers.
Just needed to post it to someone.
Thanks for your perspective.
Oh look. Another not so subtle dig at the equipment!
I hope Dexter gets one between the eyes.
Ernie Pyle he's NOT.
Undoubtedly terrfiying to one accustomed to frolicking with his metrosexual reporter colleagues in marble Manhattan bath-houses.
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