Reply #4: A little bit of description (with a "spoiler")

[alcibiades_mystery]

The reporter is on operations with Whiskey Company 2/5 when an RPG hits one of their humvees. They drag the wounded Marine back to shelter, but the chaos of the event is obvious. They can't tell whether its coming from north or south. Everyone acts professionally. We then meet the battalion commander (Lt. Col something or other) who seems like a nice enough guy, definitely semper fi and squared away, makes some points about having to stay the course, but strangely justifies it on the basis of previously lost troops. The report shows a poll on which they hang dog tags of the KIAs - 1 during the invasion, and at the beginning of the report14 through the insurgency. We're then taken to Hurricane Point, the palace camp just outside Ramadi, and down Michigan Avenue, the main road to the fortress-like Province Capitol building (Ramadi is the capital of al-Anbar Province), which is constantly lined with IEDs. We meet W Company Commander Captain Pat Rapaceau, a French immigrant to Mississippi, who describes the dangers of the city and "leads from the front." We then see an IED attack on a humvee that looks just awful. Then we meet an Iraqi photographer who embedded with the insurgents, and who has stunning photographs of the insurgents planting IEDs and waiting on American patrols. The local kids sometimes spot for American "tanks" and call it in. Rapaceau then says - in his Mississippi-French accent - that it would be better to win over the city block by block than to flatten it "like they did in Fallujah." Sadly, Rapaceau, who I think most watchers would come to like and respect, is killed by a suicide bomb attack at the close of the segment. Just incredibly sad and chaotic. 2/5 returned to the US this spring.