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[scotty61]

Black Flags Are Deadly Signals as Cornered Rebels Fight Back
By DEXTER FILKINS

ALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 11 - The stars began to glimmer through a wan yellow-gray sunset over Falluja on Thursday evening. The floury dust in the air and a skyline of broken minarets and smashed buildings combined for the only genuine postcard image this country has to offer for now.

Sitting on a third-story roof, Staff Sgt. Eric Brown, his lip bleeding, peered through the scope of his rifle into the haze. Moments before, a lone bullet had whizzed past his face and smashed a window behind him. "God, I hate this place, the way the sun sets," Sergeant Brown said.

Sgt. Sam Williams said, "I wish I could see down the street."

But these marines did see a black flag pop up all at once above a water tower about 100 yards away, then a second flag somewhere in the gloaming above a rooftop. And the shots began, in a wave this time, as men bobbed and weaved through alleyways and sprinted across the street. "He's in the road, he's in the road, shoot him!" Sergeant Brown shouted. "Black shirt!" someone else yelled. "Due south!"

The flags are the insurgents' answer to two-way radios, their way of massing the troops and - in a tactic that goes back at least as far as Napoleon - concentrating fire on an enemy. Set against radio waves, the flags have one distinct advantage: they are terrifying.

The insurgents are coordinating their attacks at a time when they have nowhere left to run. American forces have pushed south of Highway 10, the boulevard that runs east to west and approximately bisects Falluja. American intelligence officers believe that many of the insurgents have retreated as far as the Shuhada, a relatively modern residential area that is the southernmost neighborhood in Falluja.

But beyond Shuhada is only the open desert, patrolled by the United States Army. So the insurgents are turning and fighting. And at night, they are setting up deadly ambushes in the moonless pitch blackness of Falluja's labyrinthine streets.

Going straight up the gut in the center of the American advance on Thursday was Bravo Company, First Battalion, Eighth Regiment of the First Marine Expeditionary Force. Those marines, including Sergeants Brown and Williams, started their day by getting mortared in a building they had captured at Highway 10 and Thurthar Street.

The building's windows were blown out. Parts of the ceiling had collapsed. The mortars drew closer and closer and then stopped, as if the insurgents were temporarily short of ammo. "I thought, 'This is it,' " said Senior Corpsman Kevin Markley.

At about 2 p.m., the company walked 100 yards east along the highway, then turned south into the Sinai neighborhood, with its car garages and fix-it shops as well as concealed weapons caches and bomb-making factories.

Immediately, shooting broke out, pinning down the marines for an hour. Finally they moved south to a mosque with the stub of a blasted minaret. An armored vehicle drove up from the rear and dropped its hatch. Out walked a group of blinking, disoriented Iraqi national guardsmen. They had been brought in only to search mosques.

Meantime, the marines went to the rooftop, saw the flags and got into a firefight. It was silenced when they called in a 500-pound bomb from above onto a house where some of the insurgents had concentrated. The strike was so close that the marines had to leave the roof or risk being killed by shrapnel.

The Iraqi guardsmen left the mosque and trooped back into the vehicle, which drove off. Soon the marines were headed south again, through a narrow alley between deserted houses.

"Enemy personnel approaching your position in white vehicle with RPG's," someone said over a radio, referring to rocket-propelled grenades. A few seconds later, the same voice said: "More enemy personnel approaching your position from the south."

The alley exploded with gunfire and RPG rounds. Somehow the company commander, Capt. Read Omohundro, got two tanks in place to fire down the alley. They let loose with a volley and a building crumbled.

Captain Omohundro turned to a lieutenant and said, "Are they dead?"

"They must be, sir," came the reply.

But the insurgents had gotten off an RPG round and disabled one tank; the other tank mysteriously stopped working as well.

The company had moved 500 yards south. They regrouped in the pitch blackness and pushed on at about 11:30 p.m. without the tanks, trying to keep up with the rest of the front, but after moving 25 feet they were attacked again in what appeared to be a well-organized ambush.

Two more tanks came in, but one had a problem with its global-positioning system unit. There was an hour's delay. The 50 or so men of the First Platoon, which had taken casualties, started bickering. Then they moved forward, behind the tanks.

At 1:30 a.m., now roughly 700 yards south of Highway 10, they stopped and entered a house, intending to find a place to sleep. There was a huge boom inside. "Oh no! Oh no!" someone shouted. "My leg!" someone else screamed. "My leg!"

They looked further around the house and found tunnels underneath. They retreated and a tank fired rounds into the house, which caught fire.

They looked for another place to sleep.

Is it me or does this guy make it sound like they have the upper hand or what? I mean geez, they got AKs, RPGs and most terrifying of all, BLACK FLAGS! All we got are tanks, troops, laser guided bombs, night vision goggles, radios, satellite up-links and oh yeah, food, water and secure lines of supply. How are we ever to compete with BLACK FLAGS?
_________________
John Kerry. A Neville Chamberlain for our times.

[neverforget]

I think you are correct. I think most of our so-called journalists have orgasms over the thought of terrorists winning. Of course, they see them as militants or insurgents. Most of them probably still have posters of Che Guevera on their bedroom walls.
_________________
US Army Security Agency
1965-1971

[Marquis]

Guys, can't you see that our psy-ops put this sissy up to writing the story that way?

The terrorists got the message, a few minutes ago it was overheard:

"Asan, Abdulah, Zawar, wave the black flags, don't stop, it terrifies the Marines!" Then, moments later loud Bangs, Booms, and Crashs were heard! "Asan, Abdulah, Zawar, where are you?" "OK, this can still work; everybody, make more black flags, we need more black flags, hurry up!"

[Tex25]

http://news.yahoo.com/p/v?u=/ap_av/20041111/av_ap_wl/466b61a7bf5a62d27dbfff99d7adb434&cid=452&f=53746348%22,650,450)


Marines don't look that scared to me in this video clip.

[Ladder Yankee 33]

These chickens**ts sittin' in their ivory towers in down-town Manhattan would prefer to see us waiving a "white flag" of surrender as opposed to their beloved insurgents waivin' the 'black flag "
_________________
"Win the Delta Come Hell or High Water!"
RivDiv11, RAS111, T-111-9, RM3 11/68-11/69

[Jerald L. Parsoneault]

New York Times reporter writes. . .

[sleeplessinseattle]

[commdog]

"Set against radio waves, the flags have one distinct advantage: they are terrifying."

To whom? Journalists? I didn't read where the Times embed was quoting a Marine.
/CD
_________________
Sgt of Marines, 1965 -> Forever
"Society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases." - John Adams

[MSeeger]

The title of the article says it all doesn't it? These are not terrorists we are fighting. These are cornered rebels, rebelling against US occupation of their country.

And the article, while giving the impression that the reporter was actually there, doesn't exactly say he WAS there. It would not suprise me in the least if he took stories that he heard from embedded tv journalists and wove them into this fanciful article. I'm not saying that the incident didn't happen. I'm just saying maybe he wasn't there when it happened. And if he was there, he was probably scared out of his mind.

The New York Times has clearly shown that it is incapable of unbiased reporting of the facts. The fact is that they go out of their way to make victims out of the terrorists in Iraq, while trying to paint our troops as being locked in a hopeless battle simply to make their point and try to foment a strong anti-war backlash in this country complete with the same kind of huge anti-war demonstrations we saw in the days of the Vietnam war.


Maria
_________________
Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Gal. 6:7