COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

The Los Angeles Times has a vivid portrayal of life in Ar Ramadi here.

I'm convinced that more than any other city, Ramadi is the town to watch.

You can get some good background on the early days of the Ramadi occupation here.

(The bit about Combat Outpost--my company CP for most of the time there and the place the Philadelphia Enquirer referred to as "the most dangerous post in Iraq", was actually written by one of my soldiers as a special to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Newsletter. The gang at Global Security plagiarized it verbatim without attribution or compensation to the author. Just saying I noticed, guys!)

As for the article itself, my sense is that the Marines are laying it on a bit thick.

"When you walk on the streets, they can hide in every nook and cranny and you can never find them until they start shooting," said Marine Cpl. Glenn Hamby, 26, who heads Squad 3 of Golf Company.

For cryin' out loud, when are the newspapers going to get veterans on staff who know what a freaking platoon is????

This is what the war has come down to in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, where providing tenuous security harks back to America's 19th century Indian Wars — a time when the cavalry set up outposts and forts in decidedly hostile territory. Ramadi is Indian Country — "the wild, wild West," as the region is called.

That it is, that it is. And Ramadi holds a hundred thousand compelling stories for any reporter with the balls to leave Baghdad.

Consider the Civil War. Lee and Grant and Gettysburg get all the romance and all the press. But real Civil War historians--the ones who understand logistics, understand the importance of Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Savannah.

Ar Ramadi is the Vicksburg of Iraq. It always has been. Fallujah was always a sideshow. Win in Ar Ramadi, and give Al Anbar authorities the chance to work on more than their own point-blank defense, and sieze the initiative as Iraqis, and Fallujah will become isolated and, while not friendly, at least manageable. If the government can succeed in Ramadi, they'll gain a good deal of street cred throughout the West. Commerce will flow to Ramadi, and Fallujah sheikhs will pressure the jihadis to take it easy--there's money to be made.

Ramadi is the key to Fallujah.

In some ways, though, Fallujah is the key to Ramadi. There's no U.S. targets in Fallujah, so any Moe Jew Hadeen who wants to get his licks in at US troops has to go to Ramadi or Baghdad. I'd choose Ramadi--the drive along Highway 10 has the nicer scenery.

Lots of operations in Ramadi are probably drawing support from newly unemployed Fallujan wackos. There was always a lot of activity in Habbaniyah, too--which is a sleepy little town between Ramadi and Fallujah people don't hear much about.

But Ramadi is crucial. Ramadi sits squarely astride Highway 10 and the Freeway, where they pass just a few hundred meters apart, across several key bridges. If Ramadi falls, then the insurgents will be able to extract taxes or tribute from all commercial traffic coming to or from Jordan or Syria.

The open terrain between Fallujah and the freeway makes it easy to protect freeway traffic near Fallujah from all but sporadic and small-scale actions. But Ramadi is right up against the Freeway on ground which affords a lot more cover and concealment to the insurgent.

There's no walking away from Ramadi. Ramadi must hold.

Before the Marines' arrival, the commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., declared that Al Anbar was "on a glide path toward success" and pronounced the insurgency here in "disarray" — far from the situation faced here today by the Marines who took over from Swannack's soldiers.

I think the insurgency in Ramadi at that time was in disarray. Attacks and injuries were way down from their peaks between August and November. We were making inroads with the sheiks and had working relations with a lot of key tribal elders.

I think we're seeing the results of an insurgent base in Fallujah being allowed to fester unmolested, combined with the drying up of American reconstruction dollars, or at least a more ham-handed approach to dispensing them.

The Marines' initial strategy of high-profile patrols was far more aggressive than the Army's limited-engagement efforts.

Malarkey. I ran supplies back and forth across that town every day, along any road I damn well wanted. I loaded the trucks and went downtown at rush hour, with 7 guys with me and with 50. We had soldiers at the government center, on and off, the entire time we were there. And the reason I could do that was because the line companies patrolled aggressively. There was nothing low profile about the 1-124th Infantry in Ramadi.

Nothing.

The violent backlash demonstrates that the Marines screwed up somewhere--though not neccessarily in Ramadi.

It was the Marines who got chased off their patrol plans and who stopped executing raids, and who gave the initiative to the insurgents. Not the Army.

The fierce house-to-house combat of April taught the Marines a hard lesson: The kind of "hearts and minds" campaign that many had envisioned while preparing at Camp Pendleton was not going to fly in the core of the Sunni Triangle

Yeah, all their talk of 'human wave' assaults and moving Marines in to live in squad apartments within the community was pretty much treated as a laugh line when we heard about their plans back in December or so. But some things you gotta learn the hard way.

The thin-skinned Humvees that made up much of the Marine fleet this spring have been largely replaced by the tank-like "up-armored" version

Good to hear. It sure beats "well, hang your Viet Nam era flak jackets over the cavas doors."

Still, little here is completely safe, no matter how much armor is used. Venturing outside a base in Ramadi is a gut-clenching experience

Ah, see...it's all in your attitude. My little ritual was this: everytime we'd pull out the gate, I'd start singing:

Oh, The wheels on the Hummer go round and round,
round and round, round and round.
The wheels on the bus go round and round,
early in the morning.

It's stupid. But certainly don't claim to be not stupid. We all have our ways of coping.

The insurgents are believed to have used captured U.S. materiel against the Marines, including a lone Humvee seen wandering about like a phantom ship

Just for the record, I think that's a real cool image.

I don't believe it, though. Humvees never travel alone in Iraq. Ever. So it would be real easy to spot one, and track it from the air.

I think it has more to do with units stealing each others' vehicles. The vehicles then get reported missing or stolen. And then everyone's imagination runs wild.

Now two Humvees would be a lot more problematic.

"They pretty much hate us here," said one Marine commander as his Humvee maneuvered through the dangerous side streets of Ramadi's explosive south side, where fighting was intense in April. Slim youths approached with smiles on a recent morning — and then let loose with a barrage of stones.

Blessed be the slingshot.

Depending on their ages, a couple of bags of candy can distract them long enough for the convoy to get by, though.

To be honest, though, having logged thousands of convoy miles, I didn't have a rock thrown at me after about July or August of 2003. Ramadi was plenty dangerous, but the danger was not from the grass roots, mass population. Something's really changed. What was the change?

Arriving at the Islamic Law Center, where the Marines of Squad 3 were pulling a 12-hour shift the other day, is an unequivocal war zone exercise: Several Humvees block all traffic along Highway 10 and form a safety cordon with machine guns at the ready, while other Marines dismount and train their weapons on buildings, passersby and vehicles. Relieving troops sprint the final 10 yards or so to the metal front door, which is quickly opened and shut.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace.
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.

"Gee, ya think they might be setting a pattern?"

Says Alice.

Splash, out

Jason