So tell me again how the insurgents see their "terrifying" black flags in the moonless pitch darkness of Fallujah's night...
Posted on 11/11/2004 8:54:52 PM PST by freakboy
November 12, 2004 THE MARINES Black Flags Are Deadly Signals as Cornered Rebels Fight Back By DEXTER FILKINS
ALLUJA, 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.
Imagine that. He previously worked for the L.A. Times.
Exactly. As soon as I read about the black flags, I thought, "oh, how nice of the goblins to signal their location." Unlike a radio signal, a flag says, "look, I'm over here!"
These tunnels may be problematic. It'd be nice if we could flood the rats out.
There's apparently a lot of fuel in Iraq... Dump in a few thousand gallons and toss a match.
I read this carefully and had the same disappointment. I thought the comment about the failure of GPS in the tank was a particularly conspicuous example of the NYT bias, Yes - we are using loads of technology as we substitute capital for labor in war fighting, and yes sometimes that technology fails. From the available information to this point it looks like our kill ratio is somewhere north of 34:1, and my suspicion is it will get much higher as we annihilate the insurgents who will make a run for it from their increasingly constrained piece of of the city. Shame on the NYT for this pessimistic slant on Veterans Day. FY!
I wonder if the "Marines terrified of black flags" bit is PSYOPS to encourage the terrorists to reveal themselves even more often. "Abdul, wave our flag more, it scares the infidels!"
This article is pure crap. During the day the bad guys can see us. At night due to our technology we have a huge advantage and kill the bad guys with extreme efficiency.
So far as running around with black flags that is very considerate of the bad guys to make themselves even better targets. In short if we can see them for 10 or 15 seconds they will die. If we can not see them but know where they are, they will die.
They slant it to read like a defeat. Their agenda suffocates everything....UNFRICKINGBELIEVABLE!
As I was reading this garbage, I was indeed suffocating. It reminded me of the numerous "60 minutes and NYT articles" on how all of our military is inept, the equipment doesn't work and the ennemy is so much braver and tougher.
The MSM is disgusting.
I was thinking the same thing. This slimes reporter was covered in his own wastes, for sure...
It's more than likely the f*king terrorists are terrified of the US Military!
If those troops read any of this loser's crap, they'll probably cap him - and rightfully so. (If he's actually out there with them, and these troops and accounts aren't all fictional.)
Great idea. Reminds me of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Oops! Did I just say "Crusade"? Sorry.
Info on the america hating author Dexter Filkins:
http://www.timeswatch.org/topicindex/F/filkins_dexter/welcome.asp
I think Jayson Blair wrote this from a Ramada Inn in Kansas City.
Death Angel, Death Angel, target all black flags around my coordinates. Oh, and can you take out our embed while you're at it?
This DUDE must be sitting in a resturaunt reading a COMIC BOOK!!, sipping on a cool beverage!! Raising your head up will get it blowed off, Raising a flag is a Range marker for the spotters and the 155's.
What an idiot, Well it doesn't take much to be a bureau chif for the Socialist NYT! You must be foreign born, anti american, godless, support same sex marriage, abortion and have DAN Rather's Picture in your wallet. You must understand BLACK FLAGS too!!
Standing at tall attention, and saluting smartly, this veteran thanks you for your truly heroic service.
That you can also look after such anti-American, New York Times fungi as Dexter Filkins is a further credit to your character.
Give me a break. If the flag signified cholera, then it would be terrifying.
I'm surprised it's not embedded--on the other side.
So tell me again how the insurgents see their "terrifying" black flags in the moonless pitch darkness of Fallujah's night...
Good post!
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