Fallouja Iraq

Taking a short breather Friday, the 21-year-old Marine corporal explained what it was like to practice his lethal skill in the battle for this city. "It's a sniper's dream," he said in polite, matter-of-fact tones. "You can go anywhere and there are so many ways to fire at the enemy without him knowing where you are."

The secretary of Defense has decided not to overrule his predecessor and posthumously award the Medal of Honor to Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta of San Diego, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine) announced Wednesday. The decision by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta means the Navy Cross awarded to Peralta for heroism during the 2004 battle in Fallouja, Iraq, will not be upgraded to the nation's highest award for combat courage. Hunter had petitioned Panetta to overturn the decision made by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates in 2008.

Soon, the Marines would be marching forward in Great War-style formations on a chilly, rainy evening imbued with a sense of the apocalyptic. But for now, the troops crouched in foxholes gouged from the desert north of Fallouja, scanning the fireworks. An immense barrage of air and artillery strikes rained down on the rebel-held city, and the Marines roared with every blast. Force Recon was at work.

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.

The U.S. Central Command said Tuesday that a service member attached to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force operating in and near Fallouja, Iraq, was killed in action, and Dutch authorities have announced the first death in Iraq among their 1,300 troops. More than 770 U.S. service members have died since the war began in March 2003. The statement on the Central Command website gave few details of Monday's death and did not identify the member pending notification of relatives.

along msr mobile, outside fallouja, iraq -- The battle for this desolate stretch of road east of Fallouja is relentless: Twenty-four hours a day, Marines lumber up and down the six-lane freeway in 23-ton amphibious assault vehicles, looking for bombs and dodging snipers. The shadowy gunmen are a constant menace on MSR Mobile -- short for Main Supply Route Mobile, so dubbed because it serves as a main link between several U.S. bases here in Al Anbar province.

The Marlboro man is angry: He has a war to fight and he's running out of smokes. "If you want to write something," he tells an intruding reporter, "tell Marlboro I'm down to four packs and I'm here in Fallouja till who knows when. Maybe they can send some. And they can bring down the price a bit." Such are the unvarnished sentiments of Marine Lance Cpl.

The strategy appears simple enough. "What we'd like to do is have the good people of Fallouja who see their country has a future -- who want to be a part of that -- to separate themselves from those who have nothing to live for," said Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which has encircled this city of 300,000. If only it were that easy. Counter-insurgency warfare seldom is, experts say, as U.S.

Dr. Ahmed Ghanim's nightmarish week began with a phone call in the operating room of a makeshift medical center in downtown Fallouja. On the line was the manager of the city's General Hospital. Iraqi national guardsmen and U.S. Marines, the manager said, had entered the hospital, handcuffed the doctors and were forcing the patients out to the parking lot.

Preferably, the Easter service would have been held on the roof so that worshipers could watch the sunrise. But that could have exposed the Marines at this forward base to gunfire and rockets launched by anti-American insurgents, with whom they have been fighting for a week. So Navy Lt.

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.

In one of the most misguided reconstruction projects attempted in Iraq, the U.S. spent nearly $100 million to build a sewage treatment system for the city of Fallouja, according to a government audit report released today. Sewage continues to run in the streets, and the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found that the system may never be properly connected to individual homes, lacks the necessary fuel to operate and is unlikely to ever cover the full city.

camp pendleton -- The Marine Corps announced Monday that it has charged a Marine sergeant with murder in connection with the killing of an unarmed Iraqi prisoner during fighting in the city of Fallouja in late 2004. Sgt. Jermaine A. Nelson was charged with one count of unpremeditated murder Thursday, the same day that a charge was unsealed in federal court in Riverside against former Marine Jose Luis Nazario Jr. in the same incident.

The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles has filed charges against a former Marine sergeant for his alleged role in the killing of eight unarmed Iraqi prisoners during a November 2004 battle in Fallouja, according to military and civilian sources. Jose Nazario, a Murrieta resident who worked as a sworn officer in the Riverside Police Department until his termination last week, is expected to appear in a federal courtroom in Riverside today.

Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents are examining allegations that Marines killed as many as eight unarmed Iraqi prisoners during a battle in Fallouja in November 2004, according to civilian and military sources. The investigation is at least the third of possible war crimes by Marines based here and involves the same company, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment, that is at the center of the largest allegation of atrocities by U.S.

U.S. troops in Iraq uncovered a "car bomb factory" near Fallouja this week that contained multiple canisters of chlorine, a potentially lethal gas that has been used in three insurgent attacks over the last month, a top U.S. official in Baghdad told reporters Thursday. Lt. Gen. Raymond T.

On Monday, Echo Company battled insurgents for two hours. One Marine was killed and 15 were wounded in the latest and bloodiest of numerous skirmishes. Then four Marines -- from the battle-hardened company, part of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment of the 1st Marine Division -- asked a Protestant chaplain to arrange a battlefield baptism. "I've been talking to God a lot during the last two firefights," said Lance Cpl. Chris Hankins, 19, of Kansas City, Mo.

Directed by U.S. Marines, two dozen Iraqi men collected corpses Tuesday in an effort to rid this devastated city of hundreds of bodies in keeping with Muslim burial practices. Bodies lay in homes, on verandas and in shallow, makeshift graves. Muslims generally bury their dead within 24 hours, but combat has prevented the interment of most corpses.

In desperation and anger, they arrive daily at a Marine outpost here: Sunni Arabs fleeing the violence in Baghdad and often pleading for U.S. protection against Shiite death squads. Two years ago, it was the opposite. Fallouja residents fled their city for the relative safety of Baghdad before a violent clash between U.S. forces and the Sunni-led insurgency. Now, the city astride the Euphrates River has become a sanctuary from the violence in the nation's capital.

along msr mobile, outside fallouja, iraq -- The battle for this desolate stretch of road east of Fallouja is relentless: Twenty-four hours a day, Marines lumber up and down the six-lane freeway in 23-ton amphibious assault vehicles, looking for bombs and dodging snipers. The shadowy gunmen are a constant menace on MSR Mobile -- short for Main Supply Route Mobile, so dubbed because it serves as a main link between several U.S. bases here in Al Anbar province.