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"I didn't ever think we'd get engaged," said the soft-spoken, stocky Marine from Helena, Mont. "I just had the basic view of the American public - it can't be that bad out there."
EDITOR'S NOTE - Associated Press reporter Antonio Castaneda spent three weeks in western Anbar province in Iraq with Marines in Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, 4th Division, earlier this year. He was with the unit when they led an offensive into the city of Haditha in late May. And he returned to the area after an August blast killed 14 Marines - and shortly before the unit began demobilizing to return to the United States by early October.
---HADITHA DAM, Iraq (AP) - Cpl. David Kreuter had a new baby boy he'd seen only in photos. Lance Cpl. Michael Cifuentes was counting the days to his wedding. Lance Cpl. Nicholas Bloem had just celebrated his 20th birthday.
Travis Williams remembers them all - all 11 men in his Marine squad - all now dead. Two months ago they shared a cramped room stacked with bunk beds at this base in northwest Iraq, where the Euphrates River rushes by. Now the room has been stripped of several beds, brutal testament that Lance Cpl. Williams' closest friends are gone.
For the 12 young Marines who landed in Iraq early this year, the war was a series of hectic, constant raids into more than a dozen lawless towns in Iraq's most hostile province, Anbar. The pace and the danger bound them together into what they called a second family, even as some began to question whether their raids were making any progress.
Now, all of the Marines assigned to the 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, based in Columbus, Ohio, are gone - except Williams. They died in a roadside-bomb set by insurgents on Aug. 3 that killed a total of 14 Marines. Most of the squad were in their early 20s; the youngest was 19.
"They were like a family. They were the tightest squad I've ever seen," said Capt. Christopher Toland of Austin, Texas, the squad's platoon commander. Even though many did not know each other before they got to Iraq, "They truly loved each other."
All that is left are photos and snippets of video, saved on dusty laptops, that run for a few dozen seconds. As they pack up to return home by early October, the Marines from Lima Company - including the squad's replacements - sometimes huddle around Williams' laptop in a room at the dam, straining to watch the few remaining moments of their young friends' lives. Some photos and videos carry the squad's adopted motto, "Family is Forever."
In one video, Lance Cpl. Christopher Dyer, who graduated with honors last year from a Cincinnati area high school, strums his guitar and does a mock-heartfelt rendition of "Puff the Magic Dragon" as his friends laugh around him.
In a photo, Kreuter rides a bicycle through a neighborhood, swerving under the weight of body armor and weapons, as Marines and Iraqis watch and chuckle.
Each video ends abruptly, leaving behind a blank screen. Some are switched off as soon as they start - some images just hurt too much to see right now.
---
The August operation began like most of the squad's missions - with a rush into another lawless Iraqi city to hunt insurgents and do house-to-house searches, sometimes for 12 hours in temperatures near 120 degrees.
On Aug. 1, six Marine snipers had been ambushed and killed in Haditha, one of a string of cities that line the Euphrates, filled with waving palm trees. Two days later, Marines in armored vehicles, including the 1st Squad, rumbled into the area to look for the culprits.
Like other cities in this region, Haditha has no Iraqi troops, and its police force was destroyed earlier in the year by a wave of insurgent attacks. Marines patrol roads on the perimeter and occasionally raid homes in the city, which slopes along a quiet river valley. Commanders say insurgents have challenged local tribes for control and claim Iraq's most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, once had a home here.
Since their arrival in February, the Marines had spent nearly all their time on such sweeps or preparing for them, sometimes hurrying back to their base to grab fresh clothes, then heading off again to cities that hadn't seen American or Iraqi troops in months.
The intense pace of the operations, and the enormous area their regimental combat team had to cover - an expanse the size of West Virginia - caught some off guard.
The combat was certainly not what the 21-year-old Williams had expected.
"I didn't ever think we'd get engaged," said the soft-spoken, stocky Marine from Helena, Mont. "I just had the basic view of the American public - it can't be that bad out there."
In some sweeps, residents warmly greeted the Marines. But in others, such as operations in Haditha and Obeidi near the Syrian border, the squad members met gunfire and explosions. In the Obeidi operation in early May, another squad from Lima Company suffered six deaths. Williams himself perhaps saved lives, once spotting a gunman hidden in a mosque courtyard, said Toland, the platoon commander.
The night before the Aug. 3 operation, an uneasy Toland couldn't sleep. Instead he spent his last night with his squad members talking and joking, trying to suppress worries the mission was too predictable for an enemy that knew how to watch and learn.
"I had concerns that the operation was hastily planned and executed, with significant risks and little return," Toland said.
The road had been checked by engineers and other units, Marine commanders say. But insurgents had been clever - hiding the massive bomb under the road's asphalt.
Several Humvees first drove over the bomb, but the triggerman in the distance apparently waited for a vehicle with more troops. Then, as the clanking sound of their armored vehicles neared, a massive blast erupted, caused by explosives weighing hundreds of pounds. It threw a 26-ton Amphibious Assault Vehicle into the air, leaving it burning upside-down.
The blast was so large that Toland and his radioman, Williams - traveling two vehicles ahead and not injured - thought their vehicle had been hit by a bomb. They scrambled out to inspect the damage, but instead found the blazing carnage several yards down the road.
A total of 14 Marines and one Iraqi interpreter were killed.
---
There was no time for grieving - not at first. There was only sudden devastation, then intense anger as the Marines pulled the remains of their friends from the vehicle.
Then there was frustration, as they fanned out to find the triggerman. Instead, they found only Iraqis either too sympathetic toward the insurgency, or too afraid, to talk.
Although the bomb had been planted in clear view of their homes, residents claimed they had seen nothing of the men who had spent hours digging a large hole several feet deep and concealing the bomb.
It was a familiar - and frustrating - problem.
"They are totally complacent with what's going on here," said Maj. Steve Lawson of Columbus, Ohio, who commands Lima Company. "The average citizen in Haditha either wants a handout, or wants us to die or go away."
In a war where intelligence is the most valued asset, the Marines say few local people will divulge "actionable" information that could be used to locate insurgents.
Some Iraqis apparently fear reprisal attacks from militants. Many just want to stay out of the crossfire. Others hate the Americans enough to protect the insurgents: Marines say lookouts in cities would often launch flares as their vehicles approached.
In this region ruled by Sunni tribal loyalties, few voted for the new central Iraqi government, and many suspect the U.S. military is punishing them and empowering their longtime rivals, the Shiites of the south and the Kurds of the north.
"From a squad leader's perspective, the intelligence never helped me accomplish my mission," said Sgt. Don Owens, a squad leader in Lima Company from Cincinnati, who fought alongside the 1st Squad throughout their tour.
"Their intelligence is better than ours," Owens said.
---
The first night after the attack, Williams couldn't sleep. He stayed near his radio, listening to the heavy sobbing of fellow Marines that punctured the night around him.
He thought of his best friend, Lance Cpl. Aaron Reed, a 21-year-old with a goofy demeanor and a perpetual smile, now dead.
A world without his second family had begun. The young men Williams had planned to meet up with again, back in the States, had vanished in a matter of minutes. He was alone.
Yet from a military standpoint, it was important to press on to show the enemy that even their best hits couldn't stop the world's most powerful military. The Marines were ordered away from the blast site, to hunt insurgents, just one hour after the explosion.
They stayed out for another week, searching through dozens of homes in the nearby city of Parwana and struggling to piece together intelligence about who had planted the bomb.
"I pushed them back out the door to finish the mission," said Lawson. "They did it, but they were crying as they pushed on."
As word spread back in the United States that 14 men had been killed, the Marines on the ongoing mission couldn't even, at first, contact their families to let them know they had survived.
---
Marine commanders say the large-scale raids in western Anbar province have kept the insurgency off-balance, killing hundreds of militants and leaving a dwindling number of insurgent bases in the area.
They say the sweeps are critical to beat back the insurgent presence in larger cities such as Ramadi and Baghdad, where suicide bombings have been rampant.
But, among some Marines and even officers, there are doubts whether progress has been made.
The insurgents lurk nearby - capable of launching mortars and suicide car bombs and quietly re-entering cities soon after the Marines return to their bases on the outskirts.
"We've been here almost seven months and we don't control" the cities, said Gunnery Sgt. Ralph Perrine, an operations chief in the battalion from Brunswick, Ohio. "It's no secret."
Even commanders acknowledge that with the limited number of U.S. and Iraqi troops in the region, the mission is focused on "disrupting and interdicting" the insurgency - that is, keeping them on the run - and not controlling the cities.
"It's maintenance work," said Col. Stephen W. Davis, commander of all Marine operations in western Anbar. "Because this out here is where the fight is, while the success is happening downtown while the cons ution is being written and while the referendum is getting worked out. ... If I could bring every insurgent in the world out here and fight them all day long, we've done our job."
For Williams, the calculation is much more visceral and personal.
"Personally, I don't think the sweeps help too much," he said quietly on a recent day, sitting in a room at the dam, crowded with Marines resting from a late mission the night before.
"You find some stuff and most of the bad guys get away. ... For as much energy as we put in them, I don't think the output is worth it," he said.
Williams, a Marine for three years, has decided not to re-enlist.
Instead, in these last days in Iraq, he thinks of home and fishing in the clear streams of Montana. He hopes to open a fishing and hunting gear shop once he returns and complete his bachelor's degree in wildlife biology. He looks forward to seeing his mother, his only surviving parent, and traveling to her native Thailand this fall.
He said his "best memory" will be the day he leaves Iraq. His only good memories, he said, are of his friends:
Of Dyer, 19, an avid rap music fan who would bop his head to Tupac Shakur. He played the viola in his high school orchestra and had planned to enroll in a finance honors program at Ohio State University.
Of Reed, his best friend. He was president of his high school class from Chillicothe, Ohio, and left behind a brother serving in Afghanistan.
Of Cifuentes, 25, from Oxford, Ohio. He was enrolled in graduate school in mathematics education and had been working as a subs ute teacher when he was deployed.
"I think the most frustrating thing is there's no sense of accomplishment," Williams said. "You're biding your time and waiting. But then you lose your friends, and it's not even for their own country's freedom."
EDITOR'S NOTE: The ranks listed for the Marines were those they held when they were killed. Some of the men were promoted posthumously.
Miami
"I didn't ever think we'd get engaged," said the soft-spoken, stocky Marine from Helena, Mont. "I just had the basic view of the American public - it can't be that bad out there."
"We've been here almost seven months and we don't control" the cities, said Gunnery Sgt. Ralph Perrine, an operations chief in the battalion from Brunswick, Ohio. "It's no secret."
Stuff the administration hopes you don't hear, or write off as "liberal media bias".
God forbid we should make decisions based on the whole truth...
The whole truth gets you fired. Ask Gen. Shinseki.
The consensus is that Shinseki was right about the numbers,
and Rummy was fatally wrong.
Gotta save them $$$. Rather pay for and deploy the military it takes, the Repubs put the $$$ in the pockets of the rich and corps, while the military gets beat to .
How the Repubs "support the troops".
I'd like to a tie ing yellow ribbon around that mother er Rummy's and Wolfy's necks.
==================
Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation Force's Size
By Eric Schmitt
New York Times
February 28, 2003
In a contentious exchange over the costs of war with Iraq, the Pentagon's second-ranking official today disparaged a top Army general's assessment of the number of troops needed to secure postwar Iraq. House Democrats then accused the Pentagon official, Paul D. Wolfowitz, of concealing internal administration estimates on the cost of fighting and rebuilding the country.
Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops. Mr. Wolfowitz then dismissed articles in several newspapers this week asserting that Pentagon budget specialists put the cost of war and reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion in this fiscal year. He said it was impossible to predict accurately a war's duration, its destruction and the extent of rebuilding afterward.
"We have no idea what we will need until we get there on the ground," Mr. Wolfowitz said at a hearing of the House Budget Committee. "Every time we get a briefing on the war plan, it immediately goes down six different branches to see what the scenarios look like. If we costed each and every one, the costs would range from $10 billion to $100 billion." Mr. Wolfowitz's refusal to be pinned down on the costs of war and peace in Iraq infuriated some committee Democrats, who noted that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Mitc E. Daniels Jr., the budget director, had briefed President Bush on just such estimates on Tuesday.
"I think you're deliberately keeping us in the dark," said Representative James P. Moran, Democrat of Virginia. "We're not so naïve as to think that you don't know more than you're revealing." Representative Darlene Hooley, an Oregon Democrat, also voiced exasperation with Mr. Wolfowitz: "I think you can do better than that."
Mr. Wolfowitz, with Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon comptroller, at his side, tried to mollify the Democratic lawmakers, promising to fill them in eventually on the administration's internal cost estimates. "There will be an appropriate moment," he said, when the Pentagon would provide Congress with cost ranges. "We're not in a position to do that right now."
At a Pentagon news conference with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mr. Rumsfeld echoed his deputy's comments. Neither Mr. Rumsfeld nor Mr. Wolfowitz mentioned General Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, by name. But both men were clearly irritated at the general's suggestion that a postwar Iraq might require many more forces than the 100,000 American troops and the tens of thousands of allied forces that are also expected to join a reconstruction effort.
"The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the mark," Mr. Rumsfeld said. General Shinseki gave his estimate in response to a question at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday: "I would say that what's been mobilized to this point — something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers — are probably, you know, a figure that would be required." He also said that the regional commander, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, would determine the precise figure.
A spokesman for General Shinseki, Col. Joe Curtin, said today that the general stood by his estimate. "He was asked a question and he responded with his best military judgment," Colonel Curtin said. General Shinseki is a former commander of the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia.
In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that "stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible," but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it. "I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction," Mr. Wolfowitz said. He added that many Iraqi expatriates would likely return home to help.
In the 1991 Persian Gulf War, many nations agreed in advance of hostilities to help pay for a conflict that eventually cost about $61 billion. Mr. Wolfowitz said that this time around the administration was dealing with "countries that are quite frightened of their own shadows" in assembling a coalition to force President Saddam Hussein to disarm.
Enlisting countries to help to pay for this war and its aftermath would take more time, he said. "I expect we will get a lot of mitigation, but it will be easier after the fact than before the fact," Mr. Wolfowitz said. Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because of the variables. Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.
At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld said the factors influencing cost estimates made even ranges imperfect. Asked whether he would release such ranges to permit a useful public debate on the subject, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I've already decided that. It's not useful."
Last edited by boutons; 10-01-2005 at 03:44 PM.
They are marines doing what they do. This guy had a bad deal. But the marines as a whole are not destroyed.
Yes this guys story is ed up. But you don't join the Marines unless you want some serious combat.
Nice try guys.. I am sure you get joy out of bad reports. But Marine core is doing just fine.. they kicking a lot of ass.. Now I know you guys won't post any Marine core success stories.
with quotes like that you should run for president
I was raised by a Marine. My father was buried here in San Antonio and my uncle with full military honors.
Hey mookie... Marines are fighting machine.. if you joined Marine core you where ready and willing to fight.. anywhere .. anytime....
A Marine does not question leadership. A Marine follows orders and kills the enemy.
ing naturally
youve got family in the military
join the millions of others...
MARINES you noob. Marines are different...
I served the Air Force too. I am disablity retired right now with a rank equal to a Lt. Col (civil service).
Mookie you need to learn what a Marine is.. the are an elite combat unit....
Marines are sent in 1st.. even in times of no war. And they get shot and killed at times of no war. The are the 1st go to.. rapid deployment.
Marine core basic is 12 weeks + speciality..
Air Force is 6 weeks army 8...
a good friend of mine is marine
whats your point?
My point is what I said earlier in this thread.
The Marines in Iraq are not loosing. This soldier did have a bad deal. But overall they
are kicking ass and the good Marine actions are not getting reported. At least by the media and in this forum by Dan and Boutons.
I am defending the core as whole...
Btw just in case people think I am not telling truth about me working
for the government..
dude you dont need to come in here lecturing, one of our best friends became a marine and told us first hand (well second hand if you count his SEARGANT) what its all about
the marines arent losing the war
they are dying
for no reason
Mookie are you Cindy Sheehan?
Associated Press
Sept. 27, 2005 04:22 PM
WASHINGTON - A 20-minute meeting Tuesday afternoon left peace activist Cindy Sheehan and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., still at odds over the Iraq war.
"He is a warmonger, and I'm not," said Sheehan, a Californian whose son's death in Iraq prompted her to hold a 26-day vigil outside President Bush's Texas ranch this summer. "I believe this war is not keeping America safer."
"She's en led to her opinion," said McCain, who also disapproves of Sheehan's anti-war campaign. "We just have fundamental disagreements." advertisement
Sheehan's conference with McCain was one of several scheduled this week as part of her campaign to get members of Congress to explain the reasons for the Iraq war.
Since her 24-year-old son, Casey, was killed last year in an ambush in Sadr City, Iraq, Sheehan has attracted worldwide attention. Her protest in Texas made her the face of the anti-war movement. Monday, she was arrested during a rally in front of the White House.
Sheehan said she is meeting with elected officials because she wants answers to specific questions, among them, "How many other people's children are you willing to risk for this?" and what are elected officials doing to end the war.
Sheehan also was scheduled to meet with Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl last week, but she was unable to attend.
Tuesday, she thanked McCain for meeting with her, but she came away disappointed in his answers.
"He tried to tell us what George Bush would have said," she said. "I don't believe he believes what he was telling me."
Although he has criticized the handling of the Iraq war, McCain, who was held prisoner during the Vietnam War, has defended the president's call to stop terrorism abroad before it reaches U.S. shores.
McCain said he had agreed to meet with Sheehan because he believed she was coming with a group of Arizona cons uents.
But on Tuesday, the only Arizonan in her small group was her congressional liaison, who grew up in Sedona but moved away when he went to college.
"It was a misrepresentation," McCain said afterward. Asked if he would have met with her if he had known she was not with cons uents, he said: "I may not have."
He described the meeting in his Senate office as "basically a rehash of my views, which I've articulated many times, and her views, which she has articulated many times."
McCain and Sheehan met once last June, shortly after Casey's funeral.
On Tuesday, Sheehan said she remembers McCain then saying Casey's death was "like his buddies in Vietnam" and that he was afraid their death was "for nothing."
McCain said he doesn't remember saying that. "That's ludicrous, I've never said anything like that," he said. "I not only have not encouraged Ms. Sheehan, I have expressed my strong disagreement with her views on the war."
Last edited by Vashner; 10-01-2005 at 06:11 PM.
Our Marines aren't losing the war, but our politicians are by lacking the political will to put enough boots on the ground in Iraq to get the job done right once and for all, and by failing to bring to justice Al-Sadr and all the other Iraqi warlords who continuously undermine the new Iraqi government and the security situation in Iraq by covertly supporting the insurgents cause.
You think that guy is the only soldier who thinks the war is mismanaged?
God forbid that someone might actually assume you are telling the truth.My point is what I said earlier in this thread.
The Marines in Iraq are not loosing. This soldier did have a bad deal. But overall they
are kicking ass and the good Marine actions are not getting reported. At least by the media and in this forum by Dan and Boutons.
I am defending the core as whole...
Btw just in case people think I am not telling truth about me working
for the government..
Don't get me wrong here:
I have a huge amount of respect for the Marine Corps and would stack them up against anybody in the world in terms of fighting capability and competance.
What I would say is that they are being used less than effectively, the rough analogy would be using a hammer to drive screws into a board.
Nation-building and security requires different skill sets than unit on unit combat.
There is a good book by a guy named PM Barnett that outlines a sensible restructuring of our military that would develop and aquire the skill-sets needed to do occupations like this.
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