Reply #9: Iraqi insurgents elude Marines [View All]

[bemildred]

HAQLANIYAH, Iraq - The U.S. and Iraqi troops trudged through the narrow, dusty alleyways looking for an enemy that disappears like a ghost and hoping a rocket-propelled grenade would not come screaming from the rooftops. They squinted at graffiti calling for their execution, and tore down leaflets bragging about 20 Marines killed nearby last week.

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"I know the difference between a foreign Arab fighter and an Iraqi, but when the fighter is Iraqi, I cannot tell who he is," Waheed said. "We cannot recognize the enemy because he dresses like a civilian and he drives in a civilian car. He looks like everyone else."

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The doctor heals them, these guys give them shoes, another guy is the forward observer - it's like an assembly line," said Sommers, 34, of Augusta, Ga. "They know when we're coming and going. There's not much we can do." A few miles to the north was Haditha, the site of a bloody ambush that killed six Marines on Aug. 1 - including one whose corpse was reportedly videotaped by insurgents - and a powerful roadside bomb that killed 14 on Wednesday.

"Those insurgents, they'll pay for what they did last week - it may not be tomorrow, but they'll pay," said Marine Private First Class Scotty Sanders, 20, of Woodstock, Ala. "That's why we're here."

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