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[Scott in Florida]

Fw: Battle of Fallujah Gentlemen, I received this e-mail today from
one of my son's best friends who like Michael played baseball at West
Point. Mike went to the same Ft. Cooke in Taji that my son Michael
was at last year. He is also from Ft. Hood where Michael is
stationed. He is a great writer as you will see. Enjoy it first
hand. Sincerely, Mike
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
'''' ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Well Task Force 2-7 Cav
made it back from Fallujah earlier than expected, mission
accomplished. It feels so good to be back from a second successful
mission that was as difficult as it was dangerous. We left Camp Cooke
on Nov 1 and staged at Camp Fallujah for about a week.
While there, we got the good news that George Bush was re-elected'.and
we had busy days and nights of planning and rehearsals for the big
attack. 2 days before "D Day," a 122 mm rocket impacted 50 meters
away from our tents that sent everyone to the floor. We staged there
at a remote part of the post and it was obvious that a local national
tipped off the "mujahadin" (Arabic name for the enemy) where we
staged. From that attack, we lost one soldier and 4 more were
wounded. That attack gave the rest of the Task Force enough anger to
last the whole fight.
After all the drills and rehearsals, the day for the attack finally
came on Nov 8. Prime Minister Allawi gave the green light and
Coalition and Iraqi forces went all the way.

On Nov 7, a battalion of Marines seized the peninsula to the west of
the city to prevent insurgents from fleeing. A brigade (4,000
soldiers)
from the First Cav set up another cordon around the city to catch
anyone fleeing. The plan was to make sure the insurgents would either
surrender'or fight and be killed. Intelligence estimates put the
enemy between 3,000 - 5,000 strong, so we knew we had a tough fight
ahead of us.

One of the interesting factors to this fight was the weather'.although
Iraq is unbelievable hot in the summer (up to 130 in Najaf), it was
colder out in Fallujah than it was back in New York. Temperatures
were typically in the upper-30's and low 40's between 5 pm ' 8 am.
The average temperature here has dropped about 30 degrees in the past
month or so.

We moved all of our vehicles and soldiers from Camp Fallujah to a
position about 1 mile north of the city. That's also where we set up
our TF support area (re-fuel, re-arm) and where we set up the Tactical
Operations Center. All day long while we're setting up at that
location, Air Force and Marine Corps aviators shaped the battlefield
with laser-guided bombs and hellfire missiles. Although American
forces had not been into the city since April, we had been collecting
intelligence on the city for months through unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAV's), human intelligence, and Special Forces. So we knew exactly
where they stored their weapons and where they held meetings, and so
on'.all of these attacks from the air were precise and very effective
in reducing the enemy's ability to fight us before the battle even
started.
With each attack, secondary explosions of weapons/ammo blowing up were
heard. The Coalition also threw the enemy a curveball by destroying
all the vehicles that had been parked in the same location for more
than 3 days---the enemy planned to use these as car bombs when we
attacked.
Again, almost every single vehicle the air assets attacked had huge
secondary explosions.

After 12 hours of massive air strikes, Task Force 2-7 got the green
light and was the first unit to enter the city. There is a big train
station on the city's northern limit, so the engineers cleared a path
with some serious explosives and our tanks led the way. While this
was happening, my intelligence shop was flying our own UAV to
determine where the enemy was. It is a very small plane that is
launched by being thrown into the air. We flew it for 6 hours and
reported grids to the tanks and bradley's of where we saw insurgents
on the roof and moving in the street---so our soldiers knew where the
enemy was, before they even got to the location. We crossed the train
station just before midnight and led the way for the Marines by
killing everything we could in our way. It took our tanks and brads
until 10 am the next day to get 2 miles into the city. They killed
about 200 insurgents in the process and softened the enemy for the
Marines. 5 of our soldiers were wounded in this first 10 hours, but
we accomplished our part of the plan.

The Marines' mission was to follow TF 2-7 and fight the enemy by
clearing from building to building. A lot of the insurgents saw the
armored vehicles and hid. They waited for the Marines to come and
took their chances by fighting them since the Marines weren't
protected by armor like we were. In that first day of fighting, the
Marines took 5 x KIA and many more wounded, but they also did their
job very well. Along the way, they found HUGE caches of weapons,
suicide vests, and many foreign fighters. They also found
unbelievable amounts of drugs, mostly heroin, speed, and cocaine. It
turns out, the enemy drugged themselves up to give them the 'courage"
and stupidity to stay and fight. The enemy tried to fight us in "the
city of mosques" as dirty as they could. They fired from the steeples
of the mosques and the mosques themselves. They faked being hurt and
them threw grenades at soldiers when they approached to give medical
treatment. They waived surrender flags, only to shoot at our forces
20 seconds later when they approached to accept their surrender.

The next few days, TF 2-7 maintained our battle positions inside the
city, coming out only for fuel and more ammo. We fought 24 hours a
day and continued to support the Marines as they cleared from house to
house. If they were taking heavy fire or RPG fire from a house, they
would call on our tanks. Our guys would open up on the house with 120
mm main gun or .50 cal. After 5 minutes of suppressive fire, then the
Marines would go into the building and clear it. There was rarely
anyone left alive by that point. The problem is that we couldn't be
there to do that for all the Marines'.and when we couldn't and they
had to clear the building without our help, they took heavy casualties
because the insurgents didn't stop firing until the Marines got into
the building and killed them.

After 3 days, half of the city had been cleared and Iraqi Forces
followed the Marines to re-clear the buildings and clean up the
caches.
Sometimes the insurgents who had managed to hide from the Marines
would stand and fight the Iraqis, so they took some casualties as
well. But they did a good job of securing the area and collecting the
thousands of AK-47's, RPG's, mortars, and IED's that were in these
houses. All that ammo proved just how intensely the enemy planned to
defend the city'after all, Fallujah was the symbol of the resistance
against the new Iraqi government. They wanted to keep their safe
haven for terrorists like Zarqawi to behead innocent people. Since no
Coalition Forces were allowed into the city, they were able to get
away with those atrocious acts without much trouble.

On day 3 of the fight, we had the most exciting moment for me
personally when our Task Force Support Area and TOC came under attack.
Insurgents fired mortars and rockets at us everyday, some landing as
close as 30 meters from us. But on this day at 6 pm, just as it was
getting dark, we took 3 rounds very close'and then to the north 8-10
insurgents opened up with small arms fire on the TOC. Luckily, a tank
platoon was back re-fueling and along with the scout platoon, laid
down some serious firepower and killed them all in a matter of 5
minutes. But all of us in the TOC got to go out and be part of the
fight, firing rounds and seeing the tanks unload on these insurgents.
None of us were hurt, but it was an exciting 10 minutes.

THEN came the second push through the rest of the city. Although by
day
4, the Coalition had already killed over a thousand, many of them fled
to the southern portion of the city and took up positions there.
Again, Task Force 2-7 led the push a little before midnight. Same
mission, same purpose: To soften up enemy strong points and kill as
many insurgents as possible to enable the Marines to follow us when
the sun rose. The Marines from Regimental Combat Team 1 did just that
for the next 5 days---fighting house to house, finding more weapons,
more torture chambers, more ammunition, and more insurgents ready to
fight to the death. One fighter came running out of a building that
our tanks set on fire'.he was on fire and still shooting at us. As
our Sergeant Major said, "going up against tanks and brads with an
AK-47, you have to admire their effort!" Over the next 5 days, the
Marines and our Task Force killed over 1,000 more insurgents. In that
time frame, over 900 more fighters made the decision to spend 30 years
in prison rather than die. The Marines are still occupying the city
and helping with the rebuilding process---they still meet some
sporadic resistance, usually a group of 3-5, shooting from a mosque or
faking surrender and then shooting at them.

We were very disturbed to find one house with 5 foreigners with
bullets in their head, killed execution style. Marines also came upon
a house where an Iraqi soldier in the Iraqi National Guard had been
shackled to the wall for 11 days and was left there to die. These
insurgents are some sick people and Fallujah proved that more than
ever. 2 mosques were not being used for prayer'.but rather for
roadside bomb making.
They were literally IED assembly line factories, with hundreds of
IED's complete or being built. They also had several houses with
high-tech equipment where they conducted their meetings. In Fallujah,
the enemy had a military-type planning system going on. Some of the
fighters were wearing body armor and kevlars, just like we do.
Soldiers took fire from heavy machine guns (.50 cal) and came across
the dead bodies of fighters from Chechnya, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia,
Jordan, Afghanistan, and so on'.no, this was not just a city of pissed
off Iraqis, mad at the Coalition for forcing Saddam out of power. It
was a city full of people from all over the Middle East whose sole
mission in life was to kill Americans. Problem for them is that they
were in the wrong city in November 2004.

Now that it's over, there is a lot of things that people back home
should know. First of all, every citizen of Fallujah (non-insurgent)
is getting $2,500 USD (that's a lot over here) to fix up their house
or buy new things that may have been destroyed in the fighting.
Insurgents took up positions in resident's houses so we were forced to
destroy a lot of buildings. There is over $100 million dollars ready
to be spent to re-build the city. This may seem like a lot of money,
but I can assure you that it is a small price to pay for the amount of
evil people no longer alive, contemplating how to kill more Americans.
The intelligence value alone is already paying huge dividends. Some
of the
900 detainees are telling everything they know about other insurgents.
And the enemy never expected such a large or powerful attack and they
were so overwhelmed that they left behind all kinds of things,
including books with names of other foreign fighters, where their
money and weapons come from, etc' I went into the city 3 times, but
after a lot of the fighting had been done. It was amazing to see how
the American military had brought the world's most evil city to its
knees. I have an awful lot of pictures that I am going to upload to
my webshots site'.it will blow your mind to see what the insurgents
forced us to do to win this fight. And seeing the pictures of what I
saw firsthand will make you very happy to be an American and know that
our country has this might if evildoers force us to use it. Our
mission in Iraq is to help the Iraqi Security Forces become stable
enough to keep this country safe'.and once in a while fight with our
full might to give these security forces a fair chance. When we need
to go after the enemy with all we've got, the results have been
amazing.

In the fight for Fallujah, our military lost over 50 soldiers and
Marines including a sergeant major, company commander, and 8 platoon
leaders, along with 40 kids, typically between 19 and 23 years old. I
can't even tell you how proud I was to be part of this fight and know
these soldiers who were going from building to building to take the
fight to the enemy. My Task Force lost 2 more soldiers after the
rocket attack at Camp Fallujah, 1 of them that I knew pretty well. It
was hard on the unit to deal with these losses, to go along with the
16 soldiers from 2-7 who were wounded. But this was a fight we knew
would be dangerous'..but worth the risk based on the good that would
come out of it. Anyone back home who thinks the world is a safe place
needs to come here for a day and learn real fast that there are an
awful lot of people out there who hate Americans so much that they
risk their lives to try to kill us. We cannot live peacefully back at
home right now unless we continue to stay on the offensive against our
enemies and fight them in their backyards. Remember, radical Arabs
started this war'.and they continue to fight it, proving to America
over and over that they need to be fought.

I am hopeful that most Americans understand that you have to accept
death to defeat evil; all of us soldiers accepted that the day we
signed up. There are some things worth fighting and dying for, and
making the world and especially America, a safer place, is one of
them. For every Mom out there that you read about who turns into a
peace protestor when her son is killed in action, there are 99 Moms
you don't hear about who are proud and believe in this mission even
more.

It sure is good to be back to Taji after our second "field trip." We
have an officers vs. enlisted football game tomorrow where I am the
quarterback, so I am excited about that. We also have a Task Force
Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. Despite the fact we have upcoming
Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years away from family, friends, and
fun'.all of our soldiers are thankful to be back after this big fight
and to have played such an important role in the successful mission.
I received some nice letters out there that were very supportive, so
thank you to all of you who did that for me. Thanks for all your
prayers and support'.and I wish everyone back home a Happy
Thanksgiving and some quality time spent with family and friends.

Mike

--
Scott in Florida

[ToMh]

Did you find this "email" in the Conservative media?
WAFI

[Scott in Florida]

On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 08:52:42 -0800, "ToMh" <tlhumm@hotmail.com> wrote:

[Guest]

In article <1c21r01887g5ggp511ilje9f8ivfdfsnv2@4ax.com>,
Scott in Florida <NotInTheNextLifetime@nope.ucan't> wrote:

[bb]

On Fri, 03 Dec 2004 15:46:19 GMT, Scott in Florida
<NotInTheNextLifetime@nope.ucan't> wrote:

[FanJet]

bb wrote: