Please read the whole account.
That was what awaited the Marines on the last block they cleared, at the last house. The first Marine there found the gate in the high walls around the house open; the front door was locked.
"As soon as he kicks the door, the machine-gun fire cuts him down," said Hurley, a Dayton, Ohio, police officer serving in the Marine Reserves. The Marine survived, but a second fell as well, fatally wounded. From inside, a foreign fighter fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the door.
At some point, the screamed prayers began: "Allahu Akbar" -- "God is great."
Marines fell, unable to tell the source of the screams or the shots. They fired blindly, as machine-gun rounds cratered the walls and floors around them.
"Our rounds couldn't get through the walls," Hurley said.
God Bless our fighting men and women. Showing bravery and courage each and every day.
Good for them. Of course, the bleeding heart pantywaists will be screaming "human rights abuse" faster than you can say "Abu Ghraib" because of this.
"U.S. officers say the most-wanted insurgent leader in Iraq, the Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, is being sheltered among tribal leaders in Haditha and Hit, two towns 80 and 110 miles downriver. The Americans say Zarqawi was almost caught in February at a checkpoint between the towns. Other sightings since have placed him in other towns on the south side of the Euphrates. In Haqlaniyah, Zarqawi felt bold enough to preach a sermon at a mosque, according to at least one report to U.S. forces."
If someone could have just paid close attention to angle of fire and then poured/sprayed gasoline into the building -- problem solved. Don't let it happen again.
Thanks for posting this! Great article. A family friend, a Marine, was stationed in Hit last year...told us it's pronounced "heat". That begs the headline: "Zarqawi in Hit?"
What an amazing account; thanks for the post.
Ridiculous!
BTW this thread is a duplicate.
I'm pretty sure the US military can meet their expectations...
Wow, must be a new type of bullet and gun. Even a .50bmg with ap tip can't penetrate a tank.
Unless of course they meant A WATER TANK.
By Monday, more than 1,000 Marines backed by Cobra helicopters and Hornet warplanes were pouring into an area north of the Euphrates River where few American troops and no Iraqi forces have been for at least a year.
This bothers me. It appears they may be the source of the car bombs and suicide bombers hitting the country recently. Why has it taken a year to get at these multiplying cockroaches? And how is the border to be secured once we finish this job? Are we going to have to go back again in 6-months or a year to repeat the process? And where are these terrorists getting the special ammo that is so powerful it will shoot through concrete floors and walls to injure and kill our men?
Answers anyone?
At the end of the day the bad guy body count is all that matters...not how ya got the count.
Screaming "Allahu Akbar'' to the end, the foreign fighters lay on their backs in a narrow crawl space under a house and blasted their machine guns up through the concrete floor with bullets designed to penetrate tanks. They fired at U.S. Marines, driving back wave after wave as the Americans tried to retrieve a fallen comrade.
Through Sunday night and into Monday morning, the foreign fighters battled on, their screaming voices gradually fading to just one. In the end, it took five Marine assaults, grenades, a tank firing bunker-busting artillery rounds, 500-pound bombs unleashed by an F/A-18 attack plane and a point-blank attack by a rocket launcher to quell them.
"They were willing to stay in place and die with no hope," Hurley said Tuesday. "All they wanted was to take us with them.
The mosque's loudspeakers screamed Arabic that the Marines could not understand, but they said that since it was past time for prayers, they assumed the loudspeakers were rallying forces for attack.
The Marines went in a fourth time. Bullets, and one chanting voice, met them. "Nobody should have survived" the tank assault, Hurley later said in amazement.
Still under fire, the Marines holed up for the night in Ubaydi...Fired from a dozen or so yards, the rockets collapsed the walls over the fighters' hiding place
When the Marines entered a final time, the daylight finally showed them where the bullets had come from: the floor beneath their feet. The insurgents had lain faceup on the ground below, with barely enough room to point their weapons upward, Marines said. They simply blasted through the floor.
The Marines found the last foreign fighters there, dead. There were at least two, and it was unclear whether they had bled to death overnight or been killed in the morning's rocket volley, Hurley and other Marines said.
Maybe it is me and my cynicism about the WP, but the tenor of this article was one of admiration for the courage and determination of the terrorist vermin, which the WP calls "foreign fighters." The WP would have us believe that this is a war we cannot win.
I read the whole account. I did not read in any part of the account where the villages where leveled when we recieved fire from them. I did not read where B52s flew over and left huge holes where buildings had been.
Oh and the piece of crap M16 doesn't even have automatic fire. Why? Because they took that automatic fire from the M16 away so they could sell the Squad Automatic Weapon. We had full auto on the M16 when I was in. We are playing by the enemies rules, and when you do that, the enemy rules.
Sure we killed 100 and lost 3. Islamist can train 100 more in a day, and send them in from the Sanctuary our President allows them to enjoy, Syria.
Get into Syria and wipe it out, crush it. Mr Bush, stop playing around with this kinder gentler compassionate Bush Idealism. Time is not on our side. Look at the problem we have now with N. Korea, we gave them time and they now are giving us the finger - the Nuclear Finger.
Well, aren't THEY heros! Too bad that "courage" was employed in the defense of madness; it might have been put to better use. Now, these geniuses are just crypt grout.
And now they're dead. The only problem I see here is that they took a few good men with them.
Killing them seems to be the only solution. God Bless our troops!