Insurgent "House From Hell"

In 2004, the situation in Iraq was deteriorating and the Coalition had two major cities erupt in flames. Insurgents led by former Iraqi soldiers and foreign terrorist had descended on the cities of Falluja and Ramadi. Urban combat was a particularly bad scenario for the Coalition as they lost the ability to use their technological advantage in bombs and other heavy weaponry due to the high potential for civilian casualties. Falluja in the November of 2004 was a good example of how deadly and vicious combat can be in the close quarters of urban warfare. Bing West paints the picture graphically in his account of the Battle of Falluja in one chapter of his book titled "The House From Hell".

A small group of Marines were in the heat of the infamous Battle of Falluja. The combat conditions had led the Marines assaulting the city to check every single house for insurgents. This was a long tense process. Finally, the Marines who had been fighting for days in the city came up on a small average Iraqi house. Because it was too small for a large group of insurgents, the Marines decided that they could assault it on foot. They had killed an insurgent in the front of the building when they came up on the main room of the house. There they walked into a well orchestrated trap.

The insurgent were standing on a catwalk overlooking the foyer so that they could shoot anyone who entered before they could a shot off. This is what happened to Lance Corporal Cory Carlisle. As soon as he entered the foyer, AK-47 rounds began to shatter both of his legs, leaving him screaming in pain on the floor. The insurgent choose not to finish him off because they understood that Americans do not leave anyone behind and that the Marines would have to come to try and save their comrade. They were cruel and methodical.

Hearing their friend bleeding to death on the floor, the Marines began to make several attempts to rescue him while constantly under fire from the strategically placed insurgents on the foyer. West writes "Bullets were ricocheting off the walls and skipping across the floor"(297) . In the end, when they evacuated all of the wounded that accumulated during the rescue, they decided it was safer to blow up the house with a satchel charge. After the house was demolished, two insurgents lay in the rubble alive. One tossed a final grenade that missed, and was eliminated by two-hundred rounds of the Marines ammunition. The Marines were tired and covered in blood, but it was over.

The picture that West paints shows me that the insurgents were and are not as stupid as people usually give them credit for. The enemy is very clever and ruthless enough to execute deadly operations against the coalition despite their lack of more modern technology. As much as I hate to admit it, they are good soldiers and I would hate too see what they could do with an advanced war machine. I must also acknowledge the extraordinary courage the Marines showed, fighting continuously until they could save their fellow Marine. We usually underestimate the valor of our own forces because of their technological advantage, but the Marines proved that even if all they had were sticks and stone they would take the fight to the enemy. Morale wise, I couldn't see either side loosing the War.

"Invasion of Iraq"

In R. G. Grant's book, Battle, he wrote an article titled "Invasion of Iraq" about the initial Blitzkrieg Battle the Coalition waged all the way to Baghdad. He begins the story from when Saddam Hussein was being suspected of developing an arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction, or WMD. The United States, which at the time was still emotionally recovering from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, was in a state of "shoot first, ask questions later" foreign policy. Just over a year before the rising tensions with Iraq, U.S. President Bush had begun the "War on Terror". In November of 2002, the U.N. decided that for a peaceful solution, they would have to send weopons inspectors to Iraq to either confirm or deny that Iraq was making WMD. By 2003, the inspectors said that they needed more time, but both the U.S. and Britain decided that time was up. On March 20, 2003, the U.S., Britain, and the other allies of the Coalition invaded Iraq.

Grant gave a vivid image of the intense "shock and awe" campaign that the Coalition waged on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Most of the fighting was done with high tech missiles and precision guided munitions, backed-up by the powerful force of Coalition ground troops and computerized tanks. The Coalition had practically no competition for the skies over the desert and cities of Iraq. They took Baghdad on April 9, twenty days after the Invasion of Iraq began, and took Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, Iraq on the 14. The Coalition suffered 13,543 killed or wounded in this time span, while the Iraqi forces suffered over 21,000 casualties. The battle was swift, brutal, and bloody, and in less than a month, Saddam's regime was toppled. Unfortunately though, this was not the end and as Grant ominously put it,"The invasion sparked international protest against the US and Britain in particular, and began a major insurrection in Iraq against the coalition occupation, which cost many more US and British lives than the invasion itself."