Quote:
Originally posted by onetime2
There are plenty of reasons why they may not have been able to or did not want to do that. If it were to cost more men to retake the ground you give up, if the paths of retreat are blocked, if you would be a bigger target in retreat, if you're concerned the attackers will pop up somewhere else etc, etc, etc you don't retreat you attack.
|
Actually NPR gave a fairly complete report from an embedded reporter in Iraq in Fallujah. I'm recalling this from memory, so I could be a bit off.
- The marines were encountering heavy resistance
- An RPG hit a humvee and injured five marines
- The marines saw about 20-30 rebels enter the mosque complex
- The marines called in a couple of Apache helicopters
- The marines then called in two laser guided precision bombs
The death count ranges from 20 to 40. The bombs were dropped during the afternoon call to prayer, so it seems likely that innocents were killed, but neither side had said anything one way or the other on that yet, as far as I know. Also, it's unconfirmed whether the actual mosque was bombed or not.
Al Jazeera (biased source) says the mosque was bombed and that the rebels weren't there when the bombs hit:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...478D565B02.htm
My take on it:
- Our forces have the right to defend themselves
- Attacking a mosque when trying to take out a religious fanatic and cut his support is idiotic. I can't think of a worse strategy that we could have used. Sadr had 10,000 supporters yesterday, I bet he has 50,000 today.
We'll see how this all shakes out, but bombing a mosque in this situation, no matter what was happening on the ground, seems like a really bad strategy.