Word: anbar
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...succumbing to stress. Every trip "outside the wire" brings the possibility of attack from any direction, from people who look like everyday citizens and from everyday objects--cars, oilcans, dead animals, even human beings--refashioned into deadly bombs. "It's relentless," says a Marine who was deployed in al-Anbar province, which includes violent hotbeds like Ramadi and Fallujah. "From the moment you arrive until the moment you leave, you're in danger." The life-threatening character of the daily job steadily erodes an individual's psychological immune system...
...makes everyone even more susceptible, less resilient, to whatever happens," says Navy Captain Bill Nash, a psychiatrist who heads the Marines' Operational Stress Control Readiness (OSCAR) program in al-Anbar. "The war here has produced more significant stress injuries than any other conflict since Vietnam," he says. "And you'd have to be exceptionally optimistic and using massive denial to believe we are not going to generate a hell of a lot more of these stress injuries before we are done here...
...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...
...September 30. The Golf and Fox companies officially took command of Combat Outpost on September 17, five days after a seven-hour firefight had served as a reminder that Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar province, remains a key battleground in the war to shape Iraq's future. Not quite a no-go zone like insurgent-controlled Fallujah, Ramadi instead is the scene of an ongoing contest for control - The Marines on one side, various insurgent groups on the other, the people of Ramadi in the middle. "There is fighting near houses in the neighborhoods, says one of them, Waleed...
...left to do but go down fighting. U.S. military officials said the enemy fighters lacked organization and coordination. No one would say any of this now. American officials acknowledge that the insurgents are a potent and increasingly structured force. A former Saddam aide who is close to insurgents in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, agrees. What were once dispersed cells are now meeting weekly in the area, he tells TIME. At the first confab four weeks ago, he says, fighters traded intelligence about the location of U.S. bases, discussed future tactics and planned a series of attacks...