Posted on 04/27/2005 3:56:50 AM PDT by Flavius
Baghdad: US marines who suffered the highest casualty rate of any unit in Iraq have revealed that they were so short of soldiers that they used cardboard dummies to fool insurgents into believing they faced more men.
Company E of the First Marine Division dressed the cutouts in shirts and placed them in observation posts to trick rebels into thinking they were manned.
More than one third of the unit's 185 troops were killed or wounded during its six-month tour last year in the insurgent stronghold in Ramadi, west of Falluja, during which it faced 26 gun battles, 90 mortar attacks and nearly 100 homemade bombs.
The deception was revealed on Monday when the marines broke the corps' code of silence to detail the extent of shortages of equipment and manpower which they blame for many of their comrades' deaths.
The marines highlighted the lack of armoured Humvees, the four-wheel-drive vehicles favoured by the US military, which the company said meant they had little protection against roadside bombs.
When the unit arrived, none were fully armoured and the commanders had to find scrap metal to line the sides and bottom of their vehicles.
It was also issued with maps that were several years out of date and showed urbanised areas still to be farmland.
The unit, nicknamed the Magnificent Bastards, said it had only a handful of electronic devices that block the detonation of roadside bombs, which were responsible for the deaths of 13 of 21 deaths.
Telegraph, London
Damn good idea. What better way to find a sniper's position than to have him zip one right through the cardboard head of a marine? Sure beats losing a live one!
I agree.
Should have used some of those human shields that were over protecting Saddam's interests before the shooting started.
It is truly amazing.
Almost everything mentioned in this article is a non-issue. Imagine if the same reporter was writing a story on the D-Day invasion. Almost everything written would also apply to the buildup and we know how big of a failure that was. /sarcasm
How on earth does this thread qualify as passing muster on "Loose Lips Sink Ships"???
Good point! D-Day planners used dummy tanks to fool Hitler's armies into think the invasion was coming elsewhere.
I agree. This should not be posted, IMO. It puts our troops at risk.
And more recently, the Serbs did the same to fool high-altitude bombing and preserve their assets.
I completely disagree. How do you know they don't want this information to be put out? This could just as easily be disinformation put out by the US government on purpose.
Sounds like an excellent follow-up to all the 'captured doll' threads:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;s=doll
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Yesterday, one of the news programs showed police in one city (US) were using cut-outs of cops, for example, holding radar guns. The intent was that speeders would slow down long before they recognized that the 'radar gun guy' was cardboard.
Hey, if it works.....
Best use for a DUmmie I ever heard... oh wait, different kind of dummy... still, the ossibilities are intruiging...
Dade County (Florida) police used to do this sometimes a while back. They would park a cruiser in some location with a 'fake' officer inside to trick people into slowing down. I had a friend who used to love putting empty boxes of Dunkin Donuts on top of the cars when he saw them.
Caption:
Najaf - A U.S. soldier uses a dummy to draw an insurgent sniper into view. (Photo by Jim MacMillan, August 20, 2004.
Leni
also being reported here
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/international/middleeast/25marines.html?incamp=article_popular_4e786ce
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