Ambush In Ramadi -Knight Ridder interactive

[Rose Siding]

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/echo_company/

[madrchsod]

1. we will never see this on tv

pretty dam powerfull..that poor little girl...

[Fridays Child]

2. Thanks for posting this.

[NV1962]

3. Did anyone catch the bit about casualties in UNARMORED humvees?

Thanks for that link, party_line.

Looking at the 3-part stories (part 1, part 2, part 3) I found the following bit:

The first of 2nd Lt. John T. Wroblewski's three Humvees slowed as it entered the Ramadi marketplace where the insurgents were waiting.

At the wheel was Lance Cpl. Kyle Crowley, 18, of San Ramon, Calif. With him in the unarmored green Humvee were radio operator Lance Cpl. Travis Layfield, 19, of Fremont, Calif.; Pfc. Christopher R. Cobb, 19, of Bradenton, Fla.; Lance Cpl. Anthony Roberts, 18, of Bear, Del.; Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Fernando A. Mendez-Aceves, 27, of San Diego, a medic; Staff Sgt. Allan K. Walker, 28, of Lancaster, Calif., and Lance Cpl. Deshon E. Otey, 24, of Louisville, Ky. In the back, manning the machine gun, was Pfc. Ryan Jerabek, 18, of Oneida, Wis.

(my emphasis) Of these 8 US Marines, only Lance Cpl. Deshon E. Otey survived the attack; he immediately jumped out of the vehicle to seek cover behind a small brick wall and open return fire.

Unarmored humvees on patrol in Ramadi. Earlier in that story, Knight Ridder journalists David Swanson and Joe Galloway said the following about Ramadi, a city with 500,000 inhabitants:

If the Iraqi insurgency has a center of gravity, Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and a bastion of Saddam Hussein's military and intelligence services, probably is it. The city sits astride the main road from Baghdad to Jordan, and the insurgents in Ramadi were far better organized and far better schooled in guerrilla warfare than the Marines originally realized.

This junta sends soldiers into a needless war, adding injury to infamy by putting them in harm's way in unarmored humvees, patrolling Ramadi. While relatives of the soldiers sent to Iraq were blocked from organizing improv armoring of the vehicles.

And Bush/Cheney have the effing gall to air campaign ads lambasting John Kerry with the gross distortion that he “voted against body armor for our troops.” (A QuickTime version of that ad is here.)

This is stuff that needs to be put out in Big Screaming Headlines.

The weasels need to be exposed.

[childslibrarian]

4. The only survivor of that attack

Died two months later. This article makes me want to scream. The media shilled for this war, wrote glowing articles when embedded (when they could be assured they were safe) and now they have forgotten the men over there who are still daily dying. Except for the brave author of this article who, incidentally was shot while he was over there. This is Pulitzer Prize stuff and an indictment of the US media....

[Rose Siding]

5. You got that right

"...adding injury to infamy". That's a righteous point point, btw, about the ad.

I saw part of a House armed services committee meeting one night that covered that very thing. The brass all so calmly describing for the reps the process and the time involved in procurement of the armour kits for Humvees. It had to have been in March or April, just about the time we lost these kids.

You could go into a coma hearing them drone on as though it were the most cumbersome, trying feat. The reps were already taking heat from constituents, you could tell because they were posturing. The committee head had seen jerryrigged kits and was genuinely frustrated but the brass were pissy because they were being questioned and they looked like idiots.

They didn't talk about the problems with the supply lines, but that's probably another layer of trial for them by now, with all the truckers quitting. I guess that dream of bug spray for everyone is a distant memory.

[TacticalPeek]

6. Excellent/excellent journalism this!

And the lack of armor situation is maddening!

U.S. shamefully delayed request to ship vests to Iraq

[Rose Siding]

7. Galloway, on writing the piece:

NEW YORK Knight Ridder's launch today of a powerful online multimedia package chronicling the last two weeks of 12 U.S. Marines appears seamless, but the project did not come easy for the newspaper chain's famed war correspondent Joseph L.Galloway. "This was the hardest thing I've ever written or edited," he admits. "I sat in a busy newsroom with tears streaming down my face."
snip>
Galloway takes issue with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's recent use of the word "fungible" to describe U.S. soldiers. "Webster defines 'fungible' as 'interchangeable.' This package is proof they're not interchangeable," he says. "They are not spare parts."

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000612911