EOD

Hello everyone,

The drought has ended, at least for a couple of days. Army won three out of its past four football games.

Oh yeah, and it rained here, too. It rained a steady rain all day on Sunday, and it cleared the air enough that it was actually raining and not mudding. Of course the ground can’t handle all of that water at once, so everything turns to a thick muck out here, and the ground releases quite an interesting smell. Life is good.

A couple of months ago I wrote about route clearance patrols and how those patrols go in search of IEDs. Those patrols are conducted by Combat Engineers, which really is not a core mission of theirs. They have traditionally cleared minefields, but they just blow those up and clear a path. The soldiers who are officially tasked with dealing with explosives of all kinds are the soldiers who work in the field of Explosive Ordnance Disposal, or EOD.

In a conventional battle, EOD forces would handle unexploded ordnance quite often by destroying it in place. When you are fighting force on force, it isn’t all that important to wonder who placed explosives in a particular location, so EOD could simply destroy the ordnance and remove the threat. During a counterinsurgency fight such as this, every little detail on every explosive device is evidence. Evidence leads to individuals, and individuals lead to IED cells. While EOD used to work as an individual Army battalion, due to the extraordinary amount and variety of IEDs in Iraq, EOD is now the core of a larger task force, called Task Force Troy, which includes Air Force and Navy EOD teams, as well as law enforcement officers from the US and allied nations. If it involves explosives, EOD will exploit it and then destroy it after all evidence has been collected. TF Troy has played a major role in attacking the IED networks. To give you an idea of the decline in IED incidents across Iraq, in July 2007, there were about 2600 IED incidents across Iraq (an incident is defined as an IED that exploded against a target or an IED that was discovered and cleared). Keep in mind all of the categories of IEDs that are included here – HBIED, VBIED, SVBIED, you know the list. Anyway, as of July of this year, the number of IED incidents across Iraq was down to 500, and the overwhelming majority of those incidents involved IEDs that were found and cleared. In July of 2007, the number of IED incidents where there was a coalition force (CF) casualty was about 250 for that month – casualty being injury or death. In July of this year, that number was in single digits. Zero incidents is better than 500, but you can see the progress that has been made. Once the IED suspects are detained, they are held for trial in Iraqi courts. All of the evidence and the biometric information that I explained in the past is used to, hopefully, put these people away for a long time. Some of these judges still prefer two Iraqi witnesses instead of hard evidence like fingerprints or biometric matches, so there are still challenges to be overcome.

The gadget in the first photo is one of the tools of the EOD team, and it is called TALON. The little guy is fearless when it comes to inspecting IEDs up close and personal. Equally fearless are the EOD working dogs, which are mainly German Shepherds. Explosive sniffing dogs have played a large role in this fight, as well. I don’t tell you this to upset any dog lovers, but an EOD dog happened to be killed at a separate location on the day that I was working with the EOD team. He found an IED and he inadvertently detonated it. Another Shepherd died a couple of days ago during a lethal operation right here in Tikrit as he went into a building to take on a suspect. I mention that only to point out that there are a lot of resources at work over here which are saving human lives, and there are hundreds of military working dogs in the fight.

The majority of the lethal activity in MND- North is still occurring up in Mosul, where AQI is still fighting it out. Even so, attack levels are remaining fairly low. A new Mosul Reconstruction Operations Center was just opened in Mosul last week, which was a major event in and of itself because that illustrates the commitment by the Government of Iraq to continue to put effort into rebuilding that city which has very few Shia, who hold majority power in the central government. Although this was a big event and many press agencies were present, I understand that there was no reporting on the issue. Voter registration for the January elections has ended, and it should be noted that the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) performed extremely well in preventing any attacks on voter registration centers. I don’t imagine that this was mentioned back home either. For the record, Iraqis have to register in person and they have to positively identify themselves and they have to provide a real address and they can only register at one location. How old fashioned of them. They cannot register and vote on the same day, by the way. They are new enough to the whole voting concept that voter fraud is still considered a bad thing and not simply another tool by which to win an election. Let me make a prediction: there will be less fraud and more order in the Iraqi elections than there will be in the US elections. Thank you, Chicago machine. When you have US judges ruling that a park bench can be used as an address to register to vote, I wonder how far we are from a lawless society.

On the topic of Syria, there is no doubt that US military members and Iraqis have died as a result of Syria’s facilitation of foreign fighters coming across its borders. If they are worried about sovereignty, maybe they should do something about all of the Saudis and Somalis and Egyptians who populate their country enroute to their killing sprees in Iraq. Iraq has asked Syria to close its borders to foreign fighters, as has the US. Syria has ignored those requests.

I know that there has pretty much been a news blackout back home with regards to Iraq. At the height of the violence, there were over 250 reporters in Iraq. Now, there are fewer than 50, and most are not from US agencies. A US news agency representative says, “There just isn’t a story there.” I understand that excitement sells papers. I also know that Americans like to win, so I have a feeling that good news stories would sell. I still read comments about the “Iraqi War disaster,” and that description might have fit a year ago. Maybe the American people need an update. Having said that, maybe people are getting around the media and learning for themselves what is happening over here. According to a Pew Research poll, Americans have had a huge shift in their thinking about Iraq. In the poll, they were asked to rate progress in Iraq, and they could answer “very” or “fairly well,” or “not to” or “Not at all well.” In June of this year, 52% gave the negative responses and 48% gave the positive. In September, 58% gave the positive responses and 37% gave the negative. In April 2008, 47% said that we would succeed in Iraq and 46% said that we would fail. In September, 58% said we would succeed and 34% said we would fail. It is good to see that the media has not been totally successful in defining Iraq in their terms.

Here is my view on the media. I don’t expect them to ignore the bad when bad occurs, but neither is it OK to ignore the good when it occurs. I think that for many Americans, Iraq is going to end up being simply “The Iraq War.” The only opinion people will have is that they supported it or they did not support it, but no one will know anything about it, other than they learned the term “IED.” I think that the American people are being cheated by the press. I think that it is wrong that they do not get to experience the successes of their military. Think about the Olympic Teams, or even your favorite sports team. Win or lose, you get to analyze every detail of every event or game. Think if the press took the “there’s no story there” attitude towards the Olympics. You would have read about every event where the US did not win, but you would know nothing about Mark Phelp’s 8 gold medals. I think that it is extremely important that the American public has confidence in its military, which means that the public should have the full story when the military is engaged in war. I think that if the public was properly informed of the “stories” that take place every day in Iraq (or Afghanistan), people would be very inspired by the determination, competence, and honor of their young soldiers. I see that as a very good thing. I have been in the Army for a lot of years and I am still inspired by them. There is nothing wrong with allowing people to know that their fellow citizens in uniform are demonstrating courage and heroism on a routine basis. Every day, Iraqi citizens and soldiers are seeing a side of the American military that many Americans don’t get to see. As I said, you are being cheated.

Congratulations – only 6 more days of enduring what must be a non-stop stream of political commercials on your TVs and radios. Good luck.

The second attached picture shows you another weather day in Iraq. I once mentioned that it looked like Mars here one day back in April, but that particular day shown in the picture takes the cake. Mars or Mercury, it was a strange look.
The third picture is probably the most disturbing of all. Look close and you will see little blue flags out there. Yes, it is a golf course. It is a 9-hole course and it opened here on Speicher on Father’s Day. I have never seen anyone use it (who actually brought clubs here?), but I imagine somebody has been out there. When the PGA tour sweeps through here in a few years, remember where you saw this course first.

Everyone take care.

Kirkuk

Hello everyone,

October has arrived, the temperatures up here in the north have consistently been down in the 90s during the day, and soldiers are resorting to long sleeve PT uniforms to fight the stinging cold during the 75 degree mornings. Fall finally arrives in Iraq. I am not a hot weather person, so you have to admit that I was good about not whining during the heat of the summer.

Over the past couple of weeks I made my way up to Tamim Province to the north of my location. The most well known city up there is the city of Kirkuk. Tamim Province is a mixed province of Arabs and Kurds, yet despite the mixed population, it is also one of the most stable provinces in the northern region, not counting the three provinces that are officially in the Kurdish region.

Kirkuk is one of the cities where Saddam Hussein ordered the Kurdish population to be evicted and replaced with Arabs. After the US removed Saddam, Kurds began to return to the region with the goal of reclaiming their homes and land. Tamim Province has a lot of oil and natural gas and the Kurds would obviously like to return to the industries in the province at which they once worked.

My trip to Tamim was to visit with several different types of units. I met with another Field Artillery unit that is conducting non-traditional FA missions (they all are); I met with the Kirkuk Police Transition Team, and I slid over to the west side of Tamim to the town of Hawijah to spend time with an Infantry battalion that has done a remarkable job of pacifying what was once a very violent region.

The most active terror groups in Tamim are Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and Ansar al-Sunnah (AAS). Both are Sunni criminal groups, but the relationship between the two has been somewhat rocky over the years. AAS is comprised of Kurds and Arabs, mostly Iraqi, and they do support the goal of Osama Bin Laden to force the Sunni brand of Islam onto the rest of the world. AAS is considered a Salifist group, which means that its members believe that Islam should adhere strictly to its roots, and that innovation or ideas that did not come directly from Mohammed are forbidden. AAS has been very active in conducting IED attacks on coalition forces (CF) and Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), and its members are probably some of the most consistent in videotaping the IED attacks for posting on the internet (quick, someone perform a Google search and see how many video clips Mohammed posted online to ensure that this is not an innovative way for AAS to be spreading its beliefs). While AAS used to make it clear that it had nothing to do with AQI, as leaders from both groups have been captured or killed, the cooperation between the two groups has grown. AAS has been significantly damaged as an organization in Tamim.

Many people refer to Tamim as Kirkuk province, and I noticed that some newspapers do that as well. As most of you have probably heard, the Iraqi Parliament has passed the provincial election law, setting provincial elections for January 2009. These elections are likely to bring greater Sunni representation to the Iraqi parliament since Sunnis are unlikely to boycott the elections as they did in 2005. The original intent of the election law was to include a question on the future of Tamim province. Kurds would like to see Tamim revert to the control of the Kurdish autonomous region, while Arabs would prefer that it remains under the control of the Government of Iraq (GoI). The question of the status of Tamim will not be on the ballot in January, but the election law requires parliament to deal with the Tamim question no later than the end of March 2009. One of the changes in the election law is that minority Christian groups will not be ensured any representation in Parliament as they are now. This caused thousands of Christians to protest the law in Ninewa, and Prime Minister Maliki actually came out and called for Parliament to reinstitute protections for minority representation.

Although Tamim is fairly passive at this point, all is not completely well. In fact, a few days after I left FOB Warrior in Kirkuk, several rockets landed on the FOB, killing 6 foreign workers. During my time with the PTT in Kirkuk, we went on a mission to disrupt a local IED network with the local Iraqi Police (IP). Because of the favorable security situation in Kirkuk, the PTT has been able to train the IP rather than escort them from battle to battle, and they have developed into a fairly competent force. They are one of the police departments in the north that is fully staffed with full time investigators. I went with the PTT and IP on an early morning raid of a local known IED maker’s house. The suspect was captured at his other house in the country by an Iraqi Army (IA) raid, but there was plenty of evidence to be collected at his house in Kirkuk as well. The search of the house turned up spools of copper wire, timers, and trigger devices. The wife, of course, knew nothing, but the purpose for a person to have these three types of items hidden in various places around the house and yard is fairly obvious in this environment. The IED networks in Kirkuk have been heavily targeting the IP. The IP did a pretty decent job on the raid and on the search with a little help from the CF in finding those good hiding places around the (very cluttered) yard.

The Infantry commander over in Hawijah turned his area around much quicker than even he expected. His forces used a combination of carrot, stick, and a great deal of trust in the local Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to clear the region of the terrorists. This is the unit that organized all of those soccer games a couple of months ago, and those games were made possible due to the aggressive efforts at bringing the security situation under control. The CF forces and ISF have a great relationship with each other and with the community in Hawijah, and the US commander relies heavily on the ISF to use their connections to locate the insurgents that will then be targeted by a combined US/Iraqi force. While the infantry unit “captures” more often than it “kills” these days, persistent IED emplacers are known to end up getting the attention of the CF sniper teams, which tend to effectively put them out of business.

Rather than fly back to Speicher this time, I joined up with a US logistics convoy for the return trip. These convoys are called Combat Logistics Patrols, or CLPs. These CLPs move out with a purpose, and they are on the roads constantly as they move supplies throughout the region. As the CLP traveled across the mountain range between Tamim and Salah Ad Din Provinces, believe it or not, there were some areas that actually looked nice. AQI apparently thinks so, too, because they are trying hard to keep a foothold in that area, which contains the oil rich city of Bayji. Who says that terrorists don’t enjoy a little nice scenery to start their day every now and then?

In an interview with the press over here, Prime Minister Maliki, for the first time, acknowledged the contribution of US and other coalition forces to his country’s progress. He said that Iraq “appreciates and respects their sacrifices and said that the deaths of the US troops would act as a bridge between the two countries for years to come. Maliki has been walking a tight rope with heavy pressure from Iran to push the US out of Iraq. Iran, by the way, is continuing to funnel fighters and weapons into Iraq. Maliki went on to say that the American people may not be fully aware of the accomplishments that the US intervention in Iraq has brought them. While he has been touting the security improvements in his country over the past year, this is the first time that he has actually given credit to US forces for playing a large role in those improvements. Maliki also said that despite the drop in violence, Iraq still needs US troops for some time. The US and Iraq are still hammering out a status of forces agreement that needs to be adopted by 31 December.

The US press is regularly critical of the political process over here, and even of the corruption that is common throughout government in Iraq. There are valid criticisms to be made on each of those topics, but I think that it is well past time for Americans to step back and realize what is happening in our own political process. When you have a group such as ACORN whose sole purpose it is to conduct voter fraud, and when you have a political party that applauds these illegal efforts, and when you have a population that simply shrugs their shoulders about it, you have a Republic that is in trouble. When you have judges ruling that it is unfair to require people to identify themselves before they vote, or to verify their place of residence, or to have a system in place that confirms whether a person has already voted, or to even show up to vote during posted voting hours, you have the makings of a crack pot third world system. Even in Iraq, voters are required to prove who they are before they vote. I somewhat mocked the happenings in Chicago a couple of months ago, but there is very little humor in the types of fraudulent activities that are now occurring in Ohio. Add to the mix a supposed “free press” that is complicit in the cover-up of the fraud, and I would like to know how that is different than what occurs in third world nations. The military and State Department are over here trying to teach the Iraqis how to execute a fair election process and how to run a corruption free government. Who is taking on that responsibility back there? With the vitriol that is being spewed in the US over one of the candidate’s Christian faith, it is apparent that there are some in the US who would gladly make an election law that bans Christians from seats in government. People should probably wake up.

The attached photos are from Kirkuk. The first one speaks for itself – the kids like the Americans. The second photo shows the typical wiring system in the towns over here. People rig wires anywhere they can to tap into electricity. My electrician brother-in-law will see this and realize that he has great job opportunities in Iraq if he wants them. The third picture is from the back yard of the target house. No room for after-raid soccer this time around. Iraqi yards are pure clutter. Finally, I don’t have relatives in the waste disposal business, so the street cleaning opportunities can go to someone else. For those who don’t know, Iraqi roadways are notorious for their litter. It is everywhere.

Everyone take care, and remember, if you are voting early, it’s only legal to vote once.