Posted on 10/21/2005 7:01:20 PM PDT by 1066AD
US troops fighting losing battle for Sunni triangle By Adrian Blomfield (Filed: 22/10/2005)
The mob grew more frenzied as the gunmen dragged the two surviving Americans from the cab of their bullet-ridden lorry and forced them to kneel on the street.
Killing one of the men with a rifle round fired into the back of his head, they doused the other with petrol and set him alight. Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man's body to stoke the flames.
It had taken just one wrong turn for disaster to unfold. Less than a mile from the base it was heading to, the convoy turned left instead of right and lumbered down one of the most anti-American streets in Iraq, a narrow bottleneck in Duluiya town, on a peninsular jutting into the Tigris river named after the Jibouri tribe that lives there.
As the lorries desperately tried to reverse out, dozens of Sunni Arab insurgents wielding rocket launchers and automatic rifles emerged from their homes.
The gunmen were almost certainly emboldened by the fact that the American soldiers escorting the convoy would not have been able to respond quickly enough.
"The hatches of the humvees were closed," said Capt Andrew Staples, a member of the Task Force Liberty 1-15 battalion that patrols Duluiya and other small towns on the eastern bank of the Tigris, who spoke to soldiers involved.
Within minutes, four American contractors, all employees of the Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown & Root, were dead. The jubilant crowd dragged their corpses through the street, chanting anti-US slogans. An investigation has been launched into why the contractors were not better protected.
Perhaps fearful of public reaction in America, where support for the war is falling, US officials suppressed details of the Sept 20 attack, which bore a striking resemblance to the murder of four other contractors in Fallujah last year.
Duluiya, located in the notorious Sunni triangle, is much smaller than Fallujah but no less violent, even if events here rarely make the news.
The violence here seems to encapsulate the growing difficulties the US military is facing in trying to defeat the insurgency. Pinned down by a constant stream of hit-and-run attacks from former Saddam regime loyalists, American soldiers are unable to focus their attention on the foreign extremists who pose a far more dangerous threat to the future of Iraq.
Yet it is here that the battle against the suicide bombers must be won.
The isolated towns east of the Tigris supply the foreign fighters and their allies and provide a haven where they can regroup after American offensives on their urban strongholds.
If the Americans do not close off these boltholes, it seems unlikely the war can be won.
But hopes for progress are growing more remote. The insurgency in eastern Salahuddin province is growing more intense, more deadly and more sophisticated.
Lt Col Gary Brito, the battalion's commanding officer, said that in recent months the number of roadside bombs targeting his men had increased by a third - even though journeys out of base have been cut back. They are having a more devastating effect too.
"Before only two out of 10 used to be effective," he said. "Now four or five have a catastrophic effect, blowing away a vehicle or causing casualties." In the past few months at least four American soldiers in this battalion alone have been killed. Another 39 have been wounded.
Even routine patrols are fraught with danger.
"What the hell was that," shouted Lt Chris Baldwin as a huge explosion rocked Baker Company's convoy of humvees trundling along a street in Dour, another town under Lt Col Brito's watch.
"Contact! Contact!" he bellowed into his radio as the gunners opened fire on a row of nearby houses from where the rocket-propelled anti-tank missile was fired.
As the gunfire died down, the soldiers burst into house after house, their facades peppered with bullet holes.
But, as is so often the case, the attacker had vanished down one of Dour's maze-like alleys.
Instead the Americans were confronted with sullen Iraqis, holding their terrified children to their sides. An old woman sat on her bed, clutching her heart, as the soldiers interrogated the family.
"They heard nothing, they saw nothing, same as ******* usual," said Sgt Jody Miller. Taking another deep drag from his cigarette, he turned to the company's translator.
"Tell them to tell us where the bad guys are so we stop frigging shooting up their houses," he said.
Nobody was hurt but the mutual distrust between the Americans and the local community deepened just a little bit more.
Beats the heck out of what the Anglo-Saxons were doing to the Brits and Irish ~ that was only 900 years or so (off and on).
Go educate yourself about what happened to Fallujah. After you've done that, then come back and explain to me why you believe our troops lack the ability to impose their will on the Sunnis that are backing the insurgency.
This will be there fight soon. I would not to see atrocities on either side but I fear it will get ugly.
Nevertheless, it will be an internal Iraqi matter
Sounds like a plan to me, lets roll!
Regards,
GtG
DU picked up the story.
Saddam knew.
OK.
I'm sick of hearing this stuff (descriptive wording omitted)
"Distrust" and "hurt" do not equate to "out of power" or "executed".
Let's see one reporter, who has been in or around actual combat - with weapon in hand and on orders - report the same situation!
War sucks,
there are people out there who support you...
and those who don't.
there are feel good stories,
and the others.
Bottom line is that the 'sunni triangle' won't be the same tomorrow as two years ago,
won't be the same tomorrow as today.
Iraq WILL be a changed state when we leave - almost certainly for the better.
The other bottom line is that the MSM and large parts of the settled world will be saddened by that fact.
Xin Loi.
Wait, wait:
when I google "Duluiya" or "sunni triangle" and "contractors", all I come across in News is this story...
If this story is true why haven't others picked it up yet?
Something isn't right about this....
It is new but similar.
Your reference is a disquised link to DU???
Duh, the link to the DU thread and me saying DU picked up the story was a pretty obvious give away.
guys -
the telegraph is the ONLY source I've found that's carrying this story-
doesn't that seem strange?
YO! What you be talkin' about Cain't even read that in "MaHEAD"
This incident is not a measure of who is winning the Sunni Triangle.
The measure is in the voter turnout in the Sunni Triangle. The Iraqui people deplore this incident as much as anyone.
The Islamofascists are on a campaign to dehumanize us in Iraq. We need to fight back by humanizing ourselves.
The liberal media goes along with the dehumanizing of Westerners in Iraq. Otherwise they would be showing photos of dead and captured terrorists as well.
Sorry, I only read what was under the line. Thought the line delimited someone else' post.
Quite true of course. And the reporters of the left, the AP dogs and Kevin "Let's Backstab Some Marines" Sites, now of Yahoo, reported that our guys were brutes.
This story illustrates how the bestial -ists will be brave when they are armed and face the unarmed. When we are armed they are contemptibly craven.
This street needs to die. The men, the women, the livestock, those beasts of children, the buildings and the very cobblestones. Americans won't do it. Iraqis will. Give them their head.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2005/09/oil-spots-and-maneuver.html
For accurate news, go here or to Winds of Change.net.
If things are so bad, why is Syria now on the hot seat as Wretchard has documented for the past 5 weeks? The Anbar area is getting hammered with one assault after another. One began again on the day of the election.
Frank
You got that right. Unleash the Kurds.
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