Report 03-31-03

[--am--]

March 31, 2003, 1828hrs MSK (GMT +4 DST), Moscow - During the night of March 30-31 the situation on the US-Iraqi front became increasingly more critical. All indications are that the coalition has launched a new attack.

Following a three-hour-long artillery barrage and several nighttime aviation strikes the coalition forces came in contact with the Iraqi troops near Karabela and attempted to move around the Iraqi defenses from the east.

For now the coalition is limiting its actions to probing the forward layer of the Iraqi defenses, attempting to assess its density and organization after nearly five days of artillery and aerial bombardment. There have been no reports of any coalition breaks through the Iraqi defenses in this area. At the same time morning radio intercepts uncovered a large US military convoy moving around the Razzaza Lake. At the moment it is unclear whether the purpose of this movement is to get to the town of Ar-Ramdia or a wider maneuver leading to the town of Al-Falludja.

Another [coalition] convoy numbering up to 100 combat vehicles was seen near the town of Al-Hillah moving in the southeaster direction 30 kilometers from the strategic Baghdad-Basra highway. Given there is no Iraqi resistance this coalition force will be able to reach the highway by today’s night. So far there were no reports of any losses in this area.

The US forces resumed attacking Iraqi defenses near An-Najaf. The US group of force in this area has been reinforced with at least three reserve Marine battalions and now Americans are trying once again to capture this key town. According to the US intelligence Iraqi defenses in this area number up to 3,000 troops aided by around 1,500 volunteers and [Ba’ath] party activists. The Iraqis here are armed with around 30 T-55 and T-62 tanks, up to four artillery batteries and more than 300 various anti-tank weapons. The town is being stormed by the elements of the 1st Marine Division numbering up to 6,000 troops assisted by 80 tanks and 60 artillery systems. Additionally, aerial support is provided by up to 40 helicopters. So far the Americans were unable to push the enemy. Early today morning an American tank was destroyed near An-Najaf. At least two of its crew were killed.

Intensive exchange of fire is continuing in the vicinity of An-Nasiriya. The US Marines have so far been unable to side nth staging area they captured seven days ago on the left bank of Euphrates. The bridge connecting this staging area with the main coalition forces is nearly destroyed and is under constant fire from the Iraqi defenses located in the riverside city blocks. This is the reason why the [coalition] troops holding the staging area can only be reinforced by small and lightly-armed units and only during nighttime. During the past night alone the Marines holding the staging area sustained 2 killed and 5 wounded.

The situation [for the coalition] is complicated by the fact that the residential blocks occupied by the defending Iraqis come to the very edge of the river, giving a significant advantage to the defenders who control the river and all approaches to the river. Currently the coalition artillery and aviation is methodically destroying these blocks in an attempt to push the Iraqis away from the shoreline.

Intercepted radio communications indicate that the Marines engineering units are ordered to build a pontoon crossing up the stream from An-Nasiriya and move up to three battalions of Marines and troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to the left bank of the Euphrates for a future strike in the rear of the An-Nasiriya garrison. The coalition command would have been ready to bypass other defended crossings on the Euphrates if it wasn’t for one problem: the entire group of forces has only two pontoon units. Any new pontoon units will arrive not sooner than in mid-April.

A standoff between the Basra garrison and the British marine infantry is continuing in the area of Basra. Using localized attacks the British are attempting to “lean”on Basra as closely as possible and to tighten the blockade, but so far they were unsuccessful. Thus, during the last night the British attempted to take the town of Al-Hasib located 7 kilometers southeast of Basra. The British plan was to reach the Al-Arab River and to slice the local Iraqi defenses in half, separating Basra from the defending Iraqi forces on the Fao peninsula. Up to a battalion of the British marine infantry supported by armored vehicles entered the town of Al-Hasib from south but in less than an hour they were stopped by Iraqi fire and requested aviation and artillery support.

Fighting for the control of the town is continuing. At least two British soldiers were killed and three were wounded in this battle. One British armored personnel carrier was destroyed. British commanders are reporting killing 50 Iraqis and capturing 10. In the area of the As-Zubair River port, which was declared to be under full coalition control just a week ago, a British patrol boat was attacked. The boat was carrying its crew and a marine infantry unit. As the result of the attack at least 4 British soldiers were killed and 9 were wounded.

The official coalition losses are, to put it mildly, “falling behind”the actual figures. The 57 dead acknowledged by the coalition command reflect losses as of the morning of March 26. This information was provided to a BBC correspondent by one of the top medical officials at a field hospital in Al Kuwait during a confidential conversation. “We have standing orders to acknowledge only those fatalities that have been delivered to the hospital, identified and prepared to be sent back home. The identification process and the required standard embalming takes some time –occasionally up to several days. But only the command knows how many casualties we sustained today and you will learn about it in about three days…”[Reverse-translated from Russian] This conversation was taped by the journalist and sent to the editor via a cellular phone network.

Based on the radio intercepts and internal information networks of the US field hospitals as of this morning the coalition losses include no less than 100 killed US servicemen and at least 35 dead British soldiers. Additionally, some 22 American and 11 British soldiers are officially considered to be missing in action and the whereabouts of another 400 servicemen are being established. The number of wounded has exceeded 480 people.

US experts at the coalition command headquarters studied the cases of destroyed and damaged M1A2 tanks and various APCs. The conclusion was that without a doubt the Iraqis do possess modern anti-tank weapons but so far use them on a “very limited scale.”Only three tanks have been hit by guided weapons which destroyed these tanks with the first hit. The rest of the tanks were destroyed with more standard weapons. Some of the most common causes [of destroyed armor] include: anti-tank guns (about 40% of all hits), man-portable rocket-propelled grenade launchers (25% of hits), and landmines (25% of hits). Effectiveness of anti-tank artillery has been particularly high. “Impacts by high-velocity projectiles do not always destroy the tank and its crew. However, in 90% of all cases the tank is disabled and the crew is forced to abandon the tank on the battlefield…”–says the report that was distributed to the commanders of the forward units for analysis.

Russian military analysts are advising the Iraqi military command against excessive optimism. There is no question that the US “blitzkrieg”failed to take control of Iraq and to destroy its army. It is clear that the Americans got bogged down in Iraq and the military campaign hit a snag. However, the Iraqi command is now in danger of underestimating the enemy. For now there is no reason to question the resolve of the Americans and their determination to reach the set goal –complete occupation of Iraq.

In reality, despite of some obvious miscalculations and errors of the coalition’s high command, the [coalition] troops that have entered Iraq maintain high combat readiness and are willing to fight. The losses sustained during the past 12 days of fighting, although delivering a painful blow to the pride and striking the public opinion, are entirely insignificant militarily speaking. The initiative in the war remains firmly in the hands of the coalition. Under such circumstances Iraqi announcements of a swift victory over the enemy will only confuse its own troops and the Iraq’s population and, as the result, may lead to demoralization and a reduced defensive potential…

Russian military analysts believe that the critical for the US duration of the war would be over 90 days provided that during that time the coalition will sustain over 1,000 killed. Under such circumstances a serious political crisis in the US and in the world will be unavoidable.

(source: iraqwar.ru, 03-31-03, translated by Venik)

[N1kPaz]

Spare us.

[Thrawn]

What garbage?  I found it very informative and objective.

[Dowding]

I'm very skeptical of the information. There's too many allusions to BBC reports as a back-bone, which are then used to spin the whole thing in a negative light.

Why do I think this? Radio intercepts can be notoriously ambiguous. I really doubt they could take 24 hours of communications, decode them, translate them, pull it all together in one succinct, easily read report less than 24 hours after the events took place. It's just no possible.

We'll see the veracity of these reports after the war. Personally I think they are a conglomerate of various sources, including Western media and Iraqi and Coalition press conferences with embellishments, cobbled together to give it a hint of truthfulness.

[--am--]

US Marines Turn Fire on Civilians at the Bridge of Death
 
Mark Franchetti – The Sunday Times 30 March 2003

THE light was a strange yellowy grey and the wind was coming up, the beginnings of a sandstorm. The silence felt almost eerie after a night of shooting so intense it hurt the eardrums and shattered the nerves. My footsteps felt heavy on the hot, dusty asphalt as I walked slowly towards the bridge at Nasiriya. A horrific scene lay ahead.

Some 15 vehicles, including a minivan and a couple of trucks, blocked the road. They were riddled with bullet holes. Some had caught fire and turned into piles of black twisted metal. Others were still burning.

Amid the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians, lying in the road or in nearby ditches. All had been trying to leave this southern town overnight, probably for fear of being killed by US helicopter attacks and heavy artillery.

Their mistake had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the coalition’s supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young American marines with orders to shoot anything that moved.

One man’s body was still in flames. It gave out a hissing sound. Tucked away in his breast pocket, thick wads of banknotes were turning to ashes. His savings, perhaps.

Down the road, a little girl, no older than five and dressed in a pretty orange and gold dress, lay dead in a ditch next to the body of a man who may have been her father. Half his head was missing.

Nearby, in a battered old Volga, peppered with ammunition holes, an Iraqi woman — perhaps the girl’s mother — was dead, slumped in the back seat. A US Abrams tank nicknamed Ghetto Fabulous drove past the bodies.

This was not the only family who had taken what they thought was a last chance for safety. A father, baby girl and boy lay in a shallow grave. On the bridge itself a dead Iraqi civilian lay next to the carcass of a donkey.

As I walked away, Lieutenant Matt Martin, whose third child, Isabella, was born while he was on board ship en route to the Gulf, appeared beside me.

“Did you see all that?” he asked, his eyes filled with tears. “Did you see that little baby girl? I carried her body and buried it as best I could but I had no time. It really gets to me to see children being killed like this, but we had no choice.”

Martin’s distress was in contrast to the bitter satisfaction of some of his fellow marines as they surveyed the scene. “The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy,” said Corporal Ryan Dupre. “I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin’ Iraqi. No, I won’t get hold of one. I’ll just kill him.”

Only a few days earlier these had still been the bright-eyed small-town boys with whom I crossed the border at the start of the operation. They had rolled towards Nasiriya, a strategic city beside the Euphrates, on a mission to secure a safe supply route for troops on the way to Baghdad.

They had expected a welcome, or at least a swift surrender. Instead they had found themselves lured into a bloody battle, culminating in the worst coalition losses of the war — 16 dead, 12 wounded and two missing marines as well as five dead and 12 missing servicemen from an army convoy — and the humiliation of having prisoners paraded on Iraqi television.

There are three key bridges at Nasiriya. The feat of Martin, Dupre and their fellow marines in securing them under heavy fire was compared by armchair strategists last week to the seizure of the Remagen bridge over the Rhine, which significantly advanced victory over Germany in the second world war.

But it was also the turning point when the jovial band of brothers from America lost all their assumptions about the war and became jittery aggressors who talked of wanting to “nuke” the place.

None of this was foreseen at Camp Shoup, one of the marines’ tent encampments in northern Kuwait, where officers from the 1st and 2nd battalions of Task Force Tarawa, the 7,000-strong US Marines brigade, spent long evenings poring over maps and satellite imagery before the invasion.

The plan seemed straightforward. The marines would speed unhindered over the

130 miles of desert up from the Kuwaiti border and approach Nasiriya from the southeast to secure a bridge over the Euphrates. They would then drive north through the outskirts of Nasiriya to a second bridge, over the Inahr al-Furbati canal. Finally, they would turn west and secure the third bridge, also over the canal. The marines would not enter the city proper, let alone attempt to take it.

The coalition could then start moving thousands of troops and logistical support units up highway 7, leading to Baghdad, 225 miles to the north.

There was only one concern: “ambush alley”, the road connecting the first two bridges. But intelligence suggested there would be little or no fighting as this eastern side of the city was mostly “pro-American”.

I was with Alpha company. We reached the outskirts of Nasiriya at about breakfast time last Sunday. Some marines were disappointed to be carrying out a mission that seemed a sideshow to the main effort. But in an ominous sign of things to come, our battalion stopped in its tracks, three miles outside the city.

Bad news filtered back. Earlier that morning a US Army convoy had been greeted by a group of Iraqis dressed in civilian clothes, apparently wanting to surrender. When the American soldiers stopped, the Iraqis pulled out AK-47s and sprayed the US trucks with gunfire.

Five wounded soldiers were rescued by our convoy, including one who had been shot four times. The attackers were believed to be members of the Fedayeen Saddam, a group of 15,000 fighters under the command of Saddam’s psychopathic son Uday.

Blown-up tyres, a pool of blood, spent ammunition and shards of glass from the bullet ridden windscreen marked the spot where the ambush had taken place. Swiftly, our AAVs (23-ton amphibious assault vehicles) took up defensive positions. About 100 marines jumped out of their vehicles and took cover in ditches, pointing their sights at a mud-caked house. Was it harbouring gunmen? Small groups of marines approached, cautiously, to search for the enemy. A dozen terrified civilians, mainly women and children, emerged with their hands raised.

“It’s just a bunch of Hajis,” said one gunner from his turret, using their nickname for Arabs. “Friggin’ women and children, that’s all.”

Cobras and Huey attack helicopters began firing missiles at targets on the edge of the city. Plumes of smoke rose as heavy artillery shook the ground under our feet.

Heavy machinegun fire echoed across the huge rubbish dump that marks the entrance to Nasiriya. Suddenly there was return fire from three large oil tanks at a refinery. The Cobras were called back, and within seconds they roared above our heads, firing off missiles in clouds of purple tracer fire.

There were several loud explosions. Flames burst high into the sky from one of the oil tanks. The marines believed that what opposition there was had now been crushed. “We are going in, we are going in,” shouted one of the officers.

More than 20 AAVs, several tanks and about 10 Hummers equipped with roof-mounted, anti-tank missile launchers prepared to move in. Crammed inside them were some 400 marines. Tension rose as they loaded their guns and stuck their heads over the side of the AAVs through the open roof, their M-16 pointed in all directions.

As we set off towards the eastern city gate there was no sense of the mayhem awaiting us down the road. A few locals dressed in rags watched the awesome spectacle of America’s war machine on the move. Nobody waved.

Slowly we approached the first bridge. Fires were raging on either side of the road; Cobras had destroyed an Iraqi military truck and a T55 tank positioned inside a dugout. Powerful explosions came from inside the bowels of the tank as its ammunition and heavy shells were set off by the fire. With each explosion a thick and perfect ring of black smoke ring puffed out of the turret.

An Iraqi defence post lay abandoned. Cobras flew over an oasis of palm trees and deserted brick and mud-caked houses. We charged onto the bridge, and as we crossed the Euphrates, a large mural of Saddam came into view. Some marines reached for their disposable cameras.

Suddenly, as we approached ambush alley on the far side of the bridge, the crackle of AK-47s broke out. Our AAVs began to zigzag to avoid being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).

The road widened out to a square, with a mosque and the portrait of Saddam on the left-hand side. The vehicles wheeled round, took up a defensive position, back to back, and began taking fire.

Pinned down, the marines fired back with 40mm automatic grenade launchers, a weapon so powerful it can go through thick brick walls and kill anyone within a 5-yard range of where the shell lands.

[--am--]

I was in AAV number A304, affectionately nicknamed the Desert Caddy. It shook as Keith Bernize, the gunner, fired off round after deafening round at sandbag positions shielding suspected Fedayeen fighters. His steel ammunition box clanged with the sound of smoking empty shells and cartridges.

Bernize, who always carries a scan picture of his unborn baby daughter with him, shot at the targets from behind a turret, peering through narrow slits of reinforced glass. He shouted at his men to feed him more ammunition. Four marines, standing at the AAV’s four corners, precariously perched on ammunition boxes, fired off their M-16s.

Their faces covered in sweat, officers shouted commands into field radios, giving co-ordinates of enemy positions. Some 200 marines, fully exposed to enemy fire and slowed down by their heavy weapons, bulky ammunition packs and NBC suits, ran across the road, taking shelter behind a long brick wall and mounds of earth. A team of snipers appeared, yards from our vehicle.

The exchange of fire was relentless. We were pinned down for more than three hours as Iraqis hiding inside houses and a hospital and behind street corners fired a barrage of ammunition.

Despite the marines’ overwhelming firepower, hitting the Iraqis was not easy. The gunmen were not wearing uniforms and had planned their ambush well — stockpiling weapons in dozens of houses, between which they moved freely pretending to be civilians.

“It’s a bad situation,” said First Sergeant James Thompson, who was running around with a 9mm pistol in his hand. “We don’t know who is shooting at us. They are even using women as scouts. The women come out waving at us, or with their hands raised. We freeze, but the next minute we can see how she is looking at our positions and giving them away to the fighters hiding behind a street corner. It’s very difficult to distinguish between the fighters and civilians.”

Across the square, genuine civilians were running for their lives. Many, including some children, were gunned down in the crossfire. In a surreal scene, a father and mother stood out on a balcony with their children in their arms to give them a better view of the battle raging below. A few minutes later several US mortar shells landed in front of their house. In all probability, the family is dead.

The fighting intensified. An Iraqi fighter emerged from behind a wall of sandbags 500 yards away from our vehicle. Several times he managed to fire off an RPG at our positions. Bernize and other gunners fired dozens of rounds at his dugout, punching large holes into a house and lifting thick clouds of dust.

Captain Mike Brooks, commander of Alpha company, pinned down in front of the mosque, called in tank support. Armed with only a 9mm pistol, he jumped out of the back of his AAV with a young marine carrying a field radio on his back.

Brooks, 34, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had been in command of 200 men for just over a year. He joined the marines when he was 19 because he felt that he was wasting his life. He needed direction, was a bit of a rebel and was impressed by the sense of pride in the corps.

He is a soft-spoken man, fair but very firm. Brave too: I watched him sprint in front of enemy positions to brief some of his junior officers behind a wall. Behind us, two 68-ton Abrams tanks rolled up, crushing the barrier separating the lanes on the highway.

The earth shook violently as one tank, Desert Knight, stopped in front of our row of AAVS and fired several 120mm shells into buildings.

A few hundred yards down ambush alley there was carnage. An AAV from Charlie company was racing back towards the bridge to evacuate some wounded marines when it was hit by two RPGs. The heavy vehicle shook but withstood the explosions.

Then the Iraqis fired again. This time the rocket plunged into the vehicle through the open rooftop. The explosion was deadly, made 10 times more powerful by the ammunition stored in the back.

The wreckage smouldered in the middle of the road. I jumped out from the rear hatch of our vehicle, briefly taking cover behind a wall. When I reached the stricken AAV, the scene was mayhem.

The heavy, thick rear ramp had been blown open. There were pools of blood and bits of flesh everywhere. A severed leg, still wearing a desert boot, lay on what was left of the ramp among playing cards, a magazine, cans of Coke and a small bloodstained teddy bear.

“They are f****** dead, they are dead. Oh my God. Get in there. Get in there now and pull them out,” shouted a gunner in a state verging on hysterical.

There was panic and confusion as a group of young marines, shouting and cursing orders at one another, pulled out a maimed body.

Two men struggled to lift the body on a stretcher and into the back of a Hummer, but it would not fit inside, so the stretcher remained almost upright, the dead man’s leg, partly blown away, dangling in the air.

“We shouldn’t be here,” said Lieutenant Campbell Kane, 25, who was born in Northern Ireland. “We can’t hold this. They are trying to suck us into the city and we haven’t got enough bellybutton up here to sustain this. We need more tanks, more helicopters.”

Closer to the destroyed AAV, another young marine was transfixed with fear and kept repeating: “Oh my God, I can’t believe this. Did you see his leg? It was blown off. It was blown off.”

Two CH-46 helicopters, nicknamed Frogs, landed a few hundred yards away in the middle of a firefight to take away the dead and wounded.

If at first the marines felt constrained by orders to protect civilians, by now the battle had become so intense that there was little time for niceties. Cobra helicopters were ordered to fire at a row of houses closest to our positions. There were massive explosions but the return fire barely died down.

Behind us, as many as four AAVs that had driven down along the banks of the Euphrates were stuck in deep mud and coming under fire.

About 1pm, after three hours of intense fighting, the order was given to regroup and try to head out of the city in convoy. Several marines who had lost their vehicles piled into the back of ours.

We raced along ambush alley at full speed, close to a line of houses. “My driver got hit,” said one of the marines who joined us, his face and uniform caked in mud. “I went to try to help him when he got hit by another RPG or a mortar. I don’t even know how many friends I have lost. I don’t care if they nuke that bloody city now. From one house they were waving while shooting at us with AKs from the next. It was insane.”

There was relief when we finally crossed the second bridge to the northeast of the city in mid-afternoon. But there was more horror to come. Beside the smouldering wreckage of another AAV were the bodies of another four marines, laid out in the mud and covered with camouflage ponchos. There were body parts everywhere.

One of the dead was Second Lieutenant Fred Pokorney, 31, a marine artillery officer from Washington state. He was a big guy, whose ill-fitting uniform was the butt of many jokes. It was supposed to have been a special day for Pokorney. After 13 years of service, he was to be promoted to first lieutenant. The men of Charlie company had agreed they would all shake hands with him to celebrate as soon as they crossed the second bridge, their mission accomplished.

It didn’t happen. Pokorney made it over the second bridge and a few hundred yards down a highway through dusty flatlands before his vehicle was ambushed. Pokorney and his men had no chance. Fully loaded with ammunition, their truck exploded in the middle of the road, its remains burning for hours. Pokorney was hit in the chest by an RPG.

Another man who died was Fitzgerald Jordan, a staff sergeant from Texas. I felt numb when I heard this. I had met Jordan 10 days before we moved into Nasiriya. He was a character, always chewing tobacco and coming up to pat you on the back. He got me to fetch newspapers for him from Kuwait City. Later, we shared a bumpy ride across the desert in the back of a Humvee.

A decorated Gulf war veteran, he used to complain about having to come back to Iraq. “We should have gone all the way to Baghdad 12 years ago when we were here and had a real chance of removing Saddam.”

Now Pokorney, Jordan and their comrades lay among unspeakable carnage. An older marine walked by carrying a huge chunk of flesh, so maimed it was impossible to tell which body part it was. With tears in his eyes and blood splattered over his flak jacket, he held the remains of his friend in his arms until someone gave him a poncho to wrap them with.

Frantic medics did what they could to relieve horrific injuries, until four helicopters landed in the middle of the highway to take the injured to a military hospital. Each wounded marine had a tag describing his injury. One had gunshot wounds to the face, another to the chest. Another simply lay on his side in the sand with a tag reading: “Urgent — surgery, buttock.”

[--am--]

One young marine was assigned the job of keeping the flies at bay. Some of his comrades, exhausted, covered in blood, dirt and sweat walked around dazed. There were loud cheers as the sound of the heaviest artillery yet to pound Nasiriya shook the ground.

Before last week the overwhelming majority of these young men had never been in combat. Few had even seen a dead body. Now, their faces had changed. Anger and fear were fuelled by rumours that the bodies of American soldiers had been dragged through Nasiriya’s streets. Some marines cried in the arms of friends, others sought comfort in the Bible.

Next morning, the men of Alpha company talked about the fighting over MREs (meals ready to eat). They were jittery now and reacted nervously to any movement around their dugouts. They suspected that civilian cars, including taxis, had helped resupply the enemy inside the city. When cars were spotted speeding along two roads, frantic calls were made over the radio to get permission to “kill the vehicles”. Twenty-four hours earlier it would almost certainly have been denied: now it was granted.

Immediately, the level of force levelled at civilian vehicles was overwhelming. Tanks were placed on the road and AAVs lined along one side. Several taxis were destroyed by helicopter gunships as they drove down the road.

A lorry filled with sacks of wheat made the fatal mistake of driving through US lines. The order was given to fire. Several AAVs pounded it with a barrage of machinegun fire, riddling the windscreen with at least 20 holes. The driver was killed instantly. The lorry swerved off the road and into a ditch. Rumour spread that the driver had been armed and had fired at the marines. I walked up to the lorry, but could find no trace of a weapon.

This was the start of day that claimed many civilian casualties. After the lorry a truck came down the road. Again the marines fired. Inside, four men were killed. They had been travelling with some 10 other civilians, mainly women and children who were evacuated, crying, their clothes splattered in blood. Hours later a dog belonging to the dead driver was still by his side.

The marines moved west to take a military barracks and secure their third objective, the third bridge, which carried a road out of the city.

At the barracks, the marines hung a US flag from a statue of Saddam, but Lieutenant-Colonel Rick Grabowski, the battalion commander, ordered it down. He toured barracks. There were stacks of Russian-made ammunition and hundreds of Iraqi army uniforms, some new, others left behind by fleeing Iraqi soldiers.

One room had a map of Nasiriya, showing its defences and two large cardboard arrows indicating the US plan of attack to take the two main bridges. Above the map were several murals praising Saddam. One, which sickened the Americans, showed two large civilian planes crashing into tall buildings.

As night fell again there was great tension, the marines fearing an ambush. Two tanks and three AAVs were placed at the north end of the third bridge, their guns pointing down towards Nasiriya, and given orders to shoot at any vehicle that drove towards American positions.

Though civilians on foot passed by safely, the policy was to shoot anything that moved on wheels. Inevitably, terrified civilians drove at speed to escape: marines took that speed to be a threat and hit out. During the night, our teeth on edge, we listened a dozen times as the AVVs’ machineguns opened fire, cutting through cars and trucks like paper.

Next morning I saw the result of this order — the dead civilians, the little girl in the orange and gold dress.

Suddenly, some of the young men who had crossed into Iraq with me reminded me now of their fathers’ generation, the trigger-happy grunts of Vietnam. Covered in the mud from the violent storms, they were drained and dangerously aggressive.

In the days afterwards, the marines consolidated their position and put a barrier of trucks across the bridge to stop anyone from driving across, so there were no more civilian deaths.

They also ruminated on what they had done. Some rationalised it.

“I was shooting down a street when suddenly a woman came out and casually began to cross the street with a child no older than 10,” said Gunnery Sergeant John Merriman, another Gulf war veteran. “At first I froze on seeing the civilian woman. She then crossed back again with the child and went behind a wall. Within less than a minute a guy with an RPG came out and fired at us from behind the same wall. This happened a second time so I thought, ‘Okay, I get it. Let her come out again’.

She did and this time I took her out with my M-16.” Others were less sanguine.

Mike Brooks was one of the commanders who had given the order to shoot at civilian vehicles. It weighed on his mind, even though he felt he had no choice but to do everything to protect his marines from another ambush.

On Friday, making coffee in the dust, he told me he had been writing a diary, partly for his wife Kelly, a nurse at home in Jacksonville, North Carolina, with their sons Colin, 6, and four-year-old twins Brian and Evan.

When he came to jotting down the incident about the two babies getting killed by his men he couldn’t do it. But he said he would tell her when he got home. I offered to let him call his wife on my satellite phone to tell her he was okay. He turned down the offer and had me write and send her an e-mail instead.

He was too emotional. If she heard his voice, he said, she would know that something was wrong.

[Boroda]

Dowding, you can't imagine how accurate and fast Soviet radio-recon was.

One of my college friends spent 3 years in the Navy sitting at the reciever at Kamchatka intercepting communications. An ordinary sailor, conscripted.

A sailor sitting at the reciever was obliged to recognize transmittions from any "possible enemy" vessel in the Pacific, record it and make a vrief translation. He had to learn hundreeds of abbrievations, code words, ship names and numbers, slang, etc. Then the transcripts were analyzed by recon officers.

It's a well known fact that USSR was able to read US Navy codes until late-80s. I hope that even now there are some nice people like mr. Walker who supply us.

Also, can you point out some things that Ramzaj wrote that contradict with what we get from intervention forces several days later? GRU obviously makes some controlled information leaks just as a present for people who have nothing else but intervent-controlled lies.

[Boroda]

Dowding, can you describe what is Sunday Times, it's political preferences, and your general opinion about that newspaper?

Amazing article.

And this people teach us how to wage war in Chechnya...

[Martlet]

Originally posted by Boroda
Dowding, can you describe what is Sunday Times, it's political preferences, and your general opinion about that newspaper?

Amazing article.

And this people teach us how to wage war in Chechnya...

odd, none of you idiots ever mention things that AREN'T anti american.

Havent seen any posts about iraqi human shields.
Haven't seen any posts about the iraqis murdered trying to escape.
Haven't seen any posts about hospitals turning into armories.
Haven't seen any posts about women shot and tossed off bridges.

Go back to killing your neighbors.  You live in a has been country that has resorted to selling weapons in violation of UN sanctions to pay your growing debts.  The sooner the Chechs march into moscow the better.  And it's only a matter of time.

[--am--]

Haven't seen that the citizens of Iraq come back from Jordan and Syria from camps the refugees to be at war against aggressors.
Haven't seen that the Arabian world is consolidated.
Haven't seen that the Japanese minister of a defense already to speak about anticipatory impacts on Northern Korea
Haven't seen that you do not have " freedom of a word ", and there is " freedom to speak, that is approved by government "

P.S. While you to not prove, that our country breaks the sanctions UN, - you the liar.

[GRUNHERZ]

Haven't seen you answer a single one of his questions.

[Dowding]

A report of coincidently negative sounding radio intercepts covering a 24 hour period can be 'leaked' less than 12 hours after the day ended? Okaaay.

It's a rehash of various sources, with a negative spin on the whole conflict. Successes are ignored, such as...

The boat was carrying its crew and a marine infantry unit. As the result of the attack at least 4 British soldiers were killed and 9 were wounded.

In this incident, in which only one serviceman died, three Iraqi boats were destroyed by Lynx helicopter. Hardly the disaster your apparently objective report portrays.

And this people teach us how to wage war in Chechnya...

And here we come to the crux of the issue. It all stems from the Western criticism of the mis-handling of Chechnya. Your bitterness regarding that is self-evident. I'd almost go as far as saying you're enjoying any hint of difficulty.

Perhaps we ought to follow the Russian example; shell every urban area that poses a problem and kill 80,000 civilians within a couple of months.

That Times report doesn't surprise me at all. This is a tough conflict, with a difficult ROE. Death is a neccessary aspect of war. I'm sure there is some tough fighting going on and we are losing people.

Stop grinning Boroda, it isn't funny at all.

[Martlet]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Haven't seen you answer a single one of his questions.

I wouldn't know if he did.  I really can't understand a word he said, so I had to put him on ignore.  Too many headaches trying to decipher his drivel, only to find I could have read it in english at the Mirror.

[--am--]

Originally posted by Dowding
APerhaps we ought to follow the Russian example; shell every urban area that poses a problem and kill 80,000 civilians within a couple of months.

We it is good to remember about the ostensibly 100 000 severely killed Albanians in Kosovo.