The withdrawal of American troops from Iraqi cities today marks a turning point for the war in Iraq, and leaves me with mixed feelings about the current situation and the war overall.
I see it as a success that the security situation has improved so much that US forces basically aren't needed to protect the urban populations anyway. Whether it was an arbitrary date or not, it sort of turned out to be an event-driven one -- at least in terms of security. I can't express the pride I feel for the sacrifice and adaptability of the troops who made this success possible.
I remember being at a small outpost on the outskirts of Balad in July of 2003. My photographer colleague and I hired two seats in a convoy of Suburbans heading out of Amman to a hotel in Baghdad, where we based ourselves for six weeks to cover the beginnings of the occupation.
We went on a raid one night out of the small base -- which had no electricity, no air conditioning, no refrigeration -- with a group from the 4th ID based on intel gained from a short trip into town by the company commander who slipped in with his translator (terp) wearing a dishdash and driving in a captured taxi cab. This was two months after the "mission accomplished" speech and I was amazed at the initiative of the troops there that early on.
I went to Sadr city then too. The fetid stench of sewage and rotten trash wafting into the gritty dust thrown up by the totally unarmored Humvee we were in. Kids threw rocks at us. "That means they like us," one Soldier told me. "I think...."
Then there was the victory lap with Marines in southern towns. The Shiite population there was overjoyed with the US victory and the overthrown Saddam. I was in a small camp in Diwaniyah when Udeh and Kuseh Hussein were killed. There was so much celebratory fire, a Marine standing post on a rooftop nearby was injured when a round came down out of the sky and hit him in the leg.
I remember standing on the street corner just outside what was still not yet called the Green Zone (the troops from the 2nd ACR called it the MOAC: mother of all checkpoints) at 9pm waiting for a driver from the AP to pick me and a couple colleagues up after a trip into the field. I didn't think for one second that something would happen to me at the time.
Then it all changed from hope to despair.
I returned to a very different Iraq in late 2005. For a month I cowered in the back of a Marine Humvee in Ramadi dodging IEDs on nightly patrols and raids. My first night there in early December, a coordinated IED attack maimed several Marines and killed two after they'd dismounted from a 7 ton truck to fix a Humvee disabled by a previous bomb. I went along on the QRF and watched as Marines picked up combat boots filled with severed feet and legs.
In Hit, we were in the boondocks for a month. The desert "ratlines" that funneled suicide bombers into Iraq from Syria. It was tense but quiet, until a group of insurgents tried to overrun the camp I was in guarded by a single platoon of Marines. We joked together that the Iraq war had turned into the war on drugs -- every time you grab an insurgent or uncover a (massive) weapons cache, there's three more that pop up right alongside it (or him). We were never going to win this war, we thought.
And then it all changed. I remember thinking to myself even after the first trip to Iraq that the main problem was the Iraqis themselves. They refused to act. They refused to reject being cooped in someone else's failing agenda (the islamists). They failed to stand up for themselves and confront the violence that no one wanted. Why weren't we guilting them into acting?
Then we did. There was a tipping point there. Not sure when, but something showed the community leaders there that throwing their lot in with AQ wasn't going to get them where they needed to go. The Iraqis didn't strike me as particularly radical people -- they weren't ripe for the Taliban or the Iranian mullahs. But something clearly convinced local leaders to side with the US and stand up against AQ. Whether it was the severed head of a cousin to Abdul-Satter Abu Risha delivered to his doorstep that did it or what, I don't know. But something tipped the balance.
Then it was hard fighting and close teaming and tough, thorough training that got the job done. The troops stuck to their guns. They refused to relent. They bit their tongues when they saw the Iraqi forces acting like idiots. They kept cajoling them into the fight. And they did it. As Steve Colbert said: "We won..."
I went back to the new Iraq in early 2008 and I was stunned. I was also bored. One month with combat units there -- Marines and Army -- and not a single raid. No incoming rockets. Not even a stray AK round from a Friday wedding party. Everything had changed.
And this is where we find ourselves today.
Am I nervous about how this is all going to shake out? Yes. But I'm confident that Iraq has passed the point of no return. I'm confident that they will not revert to the chaos and jihadist mayhem of 2006 and '07. DO they have "reconciliation?" No. But do we? Do they have a hydrocarbon law yet? No. But can you even conceive of how complex such a law would be? Could you see the US coming up with one? The only states in the region that have them are theocracies or kingdoms. No one voted on those.
But at the end of the day it's been a major triumph for our armed forces. Politicians in the US certainly didn't help much. The troops stuck to the guns, put their heads down and worked hard to make it a success. They didn't involve themselves in the debates -- there is no debate, right? You execute your orders and you do them decisively. The military did way more than they were trained to do. And they did it without complaint and with amazing skill and aptitude.
I am glad to have witnessed and been a part -- in a small way -- of this very unpopular war. It's when the chips are down; when nobody says you'll win; when all support has faded away where character is found. Those who fought, worked and died there had it. And we should be exceptionally proud of those who will never quite brush all that talcum sand out of their boots ever again.
-- Christian
Iraq Success
Can we please now say that the "Cut and Run"-ers were dead wrong. That America could be successful in Iraq and that it wasn't the Sunnis who did it; it was Americans who supported an unpopular "surge" strategy that proved to be the real solution to the security problem...
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON - The number of daily attacks in Iraq has dropped nearly 95 percent since last year, a U.S. military official said yesterday.
Iraq suffered an average of 180 attacks per day this time last year. But over the past week, the average number was 10, Army Brig. Gen. David G. Perkins, a Multi-National Force Iraq spokesman, said.
"This is a dramatic improvement of safety throughout the country," Perkins told reporters during a wide-ranging news conference in Baghdad yesterday.
He added that the country's murder rates have dropped below levels that existed before the start of American operations in Iraq. In November, the ratio was 0.9 per 100,000 people.
-- Christian
Major Iraq News...
...but you wouldn't know it from the mainstream media.
Once the most violent place in Iraq, Anbar province will come under Provincial Iraqi Control on Saturday, a senior military official said Monday.
So far, nine Iraqi provinces are under Provincial Iraqi Control, or PIC, in which Iraqi security forces perform day-to-day operations and U.S. troops provide assistance as needed, the military official told reporters.
"When you PIC a province, the coalition force goes into what we call an operational overwatch: They're there, essentially as a security blanket," the official said.
Though the Washington Post ran a story on its Web site today which lead with the heinous attempt by AQI to disrupt the handover by bombing a provincial council meeting and killing an estimated 20 (which hits pretty close to home for me because I met some of these tribal leaders in the very place where the bombing occurred -- see the picture above), the paper edition did not have a story on the handover, nor did the New York Times.
Remember, these were the papers that jumped on the leak of a Marine Corps Intelligence report in September 2006 that Anbar was lost. Wrote the NYTimes:
As the situation has deteriorated, insurgent attacks have increased. The report describes Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as an “integral part of the social fabric” of Anbar.
Aside from being flat out wrong on that assessment, the stories painted a grim picture of the situation in Anbar and help solidify impressions (with an election coming up just a month later) that Iraq was a lost cause.
But how times have changed. Anbar is flat out boring to go visit anymore. Believe me, I was there for two months in 2005-2006 and I know how violent it was.
And you know I went back in January and now Marines are itching to ditch their protective gear and whining louder and louder about coming home or heading to a real fight in Afghanistan. But why can't the regular media bring themselves to report such a development. Anbar was the headquarters for al Qaeda in Iraq for years -- now it's secure enough to hand over to Iraqi control...before eight other provinces...That's news.
Ok, off my soapbox now.
-- Christian
Mahdi Army Using 'Flying IEDs' in Baghdad
Our boy Bill Roggio got his hands on some intel that filled in the blanks on that truck explosion in Sadr City this week.
"...the explosions were caused by the premature detonation of a Special Groups improvised rocket launching system. The system, which has been described as a flying improvised explosive device, or airborne IED, had received little attention until yesterday’s explosions in Sha’ab.
"What I find disconcerting is there have been few corrections. This was not an engagement and these were not Special Groups transporting missiles and mortars in a bongo truck."
The bongo truck was actually the "launch vehicle," according to bomb experts who surveyed the scene. "This was a crude rocket launching system we call an IRAM [improvised rocket assisted mortars] that prematurely detonated causing the other rockets in the truck to catastrophically exploded," Stover said. Two Mahdi Army Special Groups fighters were killed in the subsequent explosions, as well as 16 civilians. Twenty-nine civilians were wounded and 15 buildings were severely damaged.
There were five blast sites, the US military reported. The initial blast occurred at the rocket launcher, while the four other rockets were thrown several hundred meters to the east and detonated. "It is believed the intended targets were US Soldiers at [Forward Operating Base] Callahan and while in the final stages of preparing for the attack, for an unknown reason one rocket prematurely detonated causing the remaining rockets to launch and explode erratically."
I dunno, what's the difference between an improvised MLRS and an IED? Roggio tries to explain:
While the US military related the IRAM explosions in Sha'ab to the April 28 IRAM attacks on Joint Security Station Thawra I in Sadr City and Forward Operating Base Loyalty, there may be two improvised weapons systems at play. Both the JSS Thawra I and the FOB Loyalty attacks were conducted by pulling trucks right outside of the bases' blast walls and firing the improvised rockets into bases. The attack on FOB Loyalty resulted in two soldiers killed and 16 wounded.
The US military said the weapons used in the April 28 attacks had a limited range of between 50 and 150 yards, according to a source familiar with the attack who wishes to remain anonymous. The US military said the range and size of the warhead on the IRAMs is classified.
Based on the images of the launchers used in the April 28 attacks [see slideshow], the IRAM looks to be a large canister, perhaps a propane or fuel tank, filled with explosives and propelled by 107mm rocket booster. These types of improvised weapons -- essentially flying IEDs -- would have a short range and would be highly inaccurate.
So, in a sense, what we're looking at is a remote controlled, improvised multiple-mortar system. Kinda like an insurgent version of the Non-line of sight Launch System, or NLOS-LS...
What is clear is that the devices are using 107mm rocket charges. The US military said these charges are "of Iranian-manufacture." The lot numbers and dates of manufacture show the rocket casings have been manufactured within the past three years.
The rocket casings shown in the images provided by Multinational Forces Iraq are the same type used in the Chinese-made Type 63 towed 107mm Multiple Launch Rocket. The Iranians manufacture this weapons system and the rockets, according to a former US military intelligence analyst familiar with Iranian munitions and weapons systems.
The type of improvised launch system and rocket is not new to warfare. The Irish Republican Army used a similar system to conduct a February 1991 attack on 10 Downing Street, the London office and home of the British prime minister.
(Gouge: BR)
-- Christian
The Sniper Dance
Here's an early look at Military.com's lede story tomorrow morning (barring breaking news, of course). Christian continues his reporting from Iraq, this time focusing on the enemy sniper threat in Tikrit:
They call it the “sniper dance.”
You’re out in the open. There are houses all around you -- cover and concealment for enemy sharpshooters to plink off a U.S. Soldier.
Stand there, wait a few seconds, shift to the right -- then do it all over again.
“We don’t want a sniper to get a good shot off on us,” one Soldier says. “So we keep moving all the time.”
In this home region for the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the security that has only recently descended here is tenuous at best. With the Iraqi army largely pushed out of the surrounding towns and villages to help U.S. forces root out the most tenacious holdouts in other areas, the focus here is on building a durable police force that can secure the population and at the same time keep the insurgency from sparking up again.
American Military Police units and the civilian advisors that help them recognize the mandate is a tall order. With corruption a part of everyday life here and a policing philosophy making the transition from being an instrument of oppression to a force that serves the community, putting the local police on the right track takes constant interaction and a deep reservoir of patience.
“Our motto is no free chicken,” said Staff Sgt. Joe Cline, a platoon sergeant with the 56th Military Police Company, who added their main mission is to cut the Iraqi police’s dependence on the U.S. military.
Each of the platoons with the 56th Military Police Company -- which is made of Army reservists from a Arizona, California and Nevada -- is divided into smaller Police Transition Teams, called “PiTTs.” Paired with civilian contractors drawn from police departments from across the country, the PiTT teams patrol the towns outside the sprawling Camp Speicher base just to the north of Tikrit, visiting police stations, meeting with their leaders and assessing what needs they have to keep cops on the beat.
At the Tikrit patrol station, MPs wanted to see if a shooting incident that occurred the previous day showed up on the station’s log books. After a furious series of mistranslations and fumbling through piles of papers, the Iraqi policeman said he didn’t have the shooting -- which occurred just a block away -- on his books.
“That was reported at another station,” the Iraqi policeman told the MPs.
Frustrated, the MPs looked at each other with dismay.
Read the rest in the headlines at Military.com, first thing Monday morning.
And I'm headed for Kansas University tomorrow to be part of a milblogging panel with Jack Holt from DoD's New Media Directorate and Castle of Argghhh's John Donovan. I'll be posting when I can from the road. If any DT readers are in or around Jayhawk Country please stop by the campus and say hello after the panel on Tuesday night.
(Photo by Christian Lowe)
-- Ward
Tomb of the Well Known Dictator
It didn’t look like much to me.
I was warned that this place was bad news. That it had been made into a temple for the deceased dictator and that we really shouldn’t hang out there for long.
I told them I wanted to go anyway.
(Sorry about the picture quality but I had to shoot it from a speeding Humvee window.)
You can see for yourself, the tomb of Saddam Hussein and the “shrine” (if you can call it that) that’s devoted to him ain’t much. I mean, check out the trash pile in the dirt to the right. And I expected Lenin’s tomb-esque lines of devoted followers lining the sidewalk to pay tribute to the “dear leader.” But no one was there.
Not even a guard to keep vengeful victims of his rule at bay.
The town of Owja, where Saddam was born and raised, is still a nettlesome mix of disgruntled Sunnis, Baathists and Hussein kin. It’s a dangerous place, these Soldiers told me. But judging from the lack of devotion to his final resting place, he’s not the local celebrity he once was.
(That's a picture of the wall leading up to Saddam's tomb...If anyone can read Arabic I'd like to know what it says. Or maybe a new caption contest?)
Sure, the unit was an hour late to pick me up. But you gotta be ready for that when traveling in a war zone. They don't work on your schedule over here.
I made it down to the command post for 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines -- a Hawaii-based unit that's been here since August. The plan was to head out with them in a town called Karmah for a couple days to see how security has improved since some tough fighting this past summer.
I met a few of the guys, loaded my gear (way too much of it, of course) into the "high-back" Humvee (the pickup truck version with a big box of thick steel armoring its cargo compartment) and we headed toward the back gate of Camp Fallujah. During the first part of the ride, we made small talk, getting to know where each other was from and how things had been since they got here.
Then I asked them how their Humvees had been holding up.
"Pretty good," one of the Marines replied.
The Humvee is a real workhorse here. But for the last few years new units coming in have been falling in on the same jeeps left here by other battalions heading out. That means these Humvees have taken quite a beating. And it's a real tribute to the maintenance Marines -- and Soldiers, for that matter -- who keep them running.
No sooner had we left the back gate on our way to Combat Outpost Delta, where 3/3's Lima Company is based, than the vehicle commander radioed his team leader: "Gunny, you know your Humvee is smoking?"
Though we tried for another 100 or so yards, pushing on for the rest of the five-mile trip was not an option. We had to tow it back to Camp Fallujah for repair or a switch of Humvee.
I was wishing I hadn't asked anything about the jeeps...
A blown radiator, a screwy Chameleon anti-IED system and a Blue Force Tracker on the fritz, kept us at Fallujah for eight more hours. Each time we thought we were free to go, a new problem cropped up. Murphy was on the attack.
The maintenance guys told me many of the earlier problems with the Humvee had been fixed. With new suspensions, more powerful engines and a rebuilt power steering system, major problems are kept at bay. Problem is, it's the minor ones that'll keep you from getting to your destination most of the time.
They told me Marines at the forward bases sometimes put oil in the power steering system, or brake fluid in the radiator. "One time I had to drain the gas tank and I found anti-freeze," one of them said.
There's no evidence this kind of routine Jiffy Lube snafu was the cause of our problems. But one thing's for sure. These Humvees do Herculean work. But if you put the wrong fluids on the wrong place, Murphy could be lurking behind you just around the corner.
Christian's "in country" and, at this writing, headed for Fallujah. Check out all the details here.
Endgame in Iraq
As many of you already know, Stratfor has been an important resource for deep analysis of many geostrategic problems facing the United States. While their analysis is typically dry and dispassionate, they tend to examine all angles without favor and do a pretty good job of distilling the issue for general consumption.
They have not been Iraq war cheerleaders, nor have they been obsessively morose in their characterization of the challenges there. So I thought it might be a thought-provoking exercise to include an excerpt here of their most recent analysis of the options in Iraq, which is posted in full on Military.com’s Warfighter’s Forum page.
While I understand none of you want this page to turn into an “Iraq War” site, we will be including a few more Iraq items than usual as the Sept. 15 interim report deadline approaches.
...Following the Republican defeat in Congress in November, U.S. President George W. Bush surprised Iran by increasing U.S. forces in Iraq rather than beginning withdrawals. This created a window of a few months during which Tehran, weighing the risks and rewards, was sufficiently uncertain that it might have opted for an agreement thrusting the Shiites behind a coalition government. That moment has passed. As the NIE points out, the probability of forming any viable government in Baghdad is extremely low. Iran no longer is facing its worst-case scenario. It has no motivation to bail the United States out.
What, then, is the United States to do? In general, three options are available. The first is to maintain the current strategy. This is the administration's point of view. The second is to start a phased withdrawal, beginning sometime in the next few months and concluding when circumstances allow. This is the consensus among most centrist Democrats and a growing number of Republicans. The third is a rapid withdrawal of forces, a position held by a fairly small group mostly but not exclusively on the left. All three conventional options, however, suffer from fatal defects.
Bush's plan to stay the course would appear to make relatively little sense. Having pursued a strategic goal with relatively fixed means for more than four years, it is unclear what would be achieved in years five or six. As the old saw goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different outcome. Unless Bush seriously disagrees with the NIE, it is difficult to make a case for continuing the current course.
Looking at it differently, however, there are these arguments to be made for maintaining the current strategy: Whatever mistakes might have been made in the past, the current reality is that any withdrawal from Iraq would create a vacuum, which would rapidly be filled by Iran. Alternatively, Iraq could become a jihadist haven, focusing attention not only on Iraq but also on targets outside Iraq. After all, a jihadist safe-haven with abundant resources in the heart of the Arab world outweighs the strategic locale of Afghanistan. Therefore, continuing the U.S. presence in Iraq, at the cost of 1,000-2,000 American lives a year, prevents both outcomes, even if Washington no longer has any hope of achieving the original goal...
We at DefenseTech recognize that the conflict in Iraq is, to say the least, a controversial subject for our readers and we're not endorsing the following view other than to say that it comes from a very reliable source and is at least a small window into the current situation from someone other than a Pentagon appointed spokesman.
No matter how skeptical you are on America’s struggle in Iraq, it’s at least worth a read to see an under-reported aspect of the ongoing “surge” and its effect on the insurgency (no matter who’s doing the shooting)...
I must apologize for the tardiness of my update. As you may know I have been kept pretty busy since my return from R&R. I was one of the early birds so now most of the team is on R&R along with some who are away on TDY; so the few of us back here have to cover down on multiple areas.
Over the past month we have seen and experienced a lot. As military professionals we are seeing the benefits of the President's surge, our tactical and operational progress over the month has been really impressive. Between U.S. ground forces and the Iraqi Security Forces (Army and National Police) we have been uncovering hundreds of insurgent (Al Qaeda and Jaish al Mahdi -- aka JAM) caches and detecting far more IEDs before they explode. Caches so far this year are over 3,800. I think that is triple last year's.
Al Qaeda has totally lost the support of Iraq's Sunni Arabs. The fanatics over-played their hand when they started murdering popular sheiks, kidnapping tribal women for forced marriages, and even tried outlawing smoking. The locals in Al Anbar Province are taking their communities back and going after the terrorists themselves. Attacks on Coalition Forces out in what once used to be the Wild Wild West are down dramatically; we used to see 50 to 60 attacks a day but now they're down to less than one a day. To the point that the Marine commander out west has asked for permission to lighten his soldiers' and Marines' load by having them only wear the flack jacket/vest without the side plates and upper arm Kevlar.
Up in Diyala the provincial capital is completely different than it was over a month ago. The soldiers of the two Brigade Combat Teams (1st CAV and 2nd ID) have secured the city. The insurgents are now wandering around the countryside -- easier to pick up with infrared/heat sensors on our UAVs and air weapons teams (attack helos). They try to plant IEDs at night thinking they are safe and sound, then out of nowhere they are taken out by a Hellfire missile and it's all caught on tape too. It's our own reality TV show call "IED Planters;" its a great show when one has night duty; dial in the UAV lead, cook some popcorn, grab a soda, sit back, relax and watch the fun -- all live!
The insurgents are still out there, but they are finding it harder and harder to find support. We are no longer playing "whack-a-mole." Since we have a larger number of troops over here we are now able to clear out the insurgents and then hold on to our gains; then turn it over to the Iraqi Security Forces, Army, National Police and local Police.
That is what we did in Baqubah (an Al Qaeda and JAM infested town). Once it was cleared we put a tank, Bradley or Striker on just about every corner and told the people to stay inside after dark. If they were out and about at night -- where they shouldn't be -- they were 'lit up.' The people appreciated it because the insurgent rats' nest was cleared out.
As if that is not enough to demonstrate that we are making serious inroads and a turn for the better, winning the counterinsurgency (COIN) war, we are taking out the insurgents' leaders faster than they can replace them. All over Iraq our Special Forces and Iraqi Special Operation Forces are taking out insurgent cell leaders in surgical strikes and raids (most effective), as are the conventional American and Iraqi units - killing or capturing ringleaders. How are we doing it? We're doing it the old fashion way, through human intelligence (HUMINT). The Iraqi people are turning them in to us and not allowing them any sanctuary -- they are denying them the ability to "swim through the sea of the people." (Mao's old Communist saying). And because our soldiers are out there interacting with the local populace. The people are not afraid to come up to our troops and tell them what is going on in their neighborhood. It's still bad out there, but it is definitely improving.
The first few weeks of July we saw a heavy increase in rocket and mortar attacks. They were up to their same old tricks of firing off a few rounds then scooting -- running off. They also fire from built up housing areas, next to schools and mosques too, because they know that we will not shoot counter battery fire against them for the sake of injuring innocent civilians and causing undue collateral damage. All the while they could care less.
They have been lucky at times and we have suffered some casualties.
Fortunately the Iraqi people are getting tired of them and turning on them. We had an Iraqi man show up at one of our local neighborhood security outposts saying that he knew where some 'terrorists' were planning to launch some rockets at the 'CF and IZ' (Coalition Forces and the International Zone). He volunteered to show our troops where they were located. He took a platoon of infantry over to a school yard where six Katyusha rockets were rigged and ready for firing. By the way, the insurgents were still there guarding the site resulting in a pretty good snatch. We tried to give the man reward money for turning the insurgents in, but he refused to take anything. He told our troops "it is my responsibility, you come here to free us and protect us; it is the least thing I can do." Incidentally, most of the rockets and mortar rounds that are being shot at us, or that we are capturing, are made in the good ole Peoples Republic of China. Déjà vu, remind you of another foreign insurgent war in Southeast Asia a few years back? This begs the Question -- Are the Chinese really our friends? They claim they don't sell arms and equipment to any country that passes them on.
Unfortunately we know they are coming in from Iran and Iran is also training insurgents in their country to use the rockets and mortars. One more reason Joe Lieberman is right on Iran. By the way, old 'Mookie' (Muqtada al-Sadr) has fled back to Iran with his tail between his legs (again) trailed by his senior cronies. Things are just getting too hot for them over here.
The Iraqi forces are increasingly carrying the fight to the insurgent militias. A National Police unit down in An Nasiriyah came under attack by Jaish al Mahdi (JAM) Army elements who are accustomed to moving about freely and intimidating the police. However, the NP unit there supported by a small U.S. advisory team fought off the insurgents. Instead of a cakewalk, the goons hit a wall and were in turn hammered with some heavy air strikes -- Specter (C130 Gunship) laid them to waste. The Iraqi police counter-attacked along with a couple of Iraqi Army battalions and cleared the town of insurgents.
Up north in Mosul, Iraqi Army and National Police units have been sticking it to the enemy through a series of tough combat engagements, and netting som e massive arms caches seized from the insurgents. In Kirkuk a gruesome car bomb went off in town and the Iraqi police reacted quickly and stopped several other car bombs on the outskirts of town from reaching their intended targets.
These recent successes are beginning to show gains on the military aspect of this war. Unfortunately all the military successes are offset by the inaction of the Iraqi Parliament. This is what the press and members of congress who want us out (now) focus on. Creating a stable, functioning and democratic government takes time. Less we forget, it took us eleven years before we had agreed upon and signed the Constitution of the United States. And we had a head start on freedom.
July was a great month for the Iraqi National Soccer team. They played a spectacular game against South Korea in the Semi-finals and defeated them in a penalty kick shoot out. That evening many Iraqis went out and celebrated. Many of the restaurants and shops were open in the market areas. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda terrorists set off two big car bombs near an area where the people were celebrating their team's victory. Everyone knew that it had to be a non-Iraqi insurgent. No Iraqi would conduct such a heinous act in a time of National pride. Fortunately the players were determined to give there best in the final game against none other than Saudi Arabia -- where some of the foreign fighters come from. I watched the final Asian Cup game with the Iraqi officers in their Operations Center and with the interpreters. The Iraqis played their hearts out and dominated the second half, running circles around the Saudis. It was not only clear that they were the better team; they wanted it more than the Saudis. I think winning the Asian Cup gave all Iraqis hope that one day they will all be united and live in peace.
Earlier in the month we lost two more IGFC soldiers to assassinations. One was an intelligence officer, Staff Colonel Jawad, who was one of the original group of officers when the IGFC was established back in 2005. He was killed on his way to work. COL Jawad was very well liked by both the officers and the enlisted. Our nickname for him was Mr. Happy. He spoke pretty good English and always greeted you with a genuine friendly smile and was always in a good mood. The other soldier was a medic with the support battalion, whom I did not know. The reality of their passing was a reminder of the brutality of insurgent warfare and that we all are targets of the insurgents.
A battalion of paratroopers riding in helicopters swooped down to attack insurgents fleeing heavy fighting in Baghdad and Baqubah on July 12, killing around 30, capturing 23 and freeing three kidnapped Iraqis who had been sentenced to die by an illegitimate terrorist court. No U.S. troops were killed in the battle.
Operation Ithaca targeted the Diyala river valley 15 miles northeast of Baqubah, a former insurgent stronghold. Scouts, aerial drones and intelligence had identified the area as a likely escape route for enemy forces fleeing U.S. and Iraqi "surge" operations.
Planning for the operation began when U.S. troops conducting a raid discovered large numbers of civilian refugees. "We found through tactical questioning that people had been forced out of their village," says Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Poppas, commander of the 5th battalion of the 73rd Cavalry Regiment, a new element of the enlarged 82nd Airborne Division.
Insurgent forces - reportedly influenced by the Islamic State in Iraq group - had cleared out three villages for use as a "safe haven." They built strong points and installed a faux Islamic court that executed kidnapped Iraqis and even recorded the murders on videotape. Poppas says the displaced villagers gave his forces detailed hand-drawn maps showing the insurgent positions.
Operation Ithaca, which included air attacks by Apache gunship helicopters and Air Force fighters, marks the continued evolution of U.S. parachute formations. Despite continuing to train for massed parachute jumps deep behind enemy lines, these days the 82nd Airborne usually moves into combat in helicopters or trucks. Analyst Barry Watts from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment calls the parachute mission "a leftover consequence of the glories of the 82nd and 101st [airborne divisions] in 1944," the year paratroopers dropped en masse into Nazi-occupied France.
But paratroopers' flexibility gives them a leg up over their opponents. To keep insurgents off guard during previous operations, 5-73 has even walked cross-country into combat instead of relying on trucks that have to stick to main roads, "which surprised everyone," Poppas says. For Op Ithaca, the battalion assaulted multiple landing zones. "Anti-Iraqi forces were caught completely by surprise both in timing and the placing of our elements."
Now that the area is cleansed of insurgents, Poppas says he is planning on sending in civil affairs teams to begin the process of rebuilding the re-captured villages. "We try to do as much post-kinetic stuff as possible."
From Military.com/Defense Tech friend and contributor Winslow Wheeler, we receive an interesting perspective on the Initial Benchmark Assessment Report released yesterday.
Grading on a Curve for the Wrong Test
President George W. Bush's report today to Congress on Iraq, the White House's "Initial Benchmark Assessment Report," presents a series of assessments of Iraq's performance on 18 benchmarks that have been jointly imposed by Congress and the President. Reading the report makes two things painfully obvious: 1) President Bush is grading Iraq on a curve; and 2) he and Congress are administering the wrong test.
While the Iraqis are assessed in the White House's report to have achieved "satisfactory progress" on only eight of 18 "benchmarks" (six are rated "unsatisfactory"; two are given mixed ratings, and two are rated unable to be rated), it is painfully clear from reading the report that the "satisfactory" assessments are graded on a sharp curve. On political issues, any change - even a decision to delay a decision - is deemed "satisfactory." On military questions, characteristics that would mean a military unit is unfit to fight in the American Army (such as the three brigades the Iraqis barely managed to cobble together to deploy to Baghdad) are deemed "satisfactory" in this report.
However, we are missing a far more fundamental and important point if all we take from this White House report is its transparent effort to make the situation in Iraq appear slightly less of a mess than others might perceive.
What comes through even more clearly is the imposition of alien benchmarks on the Iraqi society and its faltering government. These benchmarks are not an effort to assist Iraq recover from the disaster of the American invasion and occupation, they are an effort to impose Western, if not American, values and methods on a society that has been resisting them, mostly violently, for the last four years. Perhaps even more to the point, the benchmarks have every appearance of an effort to make American politicians, not Iraqi citizens, feel better about themselves. An oil law to assist non-Iraqi oil companies extract resources, Western notions of constitutional law and minority rights, federalism - if not regionalism leading to virtual partition - and ending forthwith centuries old divisions in the society are just some of the end states the benchmarks seek to effect.
Moreover, the politicians in the White House and Congress pushing the benchmarks are probably thankful these tests are not being imposed on them, if the thought of oversight of themselves were ever to occur to them. For example -
•Benchmark X seeks to permit Iraqi military commanders "to make tactical and operational decisions ... without political intervention ..." That would have been an excellent suggestion for former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and several others during the run up to the initial American invasion and for the political wrangling going on this very week in Congress from both sides of the political aisle.
•The discussion in the White House report on benchmark XI ("Ensuring that Iraqi Security Forces are providing even-handed enforcement of the law") complains that, "There have been inadequate efforts to detain some senior ... officials believed responsible for human rights abuses...." The hypocrisy of this "benchmark" pains the core of every decent American's soul.
•Benchmark VI calls on Iraqis to enact amnesty legislation, something that was a long time in coming after the American Civil War and that today's anti-immigration activists scream against from the rooftops; it bespeaks a frame of mind that many Republicans and Democrats in Congress never fail to reject as they pretend to lament the absence of bipartisanship.
Are the benchmarks an honest and soundly based effort to assist Iraqi society and government? Or, are they an excuse-in-waiting for American politicians to exploit when they try to explain away the failure of a half decade of misbegotten policy, more than half a trillion dollars, and 3,600-plus American military lives.
Bush's new "Initial Benchmark Assessment Report" is an interesting document, but it should be read to understand American political maneuvering with respect to the war, rather than a measure of "progress" in Iraq.
UPDATE:
...And a statement on the report from the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Ike Skelton (D - Mo.)...
"The interim report from General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker offers a mixed assessment, but provides little reason to think that we will see significant progress on critical benchmarks relating to Iraqi political progress and national reconciliation in the upcoming September assessment or in the foreseeable future.
"After more than four years, we can no longer afford the Administration's open-ended commitments in Iraq that have failed to bring about a stable Iraq and which increasingly limit U.S. options to address other critical national security concerns.
"The report reinforces my belief that we must start taking steps to responsibly redeploy U.S. forces from Iraq. Responsible redeployment, which would limit the U.S. military to missions such as counter-terrorism, protecting U.S. Embassy personnel, and training Iraqi security forces, is necessary if we expect the Iraqis to take primary responsibility for their country and for their security."
Update II: The Senate Weighs In
From SASC Chairman, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) -
President Bush tried to paint a picture of the Iraqis making progress on half of the benchmarks for stabilizing their country. But on the benchmarks that matter most – the political goals – the picture is a bleak one of continued failure by the Iraqi leaders.
The President tried to gloss over their failure to make political progress by calling it a “lagging indicator” of the surge strategy’s success, but the real lagging indicator today was the President’s refusal to face the reality that the surge isn’t achieving its stated purpose – giving the Iraqi leaders time and space to compromise their political differences.
Everyone agrees that there is no military solution to the violence in Iraq. Only a political solution among the Iraqi leaders themselves can end the chaos. President Bush acknowledged as much when he announced the troop surge in January, arguing a surge was necessary to give the Iraqi leaders “breathing space” to reach a political settlement.
Six months into the surge, there is no sign that an increased military presence has spurred the Iraqis to make the political compromises that only they can make. In fact, most signs point to the contrary. For example, the Administration’s report confirms: “The Government of Iraq has not made satisfactory progress toward enacting and implementing legislation on de-Ba’athification reform.” And it states: “The Government of Iraq has not made satisfactory progress toward establishing a provincial elections law.”
Yet despite these continued failures, the report repeatedly states: “This does not, however, necessitate a revision to our current plan and strategy.” I, and a strong majority of Americans, disagree.
Even on the benchmarks judged “satisfactory” the report is tainted by a lack of realism. The report states: “The Government of Iraq -- with substantial Coalition assistance -- has made satisfactory progress toward reducing sectarian violence….” How many Iraqis would agree that progress in reducing sectarian violence has been satisfactory? How many Americans agree with that assessment?
Likewise, the report states: “The Government of Iraq has made satisfactory progress toward forming a Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) and then completing the constitutional review.” But the Constitutional Review Committee has made no recommendations on the most pressing issues, and the process has been bogged down in political bickering.
It’s important to remember that these are not just goals we want the Iraqis to achieve; these are benchmarks they set for themselves. They were attached to a letter addressed to me by Secretary of State Rice on January 30, 2007, and confirmed in a subsequent letter from Secretary Rice on June 13, 2007 as having been formally approved by the Iraqi Political Committee which includes the Presidency Council – the President and the two Vice Presidents – as well as the leaders of all the major political blocs in Iraq. Of those 16 benchmarks, no more than three have been achieved.
The bottom line is that this report shows continued failure by the Iraqi leaders to reach a political reconciliation and a continued refusal by the Administration to change course to put pressure on the Iraqi leaders to achieve that political settlement.
Britain Defence Secretary Des Browne said on 19 June that the capture of eight Royal Navy sailors (one female) and seven Royal Marines by Iran was -- according to the official investigation -- not the result of “a single gross failing or individual human error.” However, Browne did admit that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) erred in allowing the 14 men and one woman to sell the story of their capture and detainment to the news media.
There will be no disciplinary action in the wake of the investigation.
The investigation determined that the seizure of the sailors and Marines by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on 23 March 2007 resulted from “the coming together of a series of vulnerabilities.” While Browne presented the inquiry’s findings to Britain’s House of Commons, the full report will not be released because it is classified and contains tactical military information.
“The central lesson is that we must improve our ability to identify and assess the risks that this complex environment generates, and to train and posture our forces accordingly,” Browne told the lawmakers.
Admiral Jonathon Band, the First Sea Lord, said that the Royal Navy would learn from the capture. “The navy is keen to repair any dent as quickly as possible,” he said. “We will recover from this. I accept it was a bad day.”
The MOD inquiry was headed by retired Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Fulton, the governor of Gibraltar and a former Commandant of the Royal Marines. The inquiry recommends that specialist teams should be employed for boarding operations when military personnel search ships for contraband and weapons. It also recommends further training for those teams, which Secretary Browne said was already being carried out.
A second inquiry -- into the Defence Ministry’s handling of the media storm that followed the capture -- also recommended policy changes. Conducted by Tony Hall, the British Broadcasting Corporation’s former director of news and current affairs, the second report criticized the ministry for allowing the seized sailors and Marines to sell their stories to the media.
Normally, serving military personnel of most countries are not allowed to take payment from media organizations. The telling of their capture and imprisonment for payment -- especially one young man telling how unhappy he was when his iPod was taken away -- infuriated many Britons.
British Defence officials cited exceptional circumstances in allowing the sale of their stories. “I acknowledge this failing was my responsibility,” Secretary Browne said..
Hall’s inquiry recommended that media payments “to serving military or civilian personnel, for talking about their work, should simply not be allowed.”
The parallel inquiries were ordered by Browne after the release of the 15 British naval personnel on 4 April. The British personnel, from HMS Cornwall, were searching a merchant ship when and their two rigid-hull inflatable boats were intercepted by Iranian craft near the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway. A helicopter from the Cornwall, which had been in the area, returned to the warship to refuel, apparently alerting the Iranians to the vulnerability of the British craft and their crews.
The recent upsurge on mortar attacks against key Iraqi and US government facilities in Baghdad could be partly attributed to Iranian training of insurgents, a top coalition commander said late last week.
Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno told reporters at the Pentagon recent sweeps in Diyala province have netted around 50 “high value” terror suspects, most of whom are Iraqis who’ve joined al Qaeda – and most of those are IED builders and truck/car bomb factory facilitators.
Some, however, are Shiite insurgents who have received training in Iran on mortar techniques.
Odierno explained:
We have found a few people that were Shi'a extremists that were connected to -- that had some training in Iran -- those mostly being the mortar and rocket teams inside of Baghdad where they were trained in Iran and came in here to conduct attacks against not only coalition and Iraqi security forces, but government of Iraq targets inside of the Green Zone.
The attacks on the Green Zone bolster arguments that the Baghdad security plan is a failure, pushing America closer and closer to an early withdrawal. Odierno said Iran is conducting a surge of its own.
I think it's Iran's attempt to continue to destabilize Iraq and inflict as many casualties as they can, frankly, on U.S. forces who are operating in Iraq. ... What I have seen, though, is a steady increase in support to Shi'a extremists. I think they are trying to surge their support to Shi'a extremists. We've seen an increased flow of training to mortar teams and rocket teams, we've seen an increase in some flow of weapons and munitions into Iraq. We are working very hard to cut those lines every day from Iran.
Though Odierno did tamp down accusations that Iran was supplying Sunni groups in Iraq to accomplish the same goal. This, after a top US diplomat in Afghanistan claimed evidence of direct links to Iranian government military shipments to Taliban insurgents.
And he went on to explain the intricate system of cut-outs that help deflect any direct links to the Iranian government’s support and training of Shiite insurgents.
I think it's the Qods Force working with Iraqi surrogates that work inside of Iraq. It's probably in some cases a network that was developed prior to Saddam Hussein's downfall and they continue to operate. And so we watch that extremely closely. We think that's the majority of where it's happening.
I would just say, again, I think some of the reason -- with the operations in Baqubah and Diyala province, we think, we're hoping will affect some of this. We want to put pressure also on that network, of cutting those supplies of weapons that are coming in from Iran. And that's one of the other reasons why we're conducting this operation.
I understand that many DT readers strongly debate the Iranian connection. But Odierno seemed to indicate there would be more concrete information emerging from the latest Diyala sweeps that would be shared with the media to prove out assertions of Iranian complicity in the deaths of Iraqis and US forces.
And I think, you know, we've had some indications of that through some of the people we've detained, and I think in the future here we're going to lay some of that out for you. So I think -- we feel pretty confident about those links.
Okay folks, I know you miss this so much (trying a little irony here), but I feel like I have to turn your attention to the latest update of Iranian activity in Iraq.
Just three days after the “groundbreaking” talks between Iranian officials and U.S. diplomats on Iraqi security, “coalition forces” (which is code for TF 145) and Iraqi troops nabbed a few more bad guys tied to the Iranian support network for the insurgency…and al Qaeda.
I know there are a lot of readers here who strongly dispute the Iranian connection with Iraq and see it as impossible for a Shiite government to collaborate with the Sunni AQ movement. But at the very least, when more “smoking gun” evidence does present itself, the U.S. can’t be accused of ignoring the threat.
Iraqi and Coalition Forces detained two individuals in Sadr City during the first raid. They are believed to be members of the secret cell terrorist network known for facilitating the transport of weapons and explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, from Iran to Iraq, as well as bringing militants from Iraq to Iran for terrorist training.
Intelligence reports indicate one of the targeted individuals detained during the operation is suspected of providing facilitation and logistic support for trafficking weapons used in operations against Coalition Forces.
In a separate raid in Khanaqin, Coalition Forces captured a suspected liaison to al-Qaeda in Iraq senior leaders, who assists in the movement of information and documents from al-Qaeda in Iraq leadership in Baghdad to al-Qaeda senior leaders in Iran.
And at today’s briefing with coalition commander, Gen. Ray Odierno, there was no flexibility on the claim of Iranian support of the violence:
“We still see interference by Iran here in Iraq…they are shipping weapons, money and supplying training” for insurgents in Iran.
But he did seem conciliatory toward Syria. While not denying the continuing flow of insurgents through Syria, Odierno is open to dialogue. Does he see an opening that the rest of us (skeptics) might be missing?
”I think we need to reach out to them and to talk to them…”
This is something that’s been bothering me deeply ever since it started and I wanted to pull in one of our Milbloggers over at “The Fourth Rail” to update DT readers on the search for the missing soldiers captured this weekend in the “Triangle of Death” south of Baghdad.
His sourcing is pretty good and he seems to have some info the mainstream media lacks in the coverage of this tragic – and still unfolding – event.
The U.S has poured over 4,000 troops into the region, and are backed by an unspecified number of Iraqi Army, police and tribal allies throughout eastern Anbar and Karbala. An American military intelligence source informed us the Anbar Salvation Council has devoted assets in the region and are working tribal and insurgent contacts to develop leads in the case. "Every asset has been brought to bear in the hunt for the missing troops," according to a Multinational Forces Iraq press release, "including search dogs, trucks with speakers, unmanned aerial vehicles, law enforcement advisers, and both U.S. and Iraqi troops." Pamphlets have been dropped via air and phone tip lines have been established.
While it was initially thought the al Qaeda assault and kidnap element would move the captured soldiers from the Mahmudiyah region into the desert expanses in eastern Anbar province, where al Qaeda maintains a base of support, the al Qaeda team appears to have stayed in the farming regions just south of Baghdad. Either al Qaeda never planned to move the soldiers far from the capture point, or the cordon was established quickly enough to have trapped the terrorists in the box. The U.S. and Iraqi security forces maintain a network of forward outposts in Mahmudiyah, Yusifiyah and Sadr al Yusifiyah which would make safe transit through these regions difficult.
Yusifiyah has been an al Qaeda stronghold in the past. Task Force 145 fought pitched battles against al Qaeda in the winter and spring of 2006, and nearly captured Abu Musab al Zarqawi before he was killed in Baqubah in June.
Al Qaeda in Iraq mocked the U.S. efforts to recover their soldiers, and stated the efforts may in fact endanger their lives. While al Qaeda has claimed it has captured the soldiers, it has yet to release photographs, video or audio to support the claim.
Al Qaeda will want to broadcast footage of the captured soldiers both to demoralize the U.S. public and to reap the rewards of a major propaganda coup. The U.S. will likely have Internet access locked down in the region to prevent the tape from being transmitted digitally, but an individual courier should eventually be able to slip the cordon. If the kidnap cell did not bring its own recording equipment, it will either push to a safe house to make the recording, or a team will press to reach it. Either act can lead to exposing the location of the soldiers. But their chances of survival decreases as soon as the tape is made.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed that these boys are found before it comes to all that.
-- Christian
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
On Monday, DT posted a detailed after action report from the influential – and thoughtful – former Army general and SouthCom commander Barry McCaffrey on his mid-February visit to Afghanistan.
We now have the report he complied on his mid-March visit to Iraq. Media reports have focused on the comments portending disaster in Iraq – and justifiably so. But there’s also some hopeful signs, particularly as counterinsurgency guru Gen. David Petraeus moves forward with his strategy to give the Iraqi government breathing room to forge compromises.
McCaffrey also makes some interesting points on certain U.S. capabilities that are worth a second look…
Iraq is ripped by a low grade civil war which has worsened to catastrophic levels with as many as 3000 citizens murdered per month. The population is in despair. Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate.
There is no function of government that operates effectively across the nation--- not health care, not justice, not education, not transportation, not labor and commerce, not electricity, not oil production. There is no province in the country in which the government has dominance.
US domestic support for the war in Iraq has evaporated and will not return. The great majority of the country thinks the war was a mistake. The US Congress now has a central focus on constraining the Administration use of military power in Iraq ---and potentially Iran.
In summary, the US Armed Forces are in a position of strategic peril. A disaster in Iraq will in all likelihood result in a widened regional struggle which will endanger America’s strategic interests (oil) in the Mid-east for a generation. We will also produce another generation of soldiers who lack confidence in their American politicians, the media, and their own senior military leadership.
But…
Since the arrival of General David Petraeus in command of Multi-National Force Iraq--- the situation on the ground has clearly and measurably improved.
There is a real and growing ground swell of Sunni tribal opposition to the Al Qaeda-in-Iraq terror formations. (90% Iraqi.) This counter-Al Qaeda movement in Anbar Province was fostered by brilliant US Marine leadership. There is now unmistakable evidence that the western Sunni tribes are increasingly convinced that they blundered badly by sitting out the political process.
Reconciliation of the internal warring elements in Iraq will be how we eventually win the war in Iraq---if it happens. There is a very sophisticated and carefully integrated approach by the Iraqi government and Coalition actors to defuse the armed violence from internal enemies and bring people into the political process. There are encouraging signs that the peace and participation message does resonate with many of the more moderate Sunni and Shia warring factions.
The command and control technology, training, contractor support, and flexibility of Marine and Army combat formations are magnificent.
The US Tier One special operations capability is simply magic. They are deadly in getting their target—with normally zero collateral damage—and with minimal friendly losses or injuries. Some of these assault elements have done 200-300 takedown operations at platoon level. The comprehensive intelligence system is phenomenal. We need to re-think how we view these forces. They are a national strategic system akin to a B1 bomber.
In Sum…
In my judgment, we can still achieve our objective of: a stable Iraq, at peace with its neighbors, not producing weapons of mass destruction, and fully committed to a law-based government. The courage and strength of the US Armed Forces still gives us latitude and time to build the economic and political conditions that might defuse the ongoing civil war. Our central purpose is to allow the nation to re-establish governance based on some loose federal consensus among the three major ethnic-factional actors.
Since today marks the end of the fourth year since Operation Iraqi Freedom kicked off, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at the current state of battle.
Two thorough assessments of the current struggle come from DT friend and military historian Kim Kagan in her latest update on Gen. Petraeus’ counterinsurgency strategy, and from MilBlogger Bill Roggio’s Fourth-Rail site in his daily update (from March 19).
From Kagan:
…Muqtada al-Sadr's decision not to fight at the beginning of the Baghdad Security Plan, and his flight from Iraq to Iran, minimized Jaysh al-Mahdi resistance in January, February, and early March. U.S. and Iraqi forces have not, however, eliminated enemy forces and organized resistance, even in those areas. Rogue elements of the Jaysh al-Mahdi continue to operate in Baghdad…
…A big advantage of a "rolling surge" is that the population and the enemy sense the continuous pressure of ever-increasing forces. Iraqis have not seen such a prolonged and continuous planned increase of U.S. forces before--previous increases have been smaller and/or focused on specific events such as elections, after which it was expected that the additional troops would be withdrawn. A disadvantage of a "rolling surge" is that the enemy continues to function in some areas of Baghdad or simply leaves the city to await the expected departure of the additional troops. The net result of the continued, increasing presence of U.S. forces appears to be having an important psychological, as well as practical, effect on the enemy and the people of Iraq… …While, or perhaps because, the Jaysh al-Mahdi has avoided fighting with U.S. and Iraqi troops, and as executions have fallen, al Qaeda has increased the number and variety of spectacular attacks in Baghdad. The aim of such attacks seems consistent: namely, to spark sectarian violence. It seems likely that al Qaeda leaders wish to incite the Shiite population of Baghdad to take up arms and continue fighting, in order to discredit the government of Iraq and the United States. So far, the Shiite population has not reacted to these attacks as dramatically as it did on previous occasions. It is likely that another goal of these al Qaeda attacks is to break the will of the American people to continue the fight, possibly even to turn off the "surge" before it takes full effect…
From Roggio:
…Sectarian murders, the fuel for the potential Sunni - Shia civil war, have been dramatically reduced. Before the beginning of the operation, Scores of bodies were found executed daily, now the number is in the single digits. Massive car bomb attacks, which in the past have killed dozens and wounded hundreds, have been reduced. While the number of car bombings have increased, their effectiveness has decreased. Over the past week only one significant suicide car bomb attack occurred inside Baghdad…
…The U.S. has been in serious negotiations with elements of Sadr's Mahdi Army, which has been behind much of sectarian murders in Baghdad and beyond. With Sadr and his senior lieutenants either in Iran or Syria, or going to ground outside of Baghdad, Sadr has lost significant command and control of his militia. The negotiations seriously threaten Sadr's power base in Baghdad and the south…
And Marines in charge of security in the western al Anbar province are beginning to see some progress in their effort to drive a wedge between al Qaeda terrorist groups and local tribal officials.
Despite positive signs, however, the American public has clearly grown tired of the Iraq war, with more than 60 percent of Americans telling pollsters they disapprove of Bush’s handling of the conflict there. Four years and more than 3,000 deaths - and tens of thousands more wounded - is too high a price to pay for most Americans. And there are signs the Iraqi people are losing confidence as well.
Though President Bush is yet again pleading for patience – which anyone who knows anything about counterinsurgency strategy understands is the key to success – the moves by a Democrat-led Congress to end the war before the 2008 election shows time is running out.
Here I was preparing another post for DT when a message came through the net with this posting from my boy over at the Worldwide Standard , Mike Goldfarb, who gave us big props for the new editorial team here.
A longtime friend and colleague Pam Hess, who’s been one of Washington’s top defense reporters for as long as I’ve been in the business, just returned from six weeks in Iraq. I saw her the other day in the neighborhood and she looked a bit bedraggled from her trip – still fighting jetlag and the culture shock of returning to a much safer existence.
Let me first say that she is no apologist for the Bush administration or its justification for the invasion of Iraq. Watching her as I have at many a Pentagon briefing, she puts the screws to every defense official she’s questioning. But having been to Iraq myself, and having experienced many of the same things she’s seen and done, I can’t help but identify 100 percent with her impressions outlined below.
It’s real evil … I’m just not sure what other word you can use for people who are shooting kids in the face…
It’s a long clip, but it’s worth every second to watch.
Pam is one of those reporters that doesn't take day trips to the field from a secure compound in Baghdad. She lives the entire time embedded with U.S. troops. It takes that kind of day-to-day existence and contact with the danger and hope of the battlefield to really understand what's going on there. And that clip from C-Span shows it.
As the president said in this year's State of the Union address, it may not be the war we started, but it’s the war we’re in now.
Yesterday’s lead news story from Iraq was on the accidental deaths of eighteen children in Ramadi from a bomb blast at a soccer field, which had supposedly been caused by the U.S. military. There was only one problem with the story: it was entirely wrong.
Although thirty-one people were injured in an American detonation of a truck bomb, and subsequently given medical care by U.S. doctors and nurses, nobody was killed in the blast. The destruction -- which had happened near, not on, the soccer field -- had caused a larger explosion than ordnance experts had anticipated, scattering debris in a massive blast wave, according to eyewitness reports from American military personnel.
In a press release, Marine spokesman Capt Paul Duncan demurred, calling the initial reports “erroneous.” In Baghdad, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Mark Fox went further. “There was no blast [at the soccer field] and there were no eighteen children killed,” said Fox at a news briefing. The inaccuracy of the initial reports was covered in detail as a feature story in the Los Angeles Times.
Reporting deliberate falsehood as news is not a rare event in Iraq. The insurgent website albasrah.com features a “Daily Resistance Report” that chronicles spectacular actions against American military forces, including fabrications of massive casualties inflicted on Americans. And although some frauds are perpetuated because they begin as rumors or conspiracy theories, others suggest careful planning on the part of a media-savvy adversary.
When ON Point’s Andrew Lubin was in Iraq, he obtained a letter allegedly written and signed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The letter -- dated January 14, 2007, and marked with the seal of the Republic of Iraq -- was a formal request asking Iranian officials to shelter renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and key leaders in the Mahdi Army. According to the letter, Maliki asked that Sadr’s men remain hidden “to keep them safe from being arrested or getting killed by American troops.” The language implied that Prime Minister Maliki asked for the men to be harbored outside of Baghdad in response to the American and Iraqi troop surge.
The Prime Minister’s brazen flaunting of American influence in Iraq in print immediately raised suspicions. When Lubin questioned the Iraqi government and U.S. military sources in Baghdad, they said the letter was a forgery. In a press release, the Iraqi government called the letter, “a deliberate distortion,” and used signature samples as evidence of fraud. U.S. military officials did not comment publicly, calling the event “a domestic matter for the Iraqi government.” Privately, a public affairs officer told Lubin that the letter may have originated from a Sunni insurgent group.
After investigating, ON Point came to the same conclusion. An Internet search found that the letter was initially uploaded at an unknown location to the Islamist website m5zn.com on February 2, and almost immediately linked to tajdeed.net, a radical Sunni web organization from the United Kingdom. According to a web hosting database, m5zn.com is registered to a man living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The use of frauds such as the deaths of innocents, casualty statistics and the letter to al-Sadr seem to be a deliberate effort constructed to play on the compassion and curiosity of western media. In cities like Ramadi, where several prominent sheikhs have publicly declared allegiance with American forces, insurgents use these reports to discredit the veracity of American claims and paint the occupying forces in a harsh, bitter light.
Insurgents also use false stories to take western reporters down intellectual rabbit trails. This causes media members of all political stripes to waste time and print space proving or disproving facts that do not exist instead of exposing the more inconvenient truths of "the noble resistance." Two days before the controlled detonation in Ramadi, a suicide car bomb killed fifteen Iraqis and injured fifteen more. Americans are pictured above, after providing medical aid to a wounded Iraqi child.
"They are cowards," said Mohammad Sarhan Rhiebi, referring to the insurgency. Rhiebi, a Ramadi resident, was talking to an American Marine whose unit provided aid after the attack. "They are trying to intimidate us by killing our women and children. But we will not give in."
Written by David J. Danelo and Andrew Lubin who are, respectively, editor and contributing editor for ON Point. Staff researcher Bobby Nakanelua also contributed to this report.
This was just forward to us from our good friend Dave Danelo over at On Point. His man Andrew Lubin is embedded in Iraq.
A chance encounter last weekend at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq became an opportunity to talk more about the future of Ramadi. ON Point's Andrew Lubin bumped into Ramadi's Mayor Latif Obaid Ayadeh at the Al-Asad airstrip. Lubin was on his way to Baghdad, and Mayor Latif, who had been meeting with American officials to discuss reconstruction and civic improvements, was returning to Ramadi. Brief excerpts of the impromptu interview and free-wheeling discussion are below:
ON Point: How long have you been the mayor?
Latif: Less than one month. I am the first mayor in a long time. There is a lot to do.
ON Point: What are you doing to make Ramadi a better place to live?
Latif: I'm cooperating with the Marines, and trying to bring jobs, reconstruction, and civil order to my town.
ON Point: What kind of jobs?
Latif: Real jobs. Right now the Marines (Civil Affairs Group & Civil-Military Operations Center) are providing demolition and some repair jobs. These are good for now, but we need stable and permanent jobs quickly.
ON Point: Do you need anything else from the Marines?
Latif: No. They are training the IA's [soldiers], my IP's [policemen], and providing us with the weapons, training, and trucks we need. They are doing a wonderful job.
ON Point: Do you get the necessary support from Baghdad?
Latif: No. They say that they are too busy to help. In the new budget these is supposed to be money for Anbar Province and Ramadi, but we get much less than we are promised.
ON Point: Why are they doing this to you?
Latif: I have my suspicions, but they deny it. But the future of Baghdad is in Anbar and Ramadi, if they would only see it.
ON Point: Is the terrorist activity still crippling your town?
Latif: No, the Marines have done a wonderful job. It is not yet peaceful, but it is much better than it was a year, or even 6 months ago.
Somehow, in the middle of my manic day with Team Mayhem, I managed to sneak in a ride on a Blackhawk helicopter. The 717th’s commanding officer, Capt. Greg Hirschey, had to deliver a shipment of robots to one of his bomb squads in the town of Mahmudiya, about twenty-five miles to the south. I wanted to see Iraq from the sky. Hirschey needed an extra set of hands. So I helped out with the delivery.
Johnnie Mason, who was waiting in Mahmudiya when we lug the robots off of the copter, was particularly glad to see us – and the machines – when we land. Four days earlier, he had come within inches of losing his life because he didn't have a robot handy.
The first bot, nicknamed “Layla,” was “flambéed” after it dropped some thermite grenades in a suspected car bomb, and couldn’t get its spindly arms out of the window. The second lost its video feed, before Mason could send it to look a row of human corpses, rotting by a canal in the 118 degree heat. So Mason had to see for himself to whether there really were wires and artillery shells stuffed underneath one of the bodies.
"Figures," Mason muttered. "I've had a bad feeling all day long that today was really gonna suck." It took him an hour to just to find the access road where the corpses were. Ordinarily, the bomb squads use GPS trackers, to plot out their routes – and to make sure they're not following the same path every time. But this road wasn't on any of the maps.
Mason -- a lanky, 31 year-old Texan with big brown eyes and a goofy smile -- was strapped into an 80-pound, sumo-esque Kevlar "bomb suit." He grabbed a long metal pole with a hook on one end. And then he began to march through the tall grass to the right of the bodies, looking for wires. Mason made a wide sweep – maybe 200 meters – to avoid potential landmines on the way. He found the detonation cord when he reached the far side of the bodies. It was coming from underneath the corpses, attached to a 122 mm shell. Mason fought back an urge to puke. “The dead bodies, they smelled like catfish bait.”
But there was no time to heave. Mason figured he only had a moment or two to act before a bomber detonated his device. So he ducked behind a three-foot berm, reached out with his pole, and pulled.
Mason was less than 20 feet away when the shells went off. But he still had time to crouch into a fetal position before the shock wave hit him. And to be terrified. "It was too fast for me to think, 'Oh God, I'm gonna die,'" Mason says. "It was just instant fear."
Dirt flew up. Shard of bomb zipped through the air. The shockwave knocked Mason over. But he was intact, somehow. “I stood up, and all this dust and dirt and rocks fall off of me. I looked like the Hulk, in that big green suit,” he smiled.
Mason’s partner, Pfc. Brian James, ran over. “Are you alright?” he yelled. “Where you at?”
“I’m in Iraq, Brooke!” Mason shouted back. That was his wife’s name.
Mason sat down for fifteen minutes, drank some water. And then he went right back to the bodies. Before the handmade bomb had gone off, he noticed a second shell, 20 meters away. So Mason took a couple pounds of C4 plastic explosive, and set the thing off. “I still had a job to do,” he told me, as he picked up the cordless phone than nearly killed him. He keeps it as a souvenir.
Inside the "Baghdad Bomb Squad"
After months of preparation, and three weeks in a warzone, my entire trip to Iraq has been boiled down to 29 hours. But that day-and-a-smidge shift with “Team Mayhem,” a U.S. Army bomb squad, winds up being pretty damn action-packed.
Booby traps, smoking mortars, rooftop gunfire, suspected truck bombs, roadside explosives, and an idiosyncratic little robot named “Rainman” all figure prominently in the story, which appears in this month’s Wired magazine. Mostly, though, the article is about the battle of wits that’s being fought between high-tech U.S. military squads and low-tech insurgent bombers. Improvised explosives have become the deadliest threat to soldiers and civilians alike in Iraq. So the winner of this fight largely determines the fate of the counterinsurgency.
But getting a clear picture of this tangle has been tough; military bomb squads, or "explosive ordnance disposal" units, are ordinarily shrouded in secrecy, operating in shadows. This is one of the first times they’ve allowed a reporter in for an extended stay.
So click here for a look inside “The Baghdad Bomb Squad.” Once you’re done, you can take a look at 140 pictures I shot during my time in Iraq. And here are some reports on American troops’ morale, and my online diaries from Iraq. Enjoy…
THERE'S MORE: Capt. Greg Hirschey, the commanding officer of the 717th Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Company (which inlcludes Team Mayhem), just dropped me a line. Two of his sergeants, he said, "were hit with an IED yesterday with injuries to their security element. I just walked into the shop from an incident and received word that our Air Force augmentation team was hit with an IED just minutes ago... It is hectic right now once again. Seems like it never stops. Here is a photo of my shot from this morn."
Captain America in the Forever War
American troops in Iraq are near-suicidal. Or maybe they couldn’t be happier. It all depends on the flavor of blog you read, I guess. But what I found in my time in Iraq didn’t cling to any neat political storyline.
Over three weeks in and around Baghdad this July, I spoke to dozens and dozens of soldiers about their views on the conflict. For the most part, morale among these infantrymen and engineers and bomb-disposers was high. Shockingly high, given the fact that they didn’t buy the Bush administration’s rationales for the war.
“Democracy? Here? Are you fucking kidding me?” one sergeant laughed, as we drove near the Abu Ghraib prison. This was from a guy from helped safeguard the January round of elections. He figures the place will collapse into civil war as soon as U.S. troops leave.
But he’s glad he’s in Iraq, regardless. Mostly, because of the insurgents.
The guerillas in Iraq have been brutal, killing way more innocent bystanders than American occupiers or Iraqi collaborators. While I was in Baghdad, a group of soldiers in a nearby neighborhood were handing out candy to bunch of kids. Until a suicide bomber stepped in, and killed 27.
“It boggles my mind, how someone can go into a crowd of kids, and kill them all. I’ll never understand it. But that’s why I’m here,” said Staff Sgt. Mark Palmer, with the 717th Ordnance Disposal Company, an Army bomb squad. “Yeah, it’s still fun to blow stuff up. But it’s not the core thing. Figuring out how this shit [the bomb] works. Stopping it from hurting people. That’s the main thing.”
U.S. troops are highly trained. So they’ll do what they’re ordered. But in order to feel good about their mission, they need a cause. They need a bad guy, a villain, so they can play Captain America. The insurgents have been only too happy to step collectively into the role of Dr. Doom.
The result is a cycle of attack and reprisal that has nothing to do with WMD or drafting constitutions – but can easily drag on for years. Most of the soldiers I spoke with didn’t expect the deadly feedback loop to stop any time this decade. “I’m staying [in the Army] until I retire, which is another ten years,” one non-commissioned officer told me. “So I figure I’ll be back here, what, another five or six times?”
Most of these GIs were ready to whoop ass, when they first get to Iraq. They’re part of America’s professional, increasingly-permanent military class. Which means they’ve been training for years to go to war – with precious few full-out battles to fight. “For a solider, this is like the Super Bowl,” Captain Greg Hirschey, the 717th’s commanding officer, said.
But the Super Bowl is only one day long. To keep going for years and years, they need a mission, a reason to stay and fight. Washington isn’t providing. The insurgents are.
And make no mistake, soldiers are staying. I’d say three in four of the GIs I spoke with were planning to reenlist. The new, fat bonuses are one reason, of course. But another is the sense that there are real-life psychopaths out there that need to be stopped. It may sound corny. It may sound dumb. But that’s what I saw.
THERE’S MORE: Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t throw in a few caveats here. These soldiers we all stationed at Camp Victory, the poshest military base I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of the safer places would could be in a warzone. Which means better morale. Could soldiers and marines feel differently out in the sticks, where it’s MREs three times a day and mortars all night? You bet. Also, I was in Iraq in July. Since then, 233 American troops have died over there. That could have been a major morale-changer, too.
AND MORE: Chris is embedded with the 2-2 Batallion of the II Marine Expeditionary Force in the Anbar province. Which means you go read his blog, now.
AND MORE: Joe Katzman's response is really worth a read.
Iraqi Shabbat
A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to attend Friday night services with a group of Jewish G.I.s serving in Baghdad. Here are the first few lines from my report for the Forward on what I found...
They are a minyan, just barely. Half of them come to pray with guns.
The rabbi, Mitchell Schranz, would rather his congregants leave their Berettas and their M-4 rifles at home than bring them to this nondescript alcove, not far from a former palace of Saddam Hussein. But this is Camp Victory, the American military's main headquarters in Iraq — and Jewish soldiers don't always have the option of welcoming Shabbat unarmed.
"We're in a wartime, combat situation," U.S. Navy Commander Schranz said in a recent interview. "You've got to be flexible."
Killing Time
For the first time since I landed in Iraq, I'm panicking. Not that a bomb has gone off. Or that an RPG has hit nearby. It's my flight out of here that's got my heart ready to jump out of my ribcage.
I'm sitting in a hangar-sized waiting room in the middle of the Baghdad airport's military wing. Defense Department contractors, most of them overweight by 75 pounds or more, waddle about the canvas-walled terminal, dripping sweat. Dozens of soldiers sit in rows of movie theater-style seats, reading paperbacks and watching "The Elephant Man" on a big-screen TV. Others catch naps on the floor, leaving their uniforms and their rucksacks covered with a talcum-like white dust. Many of them have been waiting around here for more than a day, killing time until their planes are ready to take off.
I may be joining them in the powder. Sandstorms regularly ground flights here. And after a perfectly clear morning, the air is beginning to grow hazy with dust. The people at the terminal are talking about "maintenance issues" which could ground my flight to Kuwait – or maybe re-route it to Mosul, 300 miles in the opposite direction. And that has me pacing around the terminal with worry.
Why I'm acting like this, I have no clue. In the last two weeks, bullets have zinged over my head. A mortar began smoking at my feet. And the patrol I was with was ambushed on at least two occasions. None of that really bothered me. But now, I might be missing a goddamn plane ride, and I'm freaking the fuck out. What the hell?
Maybe my reaction isn't so mysterious. After all, when it comes to travel, I'm the latest in a long line of nervous nellies. My grandfather, he'd show up to an airport three hours before takeoff. My dad leaves an hour to get to the train station, even if it's only twenty minutes away. I like to think of myself as not quite as twitchy as them. But check me out now, drumming my fingers against my thigh. Am I really all that different? On the other hand, I've never seen any member of my family in combat. There's no neurotic blueprint to follow.
Or maybe it's because I've done so much waiting around for this story already: waiting for my body armor and my shockproof laptop to show up; waiting to leave the country; waiting to get into Iraq from Kuwait, and into my unit once I was there; waiting for the insurgents to do something, so I could write it down; waiting for them to stop. And I know I've got more waiting ahead. It's going to take three days, at least, to get back to New York. God knows, I don't want it to take any longer.
Or maybe I'm so anxious because I finally can be. Because the real danger has past, and now I'm free to exhale. When I was a musician, I'd almost always come down with a nasty cold right when a tour was done – as if my antibodies were finally giving up, after a month of holding germs at bay. As if my body finally knew that I could afford to spend a day in bed.
Which gets me thinking about the soldiers I've just left behind. They've got five months, at least, until they have the luxury of worrying about a missed plane. And even when they do come back home, it won't be much of a reprieve. Most of them figure they'll be back in Iraq in another year. And while they're stateside, they'll be extremely busy. Before they shipped out to Iraq, these soldiers spent 11 of the prior 15 months on domestic missions; before that, they were on duty in the Balkans.
These guys are a small sliver of the half-million or so men and women who are rapidly becoming this country's permanent warrior class -- centurions for whom there's no break in the fighting, no rest from the alerts, no chance to get nervous before a flight. All of the burdens of war fall on these men and their families. The rest of us -- 95 percent plus of the country, as Uwe Reinhardt notes in today's Washington Post – get off basically scot-free. We don't even pay extra taxes to support them.
Not too long ago, we used to have "citizen-soldiers" in this country. That's feels almost antiquated these days. Today, our citizens and our soldiers have become increasingly separated into distinct camps. The former gets all of the benefits of the latter's sacrifice. And the segregation is only getting worse, as new recruits become harder to find, and our legionnaires get tax-free lump-sums worth a year's salary or more by re-enlisting while deployed.
When I get back to the States, I'll pick up with my reporting on the gadgets and mechanics of the military. But I'm also going to try a lot harder to be a voice for this marginalized segment of society that is being asked to do so much in our name.
I'll start as soon as I can. But right now, I have to go. My flight is getting ready to board.
THERE'S MORE: USA Today has a must-read story today on the "bidding war" between the government and private industry over our warrior class.
Detonation
The truck exploded only a couple of hours ago. But, already, the wreckage looks ancient, like a ship dredged to the surface after a century on the ocean floor. Everything inside the cab is shredded. The dashboard has been thrown loose, and singed black. The seats are atomized. The odometer sits on the ground, not far from where the driver’s door used to be.
The orange Mercedes was part of a long line of cement trucks, waiting to deliver their goods to Camp Victory when the base opened for commercial traffic at eight. Then, a pair of the trucks exploded -- a botched attempt, apparently, to detonate suicide bombs inside of the base. Two men are dead. One of the attackers has been captured.
Military investigators are still trying to piece together exactly what happened. The bombs might have been thrown into the trucks by a car passing by; the jury-rigged weapons might have already been in hand.
I try to pay attention to the conflicting theories, to the line of men waiting to be questioned. But I keep staring at the scraps of freshly-ended lives that are quickly turning into artifacts under the blazing Mesopotamian sun. The driver must have been wearing the black sandals which now lie in front of the truck. Maybe he had some pita with his breakfast; a crust now sits near the shoes. Before he died, he might have read from the crinkled, torn Koran resting a few feet away. Or he could have listened to a cassette; strands of audio tape are strewn all over the wreckage.
Back on the base, I wonder how much of this to put in public, to share with my family and my fiancée. I want to record what I see; I don’t want to worry the people I love.
It’s a dilemma soldiers here cope with every day. They crave their families’ support; they’re crippled by their concern. Most of the troops I’ve spoken to choose the keep their loved ones in the dark. “I tell ‘em all that CNN is full of shit and that nothing’s going on here,” one national guardsman says. “We don’t get shot at. We haven’t seen anyone who’s unfriendly. They think that I have a desk job, that I never go outside the wire” – Camp Victory’s concrete walls.
But letting CNN write your letters home can only fuel the worry. “Every time a bomb goes off in Baghdad, I get e-mails asking, ‘Are you alright? Are you alright?’” an officer here sighs.
Because the networks aren’t very good at conveying the subtle shades of danger in a place like this. Either they lead, big, with a new act of carnage – or they bury the news from here at the end of the broadcast. That leaves the impression that all of Iraq is in flames, all of the time. Which is just plain wrong.
Here around Camp Victory, for example, the last week has been a relatively quiet one. Iraqi army and police patrols have grown noticeably since I’ve been here. Smiles outnumber hard stares 100 to 1. And when there has been violence, it has been relatively small-scale – like the single RPG shot fired in my general direction the other night.
So I’m going to keep writing what I see, for the few days I have left here. Painting events in muted colors, instead of TV’s garish brights. And capturing my experience in Iraq, before it becomes twisted fragments on history’s road.
Bump in the Night
Years ago, I met Clive Barker, the horror film director, in a New York hotel room. He was in town to promote a video game he had helped edit. One of the first changes he made, Barker told me, was to change the monster at the end of the adventure. It was enormous, ugly – and not in the least bit frightening. Make something smaller, something hidden, he suggested. The scariest things are the ones we can’t see.
It’s a conversation I’ve been thinking about, ever since last night’s patrol. The unit I’m embedded with was called out – for the umpteenth time – to “Route Michigan,” a big, trash-packed road near the Baghdad Airport. The route’s commercial stretch, busy even in a sandstorm, was nearly empty. It was maybe eight-thirty, twilight time here in Iraq. A ribbon of bruised orange rung the sky. The moon had just risen; it was a slickly red, like blood gone bad. “This place is a whole lot creepier in the dark,” I whispered to a Lieutenant, as he peered through a night-vision scope.
Man-sized shadows crept in the background, past the scalloped balconies in the shops’ second stories. A three-legged dog scampered in front of the Humvees. I tried to stare into the dark, to see any potential attackers. If any were out there, I couldn’t see them. For one of the few times on this war zone trip, my heart started thumping, hard, against my chest.
“Hey!” the Lieutenant shouted, shining a green laser pointer at a group of men, walking into the road from an alleyway 50-75 yards away. They scattered.
Five minutes ticked by. Nothing happened. Then, without warning, a bright white flashed where the man had been. There was a cacophonous, almost electric, crack – the sound of a rocket-propelled grenade exploding. “Get cover!” the Lieutenant yelled.
Now, this is the point when I should have been the most scared – when my fears suddenly, deafeningly came true. But that’s not what happened at all. As I crouched behind a Humvee, all of the fright drained out of me. I could see what I was supposed to scare me. And it didn't any more.
Now, this is all easy to say, because the fighting ended after that single round. Who knows what would have happened in a real firefight. But yesterday, there were no more RPGs, or even a single shot fired on either side. Our unit retreated a bit; soldiers swept the area; the threat passed.
When we got back to the base, around 1:30 pm, we watched the last few minutes of “Starship Troopers.” And then I went to bed, sleeping with a baby's calm.
G.I. T.V.
I’m sitting in a room with a half-dozen soldiers. And we’re watching animated carrier pigeons on TV.
“I’ve got this amazing navigation system,” one of the birds says to the other. “I just can’t find Sgt. Kowalski.”
“No change of address form, hunh?” the second pigeon answers. Off-camera, an announcer reminds for G.I.s to notify the post office when they change bases. The soldiers in the room groan. “It’s shit like this that makes me embarrassed to be in the Army,” a sergeant to my left spits, as the television returns to its regular Fox News broadcast.
All of the major networks donate programming to the Defense Department, which re-broadcasts it to military outposts around the globe, commercial-free. But that doesn’t mean the shows run uninterrupted. Instead of slickly-produced come-ons for cars or energy drinks or Tom Cruise’s latest opus, troops are bombarded with amateurish, half-baked ads that sit in the space somewhere between public relations and public nagging. Cross-breed your local Chevy dealership’s TV spot with the company newsletter, and you have the commercials of the Armed Forces Network.
“Baby safe instruction manuals.” Websites that let you apply for jobs at the PX. The Air Force’s traveling, Las Vegas-style review. “The best softballers in Europe.” No item is too picayune or too inconsequential to be hyped on AFN. And at no point do the commercial-makers ever assume that their uniformed audience has any more than a few dozen points of IQ. “Diversification is a big word,” a talking chicken tells us.
But that doesn’t mean that AFN wants their Neanderthals to leave the armed services. Hell, no. Every branch of the military advertises on the network to get troops to re-enlist, to lure them from one service to the other, or to convince their children – presumably watching from military-provided houses – to sign on up.
It’s a tension that I’ve heard ever since I got to Baghdad. Officers keep telling me that the counterinsurgency here is a “thinking man’s war” that requires even the most junior personnel to make quick, smart decisions. And, they assure me, that America’s troops are well prepared for that mission. But, minutes later, those same officers will also tell me that “we’re not too smart” or that “I’m not the brightest guy,” or that “there’s a reason most of our soldiers didn’t go to college.”
So which is it? Has the Pentagon sent a bunch of warrior-geniuses to Iraq -- or a pack of grunts, dumb as rocks? Maybe it’s a self-selecting process, covering defense technology. But most of the troops I’ve met over the past four years have been pretty damn bright – even the ones (often, especially the ones) that never made it past the 11th grade.
AFN, on the other hand, seems to have come to entirely different conclusion. One with simple words, short sentences, and cartoons. Lots and lots of cartoons. “Don’t get wrapped up with these high interest credit cards,” an announcer says, while the television shows us a crudely-drawn mummy. “Quitting cold turkey can be tough,” coos another, as an animated man jumps off of a cliff, and splats on the ground. “Nicotine replacement products can soften your landing.”
Later, an airman shows off the skills he learned in survival school – by wearing green camouflage makeup in a snowstorm. A man dressed up like a human heart does jumping jacks and runs up stairs, to prove a point about exercise. And a doe-eyed young soldier in a gym keeps rocking his head back and forth, left-to-right, left-to-right. A buddy asks what he’s doing. “Training,” he replies. For an Army tennis championship, to be held in Germany soon. “I’m not training to compete. I’m training to watch.”
Black Hawk Up
This has been a wish-fulfillment year for me – riding on cop patrols, shooting white water rapids, proposing to my girl. Today, I checked another item off of the lifelong to-do list, getting in a helicopter for the first time. Of course, flying over Baghdad was never part of the fantasy.
Black Hawk helicopters run a regular route between the main American military bases around the greater Baghdad area. On a clear day, a pair of the copters comes here, to Camp Liberty, about every hour-and-a-half. But the days haven’t all been so clear, lately. So it took a full work week for the captain of the unit that I’m with to secure us spots on the copter down to Ad Mahmudiya, twenty minutes to the southeast.
I had heard helicopters flying off in the distance before. And I knew – from the movies, I guess – that, up close, they were beyond loud. I stuff foam plugs in my ears well before I can see the Black Hawks coming. All of the passengers do.
Maybe the ear protection makes a difference. But, as the copters descend tail first onto Liberty’s makeshift helipad, I can’t tell. A low-pitched, cyclical growl turns into a full-throated roar when Black Hawks touch the ground. It feels like I’m back in New York -- on the subway platform, with a half-dozen express trains rocketing by.
We crouch low and scurry towards the aircraft, the decibels mounting with every skittish step. Everything else is now inaudible, except for the whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp of air being sliced by helicopter blades.
We step up into the Black Hawk. One of the gunners shows me how to stick the lap belt and two shoulder harnesses into a single, circular lock. And then we take off, the copter shuddering as we gain elevation.
Baghdad is just as ugly from the sky as it is from the ground, with block after endless block of colorless apartment buildings and dilapidated factories. The roofs are covered with satellite dishes and trash.
But as the helicopters bank southward, beyond the urban sprawl, a dusty beauty emerges. From a few hundred yards up, we see neatly-groomed farms and patches of palm trees. This could be central California, easily.
The Black Hawk dips and sways. At one moment, we’re flying parallel to the ground. And then, the copter jerks to one side, rolling into a 45 degree angle. I grin. To me, this is fun.
Apparently, I shouldn’t have been smiling, the captain tells me after we land. Just about every time the Black Hawks fly, he says, insurgents take potshots at the copters with AK-47s. The chances of a serious hit are about one in a zillion. Nailing a Black Hawk moving at 150 miles per hour is tough, and a few bullets won’t bring one down.
But, just to be on the safe side, the pilots do pull a few of those crazy rolls. The gunners watch for trouble as they swing their 7.62 milimeter machine guns. And they fire off flares, the captain adds, to attract any heat-seeking missiles that might be headed skyward. I gulp.
Before making the return trip, we have a few hours to kill at the small American outpost at Ad Mahmudiya -- or “FOB Shithole,” as the soldiers here call it, using the acronym for “Forwarding Operating Base.” Life for the few hundred troops couldn’t be much different than the relative luxury and safety of the complex where I’m staying. Soldiers are packed into converted shipping containers and concrete bunkers. Piles of scrap metal and shot-up cars litter the base. The PX and the operations center recently burned to the ground. Helmets and body armor are required wearing at all times.
I sit behind one of the Black Hawk’s two gunners for the ride back. And this time, the noise is even worse, with a high-pitched whirr – from the rotor, I figure – joining the chomp of the blades and the roar of the wind passing over the the weapon. The gusts are so strong, it’s a struggle just to lift my arms to take a picture.
The captain wasn’t kidding. The copter does fire off rainbow-colored, almost iridescent, countermeasures a minute or two after we get into the air. But there aren’t any missiles to distract. The rolls are less intense. The dips are less severe. And we’re back at base just a short while later – safe, sound, and wish granted.
Dust in the Wind
I’ve been indoors for a few hours now. My eyes are still burning. And my throat is still scratched, red-raw. I’m picking and blowing chunks out of my nostrils that are brown and sticky, like the resin of hashish. But at least I’m starting to be able to breathe halfway-normal again.
For the last day-and-a-half, the air over Baghdad has grown more and more clogged with sand. Yesterday, it pushed my helicopter flight down to Ad Mahmudiya back in three hour blocks, until the trip was cancelled altogether. This morning, there wasn’t even a discussion about going airborne. Visibility has shrunk to 30 feet, maybe. The highway signs to Abu Ghraib are unreadable, until you’re right underneath. The blimps watching over the base have become invisible – if they’re even flying at all. The sun has vanished. And the wind has grown razor tips.
The guards here – contractors from Nepal, I’m guessing – wear surgical masks at their posts. Outside the gates, the locals wrap scarves around their heads, and go right on selling their tires and their watermelons and their marbled meat from ramshackle wooden stands.
Iraqi insurgents are almost certain at work, too. It’s a “perfect time for a bomb planting,” the captain of the unit I’m embedded with grumbles. “Perfect fucking cover.”
On “Route Michigan,” the American military’s name for a trash-heavy road near the Baghdad Airport, plastic chairs sway in the sandstorm. Humvees gather. Soldiers peer into the dust, looking for snipers. But if there are any shooters out there, they can’t be seen through the desert fog.
There is a small silver lining to the dust clouds, though. The temperature is a relatively temperate 113 degrees. Not bad, considering the previous afternoon peaked at 128. Yesterday, I had sweated through my t-shirt and camouflage in a few minutes, wetting the inside of my body armor. It took a good hour to achieve the same effect today. Thank heaven for small favors.
THERE’S MORE: So much for vegetarian, wi-fi paradise. Hours after I posted my note the other day about the comforts of “Camp Victory,” (be sure to read the comments) my situation turned upside-down. My unit is stationed on the far side of the sprawling enclave, near “Camp Liberty.” It is miles from Victory’s palace headquarters. And some of the joys of top brass life have yet to reach to the grunts stationed here – wireless Internet access, for one.
I do have a bed in a trailer now, which is mighty nice. But I lost the memo granting me access to the local mess hall. It’s not that big of a deal. My unit – on the secretive side, and continually on the go, even during meal times – gets food brought back to its station house. But it’s taken a few days for the supply sergeant, a soft-spoken Haitian, to get his head wrapped around the idea of a herbivore. “Vegetables aren’t food,” another sergeant here joked. “They’re what food eats.”
Things are getting themselves sorted out, however. The Captain pulled rank – loud and hard – on a poor sergeant who offered up a lame excuse for why I didn’t have a new chow pass. Within a few minutes, his boss was literally running to hand us one. And tonight, when I got back from Route Michigan, there was a plate of boiled broccoli and fried rice waiting for me. Freedom is on the march.
AND MORE: Chris has an incredible account of the day from the Green Zone.
Camp Normal
Who knew being a vegetarian in a war zone could be this easy? Not that I’m exactly in in the thick of battle, yet. Camp Victory, adjacent to the Baghdad Airport, is a sprawling military command center of 15,000 troops. And, despite the occasional helicopter grunting overhead, the conflict feels very far away. Yesterday, I was worried about facing bullets and bombs. Today, I’m wondering whether to have a slushie or a cookie for desert.
If you discount the dust and the suffocating heat, Victory could be any one of a hundred American military bases scattered around the world. Except this one is fancier. And there are more of the comforts of home.
The Camp’s chiefs are installed in smart cubicles on the top floors of Saddam’s sumptuous summer palace. Some of the soldiers ride around in bicycles, wearing Army-issue shorts and tees. Kevlar and helmets are not required.
Reporters are set up in air-conditioned tents, and can peck away at their laptops through the local wi-fi "Freedom Network." The mess hall is stocked with tangy kimchi and cook-to-order stir-fry, bean sprouts included. The PX is full of DVDs and X-Box games and Operation Iraw Freedom tchokes. The Starbucks knock-off is open 24/7, right next to the Pizza Hut and the Subway. The pool, for now, is closed.
The Army unit I’m supposed to join up with was expecting me tomorrow, not today. The action should come quick after that. So I took advantage of the pause. I napped in my deliciously-cool tent. I played war tourist as I gawked at the palace-turned-HQ. And I shared cigars with a battlefield surgeon from the Green Zone, watching Blackhawks silhouetted by the crescent moon. Not a bad first day at war.
THERE’S MORE: Yes, I did manage to get my bags back, in time to hitch a ride to Baghdad.
The Kiln of Kuwait
The first thing you notice about Kuwait – most of the time, the only thing you notice – is the heat. This is a kiln of a country. And it blasts a relentless, sand-dry wind that evaporates and withers everything inside. You squeeze your eyelids into slits, just to keep the balls underneath from losing their moisture, and turning into cracked marbles. Plans for walks or jogs quickly devolve into sluggish strolls. And with every breath, your throat feels more and more like a scroll of brittle parchment, unfolding.
I arrived in the country earlier today, on a nearly day-long flight from New York. And when I walked out of Kuwait International Airport, the billboard thermometer above the taxi stand read 39 degrees Celsius, or 102 Fahrenheit. This was at six o’clock in the morning.
After a mix-up with my bags – they’re still somewhere over Europe, apparently – a taxi took me to my hotel. It's an isolated, heavily-guarded Hilton resort, hugging the coast of the Persian Gulf. Oil tankers sit in the distance. Hundreds of beach-chairs and thatched umbrellas and neo-Arab tents line the beaches, which are kept immaculate by Indians and Thais in purple jumpsuits and bright blue overalls. Kayaks are stacked neatly against stucco “chalets.” But the fuss is mostly make-work. There are no footprints on the shore. And nobody’s using the boats. The heat forces almost everyone indoors. Outdoors entertainments for hundreds, maybe thousands, go untouched. It’s a Bellagio filled with a bed-and-breakfast-sized clientele. A ghost town.
The only exception is the pool, where about fifteen guests have gathered. Bikini-clad, modern women swim in make-up and designer do-rags. The religious ladies get wet, too -- in chadors and neon pink baseball hats, playing in the shallow end with their children. Burning Spear pumps from the bar’s sound system.
By now, it’s nearly six in the evening. The sun is sinking beneath the hotel’s mirrored walls. But whoever’s stoking Kuwait’s hundred-foot furnace hasn’t let up at all. If anything, it’s feels even hotter than it was at the airport this morning. To me, that's an awful omen. Because, very soon, I’m going to have to face this heat wrapped in Kevlar and ceramic plates, with bullets ringing in my ears and the fires from roadside bombs burning nearby. Tomorrow, I leave for Iraq.
Off to Iraq
I’ve spent a big chunk of the last four years writing about how technology is changing the way battles are fought. Now it’s time for me to witness those changes close-up – and see how war still remains brutally, awfully the same. I’m leaving for Iraq on Saturday morning, on assignment for Wired magazine.
For the moment, I can’t go into too many details about what I’ll be doing there. It’s just too tasty a story to let out of the oven before it’s baked. But here’s what I can say: I’ll be embedding with a high-tech Army unit – one that’s playing an absolutely central role in the counterinsurgency there. If these soldiers fail in their missions, the entire coalition operation could go up in smoke. If they succeed, lots and lots of American and Iraqi lives will be saved.
It's unclear how much blogging I'm going to be able to do while I'm over there. I'm certainly going to try to do as much as I can. But while I’m gone – which should be about three weeks – three supremely qualified guest-bloggers will be at the helm of Defense Tech HQ, each for a week apiece:
- Dan Dupont is the editor of the fascinating Inside Defense family of newsletters, and is a frequent contributor to Scientific American magazine.
- Dr. Jim Lewis has served as a political advisor to U.S. Southern Command, U.S. Central Command, and to the U.S. Central American Task Force. He now heads up the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
You can reach them at the regular address, defense-AT-defensetech-DOT-com. I’ll be based out of Camp Victory, near the Baghdad airport. So if you’re stationed there, gimme a shout. My usual e-mail home has been swamped by a spam-storm; try me instead at noah-DOT-shachtman-AT-gmail-DOT-com.
Johnnie Mason, who was waiting in Mahmudiya when we lug the robots off of the copter, was particularly glad to see us – and the machines – when we land. Four days earlier, he had 
After months of preparation, and three weeks in a warzone, my entire trip to Iraq has been 
THERE'S MORE: Capt. Greg Hirschey, the commanding officer of the 717th Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Company (which inlcludes Team Mayhem), just dropped me a line. Two of his sergeants, he said, "were hit with an IED yesterday with injuries to their security element. I just walked into the shop from an incident and received word that our Air Force augmentation team was hit with an IED just minutes ago... It is hectic right now once again. Seems like it never stops. Here is a photo of my shot from this morn."
Over 
The orange Mercedes was part of a long line of cement trucks, waiting to deliver their goods to Camp Victory when the base opened for commercial traffic at eight. Then, a pair of the trucks exploded -- a botched attempt, apparently, to detonate suicide bombs inside of the base. Two men are dead. One of the attackers has been captured.
Back on the base, I wonder how much of this to put in public, to share with my family and my fiancée. I want to record what I see; I don’t want to worry the people I love.
Here around Camp Victory, for example, the last week has been a relatively quiet one. Iraqi army and police patrols have grown noticeably since I’ve been here. Smiles outnumber hard stares 100 to 1. And when there has been violence, it has been relatively small-scale – like the single RPG shot fired in my general direction the other night.
Black Hawk helicopters run a regular route between the main American military bases around the greater Baghdad area. On a clear day, a pair of the copters comes here, to Camp Liberty, about every hour-and-a-half. But the days haven’t all been so clear, lately. So it took a full work week for the captain of the unit that I’m with to secure us spots on the copter down to Ad Mahmudiya, twenty minutes to the southeast.
We step up into the Black Hawk. One of the gunners shows me how to stick the lap belt and two shoulder harnesses into a single, circular lock. And then we take off, the copter shuddering as we gain elevation.
But, just to be on the safe side, the pilots do pull a few of those crazy rolls. The gunners watch for trouble as they swing their 7.62 milimeter machine guns. And they fire off flares, the captain adds, to attract any heat-seeking missiles that might be headed skyward. I gulp.
I’ve been indoors for a few hours now. My eyes are still burning. And my throat is still scratched, red-raw. I’m picking and blowing chunks out of my nostrils that are brown and sticky, like the resin of hashish. But at least I’m starting to be able to breathe halfway-normal again.
Iraqi insurgents are almost certain at work, too. It’s a “perfect time for a bomb planting,” the captain of the unit I’m embedded with grumbles. “Perfect fucking cover.”
I do have a bed in a trailer now, which is mighty nice. But I lost the memo granting me access to the local mess hall. It’s not that big of a deal. My unit – on the secretive side, and continually on the go, even during meal times – gets food brought back to its station house. But it’s taken a few days for the supply sergeant, a soft-spoken Haitian, to get his head wrapped around the idea of a herbivore. “Vegetables aren’t food,” another sergeant here joked. “They’re what food eats.”
Who knew being a vegetarian in a war zone could be this easy? Not that I’m exactly in in the thick of battle, yet. Camp Victory, adjacent to the Baghdad Airport, is a sprawling military command center of 15,000 troops. And, despite the occasional helicopter grunting overhead, the conflict feels very far away. Yesterday, I was worried about facing bullets and bombs. Today, I’m wondering whether to have a slushie or a cookie for desert.
The Camp’s chiefs are installed in smart cubicles on the top floors of Saddam’s sumptuous summer palace. Some of the soldiers ride around in bicycles, wearing Army-issue shorts and tees. Kevlar and helmets are not required.
The Army unit I’m supposed to join up with was expecting me tomorrow, not today. The action should come quick after that. So I took advantage of the pause. I napped in my deliciously-cool tent. I played war tourist as I gawked at the palace-turned-HQ. And I shared cigars with a 
