Posted on 11/11/2004 8:54:52 PM PST by freakboy
This guy might be confusing m113's, and bradly's as tanks as well.
Slaps forehead, Doh! Good point.
I really, really, really HATE it when the f'ing reporters sue insurgent instead of terrorist and marine instead of Marine, or rebel instead of terrorist...etc. So, I have corrected it for them.
Black Flags Are Deadly Signals as Cornered TERROSISTs Fight Back (New York Times Alert)
New York Times ^ | 11/11/04 | DEXTER FILKINS
Posted on 11/11/2004 11:54:52 PM EST by freakboy
November 12, 2004 THE MARINES. Black Flags Are Deadly Signals as Cornered TERROSISTs Fight Back By DILDO 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 TERROSISTS' 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 TERROSISTS 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 TERROSISTS 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 TERROSISTS 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 TERROSISTS 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 TERROSISTS 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 TERROSISTS 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.
Now, ain't that better?
:O)
P
Calm down people. Our troops are masters of warfare, and have the best equipment known to man.
Don't fall for these defeatist NYT reports. The hero's of NYT reporters (terrorists) are on the run and being massacured by the worlds finest fighting forces. So far, over 750 terrorist scum have been sent to Muhammads whore house, which is Satan's idea of heaven, with 750 ft tall sluts with transparent skin.(Yuck!) and little pearly boys for their homo pleasures.
This goes to show that the fear mongering the MSM tries to do is completely wrong, they think our troops aren't capable of fighting an urban war.
They have just been proven wrong. The speed our fine men are traveling through that mud hut crap hole is astounding, and a lesson to other terrorist filled cities.
They can't run and hide ANYWHERE!
...duh, except I've become dyslexic.
Sorry.
:O(
P
See post #7 also
P.S> I agree, why are they allowing NYT reporters to continue being embedded with our troops?
That is disgusting. they should boot them all out, I'm really REALLY sick of biased media.
Typical New York Times - take a U.S. victory and spin it to make it read like a dfeat.
The NYT has lost it; it can't even see reality any more.
That's why God invented XV
Well, we know what happen to Napoleon and his black flags.
Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times
Marines fought on Thursday in an industrial zone in southern Falluja.
Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times
Marines kept an eye out Thursday for black flags, used by insurgents to gather and attack, in Falluja fighting.
Legitimate target.
Any structure flying a black flag is a self-declared part of the enemy's command and control.
How does a flag pop up all at once?
Personally, I think the Administration should cite them as propagandists of the first order, and strip them of their White House and Embed privleges.
The First Amendment guarentees their right to Print, it doesn't say jack $#!t about access.
I love reading the Belmont Club blogs. The guy writes really well and makes it realistic.
"Set against radio waves, the flags have one distinct advantage: they are terrifying."
To Dexter Filkins "black flags" are "terrifying" as well as bugs, scary noises and the "things under his bed " that would surely come out night if it were not for his mommy's leaving the night light on..
It's a wonder how this "heroic" journalist can cover the war AND write with his dress over his head.....
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