Inside the Iraq War on Nat Geo now (9 p.m. PST)

[John Kettler]

Caught part of this on an earlier broadcast, and it's first rate. Terrific footage, great, often moving interviews, the first Strykers in combat, M107, SMAW, M24s and more. Was fascinated to learn that at Fallujah, the insurgents bricked up all entrances on the U.S. side except one doorway per building, which was rigged with an IED. Further, they collapsed roofs so that our troops would fall some 15 feet and hurt themselves while moving fast across roofs and would deliberately break down stairwells in order to channel movement into kill zones. Never heard about this before. Watch as much of it as you can.

Regards,

John Kettler

[snake_eye]

Hi John,

Some of the houses in Fallujah were death trap for the assaulting marines platoons.

As you said, all the opening were sealed but the main entrance, the stairs were done and the bottom rooms were all rigged to charges and even in some of them to an aircraft drop tank filled with gazoline set in the hall ! More, the water can and or tank usually found on the rooftop and storing the rain water , were filled with gazoline.

All was done to make the squads go into these houses by funnelling the field of fire in such a way that the guys will be trying to get to cover in these houses that seemed unoccupied.

The first guy getting into it, usually saw the firing cables, being neatly tied together and going into the other rooms. He will shout a warning and get the hell out.

Luckily, they were ralely booby trap but set afire by a fighter hidden a 100 meters or so, with the help of a car battery and a wire running to the house. If they have had remote firing device, that would have been terrible unless devices to counter that had been used ( which, I know were not use at that time). These houses were told to higher about, left alone and a specialized disposal squad unit would take care of it a bit latter.

There are quite a few books about the 2 battles that took place at a different time at Fallujah following the death and exposure of the Dark water guys on one of the bridge.

Cheers

[John Kettler]

snake_eye,

Yikes! I knew it was bad, but I had no idea it was that bad. Really need to do some serious reading, including the Wiki Leaks report on lessons learned from Fallujah. It was very interesting to me to see Tell Afar, for my brother was there. Helped me understand at least some of his experiences.

Regards,

John Kettler