As lightening flashes intermittently in an otherwise clear sky, a group of more than 200 Marines begins to gear up on a dusty plain outside the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Officers bark orders, directing grunts into their vehicles. Tank drivers climb into turrets and crank up heavy-metal tunes. Infantrymen who moments earlier had been asking about baseball scores exhort one another to move forward. "This is what you trained for, Marine!" "You're the hunter! You're the predator!"
As the group prepared to move last Thursday on the city that has most bedeviled the U.S. occupation, the hyperbole seemed appropriate. Fallujah is the presumed base of Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the most potent terrorist in Iraq. And more than 100 suspected insurgents have been arrested in recent weeks in nearby villages. Now the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines along with the Army's Brigade Combat Team 2 and a company from the 2nd Tank Battalion--a combined force exceeding 1,000 troops--were about to launch the biggest move on Fallujah in months. The 3/5 would not enter the city but intended to go right up to the southeastern outskirts. The Army would move to the southwestern edge and the tankers to the northern limits, while F/A-18s continued to pound suspected insurgent hideouts. Yet this was not the big showdown everyone had expected but rather an attempt to see how the insurgents inside the city would respond. A Marine battle-operations officer called it "a dress rehearsal" for the ultimate combat. This was a scouting mission, a risk-filled feint supported by air power, an attempt to get an edge for the eventual showdown.
The latest counterinsurgency effort began in a week that included the start of Ramadan and saw the U.S. military--primarily the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force--move boldly to try to subdue the rebellion raging in Fallujah and Ramadi, the two most restive towns in Anbar, Iraq's most restive province. New forces were brought in, new strategies employed. But despite clear successes, the week's record of strikes and counterstrikes suggests that if, as the young Marine said, the Americans are predators, the prey is dictating the nature of the hunt.
The assault had begun in Ramadi two days earlier, when much of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines joined the élite 36th Battalion of the Iraqi National Guard and their U.S. special- forces advisers to raid seven mosques in the city. As in Fallujah, attempts to prop up a local government in Ramadi have faltered amid violence, kidnappings and assassinations. Military bases in both places are frequently mortared. Unlike in Fallujah, though, in Ramadi the Marines are a regular presence in the streets. And they are hit daily by a mostly invisible enemy, bountifully armed with improvised explosive devices (IEDS), rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and automatic weapons. Most attacks occur on Ramadi's main road, dubbed Route Michigan. (When asked if they're in control of the city, a roomful of grunts responds with phrases like "Oh, f___ no!") The mosques offer support and sanctuary to fighters, the Marines say. Calls to attack Americans and the Iraqis working with them go out over the mosques' loudspeakers.