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On November 21, 2003, some minor rocket attacks on the Iraqi oil ministry and on two hotels in Baghdad elicited an exceptional amount of attention in the global media. What drew the interest of journalists were the terrorists’ mobile launchers: they were crude donkey carts. This peculiar juxtaposition of 8th- and 21st-century technology was taken as emblematic of the entire American experience in Iraq — an increasingly hopeless clash between our overwhelming conventional strength and stealthy terrorists able to turn our own lethal means against us with cheap and ubiquitous native materials. How could we possibly win this contest, when...

Stealth weapons vs. donkey carts Posted: November 25, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 David H. Hackworth Once again, "shock and awe" thundered across Iraq for two explosive weeks. Then the insurgents responded to our high-tech air and ground hammer with return fire from four donkey-drawn carts toting homemade rocket launchers that hit one of the most heavily defended zones in Baghdad. Which says it all about the nature of modern guerrilla warfare. The Have-Nots – the guerrillas – use whatever they have at hand, the simplest weapons and tactics, to go up against the Have-It-Alls. In Iraq, it has...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Since guerrillas used donkeys to outwit the high-tech defences of the U.S. military in Iraq, the life of the beast of burden has never been so miserable. Attackers used donkey carts to launch Katyusha rockets at the Oil Ministry and two fortified Baghdad hotels on Friday. Two other donkey carts were stopped -- one carrying more rockets, the other a donkey-bomb wired up with explosives. Every donkey in Baghdad is suddenly under suspicion as U.S. President George W. Bush wages a global war on terror. In a crackdown on an animal that already suffers multiple daily whippings,...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq – Faced with a U.S. military crackdown using all the paraphernalia of high-tech warfare, Iraqi insurgents resorted Friday to the humblest of creatures and the simplest of transports to carry out what U.S. officers called "spectacular" strikes against heavily fortified targets in Baghdad.</p>

The Baghdad donkey bomb was a bust, but it - and rockets fired from donkey carts - showed an increasingly "adaptive" and "ingenious enemy," a U.S. commander said. Iraq rebels fired up to three rockets from a cart early yesterday at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel - home to many journalists and U.S. civilian workers - one of which missed and hit the nearby Sheraton, said Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt. Almost simultaneously, at least seven rockets were fired from another cart at the Iraqi Oil Ministry, setting parts of it ablaze but injuring no one, he said. Two more rocket-armed carts...