Marines battle hidden enemy with clear missionBy GORDON
TROWBRIDGE, Army Times
RAMADI, Iraq — Without warning, Pfc. Kristopher Cramer suddenly had to decide: Do I kill this guy? Is he just some poor soul in the wrong place? Or is he trying to take us all out? It was yet another pop quiz in Counterinsurgency 101, where U.S. forces are constantly confronting enemies hiding among innocents, and innocents stumbling into a fate they don't deserve. Often this is a war fought in seconds. Some of its most important decisions are made not by generals, but by young privates facing a ghost enemy. Cramer's platoon recently was sweeping through a neighborhood just north of Ramadi's heavily booby-trapped main highway. The unit was partly in a search for intelligence, partly in hopes of drawing insurgents out of hiding, mostly letting residents and rebels know the Marines were around and handing out candy and soccer balls to curious kids. But as Cramer stood guard outside the gate of a home other Marines were searching, a maroon Hyundai sedan appeared around a nearby corner. Cramer calmly stepped into the street and waved the car away. That's when the driver pumped the gas and his fast-approaching car became potentially one of the gravest threats to U.S. troops in Iraq: the innocent family car loaded with explosives. Car bombs combine massive firepower with speed and stealth. It is easy to hide a half-dozen artillery shells in the trunk of a car, and easy to conceal that car in the bustle of traffic. Cramer had little time to think. He stepped forward, raised his weapon, and listened to the sound of the speeding engine. "I was going to fire a warning shot, but he was already past that," Cramer said. If he followed the standard procedure — warning shot, a shot to the tires, before finally firing on the driver — the car would already be on top of him. "I was wondering what the guy was doing," Cramer said. With no more than a few feet to spare, the middle-age Iraqi man slammed on the brakes, lifted his hands from the steering wheel then gingerly shifted into reverse and backed away. "I'm continually amazed at the Marines' bravery," said Capt. Eric Dougherty. "That they're willing to wait that extra second to make sure they don't take innocent lives is amazing." This was a day like any other in infamous Ramadi, the sullen dusty capital of Wyoming-sized Anbar Province that stretches across western Iraq to the Jordanian border. Just 40 miles east of Ramadi in Fallujah, Marines won a decisive battle in November clearing that town of insurgents in one of only a handful of traditional force-on-force confrontations since Baghdad fell in April 2003. But now in Ramadi, it's back to fighting with surgical precision: plucking insurgents from innocents, deciding in the span of a blink when to kill and when to ease off the trigger. Restraint is difficult here, especially when anger and fear mingle and play off one another. "If we took the reins off, we could roll this whole city over," Cpl. Justin Oxenrider said. "But you can't just take out anything that moves." Capt. Ed Rapisarda praised his men in Ramadi for adapting to the nightmarish scenario of urban combat that war planners thought they had avoided before the insurgency flared last spring. "Everyone has adjusted to this lifestyle, grown accustomed to it, accepted it," he said. The learning curve is steep, and the lessons are constantly changing. Marines say they're learning to spot where insurgents might hide improvised explosive devices that blow up when a foot patrol or a convoy passes. But the insurgents are adapting, too. As the Marines set up observation posts along the main east-west highway that passes through Ramadi, the insurgents figure out the view from the posts and then place explosives in blind spots. The result is a never-ending suspicion of the most seemingly benign objects. "We have to treat every garbage bag, every pile of rocks or dirt mound, as a threat, because it is," said 1st Lt. Zachary Buitenhuys. Staying alive in Ramadi also requires a little luck. A lot in the case of Oxenrider. Oxenrider's Kevlar helmet sports a dent near his right cheek, where an insurgent's AK-47 round had lodged. In late December, an enemy mortar round landed about 20 feet from him, but failed to explode. The Marines occasionally long for the kind of traditional shootout they saw in Fallujah. "This insurgency fight is against an element you can't see, an enemy that knows the ground, he's worked out his exact routes," Rapisarda said. "He has logistics support you can't see, and a population that's usually either neutral or supports his cause. "It's frustrating at times that you can't stand toe to toe with him. Because you know, every time, that you'll win." So do the insurgents. That's why they'll continue packing unassuming cars full of explosives, hoping at some point a Marine or soldier waits a few seconds too long.
|
| ONLINE-ONLY
EXCLUSIVES (Require 
