Word: mortars
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Iraq, as Prime Minister Maliki suggested, buys the Administration nothing. Blackwater has a cowboy reputation, but the team that pulled the trigger Sunday more than likely acted within the rules of engagement. With the caveat that first reports from the field are usually wrong, what apparently happened was that mortar rounds landed in the vicinity of the convoy. The Blackwater shooters assumed they were under attack. When a car bore down on the convoy, they made a second wrong assumption: a suicide bomber was behind the wheel. Things happened fast, and the Blackwater team fired on the car, killing...
...Jordan was sent to Abu Ghraib three days after he arrived in Iraq and, by many accounts, spent most of his time trying to improve the lives of his soldiers, who were living in squalid conditions and under almost daily mortar attack. Three days after arriving at the prison, Jordan was also hit by shrapnel during an attack that killed two other men. But some subordinates have suggested that he was at the very least aware of the abuses and did nothing to stop them...
...projects you really want in order to grow at a comfortable pace. For Louise Cady-Fernandes, 46, that meant starting a children's sweater company out of a spare bedroom in her Lexington, Mass., home and marketing her designs online instead of paying the rent on a bricks-and-mortar boutique. An added perk: she's deep-sixed the 2-hr. daily commute she had when she worked for a sportswear firm in downtown Boston...
...truth is, each one is a little different. I got my first feel for explosions in Afghanistan in December of 2001, when I was reporting on the siege of Tora Bora. A volley of mortars fell on a front-line position I visited one day. The fear stands out most in my mind when conjuring the memory. I remember thinking: "Run, don't die here. Run, don't die here" over and over again. But physically? Well, when the closest mortar fell atop a large rock under which I was cowering, the sensation was like being punched hard...
...worst sensation comes, of course, when the blast is nearest. In December, I was in Ramadi. After a short foot patrol with Marines, I walked back into the tiny base nestled on a bad street in the city. Minutes after I entered, a huge mortar slammed into the doorway through which I just passed. The entire building shook as though some huge hand had shoved it. Inside, I felt like my bones for a second had turned to metal, and someone had rung me with a sledgehammer...