Camp Pendleton Marines represent yourselves
Cee-gar Man US Marine
Pendleton Marines In Fight For Fallujah
Posted on 11/08/2004 8:39:55 AM PST by epluribus_2
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - More than 4,000 U.S. Marines and Army troops punched their way into northeastern Fallujah on Monday, kicking off a massive assault dubbed Operation Phantom Fury that seeks to put an end to half a year of insurgent control of the Sunni Muslim city.
The prelude to the assault on the Askari neighborhood was a crushing air and artillery bombardment of the city that rose to a crescendo by Monday evening, with U.S. strike jets dropping bombs around the clock and big guns pounding the city every few minutes with high-explosive shells.
Meanwhile, insurgents in Baghdad and nearby Ramadi tried to keep up the pressure on the coalition forces with new attacks, including one on a Catholic church in the capital.
Earlier Monday U.S. troops had fought their way into the city's western outskirts, seizing two bridges over the Euphrates River and helping Iraqi soldiers take the city's main hospital in the first stage of a major assault on the insurgent stronghold.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Camp Pendleton Marines represent yourselves
Cee-gar Man US Marine
Pendleton Marines In Fight For Fallujah
Wipe them out,all of them.....
Thats the only way I see Mooky being out of the picture. An unfortunate accident.
Besides this being a war on the battlefield, it is also a political one. President GWB, his administration, and some of the American people versus the Arab islamic clerics and Arab people in power in multiple Arab countries that resist democracy and want to keep their people in the dark ages.
Some of these same islamic clerics and islamic leaders are supporting Mooky behind the scene with money and supplies.
I wish they would name it Operation Green Glass...
You wrote:
We never did it for the money.....
Tag line material!!!!!
The skies above Fallujah burned red overnight as artillery, war planes and tanks pounded the Iraqi rebel bastion and US troops poured in at the start of an operation to retake the city.
Iraq's Defence Minister Sheikh Hazem Shaalan warns that worse is to follow as the US-backed government battles to retake the city, the symbol of a potent insurgency that is bent on undermining its plans to hold elections by January.
"Tomorrow is the large-scale operation to retake the city," he said.
"We've called it Operation Dawn. God willing, it's going to be a new, happy dawn for the people of Fallujah."
Shaalan said some insurgents had already fled and vowed to catch them.
"But our intelligence services are tracking them and we are going to get them and teach them a lesson that they would never forget."
Avenge the victims of terrorists, says Allawi
Just before the official battle started - involving 12,000 US and Iraqi troops, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi paid a surprise visit to the thousands of Iraqi troops also camped out around Fallujah, poised for action.
"Your job is to arrest the killers but if you kill them then let it be," he said.
"You need to avenge the victims of the terrorists like the 37 children who were killed in Baghdad and the 49 of your colleagues who were slaughtered," he said, referring to two of the deadliest attacks unleashed by insurgents loyal to Iraq's most wanted militant and Al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Iraqi and US officials believe that Zarqawi and his followers have turned Fallujah into an operating base. They gave the residents an ultimatum to surrender the militants or face assault, but city leaders insist such people are not there.
Allawi said uprooting extremists from Fallujah is the only way ``to safeguard lives, elections and democracy in Iraq''.
He has rejected UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's warning against attacking the city, according to a letter obtained today by The Associated Press.
Allawi's diplomatic rebuke was in response to Annan's letter late last week warning the leaders of the United States, Britain and Iraq that an all-out assault on Fallujah could undermine national elections set for January and further alienate Iraqis. Iraq's Defence Minister Sheikh Hazem Shaalan warns that worse is to follow as the US-backed government battles to retake the city, the symbol of a potent insurgency that is bent on undermining its plans to hold elections by January.
"Tomorrow is the large-scale operation to retake the city," he said.
"We've called it Operation Dawn. God willing, it's going to be a new, happy dawn for the people of Fallujah."
Shaalan said some insurgents had already fled and vowed to catch them.
"But our intelligence services are tracking them and we are going to get them and teach them a lesson that they would never forget."
It looks like the worse is to come tomorrow....
maybe they killed these guys, where this stupid AP photographer managed to take some stunning shots of the "freedom fighters.
here's a pic of them burying 7 insurgents today.
Question:
Why don't they just lay down some sewer pipe while they have the chance?
Mon Nov 8, 2004 06:29 PM ET
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - An assault on Falluja was Iraq's "least damaging choice" for providing security for civilians in the rebel-held city, Baghdad's U.N. ambassador said he told Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday.
Annan had warned the United States, Britain and Iraq that an assault on Falluja risked further dividing the Iraqi people and jeopardizing planned January elections. This drew a rebuttal from Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.
U.N. officials particularly fear a large-scale attack on Falluja could provoke an election boycott by Sunni Muslims and undermine efforts to promote stability in a country already deeply divided along religious and ethnic lines.
But Iraqi Ambassador Samir Sumaidy said he told Annan that Falluja's residents would be "very unlikely to participate in any elections in the current conditions."
"We have very few choices. We have to choose the least damaging, the least dangerous of all the choices ahead of us, and that is to return law and order to Falluja and return some level of security for the civilians, because at the moment they have no security," Sumaidy told reporters.
The two men met shortly after U.S. Marines launched a full-scale assault to retake the city. But Sumaidy said boycott fears were unrelated to the question of a military assault.
"The action in Falluja is directed against terrorists, not against those that want to take part in the election or not take part in the election," he said.
A U.N. spokesman said Annan and Sumaidy had "discussed their differing perspectives" but agreed on the importance of establishing a relationship based on mutual understanding.
The meeting was the first since Allawi sent Annan an angry letter rejecting the U.N. secretary-general's warning that an assault might jeopardize the elections.
"The terrorists and insurgents operating from places like Falluja ... are not looking simply for a delay; they want the whole political process to fail. They would not be appeased by a delay, but rather encouraged by one," Allawi wrote Annan.
In letters to Allawi, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Annan "was merely warning that use of force could destabilize the country at a critical point in the preparation for the elections," said U.N. chief spokesman Fred Eckhard.
But Allawi said "the same group who murdered so many of your staff in the bombing of the U.N. headquarters last year has since murdered hundreds of innocent Iraqis and committed countless other atrocities." He was referring to the August 2003 bombing of U.N. offices in Baghdad that killed 22 people.
Jean Araff(sp?) with CNN is embedded with one of the units. She has reported that our guys have spent an hour or more discharging or blowing up booby traps. Lots and lots of booby traps.
Jean Araff(sp?), I don't see how she does it, she has spent a lot of time in Iraq and has seen numerous bodies blown to bits. I don't know how she can get a good nights sleep.
Can you justimagine when she shows that to her grandchildren in 40 years or so?
>>A U.N. spokesman said Annan and Sumaidy had "discussed their differing perspectives" but agreed on the importance of establishing a relationship based on mutual understanding. <<
i detest this kinda PC cr*p talk.. it says nothing... mumbo jumbo.. so different then how W and Rummy, and Allawi talk - crystal clear and black and white.
maybe it's just because i'm an eegnerant red neck..
I bet Allawi CC'ed President Bush and PM Blair his response. Bush and Blair had to be chuckling.
"Allawi told Annan, "I was a little surprised by the lack of any mention in your letter of the atrocities which these groups have committed."
New left/democrat talking point, "Bush waited for election to attack".
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're on the outskirts on the northeast side of the city. But other units of task force 22 from the Army's 1st Infantry Division had been moving further in, as far in as 800 meters into the city.
Out here in between, they have been blowing up railroad tracks to allow them to move further. They've also, for more than an hour, been decimating a series of booby traps.
This is what U.S. forces had expected and had feared as they began to move into the city, that there was a series of improvised explosive devices, homemade bombs, laid out in patterns to try to prevent them from moving in. The Army, the units that we're with, have been firing at these with tanks, causing huge explosions.
This is a sector of the city where there are very few civilians. In fact, officials have told us that they believe insurgents have prevented civilians from moving back into this area as they've been rigging up buildings, barriers and almost everything else with these homemade bombs.
They are continuing to detonate them, and they are now detonating -- the Army is blowing up railroad tracks to allow them to go further.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: That Jane Arraf reporting from the outskirts of Falluja, embedded with Task Force 22 of the Army's 1st Infantry Division. If that division slows down enough over the course of the next 45 minutes, and Jane has the opportunity, we'll, of course, be going live to her for the very latest on the -- on the progress of this offensive.
eegnerant red necks need love too.
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