"We feel like sitting ducks here . . . They are watching us all the time.

[bigtree]

Mon Mar 5, 2007

U.S. builds Baghdad garrisons to fight violence


BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Barricaded in a small garrison in a Baghdad neighborhood, U.S. soldier Aaron Larson keeps an uneasy eye on the traffic for suicide car bombers.

A mortar bomb had just landed a few meters 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."

More than a dozen joint security stations have opened in a fresh approach designed by General David Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, a counter-insurgency expert who warns troops to be ready to be "greeted with a handshake or a hand grenade."

Rather than launching incursions into strongholds and pulling troops back into their bases, the goal now is to set up 24-hour neighborhood garrisons, where U.S. troops live with their Iraqi counterparts, U.S. commanders said.

The U.S. military will establish around 30 outposts, including one in the Shi'ite militia bastion of Sadr City.

So far, the plan has met little resistance, but it has placed hundreds of U.S. soldiers at greater risk, leaving them more vulnerable to insurgent attacks and in danger of being caught up in the middle of sectarian fighting.

http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2007-03-05T111545Z_01_IBO534843_RTRIDST_0_LIFESTYLE-IRAQ-OUTPOST-COL.XML



http://journals.democraticunderground.com/bigtree

[babylonsister]

1. This SUCKS! Bring them home already! Nom. nt

[stillcool]

2. This sounds so bad...

like sticking your head in the lions den. I do not understand the logic..if there is any.

[SoCalDem]

3. Operation Hunker Down and Don't Get Shot

:(

[bigtree]

8. that's the size of it

can't Iraqis do this?

[bigtree]

4. .

[SammyWinstonJack]

5. K&R

[shadowknows69]

6. This is Petraus' big counter insurgency strategy huh?

that he wrote his big "paper" on? Brilliant stuff General. Break our forces up into smaller units and stick them in the middle of a whole neighborhood that probably hates them.

[bigtree]

7. this is IT.

when they leave, the Iraqi resistance will come back

[bigtree]

9. this is a pointless sacrifice

madness

[bigtree]

10. .

[Reterr]

11. K&R/nt

[Richard Steele]

12. This is what passes for "miltary strategy"? Frickin' INSANE. Bring them HOME!!!

[WinkyDink]

13. Because we are INVADERS of whom the CITIZENS "don't know what they'll do next."

[formercia]

14. Fort Apache

I'm sure someone has already named their outpost as such.

[shance]

15. Exactly "who" is watching them? Who is making them feel like sitting ducks?

n/t