Rebels Briefly Control Central Ramadi in Presence of Marines
BAGHDAD, Dec. 1 -- The city of Ramadi and U.S. forces there came under attack from about 250 armed rebels Thursday who then briefly took over the center of the city despite the presence of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops and Marines.
The apparent target of the attack was a meeting between Marine officers and tribal leaders who support resistance to the U.S. presence, part of a groundbreaking series of contacts that got underway earlier this week.
The armed men reportedly set up roadblocks at roads leading in and out of the city and conducted their own patrols. They fired mortars at the building where the meeting was taking place as well as at U.S. bases in the area.
Authorities said U.S. troops entered the town in force about 11:00 a.m. and many of the armed men slipped away.
Al Qaeda in Iraq, which distributed leaflets saying it was taking over the city, said that about six of its men had been killed. There were no immediate reports on other casualties.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/01/AR2005120100271.html
So did the armed, masked terrorists appear before our troops were in the city or after they were there? This article implies both scenarios, unless I'm reading it incorrectly.
Sounds like the military equivalent of a bunch of teens mooning a police cruiser.
250 armed rebels could take over Times Square long enough to pass out flyers and shoot a few mortars, even though the New York police department is larger than the entire military of some countries. Ramadi's only got 400,000 people, anyway.
Think about it. If you've got 250 armed guys ready to pop out of vans you can assert temporary control of damn near anywhere. It sounds like they disperesed as soon as we showed up.
Also -
Just because we didn't want to fight them in the middle of the city doesn't mean that we just let them go. We can follow them home, and I'm sure we did.