Time magazine has a new article about events in Fallujah: How to squeeze a city. It’s very much from the Marines’ perspective, and offers some additional detail. An excerpt:

City combat blunts the Marines’ chief advantages: speed and awareness of what is ahead. Buildings create vast “dead spaces” where the enemy can hide. The cityscape hinders communications and prevents anything that flies low, like helicopters, spy drones and warplanes, from assisting friendly forces on the ground for very long. Life-and-death decisions must be made instantly: 90% of the targets are less than 50 yds. away and seen for only seconds. “When they start zinging RPGs in here, you can’t really do anything about it,” says Staff Sergeant Mike Conran. “It’s really just dumb luck if you get hit.”

In some neighborhoods, the Marines say, anyone they spot in the streets is considered a “bad guy.” Says Marine Major Larry Kaifesh: “It is hard to differentiate between people who are insurgents or civilians. You just have to go with your gut feeling.” U.S. commanders say many residents of the town haven’t declared their allegiance to either the coalition or the insurgents and are waiting to see who prevails. But the Marines sensed that, no matter how the battle turns out, winning hearts and minds in Fallujah after so much destruction may be impossible. “I think that was a pretty big step we took,” said Corporal Andrew Stokef, 20, after Specter gunships pounded Fallujah for several hours. “There’s no turning back now.”

This entry was posted by jbc on Thursday, April 15th, 2004 at 4:09 pm and is filed under war. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.