{"id":42318,"date":"2014-04-05T06:58:59","date_gmt":"2014-04-05T10:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=42318"},"modified":"2014-04-05T06:59:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-05T10:59:00","slug":"ramadi-remembered-and-refought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=42318","title":{"rendered":"Ramadi; remembered and refought"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ramadi<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

Tomorrow marks the ten year anniversary of the opening of the first battle for Ramadi, Iraq. John sends us a link from U-T San Diego<\/a> to remind us;<\/p>\n

The 1st Marine Division and the Army\u2019s 1st Infantry Division fought street-by-street in Ramadi and Fallujah, against militants allied with al-Qaeda terrorists.<\/p>\n

Camp Pendleton\u2019s 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, the first Marine unit to take command of the provincial capital of Ramadi, lost 12 killed the first day of battle, by snipers, firefights and roadside bombs.<\/p>\n

During its six-month tour, the battalion of about 1,100 known as the \u201cMagnificent Bastards\u201d lost a total of 34 Marines and one sailor killed in action, and more than 250 wounded \u2013 a toll considered the heaviest for any American unit of that size in Iraq or Afghanistan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, here we sit ten years later, and the Iraqi government forces are doing it all over again, according to the Associated Press<\/a>;<\/p>\n

This grueling urban warfare in the Ramadi suburb of al-Bakir, witnessed by an Associated Press reporter on Thursday, is part of a deadly standoff pitting government forces and allied tribal militias against the Islamic State and allied militants in Anbar province, the heartland of Iraq’s Sunni minority. The militants hold part of the provincial capital of Ramadi and nearly all of the nearby city of Fallujah.<\/p>\n

It’s the biggest challenge yet to the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and has dragged on far longer than officials had expected, costing the lives of scores of Iraqi soldiers. It is likely to disrupt voting in elections scheduled for the end of April, shaking the credibility of the government.<\/p>\n

Anbar operations commander Lt. Gen. Rasheed Fleih says U.S.-trained special forces are taking the lead in fighting since the regular Iraqi army lacks experience for this kind of warfare. He says more than 100 Iraqi soldiers have been killed and 400 wounded in three months of fighting, while about 250 militants have been killed.<\/p>\n

He estimates the number of militants at around 1,000 fighters in Fallujah alone, half of them foreigners.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow marks the ten year anniversary of the opening of the first battle for Ramadi, Iraq. … Ramadi; remembered and refought<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}