Kevin Sites posts a new entry to his blog — photos and a first-person account of a military raid in a small, northern Iraq town.
But as the [American soldiers drive], three men firing from a nearby ravine ambush the squad. Luckily the attackers are bad shots. AK-47 rounds go wide and a rocket propelled grenade sails overhead. The engineers return fire with the guttural thumping of the 50-caliber machine gun mounted on the vehicle. The suspected attackers flee, but are quickly captured. No weapons are found in the ravine, but there are dozens of spent shell casings.
Within minutes the Iraqi men, all in their early to mid-twenties, begin to turn on each other. They not only admit their guilt—but also point out a nearby house where they say they have accomplices. Lt.Colonel Huron tells Captain Larry Lyle to come up with a plain for a raid.
"Larry," Huron says of the plan, "just make it quick and violent." Violent I've come to understand, is a tactical term, rather than adjective. For soldiers it means a show of overwhelming force that immediately convinces an adversary to surrender rather than fight.
