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Length: 5:21
ANDERSON COOPER: It has
been an extremely deadly week in Iraq. More than 250
Iraqis and 15 U.S. soldiers have been killed since
Sunday. At least 46 people were killed just today.
Impossible to know who's behind all the attacks, but
U.S. forces have launched an aggressive offensive
against insurgents, including al Qaeda fighters in
the hotbed of Ramadi.
Now, it is difficult and dangerous work, of course.
And sometimes the outcome is not what was planned.
CNN's Michael Ware went out on a raid just last night
with U.S. troops and caught it all on tape.
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): To
strike at the heart of al Qaeda in Iraq, U.S. forces
in Ramadi are punching into areas not successfully
penetrated before: the militants' command bases, from
where their attacks are organized.
Like the one against this police outpost, still
blackened from a suicide truck bombing, in which
Iraqi officers died and their American trainers
suffered burns.
Army officers say there are too few troops to capture
the farmlands where the leaders hide, move and meet,
which included Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until his death,
and now the man who replaced him.
U.S. troops in the latest covert operation in Ramadi,
the true al Qaeda frontline. America's 1/6 infantry
commanders seek new ways to take their enemy
counterparts by surprise, to thwart the early warning
systems that allow top targets to slip past U.S.
raids by launching an attack with something they hope
al Qaeda won't expect: an amphibious assault.
In fast moving Marines gunboats, Gatling guns in the
bow, heavy machine gun in the stern, powering in
darkness west along the Euphrates River, a small army
reconnaissance team spies its landing with an
infrared beam, invisible to the naked eye.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The ground is pretty marshy. Stay
put for a better spot for you guys to get off at.
WARE: And Captain Dan Enslen makes it ashore, warning
his men to watch their rear. From the river bank, his
platoons silently cross 900 yards of open fields,
creeping into place as other soldiers around them
land by helicopter or push in by road. Encircling
houses used by two key al Qaeda leaders who shift
their hideouts each night.
The attack goes down. But with no traces of al Qaeda,
at least for tonight, in this house or those raided
by other teams, a tragedy unfolds.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tell the females to stay. Children
can stay.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, what it looks like we got
here, you got obviously a family living here. Two
males, of age basically, that we'll secure and detain
them with us.
And then we saw the one AK. That doesn't necessarily
mean anything. Could be a bad guy, could not be a bad
guy.
WARE: With Iraqi army engineers, they prepare to blow
a locked door searching for weapons.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chief Soto?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just give me a fire in the hole so
I can send it up the net.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you guys are ready.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, shots.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got shots fired. Anybody hurt?
WARE: When the soldiers investigate, they find a
family in mourning. The scene is a tough one. And the
soldiers are moved.
WARE (on screen): Gee, that's got to be tough.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Well, what he did is he, he
stood up or sat up to chase away the insurgents with
his AK. When he stood up, he saw, he says he thought
it was Americans, so he sat back down and went up
again and looked again and then went back down and
then his wife got up to look, and when she got up, he
shot her. So he says, he told her, he said, I told
her, sit down, sit down.
Unfortunately couldn't make that -- what the shooter
saw was two guys pop up. Unfortunately, they came
back down, it was a different one, different person
that came back up.
WARE: It's hard on the men, too. Your men.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah. And probably second to
losing one of our own, it's probably one of the
hardest things that happens to us in reality. It will
be a big blow.
WARE (voice-over): Then it becomes harder still.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's take him in the house.
WARE: Where a medic tends to the baby in its father's
arms.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like it's just a surface
wound. And it looks like the -- did they say it was a
piece of shrapnel that hit her?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. From bullet.
WARE: By morning, of 22 detainees taken in the
operation 20 were released. At least a dozen turning
out to be Iraqi police. The al Qaeda leaders, nowhere
to be seen. Unless the soldiers' aggressive new
strategy pays off, the car bombs will continue. And
these will remain the faces of the war in Iraq.
Michael Ware, CNN, Ramadi, Iraq.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: An unbelievably difficult assignment.
From the
AC360 Blog...
Friday, September 01, 2006
Posted By Thomas Evans, CNN Producer
'Your
momma' jokes cease as battle
begins
We've only been in Ramadi, Iraq, a few days. Maybe
it's the heat, which is in the low 120s, and a few
long nights, but it certainly feels much longer.
It took Michael Ware, cameraman Neil Hallsworth and
me about four days to get here. The few fights to
Ramadi only fly at night, and after mechanical
failures, sandstorms and changes in flight plans, we
ended up spending several nights on the still-hot
concrete of a helipad in Baghdad. Finally, we jumped
a ride to Falluja. Honestly, I felt like we were
hopping a freight train as we threw our bags onto a
Chinook heading vaguely in the right direction and
hoped for the best.
We wanted to join a military operation unfolding in
Ramadi, and we knew our window of opportunity was
rapidly closing. Even with our detours, we managed to
show up at the doorstep of the 1-6 Infantry just in
time.
Operation Pegasus was nothing if not complex. The aim
was to hit four targets simultaneously -- one by a
land team, moving in Humvees and Bradleys, another
target from the air, with troops dropped in by
Blackhawks, and the last, the sea team, which came in
on boats sneaking up the river Euphrates.
We ended up hanging onto the back of one of the
boats. The troops were equipped with night vision
goggles, but we were not. As we moved up the river in
the dark, I had to rely on the light from a half
moon, which wasn't so bad, but it did make every
shadow in the reeds look rather menacing.
After spending time with the soldiers of the 1-6 and
the brigade recon troop, I was struck by how tight of
a group they are. Most of them are young, perhaps
even shockingly so. As cliched as it sounds, these
guys act like brothers. They take taking care of each
other very seriously and give each other a hard time
at any opportunity.
Riding in a seven-ton personnel carrier to the boat
launch point, it was quiet for a while, and a little
tense, until the soldier behind me turned to one of
his platoon mates and said with a very dead pan
delivery, "If anything should happen to me, tell your
mom I love her." I guess if you can't tell a mother
joke before you're sent into combat, then when can
you?
Once they hit the ground, no one made any more jokes.
It was a hard night for the brigade recon troop. They
were lucky no one was hurt, but they missed their
target and an Iraqi grandmother was accidentally shot
and killed. You could tell who in the platoon knew
what had happened; you could see it in their faces.
These soldiers are like most Americans, with varying
views on this war. But none of them wants something
like that to happen. As tense and full of nervous
energy the ride out was, the way back was somber.
The raid lasted about four-and-a-half hours, yet felt
like minutes. As we waited for the boats to return
and pick us up, the night had become extremely dark.
The half moon in the sky had set at some point. We
all laid down in a field next to the river, still
staying low. Neil and I were just saying that we
can't remember ever seeing so many stars.
This isn't an easy tour for these soldiers and the
men that lead them -- Captain Dan Enslen, Captain
Chris Kuzio, and Captain Danny Pedersen -- just to
name the few that I have been able to spend a little
time with. These are guys my own age, who over coffee
instantly seem familiar. Yet I cannot imagine the
lives they are leading, American and Iraqi alike.
As we were leaving for the operation Captain Pedersen
looked at me and said, "There is no way I would go
past the wire with just a camera." Truth is I am not
sure I could go out there with what he has to
carry.