Fallouja

On the outskirts of this former insurgent stronghold, Munir Ibrahim Ismail and his family have taken up residence in an American military latrine. They picked up the trailer full of toilets at a junkyard for about $5,000 — less than it would have cost them to build a real house — and set to work. They tore out the toilet bowls and scrubbed the trailer for days with disinfectant. They ripped off tiles, poured a concrete floor and added a window. They erected a divider to create two rooms and tacked on a concrete kitchen at the back.

Amid a military tradition honed by the agony of warfare, Marine 1st Lt. Robert Michael Kelly was honored and buried Monday at Arlington National Cemetery in the section reserved for those who have fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Kelly, 29, was killed Nov. 9 in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan in a disheveled place called Sangin, long a Taliban stronghold. He was leading his platoon on a combat patrol when he stepped on a concealed bomb. FOR THE RECORD: Military funeral: An article in the Nov. 23 Section A about the funeral of Marine 1st Lt. Robert Michael Kelly said he was believed to be the only son of a general to have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan during the last nine years.

A tribal leader and a security official were killed in explosions Saturday, the latest in a string of assassinations in and around the western Iraqi city of Fallouja. The deaths capped a violent week in the Fallouja area, where a candidate for parliament has survived two attempts on his life, and only last month, 13 people were executed by men dressed in army uniforms. That mass killing remains unsolved. The assassinations have cast a pall over Anbar province, which was the center of the Sunni Arab insurgency until late 2006, when tribesmen revolted against the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Three car bombs killed 33 people in Baghdad and the western Iraqi city of Fallouja on Sunday as people expressed anxiety over the country's security situation. Two car bombs ripped through the Iraqi capital almost simultaneously just after 10 a.m. The deadliest attack was in the Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Kadhimiya, where a suicide car bomb exploded outside an office of the state Ministry for National Security and left 19 dead and 53 wounded, according to police sources. The blast destroyed several homes and turned the prosperous neighborhood into a scene of mourning and rage.

Re "Rumsfeld Looks to Military Success to Tip Iraqi Opinion," Nov. 9: I always display my American flag on Veterans Day. I have a lot of sympathy for our soldiers who have fought and died for what they thought was right. No thanks to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his neoconservative pals in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. Their lack of planning and poor decisions from the beginning of the occupation of Iraq should have gotten them fired a long time ago. What are these guys still doing in power?

Re "Rumsfeld Looks to Military Success to 'Tip' Iraqi Opinion," Nov. 9: In April, fearful that the assault on Fallouja would result in more casualties than Americans could stomach, and thus derail his campaign, President Bush pulled the troops back. Throughout the campaign, Bush continually assured his supporters in every stump speech that "progress is being made in Iraq." Interim Iraqi leader Iyad Allawi was in the United States, saying that the chaos we saw daily in Iraq was overstated.

His Charlie Battery was dug in against as many as 50 insurgents, Capt. Matt Davenport remembers, and the volleys of rocket-propelled grenades and bursts of machine-gun fire were nonstop. At one point in the two-day firefight, he recalls, "there was an explosion every five seconds." The battle was fierce enough that it could have occurred at the height of this spring's siege of Fallouja, a city that has become notorious worldwide as a hub of resistance to American and allied forces.

Re "The U.S. Loses by Quitting in Fallouja," by Max Boot, Commentary, May 6: Finally, someone has the guts to call this what it is -- an embarrassing and potentially serious defeat for the U.S. After three weeks of daily threats by the U.S. military command to clean out the insurgents in Fallouja, the Marines were pulled out and the place turned over to the bad guys. The media ran front-page articles for days on the coming decisive battle for Fallouja, and then quietly forgot all about it when we left.

The U.S. and Iraqi military assault on Fallouja is drawing a diverse reaction from Iraqi citizens. Many decry the images of destruction, but residents in several cities describe the campaign as a painful necessity and the only way to quell the insurgent violence that continues to wrack the nation.

U.S. Marines tightened their cordon around this embattled city Tuesday in an effort to stem the flow of guns, ammunition and reinforcements to insurgents who continued to clash with American forces despite a truce sponsored by the Iraqi Governing Council. Aided by information provided by residents of Fallouja, Marines stepped up what they call their "knock and talk" policy of raids on homes suspected of being used to store weaponry or harbor fighters.

An Iraqi counter-terrorism force backed by U.S. soldiers battled gunmen early Wednesday during a raid in a village in western Iraq that left at least six people dead. No Americans were among the casualties. The predawn shootout highlighted the reemerging tensions between the central government in Baghdad and residents in Anbar province, the former bastion of the Sunni Arab insurgency. The raid began with an elite Iraqi unit surrounding a street in Jubail, just outside Fallouja, Iraqi police and the U.S. military said.

On the outskirts of this former insurgent stronghold, Munir Ibrahim Ismail and his family have taken up residence in an American military latrine. They picked up the trailer full of toilets at a junkyard for about $5,000 — less than it would have cost them to build a real house — and set to work. They tore out the toilet bowls and scrubbed the trailer for days with disinfectant. They ripped off tiles, poured a concrete floor and added a window. They erected a divider to create two rooms and tacked on a concrete kitchen at the back.

A tribal leader and a security official were killed in explosions Saturday, the latest in a string of assassinations in and around the western Iraqi city of Fallouja. The deaths capped a violent week in the Fallouja area, where a candidate for parliament has survived two attempts on his life, and only last month, 13 people were executed by men dressed in army uniforms. That mass killing remains unsolved. The assassinations have cast a pall over Anbar province, which was the center of the Sunni Arab insurgency until late 2006, when tribesmen revolted against the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Iraqi security forces arrested 14 suspected Al Qaeda in Iraq members, including three who had been previously detained by U.S. troops, police officials said. Six men arrested in Fallouja were wanted for allegedly planning attacks in and around the city, police said. Police detained the other eight suspects, one of whom was a woman, during a raid on a suspected militant hide-out in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

A self-described schizophrenic who posed as a wounded Marine captain and advocated for veterans' causes for more than a year before he was unveiled as a fraud was arrested Friday in San Diego, federal officials reported. Rick Glen Strandlof, 32, will be charged with making false claims about the receipt of military medals, a misdemeanor under the Stolen Valor Act, a three-year-old law that criminalizes either wearing or claiming to have a medal that one did not earn. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $250,000 fine.

A bomb hidden in a packed Baghdad market for motorcycles killed as many as 22 people Friday, the latest in a string of attacks that seem aimed at undermining the government before next week's deadline for U.S. forces to exit Iraqi cities. In the last week, more than 150 people were killed in two attacks alone in Baghdad and northern Iraq. Another bombing killed seven people Thursday at a bus station in a western district of Baghdad.

I finally tried to wash the Marine's bloodstains from my pants. It had been nine days since the battle, and daily layers of dirt and dust masked what I knew lay beneath. From the relative comfort of "Dreamland," a reasonably secure U.S. base just outside Fallouja, I swirled my pants in a square metal pan containing four inches of precious water. With each spin, the water turned a deeper brown. Soon I could see the blood of Sgt. Josue Magana, the stains unmoved by the swirling water, my memories of that morning just as deeply set. april 26. 5 a.m. the marines of echo company had been ordered to take two homes in the Jolan neighborhood at the northwestern edge of Fallouja, the heart of the notorious Sunni Triangle and the root of U.S. occupation resistance.

As U.S. aircraft mounted heavy fire against Iraqi snipers Wednesday, Marines began building an earthen barrier around this Sunni Triangle city, suggesting that the U.S. does not anticipate an immediate resolution of the standoff. A tenuous cease-fire has been in effect since Sunday and members of the Iraqi Governing Council have attempted to negotiate a truce between the U.S. forces and the militants.

A military jury acquitted Marine Sgt. Ryan Weemer on Thursday of all charges in the fatal shooting of an Iraqi prisoner during a 2004 battle in Fallouja. At Camp Pendleton, a jury of eight officers, all of whom had served in Iraq, Afghanistan or both, deliberated for seven hours over two days before announcing its decision. Weemer was charged with unpremeditated murder and dereliction of duty, which could have brought a life sentence.

Wars throughout the ages have inspired great literature and film. The one in Iraq even has generated rap songs. But now there's going to be a video game based on the November 2004 battle in the Iraqi city of Fallouja that features some of the Marines who fought there. The idea for the game, called Six Days in Fallujah, came from troops who returned with video, photos and diaries of their experiences. The battle resulted in the deaths of 38 U.S. troops and an estimated 1,200 insurgents.