[lbo-talk] Fresh war fruit for rotting democratic, consumerist vegetables

Leigh Meyers leighcmeyers at gmail.com
Mon May 16 10:33:10 PDT 2005


---- Original Message ---- From: John Bizwas To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 9:48 AM Subject: [lbo-talk] Fresh war fruit for rotting democratic, consumerist vegetables


> How can the US have a mass anti-war movement when the media assure
> most everyone remains a misinformed pod person? Or is it that the pod
> people just don't look very hard? These Iraq-related stories sure
> don't sell the war on the homefront (only the 'righteousness' and
> 'rationality' of the US's cause, if you read the whole stories). Some
> great excerpts below, with prefatory comments:
>
> 1. Even by the inflated 'standards' of CentCom and their constipated
> gyrine bombdroppers, recent Operation Matador was a resounding
> disaster. For one thing, the US military casualties might well exceed
> that of the 'insurgents'--but the operation was reported as a
> 'success' or a mechanized roll over territory that was mostly
> uncontested. So how to account for all those dead and wounded? On the
> 'other side', there were, to be sure, lots of bystanders shot at or
> rounded up and imprisoned. A few towns and villages destroyed. Enough
> bombs dropped and artillery fired to assure Iraqis, anyway, that the
> number one source of violence in occupied Iraq is the Occupation and
> its entrenched collaborators.
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/15/AR2005051500785_2.html
>
>>> Since May 8, when Operation Matador's scheduled start was
>>> accelerated by an unexpected but fierce clash at the riverside town
>>> of Ubaydi, the Marines had found no one to fight. But the
>>> insurgents left proxies to do the killing for them: meticulously
>>> rigged roadside bombs and mines, planted on dirt roads where wheels
>>> or tank treads would pass, or along bridges.
>
> Primed for battle, the Marines found only booby traps. Sometimes they
> found them too late.
>
> On Wednesday, two artillery rounds buried in the road detonated under
> an Amtrac, blowing a two-foot-wide hole in its armor plating. The
> explosion set off ammunition inside the vehicle, creating an inferno.
>
> As the Amtrac burned, a 24-year-old Marine in a nearby vehicle
> grabbed his helmet in both fists and wrenched it. "I hate this
> country!" he screamed.>>

Amtrac?

Timesonline(UK) gets graphic:

The Locked and Loaded Survey: Change in Iraqi attitudes towards the occupation.

Deadly firefight in a desert town shocks marines

Tony Allen-Mills in Washington and Ali Rifat in Baghdad

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1612884,00.html

<...> At the last house on one street, the marines found the front door locked. For the past year coalition troops have been kicking down doors and storming into houses across Iraq. Sometimes they find signs of insurgent activity; often they find they have made a mistake.

The last thing the Lima platoon expected was the firefight that awaited them. The ferocious battle that erupted in a single-storey house in northwestern Iraq proved the kind of deadly urban encounter that coalition troops had feared but rarely endured on their advance into Baghdad two years ago.

The lethal tactics displayed by the insurgents in Ubaydi showed how vulnerable the US and British-led effort in Iraq remains to a nimble and well-armed enemy. Last week insurgents across Iraq killed more than 100 people. Yet it was a battle the insurgents lost that may have worried coalition commanders most.

A burst of machinegun fire greeted the first two marines through the door of the Ubaydi house. One was injured, the other fatally wounded. Then a rocket-propelled grenade blasted through the door, fired from somewhere inside the house. The marines heard screams of "Allahu Akbar” God is greatest.

The men of Lima company rushed for cover. They were forced to leave their wounded comrades lying where they fell. Moments later two insurgents were seen running from the back of the house. Both were shot and killed, and the marines gingerly re-entered, thinking the house must now be empty.

According to Ellen Knickmeyer, a Washington Post reporter with the unit, Sergeant Dennis Woullard pulled one of the injured men to safety while the rest of the platoon began a search of the house. One marine began to open the door of what appeared to be a storage cupboard. Then the floor erupted with flying metal.

Insurgents hidden below the concrete floor started spraying the room above with armour- piercing bullets that blasted upwards through the house, shattering ceilings and exterior walls. "I've never seen anything like this in my life,"said Woullard. "No one's ever seen or heard of guys getting attacked from under a house.

Amid more screams of "Allahu Akbar", the concealed insurgents forced the marines to retreat, once again without their wounded comrade, who would later be recovered dead. The marines fired back into the house but they lacked heavy-calibre ammunition that could penetrate the walls and floors.

Time passed as the soldiers regrouped. Another effort was made to retrieve the body but it was once again repelled by heavy machinegun fire. <...>



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