The purported incident in Ramadi never made the press releases at either Multinational Forces-Iraq or CENTCOM. The Associated Press has a reporter (Todd Pitman) embedded with the Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. Mr. Pitman's blog is called AP Blog From Ramadi, Iraq, and the site has not been updated since April 7th. An inquiry to Captain Alfred Smith, the Public Affairs Officer from the 2/28th Brigade Combat Team, which runs Ramadi, produced the following reply; "There was some action , a little more active than the norm but just another day for us." This Week in Iraq, a Coalition bulliten, has a brief description of a fight in Ramadi but nothing like the media accounts.
No big enemy attack there, it would appear, despite the press reports.
As I wrote back in August 2005 about the downward spiral of enemy resistance in Iraq, I thought they'd soon be down to essentially scrawling "Romans Go Home" on Internet sites.
We are reaching that point, it seems. We just need to add Marine lessons in conjugation, I guess...
