U.S. Forces Must Cope With 'Crafty' Foes In Iraq
By Todd Pitman
Associated Press
April 10, 2006
RAMADI — On an eerie, battle-scarred street in this blown-out urban war zone, a mannequin with painted black hair stares silently at U.S. Marines hunkered down in sandbagged observation posts atop buildings a few blocks away.
It's the latest insurgent ruse in an evolving war pitting the world's most powerful military against guerrilla fighters using their most effective weapon: ingenuity.
Insurgents in Ramadi recently have flown kites over U.S. troops to align mortar fire, released pigeons to give away U.S. troop movements and staged attacks at fake funeral processions complete with rocket-stuffed coffins, U.S. forces deployed here say.
"They're crafty — I'll give them that," said Marine Cpl. John Strobridge, 20, of Orlando, Fla., as his Humvee passed the mannequin along one of the most bomb-infested roads in town, a street Americans call Route Michigan.
"Gun it! Gun it!" he screamed to his driver as the vehicle crossed a frequently targeted intersection.
The mannequin first popped up a few weeks ago in the courtyard of a secondary school near a collapsed building. The simple figure appears to be made of wood, with a white shirt and blue pants painted on. Two white arms hang down, carrying a briefcase.
"We kind of laugh at it. We don't know why they do it," Strobridge said. "But I think the idea is, we get used to looking at the mannequin, and then one day there's a real person standing there" — with an AK-47 or a rocket launcher.
Marines said there's no point in stopping to take it down. The road is too dangerous, and such bizarre sites often are booby-trapped. At the bottom of a light pole beside another mannequin elsewhere in the city, the sleeve of an American MRE military ration package was found concealing a bomb.
A Marine intelligence officer said insurgents had placed other booby-trapped mannequins on roadsides, hoping U.S. forces would believe they were corpses and stop to check on them. He said they had used the same trick with real corpses.
In recent weeks, Marines found a human leg in the road with a pressure-switch bomb set to go off when it was picked up.
"The enemy will always try different things to try get us to bite on. They're very smart," Capt. Andrew Del Gaudio, 30, commander of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, said during an interview at Government Center, a sandbagged fortress topped with camouflage netting that serves as headquarters to the provincial government.
"They sit there and watch us, observe us for weeks at a time — see how we operate and how we react to things," said Del Gaudio, of Mount Laurel, N.J. "Then they try to place obstacles in our path."
The U.S. military conducts a huge array of counterinsurgency tactics, both offensive and defensive, but most of them are classified.
Marines stationed at Government Center, which came under a two-hour sustained attack Saturday by dozens of gunmen, say insurgents regularly creep through the abandoned, shot-up buildings surrounding it, storing ammunition in empty houses and firing rockets, mortars and automatic weapons.
Sometimes insurgents will shine flashlights at U.S. guard posts, trying to blind Marines' night-vision goggles. Guerrillas have been seen crawling slowly on their bellies, trying to lay bombs. One was spotted trying to move unseen beside a cow, trying to foil a device that produces an image from body heat.
The most dangerous threat, however, remains roadside bombs — hidden in trash, potholes, piles of dirt or dead animal carcasses. U.S. forces regularly sweep the roads for bombs, and insurgents sometimes try to remove them, then replace them. Another tactic: dropping a harmless piece of trash by the roadside one day, planting explosives in it the next, then arming it later and triggering it from blocks away with a cell phone.
Carlos Goetz, 29, of Miami, said insurgents also have used mosque loudspeakers to signal impending attacks.
"They'll call for blood drives in the hospital or say there's going to be a funeral procession, and seven out of 10 times that's code for an attack," Goetz said.
Associated Press
April 10, 2006
RAMADI — On an eerie, battle-scarred street in this blown-out urban war zone, a mannequin with painted black hair stares silently at U.S. Marines hunkered down in sandbagged observation posts atop buildings a few blocks away.
It's the latest insurgent ruse in an evolving war pitting the world's most powerful military against guerrilla fighters using their most effective weapon: ingenuity.
Insurgents in Ramadi recently have flown kites over U.S. troops to align mortar fire, released pigeons to give away U.S. troop movements and staged attacks at fake funeral processions complete with rocket-stuffed coffins, U.S. forces deployed here say.
"They're crafty — I'll give them that," said Marine Cpl. John Strobridge, 20, of Orlando, Fla., as his Humvee passed the mannequin along one of the most bomb-infested roads in town, a street Americans call Route Michigan.
"Gun it! Gun it!" he screamed to his driver as the vehicle crossed a frequently targeted intersection.
The mannequin first popped up a few weeks ago in the courtyard of a secondary school near a collapsed building. The simple figure appears to be made of wood, with a white shirt and blue pants painted on. Two white arms hang down, carrying a briefcase.
"We kind of laugh at it. We don't know why they do it," Strobridge said. "But I think the idea is, we get used to looking at the mannequin, and then one day there's a real person standing there" — with an AK-47 or a rocket launcher.
Marines said there's no point in stopping to take it down. The road is too dangerous, and such bizarre sites often are booby-trapped. At the bottom of a light pole beside another mannequin elsewhere in the city, the sleeve of an American MRE military ration package was found concealing a bomb.
A Marine intelligence officer said insurgents had placed other booby-trapped mannequins on roadsides, hoping U.S. forces would believe they were corpses and stop to check on them. He said they had used the same trick with real corpses.
In recent weeks, Marines found a human leg in the road with a pressure-switch bomb set to go off when it was picked up.
"The enemy will always try different things to try get us to bite on. They're very smart," Capt. Andrew Del Gaudio, 30, commander of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, said during an interview at Government Center, a sandbagged fortress topped with camouflage netting that serves as headquarters to the provincial government.
"They sit there and watch us, observe us for weeks at a time — see how we operate and how we react to things," said Del Gaudio, of Mount Laurel, N.J. "Then they try to place obstacles in our path."
The U.S. military conducts a huge array of counterinsurgency tactics, both offensive and defensive, but most of them are classified.
Marines stationed at Government Center, which came under a two-hour sustained attack Saturday by dozens of gunmen, say insurgents regularly creep through the abandoned, shot-up buildings surrounding it, storing ammunition in empty houses and firing rockets, mortars and automatic weapons.
Sometimes insurgents will shine flashlights at U.S. guard posts, trying to blind Marines' night-vision goggles. Guerrillas have been seen crawling slowly on their bellies, trying to lay bombs. One was spotted trying to move unseen beside a cow, trying to foil a device that produces an image from body heat.
The most dangerous threat, however, remains roadside bombs — hidden in trash, potholes, piles of dirt or dead animal carcasses. U.S. forces regularly sweep the roads for bombs, and insurgents sometimes try to remove them, then replace them. Another tactic: dropping a harmless piece of trash by the roadside one day, planting explosives in it the next, then arming it later and triggering it from blocks away with a cell phone.
Carlos Goetz, 29, of Miami, said insurgents also have used mosque loudspeakers to signal impending attacks.
"They'll call for blood drives in the hospital or say there's going to be a funeral procession, and seven out of 10 times that's code for an attack," Goetz said.
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