Word: mortared
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Sunni triangle and in Baghdad since Friday, possibly hoping that opening up new fronts away from Fallujah might ease pressure on the city and also to signal that even after the city falls, the fight will continue elsewhere. Particularly symbolic in that respect were Friday's coordinated bomb and mortar attacks in Samarra, a town recaptured from rebels by U.S. and Iraqi forces only weeks...
...most important survival role religion may serve is as the mortar that holds a group together. Worshipping God doesn't have to be a collective thing; it can be done in isolation, disconnected from any organized religion. The overwhelming majority of people, however, congregate to pray, observing the same rituals and heeding the same creeds. Once that congregation is in place, it's only a small step to using the common system of beliefs and practices as the basis for all the secular laws that keep the group functioning...
First stop is the government center, a heavily fortified observation post where two Marines had been wounded by mortar fire earlier that day. The stay is brief. "We're definitely being observed," says Rapicault, but the night seems calm enough, so the units decide to head back. They turn right out of the government center onto Michigan, then right again on Central. Halfway down the street, an IED detonates near the lead humvee. They have driven into an ambush. As Ryan steers through the smoke, red tracers streak through the air and bounce along the ground. RPGs fly from both...
...huge black cloud into the sky. Aerial surveillance spots a pickup truck with a mounted machine gun moving in from the west. From above comes a deep rumbling sound. "Basher took it out," says a radio operator in Chontosh's carrier. Insurgents seen trying to set up a mortar position are killed with a TOW missile fired by another company. Around midnight, as the convoy approaches the factory, the Americans take gunfire from the upper floors and off both flanks. The shooters are immediately silenced by tank shells and heavy machine guns. India Company grunts dismount and move through...
...with heavy fusillades, there is little action at the soda factory. Chontosh meets with the 3/5 commander, Lieut. Colonel Patrick J. Malay. They agree that things are looking good, but Malay says, "Let's not press our luck" by staying too long and "letting someone get lucky with a mortar." Twenty minutes later, they head...