Battle Reveals New Iraqi Tactics (WP Details Samarra Battle)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26784-2003Dec1.html

SAMARRA, Iraq, Dec. 1 -- Sgt. 1st Class Robert Hollis knew there was trouble even before the shooting started. As he stood guard in his M1-A1 Abrams tank outside a bank in this Sunni Muslim town, the usually busy streets suddenly emptied Sunday. Men hurried down back alleys, some running. Women dragged their children away from the positions of U.S. troops.

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"I'm telling you these guys taking some of the shots knew they were going to die," said Hollis, a 17-year veteran and native of Pensacola, Fla. "But they still, under that fire, squeezed the trigger, even though they knew that was the last thing they were going to do. They were standing the ground and fighting, and our guys were standing the ground and fighting."

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Down the street, Bassem Feisal was too late. The Iraqi, who is mentally disabled, stayed in the street outside a café, even after the shooting started, according to his brother Saad. Bassem was shot twice in the left arm, but survived a fusillade of gunfire that riddled a seven-story building near the bank with dozens of holes.

Saad stood Monday near a sedan crushed under a tank's treads and smoldered. "This is the gift of Mr. Bush?" he asked, his shirt smeared with his brother's blood.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/02/IRAQ.TMP

Samarra, Iraq -- U.S. commanders said Monday they had killed up to 54 insurgents in the fiercest battle since Saddam Hussein's government fell nearly eight months ago, but townspeople disputed that claim, saying only about nine Iraqis were killed in the battle Sunday, most of them noncombatants.

Military officials said the simultaneous attacks against two convoys of Bradley fighting vehicles in this city about 70 miles north of Baghdad were a highly synchronized operation involving heavy munitions and requiring precise knowledge of the American convoys' schedules.

"This was a coordinated effort,'' said Col. Frederick Rudesheim, commander of the 4th Infantry Division's 3rd Brigade, whose tanks drove into two ambushes as they escorted trucks carrying large amounts of the new Iraqi currency to branches of the Radifan Bank on opposite ends of town. He said 30 to 40 insurgents attacked each convoy. "There was a concerted effort by the enemy to deal a significant blow to coalition forces," Rudesheim added.

But with Samarra's hospital still filled with casualties, residents told a starkly different story. In a mix of rage and grief, residents lashed out at the brigade's soldiers for firing randomly into crowded market areas in the center of the city, killing civilians, including two Iranians believed to be pilgrims visiting a Shiite mosque in town.

"All the people in town today are asking for revenge," said Majid Fadel al-Samarai, 50, an emergency-room worker at the Samarra General Hospital who said he counted nine dead people at the hospital on Sunday. "They want to kill the Americans like they killed our civilians. Give me a gun, and I will also fight."
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(related)

A guerrilla war is not a war of technology versus peasantry. Rather, it is a contest of endurance and national will. The side with the greatest moral commitment (ideological, religious or patriotic) will hold the ground at the end of the conflict. Battlefield victory can be almost irrelevant, since victory is often determined by morale, obstinacy and survival.

LTC (Ret) Lester W. Grau, U.S. Army
General (Ret) Mohammad Yahya Nawroz, Army of Afghanistan

THE SOVIET WAR IN AFGHANISTAN:
HISTORY AND HARBINGER OF FUTURE WAR?


http://www.bdg.minsk.by/cegi/N2/Afg/Waraf.htm

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-samarra2dec02,1,7960049.story?coll=la-home-world

SAMARRA, Iraq -- It was the biggest urban street fight in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad. One hundred U.S. soldiers in Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and armored Humvees had the job of protecting a convoy of Fijians delivering millions of new Iraqi dinars to two state-owned banks in this tense Sunni Triangle city.

Awaiting them was a like number of insurgents -- their Kalashnikovs, mortars, roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades at the ready.

As a battle unfolded over four hours Sunday, with twists and turns of fortune on both sides, the U.S. soldiers said they realized they were up against tenacious foes using their knowledge of the cramped cityscape to maximum advantage. Even small children were used as spotters by the insurgents, said 1st Lt. Jason Honeycutt, commanding one of the big M1A1 Abrams tanks.

The engagement demonstrated one thing: Nearly eight months after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, anti-American insurgents are regrouping and fighting in larger numbers and more daring ways, apparently with a leadership providing coordination.
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Good points, IG.

I've read a quote by a North Vietnamese Army official in response to a US Army's official's statement -

"We beat you in every head to head battle".

The NVA man said "That's true, and irrelevant."

So telling.

In responding to a question about what would North Vietnam would do about the heavy American bombing, General Giap asked "What's a million Vietnames dead?" After a pause, Giap answered himself "Economics"! What Giap meant was that a million dead Vietnames would be a million less mouths to feed. Giap wasn't being callous, he was being hard as nails saying the Vietnamese equivalent of Kennedy's "pay any price, bear any burden."

Unintended or not, that's the message below the surface. The anti-occupiers have become so organized, so dangerous, that our troops must resort to brutal methods to wipe them out.

All's fair in love (of oil) and war ...

They don't seem to have been that effective.
Then again, fighting with an Abrams could be like that.
But there did have to be a good deal of organization and
planning. Hmmm.

According to the official reports, that's a lot of dead resistance fighters for an organised ambush without any success. The military is already backing away from the figures.
"But the colonel conceded that the figures were a rough estimate based on battlefield reports." http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1097902,00.html

I would guess some resistance killed, some civilians, and some more "non-combat related deaths" will appear in the US forces.

Fog of war and all that.
Give it a week and see what filters out.

But you can speculate about what they were
up to.

Skirmish: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/iraq-d02.shtml

The US media is hailing the American military’s success in repelling an attack on two convoys in Samarra in central Iraq, but other news accounts report indiscriminate firing by US forces following the initial attack, and numerous civilian deaths.

In an assault that apparently represented a new level of coordination by Iraqi resistance forces, groups of insurgents opened fire Sunday afternoon with small-arms fire, mortars, homemade bombs and rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) on two separate US military convoys that had just delivered currency to two banks in Samarra, a city located 60 miles north of Baghdad. Attackers shot at the US forces from the street and from rooftops.

American military officials noted that the nearly simultaneous attacks were coordinated, involving between 60 and 100 guerrillas. US Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told a news conference, “It was a large group of people. Are we looking at this one closely? Yes. Is this something larger than we’ve seen over the past couple of months? Yes. Are we concerned about it? We’ll look at it and take appropriate measures in future operations.”

Capt. Andy Deponai, whose tank was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, indicated surprise about the character of the attack. “Up to now you’ve seen a progression—initially it was hit-and-run, single RPG shots on patrols, then they started doing volley fire, multiple RPG ambushes, and then from there this is the first well-coordinated one,” he told the press. “Here, it seems they had the training to stand and fight.”

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The spin and stories are beginning to remind me of the Lynch stories.

But some 29 wounded. And not a singel hand gun in the bunch.

Iraqi civilians are disputing U.S. military claims that 54 insurgents were killed by U.S. troops fighting their way out of simultaneous ambushes in the northern city of Samarra. Local residents say the figure is much lower and that the troops fired randomly, injuring civilians.

Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was shot dead west of Baghdad Monday. In a statement, the U.S. military said the soldier was wounded by small arms fire near the town of Habbaniya, an anti-American hotbed, and later died of his wounds. Three Iraqis were captured during the clash and were being questioned.

In Samarra, evidence of a massive firefight was not difficult to find Monday -- burned out cars litter streets and bullet holes pock many buildings in two areas on opposite sides of the city.

The U.S. military initially reported 54 insurgents were killed in the coordinated attacks Sunday, but a day later no bodies had been recovered.

Residents said at most eight or nine people died in the clashes, mostly civilians caught up in the fighting.

Initial reports that nearly two dozen insurgents, who the military referred to as "soldiers," were captured were also revised.

"I am only aware of one soldier that has been detained. I believe that those earlier reports might have been a bit off," said Brig.-Gen. Mark Kimmitt, Deputy Director for Operations.

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http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1070277436828_66/?hub=CTVNewsAt11

Or sucked in maybe. This is interesting.

...the old Vietnam Wurlitzer to produce this whopper.