Posted on 11/12/2004 6:45:46 AM PST by TexKat
View from the gunners site in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle as 1st Platoon, Apache Troop, 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division entering Fallujah. US marines barged house-by-house through Fallujah finding anything from corpses and weapons to hostages as they battled to secure the rebel enclave after seizing almost total control.(AFP/US Army/Johancharles Van Boers)
Scrolll down and click on Fallujah footage below if its Reuters you are talking about.
HA! It takes more than those people to bring me down.
Now, when our guys come back from Fallujah...that'll be a great day! :-)
Then they won't mind us dropping that ratio a few percentage points!
Exactly right... there was a belated attempt to find a political solution to the fighting in Falluja. It initially appeared to have worked but later collapsed as the so-called Fajulla-Brigade melted into the hostile population (or deserted).
The MSM asks: Where are all these insurgents?
I ask: Where are the 100,000 civilians? Answer: any smart civilian left a long time ago...
Here is an easy and quick way to help our troops and their families. At the links provided below you can send pre-paid phone cards to servicemen and women in the field and commissary gift cards to their families.
http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2004/nr20040423-0646.html
"I get steamed whenever I hear this lie repeated. "
Me too! Like those dirt bags could ever fight Marines to a stand still.
thanks for the ping. some great new pictures! for a 42 year old prairie chicken - i sure wish i was there with my 223 varmit gun helping out.. these Marines are enjoying themselves and they make me smile and outright laugh..
by the way - what does "frog out!" mean in Marine lingo? like "hop to it" ?
wishful thinking - maybe alZarqaword taped that before he was cornered? i had high hopes they would dig his corpse from the wreckage.... but most likely he is following in the brave sandle steps of his heroes - Saddam and OBL, and is hiding like the sniveling coward he is in, in a hole somewhere..
but i'm guessing there will be a surviver or two who might be "persuaded" (maybe some panties on the head?) to rat on the leader rat though - like the rats who ratted on Saddam.. and tell the Coalition where the rat holes are located..
i really like the picture of the rats in the pillow cases being hauled around by the scruff of their necks by our really BIG guys.. :) but the ones getting the boot are even sweeter to see..
man oh man.... awesome US Military!! God bless you guys!
Amen af_vet_1981.
News of ambush this morning..using armor piercing grenades..Went through tank and took the left arm off an American soldier..managed to rescue him under tremendous fire..These are more organized fighters..and fighting to the death..
There is more than one video to that link, you have to click on the one entitled Fierce Fighting in Fallujah.
bump 4 later...
I don't know what it means sd. Maybe we can get some of our Marine freepers to help us out with "frog out".
BTTT
By Terry Friel
NEAR FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - Twenty-two American troops have been killed and 170 wounded in the four-day assault on Falluja that has seen U.S. forces take about 80 percent of the rebel city so far, a U.S. Marine general said on Friday.
Lieutenant General Thomas Sattler, commander of the offensive, said five Iraqis had also been killed in the operation launched in a blaze of artillery fire on Monday. But U.S. forces were still conducting house-to-house searches for insurgents.
"We occupy about 80 percent of the city right now," Sattler told reporters at a U.S. base on the edge of Falluja. "There is much clearing to be done even though we occupy about 80 percent."
U.S.-led troops battling to take control ran into areas of fierce resistance on Friday as aid agencies pressed for access to get food and water to needy civilians trapped inside.
Hours after the U.S. Marines said insurgents were penned into the south of Falluja, a battle erupted in the northwest of the Sunni Muslim city, a nerve-center of guerrilla activity.
Sattler said U.S.-led forces had gained the upper hand in the battle, killing about 600 insurgents and capturing 150 during the assault, including at least a dozen foreigners, ten of whom were believed to be from neighboring Iran.
Iraqi officials say foreign Islamic militants are behind much of the bloodshed gripping Iraq, many of them based in Falluja, and have vowed to crush the insurgency ahead of elections scheduled for January.
Loyalists to the former regime and militant nationalists are believed to form the core of the insurgency, which has raged in Iraq since shortly after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
"Our goal right now, we feel we've broken their back and their spirit, is to keep the heat on them," Sattler said of the militants still holed in Falluja, known as the city of mosques.
"The operation is going extremely well and we will continue to press the enemy until we have in fact returned Falluja to the Fallujans."
He said about 300 people had negotiated their surrender on Friday at mosque in the city, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, but U.S.-led forces were trying to ascertain how many of them were fighters and how many civilians.
The U.S. military acknowledges insurgent leaders and other militants may have fled before the attack -- especially since it was clear for nearly a month before the offensive that it would happen -- but says those who remain are cornered.
"They are foreigners. They were not invited to come to Iraq and we want them out of here," Thaer al-Naqib, a spokesman for Iraq's interim prime minister, told reporters.
Actually, collateral damage is NECESSARY for us to win this war - like all wars. An enemy must be completely demoralized to finally throw in the towel. World War I, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I are all examples of where we did not do this. On the other hand, the Civil War and World War II are examples of where we DID follow this protocol. Germany and Japan gave up the ghost (and had no serious post war "insurgencies") when women and children and other innocents were scared sh*tless.
One thing I think is dumb, why are they sending the men back into the city and not putting them in a holding camp? Won't they just go back in and pick up a gun and fight to the death ?
um... yeah? - to the death is good. better dead. our Commaders are winnowing the chalf.. let the women and children and old men through.. the men go back in and either wait it out - or - fight to the death. sounds like a good plan to me.
It's "frag out". Its called when a live grenade has been thrown.
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