Posted on 11/14/2004 4:41:04 PM PST by saquin
Fleeing rebels are tracked by aircraft and killed by US troops
THE last hours of the mujahidin are terrifying. With the city they once ruled with the absolute authority of medieval caliphs now overrun by American and Iraqi troops, they have to keep moving. To pause even for a few minutes can mean instant death from an unseen enemy.
A group of 15 fighters dressed in black and carrying an array of weapons ducked into a two-storey house in war-torn southern Fallujah yesterday morning. Their movement was picked up by an unmanned spy plane that beamed back live footage to a control centre on the edge of the city. Within minutes, an airstrike was called and the house disappeared in a giant plume of grey smoke.
From a house across the road, the explosion flushed out another group of guerrillas. Deafened by the blast, they stumbled out into the street, formed a ragged line and started off on the marathon to postpone their deaths, the drone dogging their every step.
“The rats are trying to move about,” Major Tim Karcher, of the Second Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, said as the figures flitted from street to street, seeking cover close to walls.
Sometimes they can throw off the drone, ducking out of sight of the men in whose power it is to summon FA18 fighter-bombers or 155mm artillery strikes. But they have no way of knowing. And, increasingly, as they run they are coming into the crosshairs of American snipers, crackshots such as Sergeant Marc Veen and his long-barrelled rifle, Lucille. Yesterday morning he spotted a black- clad man with an AK47 assault rifle peering round a corner 500 yards from the villa where Cougar Company of the Seventh Cavalry has set up a forward base.
He shot the man in the stomach: he fell, but kept crawling, so Sergeant Veen shot him again in the shoulder. Still the man tried to move away, so the sergeant blasted him with his 50-calibre machinegun.
“There’s pretty much no feeling,” the 24-year-old from Chicago explained, perched on the parapet of the house, the shell of the killer bullet tucked as a trophy into his flak jacket. “If I didn’t get that guy, that guy would get one of my buddies some time later down the line.”
The battle for Fallujah is all but over. The main north-south road in the once-dreaded Jolan district is a US military highway, smothered in dust kicked up by troop carriers and giant bulldozers. Almost every building is cracked, chipped or holed by the fighting.
Any guerrilla who could make his way back up from the last pockets of resistance in the south would see the mujahidin graffiti — “Jihad, jihad, jihad, God is Greatest and Islam will win” — replaced by slogans daubed by the US-backed Iraqi Army, posted the length of the route. Standing on a street reeking of decomposed bodies, the ruins of a five-floor building silhouetted behind him, Lieutenant Fares Ahmed Hassan said that the destroyed city would send a strong message to a nation where force has long been the lingua franca of government. “When the people of Fallujah come back and see their houses, they will kick out any terrorists. This will be an example to all Iraqi cities,” the Kurdish officer said.
Apart from a handful of women and children, the only civilians he had encountered were men of fighting age, about 500, detained for vetting. He said that some civilians had said that insurgent snipers had shot anyone trying to leave their homes. As US troops sweep through the houses, they are unearthing the insurgents’ horrifying secrets — more akin to the handiwork of psychotic serial killers than guerrillas or even terrorists — that have shocked the world and explain why this devastating offensive has met with so little opposition from the Arab world.
In the south of Fallujah yesterday, US Marines found the armless, legless body of a blonde woman, her throat slashed and her entrails cut out. Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the US Navy Corps, said that she had been dead for a while, but at that location for only a day or two. The woman was wearing a blue dress and her face had been disfigured. It was unclear last night if the grisly remains were the body of the Irish-born aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, or of Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole abducted two weeks ago. Both were married to Iraqis and held Iraqi citizenship; both were kidnapped in Baghdad last month.
US and Iraqi troops have discovered kidnappers’ lairs filled with corpses or emaciated prisoners half-mad with fear, and piles of bodies of men who had refused to fight to the death with the insurgents. As the guerrillas run their last sprint from death, sympathy for their cause among Iraqis is rapidly running out.
The guy on the right has a lip full of chewing tobbacco. Makes the picture look like he's scowling.
Except, there is no worrying about shooting a cop, an old man, or a lady.
I can't wait until they release a video game.
Don't hold your breath waiting for any of the MSM to report this as a success.
Marking this to print and send to a young Marine in Ramadi.
Note the pro-American Iraqi officer was a Kurd. We should have been working more closely to build an army with Kurds. The Kurds have talked about independence but they have said they will remain as part of Iraq.
Last night I saw a bunch of fat nerds from Western New York protesting the 'attack on Fallujah' from their clean, safe, unthreatened suburban neighbourhood.
If I had the power I would transport every one of these protesting idiots right into downtown Fallujah and make sure they toured every one of the torture sites and viewed all the CDs of beheadings.
Then I would leave them there to make their own way home. Or not.
Yeah, I had the same thought. That's right out of a Tom Clancy novel...
I have been saying the same thing for months and months....
How many lives have been lost due to this tactical error. Negotiate my a$$!
Aren't you glad the moral relativist mouth breathers didn't win the election? I could just hear diplomatic "geniuses" like Richard Holbrooke and Madeline Albright telling us, "It's not that simple; there are varying shades of gray," until a terrorist's nuclear weapon exploded in the United States. No thanks. The grown-ups are in charge.
BUG HUNT
I'd hazard a guess that the reporter couldn't tell Ma Deuce from a .50 cal. Barrett sniper rifle. A sniper would more likely have the latter than the former
I've never seen a short barrelled .50 caliber Barrett.
But then, this guy might think a 7.62 or a 5.56 was "long barrelled", too!
Thank God for Rummy.. God Bless him .. I so hope he's with us the next four years.
Don't MISS seeing the raw battle footage from Fallujah -- it's the top left link on Drudge .. it's COMPELLING and really really raw. God bless these brave warriors.
ping
Lucille???
"And, increasingly, as they run they are coming into the crosshairs of American snipers, crackshots such as Sergeant Marc Veen and his long-barrelled rifle, Lucille."
"Still the man tried to move away, so the sergeant blasted him with his 50-calibre machinegun. "
A 50 Cal sniper rifle is not a 50-calibre machinegun.
Me too...but I doubt it in this instance; they get just enough Al Jizm to know to yelp for American reparations.
They need to be thankful Bush is in charge and not me. No further comment.
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