Doug Lorimer
"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 US Army's 4000-soldier First Brigade and 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 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, July 19, 2006.
Visit the