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Link to Full Article
Chicago Tribune
MOSUL, Iraq - Spec. Chris Espindola had just groused - "Who plans missions on Thanksgiving?" - when the first mortar hit. Then came a rocket-propelled grenade, small-arms fire and another mortar.
On the receiving end was a convoy of U.S. Army officers who were traveling around increasingly unsettled Mosul, visiting American soldiers throughout the city to wish them a happy holiday.
On their rounds the officers learned that the bodies of two Iraqi soldiers had been dumped in one of the busiest traffic circles downtown. The officers diverted there to pick them up.
"We can't just leave them. This is being done to send a signal and intimidate the public," the unit's commander, Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla, said as his soldiers used body bags to load up the bodies of the Iraqi men, who had died from gun shots to the head.
But insurgents apparently were lying in wait. Just as the soldiers began putting the bodies into their armored vehicles, the firefight began, and for several cacophonous minutes bullets tore through the busy traffic circle as Iraqi pedestrians dived for cover.
No one was killed, but the day's events illustrate the precarious state of Iraq's third-largest city and who all the major players - and victims - are in this conflict, which has been simmering here for the past two weeks.
On Thursday alone, even as U.S. troops were eating turkey and stuffing, word was filtering in that the bodies of 11 Iraqi soldiers had been found throughout Mosul, a discovery that has become all too common recently as insurgents have turned their attention to fellow citizens rather than U.S. forces in the area.
In a way, Thursday's small battle was what U.S. commanders have been hoping for. Their soldiers train for just these adrenaline-pumping moments. Their equipment is the best in the world, and their chances of winning against virtually any enemy are excellent. But what has been frustrating about Mosul is that the insurgents have been operating just under the radar, intimidating the public with tactics as effective as any psychological operations campaign the U.S. Army could ever launch.
The bodies found in Mosul's busy traffic circle Thursday afternoon are one example. The executed men lay blindfolded and bound. Tucked visibly in the waistbands of their pants were their military ID cards; the message to anyone who walked past was plain: Cooperate with the Americans or the new Iraqi government, and this will be your fate, too.
American military planners in Mosul are placing high priority on stopping the killing of local forces, who are deemed essential to securing peace in the city.
On Wednesday, when word came in that insurgents had been using a local taxi stand to kidnap Iraqi soldiers coming home on leave, Kurilla's convoy of armored vehicles descended on the stand from every direction, surrounding the men there. One by one, the Army commander pulled the Iraqis aside and asked what they knew of soldiers being picked up there and taken to their deaths.
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