July 16, 2006
"Hundreds of US Marines stormed through dimly lit
hallways of the largest hospital in western Iraq on [July 5], taking
control of a facility allegedly used by insurgents", Associated Press
reported from Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, located 110
kilometres west of Baghdad.
In a statement issued the next day, Colonel Sean MacFarland,
commander of the other US occupation forces in the Ramadi area, claimed
that "credible intelligence reports indicated" that the Ramadi General
Hospital "was being used as an insurgent safe haven and command
center".
AP reported that marines involved in the eight-hour assault on
the hospital "said one member of their platoon had been shot in the arm
near the hospital while handing candy to children at a nearby school.
Some angrily accused doctors of harboring and helping insurgents."
The marines "said they found about a dozen triggering devices
for roadside bombs hidden above the tiled ceiling of one office" in the
hospital. However, "Doctors said they knew nothing of insurgent
activity or the explosive triggering devices found hidden in the
hospital. They insisted they were bound by the Hippocratic oath to
serve all patients ..."
The assault on the hospital was part of what New York Times
staff reporter Dexter Filkins described in an article filed from Ramadi
on July 4 as a "slow-motion offensive" by several thousand US marines
and US Army soldiers that began on June 9, when they cordoned off the
city. The aim of the offensive, marine commanders said, is to set up
heavily fortified outputs in each of the city’s neighourhoods.
"The 800-member Third Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment, which
until recently was responsible for holding most of the city on its own,
has lost 11 marines since arriving in March", Filkins reported.
"Commanders declined to disclose the number of wounded. Over all in
Iraq the number of American wounded in action is roughly seven times
the number killed."
Filkins described the Ramadi provincial government building,
the key base for the marines inside the city, as resembling "a fortress
on the wild edge of some frontier: it is sandbagged, barricaded, full
of men ready to shoot, surrounded by rubble and enemies eager to get
inside. The American marines here live eight to a room, rarely shower
for lack of running water and defecate in bags that are taken outside
and burned ...
"Sometimes the Government Center is assaulted by as many as 100
insurgents at a time. Last week, a midnight gun battle between a group
of insurgents and American marines lasted two hours and ended only when
the Americans dropped a laser-guided bomb on an already half-destroyed
building downtown. Six marines were wounded; it was unclear what
happened to the insurgents."
Noting that the "number of Iraqi casualties [in Ramadi] —
insurgents or civilians — is unknown", Filkins reported that in "three
years here the Marine Corps and the [US] Army have tried nearly
everything to bring this provincial capital of 400,000 under control.
Nothing has worked.
"Now American commanders are trying something new. Instead of
continuing to fight for the downtown, or rebuild it, they are going to
get rid of it, or at least a very large part of it. They say they are
planning to bulldoze about three blocks in the middle of the city, part
of which has been reduced to ruins by the fighting ...
"The idea is to break the bloody stalemate in the city by
ending the struggle over the battle-scarred provincial headquarters
that the insurgents assault nearly every day. The Government Center
will remain, but the empty space around it will deny the guerrillas
cover to attack."
The July 6 Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Colonel
MacFarland was seeking to duplicate in Ramadi the "clear, hold and
build" strategy he claimed to have successfully employed in a June to
September 2005 assault against the insurgent-held city of Tal Afar,
420km north-west of Baghdad.
The April 3 Newsweek reported that the Tal
Afar assault had left much of the city in ruins, with 100,000 of its
250,000 residents forced to permanently relocate to other parts of
Iraq. MacFarland remarked of Tal Afar to Newsweek correspondent Rod Nordland: "What’s it look like to you — Stalingrad in 1944?"
According to the July 9 Chicago Tribune, a "crucial cog
in the US military’s game plan in Ramadi is the involvement of Iraqi
soldiers [from the US-established puppet Iraqi army]", with each new
fortified neighbourhood camp "being set up with one US company and one
Iraqi company. The strategy readies Iraqi security forces for the day
they take over responsibility for securing Ramadi, but so far that
strategy has been hampered by a reluctance by some Iraqi soldiers to
fight there.
"[US Army Major Steve] Talbot said that out of 750 Iraqi soldiers assigned to work in Ramadi, 600 had quit."
From Green Left Weekly, July 19, 2006.
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