NYT: For Americans, Fight Is Fiercest in a Sunni City

[Rose Siding]

RAMADI, Iraq, Oct. 22 - The Bradley fighting vehicles moved slowly down this city's main boulevard. Suddenly, a homemade bomb exploded, punching into one vehicle. Then another explosion hit, briefly lifting a second vehicle up onto its side before it dropped back down again.

Two American soldiers climbed out of a hatch, the first with his pant leg on fire, and the other completely in flames. The first rolled over to help the other man, but when they touched, the first man also burst into flames. Insurgent gunfire began to pop.

Several blocks away, Lance Cpl. Jeffrey Rosener, 20, from Minneapolis, watched the two men die from a lookout post at a Marine encampment. His heart reached out to them, but he could not. In Ramadi, Iraq's most violent city, two blocks may as well be 10 miles.
...
Here in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, Sunni Arab insurgents are waging their fiercest war against American troops, attacking with relative impunity just blocks from Marine-controlled territory. Every day, the Americans fight to hold their turf in a war against an enemy who seems to be everywhere but is not often seen.
...
Still, more than two years after the American invasion, this city of 400,000 people is just barely within American control. The deputy governor of Anbar was shot to death on Tuesday; the day before, the governor's car was fired on. There is no police force. A Baghdad cellphone company has refused to put up towers here. American bases are regularly pelted with rockets and mortar shells, and when troops here get out of their vehicles to patrol, they are almost always running.

http://nytimes.com/2005/10/23/international/23ramadi.html?ei=5094&en=042fd41fd39161a9&hp=&ex=1130040000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

[mike_c]

1. object lesson in how to bring a military superpower to its knees....

We CANNOT succeed if we're forced to occupy a hostile nation. We can wipe it from the face of the earth, but we cannot hold it indefinitely against its own people. It's a catch-22-- the only way to maintain an occupation is with brutality, but that simply increases the strength of the eventual backlash. Garrison occupations are destined to fail. What the fuck were they thinking?

[acmavm]

2. They were thinking? I have the impression they were all foaming at the

mouth and shouting nonsense about flowers and chocolates and a statue being erected of george in Baghdad Square.

[pfitz59]

3. We are the machines!

Like terminators! Iraq is an apocalyptic wet-dream!