Barnes Blog
As the conflict in Iraq continues, U.S. News has dispatched Pentagon correspondent Julian E. Barnes for a frontline view. Barnes, who has periodically reported from Iraq since the war began in 2003, is blogging his impressions for usnews.com.
Battling snipers: 'We've killed all the stupid ones'
On midday on Friday, soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division's 1-327 infantry battalion move to the southern end of Huwija, away from the Sabbath crowds but just within range of the powerful loudspeakers of one of the city's mosques known to deliver anti-American sermons.
A few minutes after they park, a series of three shots ring out.
"That was close," shouts Spc. Dale Dugas, a humvee gunner for Charlie Company. As Dugas scans the rooftops, the patrol begins to move, first stopping and searching a car, then moving a block away from the first attack.
A few minutes later, a projectile whistles past Dugas's head. With a muffled boom, a rocket-propelled grenade sails over the humvee and lands in front of an Iraqi home—sending a cloud of smoke drifting into the air and forcing a man and his child to scurry away from their home.
"That just missed us," Dugas shouts.
"It came from the back left," calls out the driver, Spc. Chris Billingsley.
As the patrol begins rolling, Billingsley looks out his side window. A man is standing in a doorway pointing to his left.
"Do you see that guy in the doorway?" Dugas calls out. "He is motioning to someone!"
A sniper is haunting the town of Huwija, a small but violent majority-Sunni Arab town west of Kirkuk. Staff Sgt. Michael McMath thinks the sniper has something against him personally.
"I've been hit five times," McMath says. "It hit the turret, I got hit in the blue force tracker. Yesterday he hit my tire."
McMath says the sniper's tactics have been changing. At first he was aiming at the American gunners who stand exposed out of the top of the humvee. Now McMath believes the sniper is going for the tires, attempting to disable the humvees and force the soldiers inside to dismount.
"He is changing his tactics," McMath says, "so we are changing our TTPs"—tactics, techniques, and procedures. Less than an hour after McMath spoke those words, he got hit a sixth time. This time the bullet went harmlessly through the bumper.
It is not just the Americans who have become the target. The sniper has also killed an Iraqi soldier. First Sgt. Sami Rakan Majoud, a soldier in the Iraqi Army, believes the snipers working the streets of Huwija are more likely criminal thugs than hard-core terrorists, even if the snipers portray themselves in more glorious terms.
"These days, people go around doing anything and they say they do 'jihad,' " says First Sgt. Sami Rakan Majoud. Still, whatever the motivation, the Iraqi soldiers say they are not going to restrain themselves if they catch the sniper before the Americans do.
"We know you guys are nice to the detainees, keep them in jail for a year, then let them go," Majoud says. "If we catch him we are not going to let you guys see the [expletive]. We will kill him."
advertisement
