"Their intelligence is better than ours." 11 Marines Killed

By ANTONIO CASTANEDA, Associated Press Writer
Sat Oct 1

HADITHA DAM, Iraq - Cpl. David Kreuter had a new baby boy he'd seen only in photos. Lance Cpl. Michael Cifuentes was counting the days to his wedding. Lance Cpl. Nicholas Bloem had just celebrated his 20th birthday.

Travis Williams remembers them all — all 11 men in his Marine squad — all now dead. Two months ago they shared a cramped room stacked with bunk beds at this base in northwest

Iraq, where the Euphrates River rushes by. Now the room has been stripped of several beds, brutal testament that Lance Cpl. Williams' closest friends are gone.

For the 12 young Marines who landed in Iraq early this year, the war was a series of hectic, constant raids into more than a dozen lawless towns in Iraq's most hostile province, Anbar. The pace and the danger bound them together into what they called a second family, even as some began to question whether their raids were making any progress.

Now, all of the Marines assigned to the 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, based in Columbus, Ohio, are gone — except Williams. They died in a roadside-bomb set by insurgents on Aug. 3 that killed a total of 14 Marines. Most of the squad were in their early 20s; the youngest was 19.

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This is reality of war. Americans are too distant from this reality as that is right where they want us.

"I think the most frustrating thing is there's no sense of accomplishment," Williams said. "You're biding your time and waiting. But then you lose your friends, and it's not even for their own country's freedom."

Isn't that the bottom line? Our guys are over there dying and don't even get to have the feeling of accomplishment. That is wrong.

As far as the insurgents having better intelligence than our guys, that is never going to change and nor will the endless bombings. The neocons made a massive mess out of this entire thing. Idiots