'Tipping Point' -- Just another day in Ramadi: Another IED, an ambush...

[ProSense]

Tipping Point'

Just another day in Ramadi: Another IED, an ambush, one dead Marine and a couple of lucky ones. A report from the epicenter of the insurgency.


Ramadi, Iraq: A U.S. soldier lies injured after his convoy is hit by explosives

By Scott Johnson
Newsweek

August 7, 2006 issue - Lance Cpl. Dustin Gross lay on a Ramadi street beside his wrecked Humvee, conscious but too badly injured to get up. The crew's gunner, momentarily knocked cold, slumped in the turret above him. Huge pieces of shrapnel and broken bits of pavement rained through a haze of dust and debris. A massive blast from an improvised explosive device had just ripped into the Humvee's engine block, tossing the five-ton vehicle into the air and flinging the driver-side door, torn from its hinges, across the street. The rest of the patrol quickly checked themselves for injuries, each shouting "I'm OK!" as they raced to help Gross. They dragged him to the Humvee's sheltered side, and I followed. (A NEWSWEEK photographer and I were embedded with the unit.) "Cover that corner!" ordered Staff Sgt. Chris Winship, scanning the street for any hint of an ambush. He had a Marine down, a disabled vehicle and no time for bad guesses.

Snip...

Iraq these days doesn't get any worse than Ramadi, capital of restive Anbar province. Winship's crew and the several thousand other U.S. forces there are pitted against a city full of adversaries, who run the gamut from Qaeda veterans and unreconstructed Baathists to street-corner mercenaries, happy to plant an IED for the price of an air conditioner or a generator to run it. The violence continues to frustrate the U.S. military's hopes for a quick withdrawal from the city, or even a pullback to bases outside town, as Sunni politicians have urged for months.

Snip...

The rest of Ramadi lingers in a perpetual state of war. In the heart of the city, Marines from Kilo Company are besieged behind blast walls by fighters who lurk in a "dead zone" of ruined buildings just yards from their front gate at the city's heart. Only five Marines from the company's original Third Platoon remain; the other seven have all been killed or wounded. Most Marines in the city have survived more than one IED attack. More than two dozen Marines have been killed in Ramadi since April, and more than double that number again in the surrounding areas.

Marines in Ramadi prefer to patrol at night, when technology gives them the advantage. Even then it's hazardous duty. NEWSWEEK accompanied Captain Barela and his men on a night foot patrol into the heart of the souk, or marketplace, in a neighborhood so riddled with insurgents that the Marines mostly avoid it. The night very nearly qualified as a success by local standards. Barela had a good chat with a lawyer living in a two-story house just off 17th Street, where terrorists run rampant. His men were resuming their patrol when a thunderous blast echoed across the city. Word came soon: another Marine patrol had been following Lima's path when Cpl. Julian Ramon, 22, stepped on a pressure-activated mine. He died later that night. After the explosion, Barela and his men changed course. They headed west, toward the safer part of town. The night had gone on long enough.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14098264

[uppityperson]

1. time to come home

[ProSense]

2. "The rest of Ramadi lingers in a perpetual state of war. " n/t