In Iraqi Oil City, a Formidable Foe(Insurgents Control Key Oil City)

[RedEarth]

BAIJI, Iraq -- Pfc. Robyn Houston fires bursts of bullets into the air as his Humvee swerves around a pothole and lurches over a highway median. His convoy bears down on oncoming traffic, forcing Iraqi cars to swerve onto a dirt shoulder. Roadside bombs "are really bad here!" the vehicle's commander, Staff Sgt. Sean Davis, 30, of Crestview, Fla., shouts over the gunfire and growl of the Humvee. "We're firing warning shots to get them off the road!"

Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division arrived in Baiji in the fall to find the oil city an insurgent stronghold and its residents resentful of U.S. troops. (By Ann Scott Tyson -- The Washington Post)

It's a tactic Davis and his platoon resort to daily to avoid deadly explosions in Baiji, a Sunni Arab city long neglected by American forces and still firmly in the grip of insurgents, soldiers here say. In the first month after the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division took over security duties in northern Iraq in late fall, roadside bombs killed or wounded more than a quarter of the 34-man platoon.

Baiji has emerged as a critical priority for the U.S. military because of its importance to Iraq's oil industry, a fact underscored last month when insurgent threats forced officials to shut down the country's biggest oil refinery here, which handles 200,000 barrels a day.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/18/AR2006011802562.html

[htuttle]

1. So, these guys barrel the wrong way through traffic every day...

...firing 'warning shots' randomly at passers-by, and they wonder why the residents are resentful of US troops?

Why is the US military acting like a street gang? We're not going to win any friends acting like that...

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. Save their lives and limbs. Total desperation, because of the

impossible position they've been put in by the neocon chickenhawks.

[saigon68]

4. firing 'warning shots' randomly at passers-by

That's one way to win hearts and minds

And where do these EINSTEINS think the bullets they shoot into the air are going to "Come Down"

And a few Repuke Lites here threaten me and call me a fuck head and an ass-wipe for suggesting that some of these "soldiers"

Are hillbilly rustics like Lynndie ??

[bemildred]

3. I don't understand WHY they need to do this?

Does running up and down these roads trying not to get blown up accomplish some strategic or tactical objective? Is this REALLY the only way to do it? It sounds dumb as shit, in every way I can think of.

[wellst0nev0ter]

5. More (*SIGH*)

The sheik was holding a large gathering and was unavailable, they were told. The American convoy tried to turn around, but Iraqi cars blocked the way and people waved the soldiers down an alternative, dirt route along the Tigris nicknamed "Smugglers' Road."

"It was weird," Bartlett recalled thinking. A few hundred yards down the road, bordered by fields, the convoy was hit by a massive explosion.

Behind the blast, Goudy jumped out of his Humvee and ran forward toward the huge cloud of smoke and debris. As it cleared, he was confused by what he found.

"I saw this big piece of flesh and thought it was a goat or cow. I thought, 'Wow, these guys put an IED in a dead animal,' " he recalled. He went on, hoping to find his men sitting in the truck. But as he got closer, he recalled, "I didn't see the truck. I started seeing limbs and body parts." Goudy tripped over what was left of one soldier. Then he found the only survivor of the five soldiers in the Humvee, blinded and screaming.

"It was horrible," Bartlett said. "We had to pick up body parts 200 meters away." The Humvee was "ripped in half and shredded," he said, by a monster bomb later found to contain 1,000 pounds of explosives and two antitank mines, with a 155mm artillery round on top.

The attack left the platoon outraged.

"I felt so angry and violated," said Goudy, of Clarksville, Tenn. "We all wanted to go out and tear up the city, kick down the doors, shoot the civilians, blow up the mosque." Goudy and others were convinced Iraqis living nearby knew about the bomb but did nothing to warn them.

Jesus H. Christ on a trailer hitch. We are now apparently fighting for a people who take toys from us but send us to our deaths. Anyone who thinks this occupation will last is a moran.

[saigon68]

6. shoot the civilians, blow up the mosque

They are ignorant rustics

Little babies sent to pacify the (insert racial epithet here)heads.