Indian Express: A large body (at least a company, if not more) of British Royal Marines, with tanks, lay pinned down, around it. Journalists embedded with the unit spoke, for hours, on the deadly resistance being put up by the Iraqis. Marines crawled and manoeuvred themselves from one safe vantage point to another, but never got any closer to the house of the defenders even after mortar shells had gone through it. They waited, instead, for the Harriers to arrive and put a 500-pound bomb into it.
It was stirring television, particularly so early in the war which was never expected to be fought. But it wasn’t stirring warfighting. If an army with a superiority of 20 to 1, with total air dominance, the finest in smart weapons, bristling with technology and body armour which would make it impossible for the enemy to kill you unless he actually hit you on your nose or some place like that, has to wait a whole day to clear out one little machine-gun nest, it would be a long time before it can neutralise any significant challenge from the defenders. And this, mind you, were the British who have shown greater spunk in the firefights so far than the Americans.
Why yes, I do hope that we consider every soldier the most expensive and valuable military equipment we have -- designed for years of service unless misused. I will also note I saw this criticism on Fox Network where an old Republican geezer was saying this was a war of wusses, probably another chickenhawk.
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