Threats lurk in Fallujah slum

AP ^ | Thu, Apr. 29, 2004 | Jason Keyser

[Anti-Bubba182]

FALLUJAH, Iraq - In the ancient slum at Fallujah's heart, Marines rely on high-tech equipment, night vision and the fearsome AC-130 gunship. But their Sunni foes have their own advantages - the labyrinth of alleyways that offer deadly ambush sites shielded by a civilian population.

The Golan slum, home to some 40,000 people, has seen three days of intense combat, with Marines fighting mainly from the air with precision weapons. If they enter in force, it will mean deadly urban warfare. U.S. forces are so concerned that when Marines begin moving through Fallujah on patrols with U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces on Friday, they will skip Golan.

Golan - named after the strategic Golan Heights that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 war - is the oldest part of Fallujah, its tight alleyways and old, ramshackle houses pressed between railroad tracks and the muddy Euphrates River.

An estimated one-third of Fallujah's 200,000 people have fled the siege this month, but not many from Golan. Most are too poor to afford alternative housing.

Marines say Sunni Muslim guerrillas are also concentrated in that part of the city, and a key concern is to avoid harming civilians wedged in the middle.

Troops on the northern fringe of the neighborhood stare down fighters just a street away.

A satellite photo of Fallujah shows a city with wide roads, neatly-organized blocks of houses and open spaces, and in the northeast corner Golan, a knot of streets too narrow for tanks and heavy armor.

To fight the insurgents but keep casualties down, U.S. forces have turned to the air, using laser-guided bombs and other munitions to hammer at insurgents holed up in buildings.

[Burkeman1]

Right. The C-130 is just completely accurate? Given the coordiates from scared Marines on the ground are correct?

But we know the truth in Iraq because our press is right there? They are following this story like hawks!

Or have they left that rooftop hotel in the "Gree Zone" in Baghdad yet?

[Hewar]

I think the solution is easy.Those who are against the violence should leave, Who stay in Falluja from civilians are with the thugs. The point they are poor and can not afford to leave is not correct. They were the most previleged people who supported Saddam and they are the same criminals who were killing the rest of Iraqi people.
We left to the Iranian and Turkish border in April 1991, in the greatest mass migration and protest against Saddam, 3-4 million Kurds left all their homes jobs belongings going toward unknown to the hostile Passak soldjers on Iranian border and even the more hostile Turkish Genderma on the other border. All the children younger than one year died on the borders, as well as all old people who never returned to their homes, their graves are on the borders of Iran and Turkey. I am a paeidiatrician and lived on the border for two month in my car ( ordinary people had no cars)in the most harsh condition I have ever seen in my life but I was still happy to be free from Arab's oppression and was proud of my nation ( KURDs) for their bravery and freedom loving for which they were all ready to sacrifice every thing including their lives and the lives of their children. I was helping children and families who were in need to my help without knowing where were my family. I think these people in Falluja are families of those who are fighting and they are using their families as human shields, because they know very well that they can not govern Iraq any more that is why they decided to commit succide, as the time of accountability for their crimes has come.

[livius]

Thank you for your account - I'm glad you made it out, and it reminds us (most of whom had never had to live through something like that) how terrible it was.

I agree, many of the families still in that part of Fallujah are being used as human shields by the thugs, and probably aren't being allowed to leave by the thugs themselves. Even some reporters are acknowledging that.

[LibLieSlayer]

"correct answer , too bad it wont happen , the "peacnik sheiks" are on the way so says the article.
then the bad guys will throw down their RPG's and we'll all sing Koombayah".

Maybe.....but if they fail to procure the surrender of weapons and insurgents, the enemy may all be singing "Boombayah"

LLS

[Polybius]

AC-130 can put down very accurate fire and take out a single building or, as in the above case, an entire weapons storage area. It is not a B-17 carpet bombing weapon......Polybius

Right. The C-130 is just completely accurate?....Burkeman1

Hmmmmm...Let's see. I say "very accurate" and Burkeman1 changes that to "completely accurate" in the very first sentence.

Let's see where this strawman argument set up leads to......

Given the coordiates from scared Marines on the ground are correct? But we know the truth in Iraq because our press is right there? They are following this story like hawks! Or have they left that rooftop hotel in the "Gree Zone" in Baghdad yet?

So, an AC-130 with literally a bird's eye view of the battlefield and crammed with detection equipment might not be "completely" perfect in every way so we should rely instead on.........what?

Then he veers off into an incoherent rant about the press as if Freepers who collectively have centuries of Armed Forces service know nothing about the military except what they hear on CNN.......

It seems that Burkeman1's strawman argument set up lead to......absolutely nowhere.

According to his previous post, AC-130's are "useless" and the narrow streets make tanks less than optimal and bombing kills civilians so........

Burkeman1 was absolutely correct in his previous post, guys. Our weapons are "useless" and the U.S. needs to admit the war is lost and come back home.