Remember the Alamo? Soldiers Making Another Last Stand in Baghdad

[bigtree]

Battle lines drawn in Baghdad streets

James Janega

February 16, 2007 1:50 PM

{snipped}

Officially known as ''Combat Outpost Casino,'' the 'Alamo' represents the first attempt at putting U.S. and Iraqi forces in smaller stations where they will live together, in the middle of the neighborhoods they are assigned to protect.

Dozens of such posts are planned, and they will be manned by many of the 21,500 additional combat soldiers President Bush has pledged to send to Iraq. The idea is that living in the neighborhoods will do what three years of patrols launched from larger, more distant bases could not.

Gunfire and rocket bursts constantly crackle through the neighborhood. ''Right now, the only friendly out here is us,'' said Sgt. Jason McQueen, who mans the headquarters all night long.

Weeks of effort here have worked, but only to a point. Battles between militants are tamped down in minutes instead of hours . . .

Even today, the soldiers rarely know who is fighting whom.

At 10:30 p.m. Monday, a few pops of gunfire two blocks away built to a steady roar that lasted half an hour.

Soldiers smoked cigarettes and chattered loudly. Tracer rounds arced over the darkened outpost as soldiers filmed the battle, as if it were a Fourth of July display.

Things quieted down until 11:30, when a rocket landed a block away, rattling the thin plastic over the drafty, sandbagged window of the company headquarters.

At 11:45, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded to the north.

Just after midnight, a roadside bomb blew up nearby . . .


http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=WORLD&ID=564964624065495257

[Tin Man]

1. I call it "babysitting a civil war"

...it's beyond ridiculous. Our soldiers can't even say who's shooting at who.

[Bucky]

2. I'm not versed in military science, but this does *not* sound like a strategy for victory to me.

In fact, it doesn't sound like a strategy at all. It sounds like a tactic for securing one neighborhood simply getting repeated cookie cutter style in a lot of neighborhoods all at once. It looks like a formula for getting a lot of guys killed for no solid accomplishment.

[bigtree]

3. A+ analysis

a no-brainer for most of us

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

4. Well thank God we won at the Alamo.

If I remember correctly.

:eyes:

[Bucky]

5. Were you homeschooled in Kansas?

Thank goodness you were spared exposure to that crazy "theory" of evolution.

[zbdent]

6. Hey, I just saw Davey Crockett's Blackberry for sale on eBay

last I checked, some freeper was bidding $1200 for it ...