|
'Time to stop being Mr Nice Guy'
'I lost a scout this morning to sniper fire and my first sergeant was hit by a mortar round yesterday. That means I am taking it a little bit personally. How am I meant to protect my men when the generals are denying me the ability to bomb enemy positions?".This sounds too familiar for comfort... On the outskirts of the central Iraqi town of Samawah, Capt David Waldron and his company of tanks are locked in a defensive formation. His men are under intermittent attack by snipers and mortar fire. They are also increasingly angry and frustrated. From Basra to Karbala, south of Baghdad, coalition forces are under attack from soldiers in civilian clothes and Saddam Hussein's shadowy Fedayeen paramilitaries. And yet 50 per cent of the coalition's desired targets are being vetoed by high command for fear of hitting a sensitive "no combat zone". "Nope. Nope. You can't bomb them when they're in Laos. Just isn't done, y'know..." In the latest insight into the resistance, one of Capt Waldron's patrols stopped a civilian car on a routine search and found an armed Iraqi in the back seat. This was not a trained soldier but a 12-year-old boy, his face stricken with terror as he hugged an AK47 to his chest. According to the unit that detained him, the boy said he had been given the weapon by men from Saddam's paramilitary forces. They entered his home, forced it into his hands and then told him to confront the American invaders. I guess we should consider it a blessing that they don't round up the little girls the same age and send them out, too... US intelligence now believes that the Fedayeen, a paramilitary group under the control of Saddam's second son, Qusay, and loyalists from Iraq intelligence services are issuing weapons to citizens in the cities at the forefront of the American advance. They are ordering them to fight or face brutal reprisals not only upon them but also their families. In one incident at Samawah, a city with a population of 200,000 halfway between Basra and Karbala, captured PoWs have told American soldiers that they were herded into taxis and ferried to the front. There they were forced out at gunpoint and told to charge the stationed Abrams tanks of the 3/7 cavalry unit. The Americans, seeing that their attackers were in civilian clothes, at first shot above their heads but, as they came closer, they opened fire, killing several Iraqis before the rest surrendered. The unit commander described the assault as "almost a suicide attack". Yeah. We've seen that before, too... From Basra to Karbala coalition forces report facing not the formations of Iraq military they had expected - and which their Abrams tanks and air power could easily cope with - but men in civilian clothing riding in non-military vehicles. The centres of cities are being held by the Fedayeen, preventing the advancing army from using the main roads to ferry fuel, ammunition and water to the troops further ahead. Before the invasion, US military intelligence learnt that some Iraqi units were packing their civilian clothes with their uniforms. At the time it was thought this was an indication that they were planning to desert. Now it appears that it may have been an order from high command so that they could blend into the crowd to confuse the Americans. Mortars and artillery are reported to be positioned by hospitals, schools and mosques. Which can legitimately, in those cases, be flattened... Other targets are being identified by special forces operating in the urban areas - and yet the targets are being vetoed as too "sensitive". As one of Capt Waldron's tank commanders, Sgt Robert Byrd, put it: "It's time to stop trying to be Mr Nice Guy. They are bombing us. Let's start bombing the hell out of them." Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-03-24 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=11800 |