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Here's an 'incresingly sophisticated insurgency" quiz:
Question: How many US Marines does it take to stop multiple suicide bombers driving huge, "bulletproofed" dumptrucks and firetrucks?
"Butler ? that day, that Marine ? that's the critical error the insurgents made," Capt. Frank Diorio says. "They thought they could keep the Marines' heads down. But he gets back up."The rest is at the link.Butler, 21 and an Altoona, Pa., native, fired through the windshield of the first suicide bomber as he rammed a white dump truck through a barrier of abandoned vehicles the Marines had improvised. Barreling toward the camp's wall, the truck veered off at the last moment under volleys of Butler's gunfire.
"I shot 20 or 30 rounds before he detonated," he says.
Knocked down by that blast, with bricks and sandbags collapsing on top of him, Butler struggled to his feet only to hear a large diesel engine roar amid the clatter of gunfire. It was a red fire engine, carrying a second suicide bomber and passenger. Butler says both were wearing black turbans and robes, often worn by religious martyrs.
Amid the chaos of that first bomb blast, supported by gunfire from an estimated 30 dismounted insurgents, the fire engine passed largely undetected on a small road that leads from town directly past the camp wall, according a Marine report.
"I couldn't see him at first because of the smoke. It was extremely thick from the first explosion," Butler says. When the fire engine cleared the smoke, it was much closer than the dump truck had been.
Side note: kudos to USA Today's Elliot Blair Smith for telling the story without praising the enemy. Another quote from the report:
The daylight attack on this remote U.S. military base fits a pattern of recent insurgent attacks on U.S. military strongholds. On Saturday, a mortar attack at Camp Ramadi killed three servicemembers, and there was a coordinated assault two weeks ago on the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.U.S. forces have repelled each attack, inflicting large losses on the insurgents while incurring few casualties.
