U.S. builds Baghdad garrisons to fight violence

[cal04]

Barricaded in a small garrison in a Baghdad neighbourhood, U.S. soldier Aaron Larson keeps an uneasy eye on the traffic for suicide car bombers.

A mortar bomb had just landed a few metres away, shaking the sandbagged outpost where some 30 American soldiers are hunkered down with Iraqi police and army under a new security plan to rein in sectarian violence in the Iraqi capital.

"We feel like sitting ducks here," said Larson. "They are watching us all the time. We don't know what they'll do next."

U.S. commanders are moving troops from the relative safety of their sprawling bases and stationing them in small outposts in Baghdad's most violent districts in a pivotal tactical shift.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO534843.htm

[maddezmom]

1. they are sitting ducks

This doesn't bode well, IMO.

[ClintonTyree]

2. Worse than sitting ducks...

sitting ducks can at least flap their wings and fly away. It's more like the enemy shooting fish in a barrel. Our troops are stuck where they are, shackled by orders to hold their positions at all costs: all costs meaning, their lives. This aspect of "the surge", occupying neighborhoods with the intent to hold that ground no matter what, is terribly reminiscent of the fire-base massacres of the Viet Nam War. Fire-base Mary Ann, among many others, where troops were surrounded by the enemy with no place to retreat to, like shooting fish in a barrel for the enemy. Poor strategy then, poor strategy now. I guess the Pentagon doesn't learn from it's mistakes and for that ignorance our troops will pay with their lives. :grr:

[bemildred]

3. This sort of stupidity boggles the mind.

It is what you get when ignorant, self-serving, non-serving, political hacks run wars.