no, auggie, we fired rockets from a gunship at the militants who were on a wall outside a mosque using it as cover to rain rocket propelled grenades and automatic weapons fire down on marines. ***correction, we did drop one 500 lb laser guided bomb from an f-16 on the outer wall and one hellfire missile struck the base of its minaret (i myself would have offered women children and old people a chance to leave and then wiped the entire mosque complex off the face of the earth along with all those who chose to stay inside)*** if you hold a child in front of you while shooting at me, do i sacrifice my life rather than shoot back for fear of hitting the child? if you value life so cheaply, i'm sorry to say that if i must fight you then i will do it not using rules of honor but by the rules of the street. hold up a baby in front of you while shooting and i will shoot right through that baby's head and kill you. it will play badly on tv, but until the enemy know that we are not going to cede the rules to them, they will continue to use ploys such as these.
yes, the outer wall of a mosque was damamged and "worshippers" were injured and killed. the majority of them were worshipping with kalashnikovs and grenades. the problem is that we have been overly cautious throughout this engagement for fear of damaging our relations with the "arab street." now we must wipe out these few thousand, and that's all it is. because as loud and violent as he is, al sadr does not command a huge following among iraqis.
yes, over 30 american were killed in the last few days in an aggressive campaign of well planned violence. more will die. al sadr wisely took advantage of an uprising among sunnis who he would gladly kill to hit americans. the problem is not that we are bulls in a china shop but that we are trying to skip from lily pad to lily pad carrying roses while our enemy hides behind his grandmother while lobbing grenades in our path. we must accept that there is no way that we will look good to some people, no matter what we do. these outside views matter less than the views of the people in iraq who are just as fearful of an armed madhi militia as they were of saddam.
they know that al sadr has rasied an army of thugs and murderers who want to formulate a civil war within iraq that will tear the shi'a apart. they realize that he is merely a front for the kind of religious extremism that sits next door and regardless of what al jazeera and al arabiya and al reuters would have the american people believe, this is not representative of the majority of iraqis. it's a well armed and ruthless minority that is killing to have their way and it will not work. yes, we lost a lot of soldiers and they and their families are in my prayers as is my nephew who fights there too.
i understand auggie, that war means fighting and fighting means killing. history will show that this was a tipping point when civilization was challenged. do we slink back and cede the world to barbarians, or do we forge ahead and pay any price, bear any burden. i believe that if we elect john kerry we'll have chaos disguised as nuance and chaos in this day and age will mean armageddon. it's not a matter of whether or not to make the fight. it hasn't been that for several years. all it is now is a matter when and where. kerry will choose to put it off and appease until he must lash out, and when he does the result of that will be a butcher's bill unlike anything the world has seen.
r.i.p. marco, my guardian angel.
...global warming can manifest itself as heat, cool, precipitation, storms, drought, wind, or any other phenomenon, much like a shapeshifter. -- jim geraghty
pray to st. jude
i'm a sonic reducer
he was the gimmicky sort
fenchurch=mejusthavingfun=magwildwood=mmousefan=bkcollector=bradmajors=somethingtotalkabout: the fenchurch mpd collective
Updated On: 4/7/04 at 08:20 PM
