American Intifada: Post Says Troops Struggle to Help Angry, Defiant Iraqis

[BurtWorm]

I wonder if the IDF see themselves as "struggling to help" angry, defiant Palestinians.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37660-2004Jul8.html


In Place of Gunfire, a Rain of Rocks
U.S. Troops in Sadr City Struggle to Help an Angry, Defiant Populace
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 9, 2004; Page A01


BAGHDAD, July 8 -- Preparing for a morning patrol, Sgt. Adam Brantley surveyed his perch in the gunner's nest of an armored Humvee. In front of him was a machine gun mounted on a swivel. His M-4 rifle lay on the roof next to it.

Brantley stepped down and stooped in the dust, searching for rocks the size of baseballs. He collected a few handfuls and piled them next to his rifle. His convoy pulled into the smoky streets of Sadr City.

"I don't throw unless thrown upon," said Brantley, 24, who would have cause to do so in the next few hours as rocks thrown from side streets banged against the Humvee.

In the context of Iraq's continuing violence, it is perhaps a measure of progress that U.S. soldiers working in a slum on Baghdad's barren eastern edge are feeling the sting of stones more often than bullets. Only weeks ago, U.S. soldiers were fighting -- and, in some cases, dying -- to put down an armed Shiite uprising on the same streets.

But the daily rock fights between U.S. soldiers and ordinary Iraqis, many of them children, highlight the mutual antipathy that has built up since the handover of political power to an Iraqi government. Although often-intense fighting continues in some regions, the U.S. military occupation of Sadr City, as observed in four days on patrol with a U.S. Army unit, has evolved into a grinding daily confrontation between frustrated American soldiers and a desperate population.

[BurtWorm]

1. This is what our inifada looks like

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I38031-2004Jul08L

[JSJ]

2. the rationale of the occupier- we're here to 'help'...

...and we'll kill you if you don't accept.

[drfemoe]

3. weaponry

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein