U.S. Marines Wall in Iraqi City With Sand

[deadparrot]

RUTBAH, Iraq - U.S. Marines used to patrol the streets of this city near the volatile Syrian border. Now they've penned it in with a wall of sand, leaving only three ways in or out.

While causing discomfort to the townspeople, the military says it is an effective barrier to insurgents and frees up troops for use in other parts of restive Anbar province in western Iraq.

The Marines ringed Rutbah with a 10.5-mile-long berm, seven feet high and 20 feet wide, in mid-January and reduced their presence to checkpoints at the three entrances that also are manned by a few dozen Iraqi soldiers.

The move was forced by a major U.S. effort to make the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah a showplace of American-Iraqi cooperation. That leaves fewer Marines to patrol a region with close tribal and economic ties to neighboring Syria, which Washington has accused of letting militants slip over the border.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060305/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq...

[Scurrilous]

1. I wonder...

...where they got the idea for this?

[Kagemusha]

4. Well it was first tried at least two years ago...

And in that case it was indeed used to create a prison out of a town. The practice has continued but without a great deal of consistency.

[WHAT]

5. It seems like a good idea to me...

outside of the politics of should we be there or not.

It seems like a pragmatic and effective solution with built-in advantages and disadvantages. I can really see the problem of turning the city into a prison so the outcome would have to do with how you police the policies...allowing for swift passage of water, medical aid, etc. I wonder, if this was done with Fallujah, how many lives would have been saved. Would it allow for keener organization and promote cunning within the population?

I'm no military expert (ha, ha), it just seems like an interesting idea to explore...how long does it take to tunnel through sand, would smugglers want their families safely ensconced with-in the walls while they have little camps with access, what would be indicators of increased insurgent(?) activity...anyway, it just seems like an interesting idea.

I'm sure the military types that make their way with bs didn't think of this...

[daleo]

2. I make that to be about a million tons of sand

I wonder how much fuel that took.

[Rex]

3. There are only a few places that are almost totally walled in

we call them strongholds and prisons. Guess they will have to resort back to city-states and regional governments. Sad.

[karlrschneider]

6. Nobody could have imagined the berms being breached...

[ChristianLibrul]

7. sand

Let's hope they haven't created their own Alamo. If there are only three ways IN, there are only three ways OUT, too.

[Warren Stupidity]

8. Hmmm... I think that the Nazis did something similar

in Warsaw. Another abomination done in our name.

[saigon68]

15. Warsaw Ghetto Destruction, 1943

[LynnTheDem]

9. And that worked so well in 'Nam.

Really it did.

MFing idiots.

Sigh.

[HuffleClaw]

10. not the first time either to my recollection

some might call it a ghetto.

[Voltaire99]

11. Nation building or nation burying?

Bring home the troops. There are plenty of sandboxes here.

[DoYouEverWonder]

12. Good to see democracy on the march again

Sounds more like a prison or a concentration camp to me.

[leesa]

13. As they conduct yet another round of genocide on yet another Iraqi town

remember that over 80% of them believe they are avenging Iraq's participation in 9-11. Our government and media are war criminals.

[tanyev]

14. Hey, I thought we were there to liberate the Iraqi people,

not pen them in. Did I miss something?

[truthisfreedom]

16. well, ya see "walling-in" is just the first step in liberatin' the country

next we got "shootin' everbuddy" and "rapin' and pillagin'."

i think. we gotta look at the manual agin', but that's what it is as i recall.