Muntheria

Hello everyone,

I trust that everyone has been getting their fair share of the Olympics, and more importantly, pre-season football. I haven't had the opportunity to see much of either. I didn't even get to watch the 9 year-old Chinese girl lip-synching during the opening ceremonies, so I guess I am missing out on some good stuff. I did read an Op-ed where the writer blames that incident on the US because of the emphasis on beauty in the States. The "Hate America First" crowd doesn't let up.

As part of my ongoing collection effort, I spent some time out east on the Iraq-Iran border gathering information on Port of Entry Transition Teams (POETT). Closely related, but not quite the same, is the Border Transition Team (BTT). The BTT works with the Iraqi version of our Border Patrol, and the POETT works with the customs, passport, and immigration people at the (legal) border crossings (as my wife asked, "Do they really have people immigrating to Iraq?).

The Port of Entry (POE) which I visited is called the Muntheria POE, which sits near a city called Khanaqin. Khanaqin is in the northeastern area of Diyala Province. This area has a heavy Kurdish population, and the Kurdish tribal affiliation crosses the border into Iran. Interestingly, the water and electric lines coming into Muntheria come from Iran. The cell tower sitting on Muntheria is Iranian. Unfortunately, although electricity still flows to the POE from Iran, the Iranians cut off the water when the US POETT moved onto the port. A somewhat high level priority is for a desert based port of entry to have water, so that issue is being worked by someone (I think).

The terrain up in the Muntheria area is similar in appearance to eastern Utah, with hills and rock outcroppings everywhere. The trip out there could only be accomplished partially by helicopter, with the final two hours being accomplished on the road in a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, or MRAP. The ride was somewhat like a 2-hour serpentine course, with the vehicles weaving in and around holes from previous IEDs. In addition to the IEDs, the whole area up there still has its fair share of mines from the Iraq-Iran War in the 80's. Tank and field artillery fighting positions are still present, and they face both east and west, which speaks to the back and forth nature of that fight. On the way to Muntheria, we passed by a small village that sat probably 200 yards off of the road. As we approached, it was obvious that the kids in that village had ears for the MRAPs. These kids came pouring out of the village and running towards the road. The gunners threw what little toys and candy they had out to the kids, and, as in any survival of the fittest situation, the big burly kids made sure that they took anything that the little kids picked up.

The POETT at Muntheria has done a great job at building up trust with the Iraqi personnel at the POE. Overall, the Iraqis working there seem to possess a good deal of competence. The POE commander, a Brigadier General (BG) Kahlid, comes down hard on corruption, and he even signed paperwork to fire a corrupt employee while we were meeting with him in his office. The POE only handles pedestrian traffic at this point, with buses (or relatives) transporting Iranian visitors to their destinations once they are inside Iraq. Many visitors come from Iran to visit the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf in Iraq. The exception to the pedestrian traffic is that oil tankers roll from east to west continuously. The tankers transport unrefined crude oil into Iran, and they return empty or with refined fuel. The goal of the POE is to eventually open up to other types of commercial traffic. Prior to 2003, the POE supposedly processed 2000 people per day. That number today is somewhere around 300 people per day. The POE commander does not believe that he receives enough funding from Baghdad to get the port to the performance or appearance level that he wants. Being that this is a Kurdish region, and since the area might end upin the Kurdish autonomous zone after the elections, the central government is not eager to spend money up in the Khanaqin area, although the government is more than happy to receive the income from trucks coming through from Iran.

Besides US military personnel working on the POETT, there are also Department of Homeland Defense and Border Enforcement Administration employees assigned there. These guys are the experts at running border ports and securing the border (go ahead - insert wise crack about the US border security). Despite the well run nature of the POE, there are unofficial border crossing points where other types of products and people enter the country, just as happens in the US. Some of those people belong to the Iranian Special Groups. With the new toned down nature of the Shiite Mahdi Army in Baghdad, the Iranians are supposedly training operatives to get back into Iraq to target US forces and Iraqi leaders for assassination.

As always, I had the opportunity to visit with Iraqi leadership and drink Chai tea while I was traveling. I was able to meet the POE Commander, the POE fire chief (he wanted the US to buy him a bigger TV), and the Director of Passports & Immigration. In the first attached picture, I am seated next to COL Shugart, who is the Director of Passports and Immigration. He reminded me of my grandma in that he wouldn't stop sticking those pastries in our face. The next picture is of BG Kahlid, who is celebrating in traditional Iraqi fashion after the grand opening of a shooting range complex on his POE. First lesson - stop shooting your weapon straight in the air when there are people standing around you. The third picture is obviously towards the Iranian side of the border.

Let me do something different and share a couple of observations from outside of Iraq. If anyone still tries to make a moral equivalence between US and Russian forces as they did during the cold war, they only need to look at the Russians today to see the major difference. Saddam and his cronies raped and pillaged their own people all across Iraq until the US showed up. Now that type of behavior is unacceptable in this country. The Russian army showed up in Georgia, and now they are running around raping, pillaging, and looting that country. While a Russian officer was forcing some Georgians to work for him, he said to an AP reporter that, "You can even make a monkey look human by putting him to work," and then he threatened to arrest the reporter if she used his name or took his picture. I hope people are paying attention.

While the US Army is conducting plenty of non-traditional missions over here, it is now resorting to non-traditional missions back in the US. Acouple of years ago, someone warned the nation's youth that they had better do well in school or they will end up in the Army. The reality is that they had better do well in school or else they will need to get a waiver to have the privilege of serving in the Army. GEN William Wallace, the commander of the Army's Training & Doctrine Command (under whose command I currently fall), is extremely concerned about studies that show that only 28% of US 17-24 year-olds meet the Army's physical, intellectual, and moral criteria for enlistment. As a result of his concern, the Army is opening a charter school in South Carolina to get students qualified to join the Army. The Army charter effort will soon move to other states as well. Yes, we have a crisis in education in the US, and yes, it does ultimately affect our national security.

I will be pulling a different type of duty for the next couple of weeks. I will be sitting on a board at a US detention facility in southern Iraq in which we will be reviewing Iraqi detainee files to make recommendations for the release or further detention of the Iraqi prisoners. It should be interesting.

Take care.

Moving Forward

Hello everyone,I don’t have much in the way of personal travels to write about this time around. The continuing saga of sand storms has made traveling a real hit or miss experience. I have spent the last couple of weeks stuck on Speicher, and the issues that I have been working on here are not interesting enough to make you want to read about them (or me to write about them).


There is obviously still plenty going on in Iraq in general. Although the government was hoping to hold provincial elections on October 1st, that timeline won’t be kept. The sticking point is the failure of the Parliament to pass a Provincial Elections Law before adjourning for the remainder of August. One of the major stumbling blocks has been the status of Kirkuk Province up here in the north. Kirkuk is heavily Kurdish, and there is a lot of oil coming from the province. The Parliament has been trying to figure out how to frame the elections in Kirkuk. The Kurds want Kirkuk to be a part of the autonomous Kurdistan region, while the national government does not want this. According to reports from Kirkuk, many Arabs living there are content to allow the Kurds to govern their region because the Kurdish regions have been the most orderly and stable in Iraq since Saddam was removed. The Kurds in Kirkuk will not accept a proposal to have the elections set up so that there are equal numbers of seats in the Kirkuk provincial government to divide power equally between Kurds and other factions. Most reasonable people don’t see how the elections can occur at all in 2008 based on the fact that this Kirkuk dispute is holding up the entire election law process. Voter registration is moving forward, however. I’ve read comments that although the security has improved in Iraq, the political process is still broken because there are still some stalemates. Doesn’t the fact that there is a stalemate in Parliament rather than a shootout in the streets of Kirkuk over this issue mean that the political process IS working?


In an interesting turn of events, Muqtada al-Sadr from Sadr City has called on his Mahdi Army to lay down their arms. He issued a document that says that his followers will now be guided by Shiite spirituality instead of anti-American militancy (let’s hope that there is a difference). The document says that the new focus of the Sadr sect will be on education, religion, and social justice. Under Islam, I don’t know how much separation there is between those three focus areas.


Sadr has been responsible for a lot of violence in Baghdad, but he began to lose influence when he ran away to Iran. Although there are plenty of Shiites in Iraq and Iran, thousands of Iraqis lost relatives in the war with Iran. They don’t appreciate Iran’s influence. The people of Sadr City have grown tired of being locked in their homes due to the fighting that at first Sadr, and then the Iranian special groups, have caused in their neighborhoods. Sadr has very much been forced to play catch up to remain relevant. Several months ago, he ordered his men to fight, and many said that they were tired of fighting, so he changed his mind and said that they should have a cease fire. Then the Iranians kept trying to keep the fight going, and the people realized that he is nothing but an Iranian stooge. Then Sadr said that his sect would boycott the elections, but then his own people said that they were going to participate anyway or else they would have no power, so then he said that what he meant was that some of his party could participate if they wanted to. And then Sadr said that he would no longer target Iraqis and that he would just kill Americans, but his people asked him why because the Americans keep helping them, so now he says that there will be no more focus on anti-American militancy. Let me summarize what I just said in five words or less: I think we beat him.


So what does that mean to the Sunni fight that is taking place up here in the north? Although the Sunni and Shia groups dislike each other, they feed off of each other. When you have a major group like the al-Mahdi Army laying down their arms, that is a morale breaker for other criminal groups in country. Every time peace breaks out somewhere in Iraq, the people living in areas where the terrorists are still active start to understand that peace is possible, and they start to turn against the terrorists. Every time the security improves in different regions, the Iraqi Security Forces gain credibility, so people begin to trust them and feed them information. Al-Mahdi was heavily influenced by Iran, and the Iraqis didn’t like that. AQI is largely a group formed of foreign fighters. The Iraqis are not happy about that, either.


The Sunni Awakening, as it is called, began over in Anbar province just to our west. Fallujah and Ramadi sit in Anbar, and some of the most violent battles of Iraqi Freedom occurred in those towns. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ran his main slaughter houses out of Anbar until two F-16 pilots sent him to his Maker via two 500 pound bombs. Anbar was supposed to be turned over to be fully administered by the Iraqis back in May (the US Marines run the security in Anbar). Weather problems initially caused a delay in the handover process. Now that we are in August, the turn-over of Anbar from US to Iraqi control has not yet happened, and the reason is because the Iraqis in Anbar don’t want it to happen. Here is a quote from the Anbar area: “The people in Anbar love the US Marines. If anyone tells you any different, they are lying.” Now you would expect that I would mention that the quote came from a US Marine spokesperson, but it didn’t. The quote came from Iraqi Army Brigadier General Ali, who is the military commander in the Fallujah area. The Iraqi people do not want to take back governing authority because they think that means that the Americans will leave, and they don’t want that. Not to be repetitive, but I believe that we won in Anbar province, too.


Moving on to a final topic, there was a US GAO report recently released that claims that the Iraqis are not doing their share to fund reconstruction efforts. Let me touch on that just a little bit. First of all, a read of that report shows that it compares US spending from 2003 through the present. It only shows Iraqi spending from 2005 to the present. Keep in mind that after we invaded, Iraq had to rebuild a central government from scratch. Saddam did not have a mature centralized budget process. If he wanted money to go towards “X,” he ordered it to go towards “X.” It has been a total cash society. The figures in the GAO report show huge US reconstruction spending in 2003/2004, which is true. We went in right behind our combat troops and began to rebuild when the Iraqis literally had no government of their own. Since 2005, once the Iraqis had established a constitutional government, they have budgeted more money towards their own reconstruction than we have budgeted. For 2008, in fact, the Iraqis have ten times more money budgeted towards their construction than the US. While there is a large oil surplus here, that was not expected. No one saw the price of oil hitting almost $150 per barrel. Due to the large surplus, the Iraqi government passed a supplemental $22 billion budget on August 7th in which they directed $8 billion towards their reconstruction. Their reconstruction budget is 10 times more than the US is directing towards reconstruction here.


Once a budget is established, the government then has to have systems in place to disburse and spend that money. That may not be as simple as it seems. Until you have the technical ability to conduct funds transfers and similar electronic transactions, how do you transfer a couple million over here and a couple million over there in a cash economy? The Iraqi officials had to learn everything from scratch. What is the contracting process? Who can bid on the jobs? What is the payment process and what are the payment terms? Add to that some misguided US projects that were turned over for upkeep to Iraqis who had no technical ability to maintain the project, and you have a lot of money spent. Executing a budget is not exactly straight forward when a society has never executed a budget before.


That is probably much more information on that topic than anyone really wanted, but I have no war stories to tell this time around. The pictures aren’t necessarily related to anything that I just wrote about. The one picture shows how Iraqis get gas without waiting in long lines in this country with so much oil. I have no idea where the roadside gas sellers get their gas. The other picture shows how Saddam spent his budget when he ran it. That is called the Moon Palace, which just another Tikrit area getaway for the tyrant.


Everyone take care.

From Searching to Soccer

To start things off, I am happy to report that my family has made it back home to Colorado after 2 months and over 9,000 miles of driving. Yes, Tina is still sane, but she had to work to keep the casualty count among the kids down to one appendectomy, one re-injured knee, and one broken arm. It appears that Deployed Dad maintains a commanding lead in the category of “Fewest Trips to the ER.” Despite 75% of the kids getting hit with one type of injury or illness during the trip, they had a blast. Thanks to all of you who hosted them on that journey.

My journeys over the past couple of weeks included a trip down to the city of Balad in southern Salah Ad Din province. Balad was the home of a large portion of the Saddam Hussein Air Force. The few fighter jets that we maintain in country are based out of Balad, but I did not travel to Balad to visit with the Air Force. The Army calls the base around the airfield COB Anaconda. Like most inhabited areas in Salah Ad Din province, Anaconda sits in the Tigris River Valley. Insurgent activity down in that area has not been limited to just AQI. The region has a mix of Sunni and Shiite citizens, so there have been Shia insurgent groups as well as a couple other Sunni groups operating in the area.

The unit that I visited at Anaconda is a Field Artillery (FA) battalion. When you think Field Artillery, you obviously think of the big guns and the rolling barrages of destructive firepower. In the Counterinsurgency (COIN) fight, the need for that type of fire support is not generally required. Therefore, our FA units have been asked to take on a lot of non-traditional FA roles in the past couple of years. I was visiting with the battalion to collect information on how they have organized for their new roles. They have had to adjust to fight an infantry fight, as well as having to perform the other duties and community engagements that are important to winning over the population.

I had mentioned a few weeks ago that the insurgents may have been moving towards the river valleys as the Iraqi Army (IA) and US forces chased them around the Northern provinces. During my visit to Anaconda, the FA battalion conducted the first series of riverine operations to be conducted by Army units during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). I did not have the opportunity to participate on these operations, but the soldiers would have made their Navy brethren proud with their performance out there on the river.

One of the missions that is being handled by the FA soldiers is that of reconciliation. The reconciliation process is a method being used for former fighters to clear their names with US forces. The Iraqis do not have any formal part in the reconciliation process. Anyone who reconciles with the US still has to deal with the Iraqi system if they have committed Iraqi criminal offenses. There are rules as to who can reconcile with our forces, and there are certain requirements placed on those wishing to clear their names, such as the requirement to turn in weapons and provide information on weapons caches. The troops down at Anaconda have been leading the pack on reconciliation efforts in the province and have discovered a lot of weapons caches. The result has been a significant reduction in violence.

Along with the reconciling, governance, and economic issues, the FA battalion still has to deal with security issues day to day. I participated with one of the companies (or “batteries” in FA speak) as they went to search a farm house complex in the region for a suspected weapons cache. The property sits in an isolated rural area that is only accessible via elevated canal roads. An IA unit linked up with us on our way out to the farm. Upon our arrival, we were met by the farm owner, who explained that he lived there with his brother, his three wives, and his ten sons. He said that he knew nothing about any weapons caches, and he invited a search of his property. The US and IA troops took him up on the invitation and searched for quite awhile, but did not locate any caches. There were plenty of sheep, a few cows, and a lot of rats, but no hidden weapons. It is never a surprise to watch our soldiers act with tremendous professionalism, but it was also nice to see the Iraqi soldiers acting very professionally. The IA platoon leader was definitely in charge of his troops, and in a real sign of progress, the platoon sergeant was even giving commands. That is a big deal in an army where non-commissioned officers (NCOs) have had no role in the past. The strength of our military comes largely from the leadership of our non-commissioned officers as they train, supervise, and mentor our soldiers. The US Army is trying to develop the IA to the point where they also have a strong NCO corps.

The US Battery Commander did not want to leave the farm house without showing some appreciation for the cooperation that we received (for those of you in Colorado Springs, this Captain happens to be a 1997 Harrison High School graduate and a subsequent graduate of UCCS). He went to one of his vehicles and produced a soccer ball, which he gave to one of the 10 sons. An immediate impromptu soccer match broke out, pitting the sons against some of the US and IA soldiers. The soldiers, wearing full battle-rattle, were no match for the quick little farm kids, so as usual, we probably would have lost to the kids had there been nets to use for scoring. One of the kids told us that we were welcome back to his house every day if we wanted to come back. The farmer was thinking, “Hey thanks, guys; I have 200 sheep to tend to and now my kids will spend their day playing soccer instead of doing their farm duties.” Admittedly, I was looking around while the kids were playing with their new soccer ball, and there were sheep wandering around everywhere. I imagine the kids were busy rounding them up after we left. The attached pictures are obviously from the search-turned-to-soccer visit.

I have a couple of news stories from this end. Marie Colvin of the Times of London has been embedded with one of the IA units up in Mosul during Lion’s Roar. She called the operation up in Mosul “one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.” While our Commanding General did not agree that the terrorists have been completely defeated in Iraq, he did say that he thinks that we are at the “irreversible point” as far as taking on the insurgency. These guys are still here, and they are still killing, but as I mentioned before, they haven’t been able to muster the big attacks over the summer that they have conducted in the past.

Also from Iraq, which I assume you probably know about, the last of 550 metric tons of yellowcake was safely shipped out of Iraq to a firm in Canada. Yellowcake is the raw material from which nuclear bombs are made. A professor from Sussex University in England (Norman Dombey), estimates that the yellowcake shipped from Iraq was in large enough quantities to make 142 nuclear bombs. The presence of the material was kept very secret and it was shipped very quietly out of country to avoid any possibility of any of the insurgent groups getting their hands on it. To top things off, there was a mass re-enlistment ceremony conducted by GEN Petraeus at Al Faw Palace on the 4th of July. 1215 US servicemen and women re-enlisted, making that the largest re-enlistment ceremony on record. Not bad for a stretched-thin military.

As the elections are approaching in both Iraq and the US, poll-taking will begin in earnest. In an interesting poll taken in Iraq, most Iraqis don’t want a quick US withdrawal or an immediate time table. The polling results indicate that the majority want the US to leave, but only a minority say that they want us to leave immediately. Here are some comments taken from the article. I will not comment on the comments:

“The American presence in Iraq is the safety valve to keep this country quiet. If they withdraw, that will lead to calamity.” – Maied Rashed al-Nuaemi, Mosul.

“The proposal…to pull out the troops by summer 2010 is foolish. If the United States withdraws from Iraq, I think its credibility among the international countries would collapse.” – Mohammed Sulaiman, Baghdad.

“We need more training, as well as new and developed weapons and supplies. We also need modern and developed technology. The US should withdraw gradually so our Iraqi forces can fill the gaps that the American forces will leave.” Brig. General Najim Abdullah, Iraqi National Police.

The Iraqis are still struggling to pass an elections law, so it is unclear whether their elections will even happen this fall. Registration drives have already begun and so far, no attacks on registration stations. I think these people are realizing that they lose power if they don’t participate in the elections process.

Everyone take care and enjoy the last full month without what we have all been waiting for – the beginning of another football season.

Land of Palaces

Hello everyone,

Hope everyone is having an enjoyable summer. It’s hard to believe that it is already a week into July.

Everyone has heard the stories of Saddam and his palaces that he had built around Iraq. I had the opportunity to see a few of these palaces over the past couple of weeks. Some of these palaces have holes where ceilings used to be, courtesy of the US Air Force, but most others are still in tact. While the palaces make good pictures and are built with marble floors and chandeliers, when you actually take a close look at the workmanship, it reminds you that this is Iraq. The palaces do stand out among the common houses in the surrounding villages, particularly up here in Tikrit.

I spent some time down in Baghdad attending a biometrics conference and collecting information on Army Space Support Teams. I know most of you can hardly contain yourselves thinking of the excitement of that adventure, but hey, some of the work isn’t quite as “field army” as others.

Biometrics is actually playing a large role in fighting the insurgency right now. Biometrics is the ability to establish an individual’s identity through a unique physical characteristic. There are uses of biometrics here in Iraq that we wouldn’t stand for in the States, but the people here are accepting of this intrusion because it is helping to track the bad guys and it is saving lives. Biometrics involves taking fingerprints, facial photographs, and iris scans of Iraqis and keeping this information in a data base. Iraqis can refuse to be enrolled in the biometrics system, but they can then be refused employment or admittance to certain buildings or regions. All Iraqi security forces (ISF) have to be enrolled in the biometrics system and the system is used to scan them into their work places to ensure they are who they say they are. Fingerprints are being pulled from IEDs and IED makers are being captured right and left. Obviously people don’t leave their eye print on IEDs, but the iris scan is used to verify identities for people crossing the borders and for people entering secured facilities. The insurgents are so concerned about the use of biometrics that an Al-Qaeda member actually jumped at a biometrics computer at a border crossing and blew himself and the computer up in an attempt to destroy biometrics data. Known criminals or suspects are placed on a biometrics watch list, and if a person at a checkpoint receives a “hit,” they are immediately arrested. As I said, we obviously would not accept this type of personal intrusion at home, but we aren’t dealing with an insurgency at this point, either.

The Marines tend to be a little more aggressive with their use of biometrics than the Army. They wall off whole cities and towns and require anyone wanting entrance to have to be scanned. This has helped cities like Fallujah and Ramadi to become pretty secure.

The Army Space Support Team, or ARSST, is also located in Baghdad. The team is out of Colorado Springs and it provides the Army with information heavily derived from satellites. Unfortunately, most of the work that the ARSST performs is conducted at a level that can’t be discussed among unclassified friends, so there is not much that I can write about this topic. I will say that the Army hasn’t completely grasped the full potential of space in its day to day operations quite yet.

The attached picture is the Al Faw palace at Camp Victory in Baghdad. There are several lakes and numerous other palaces and large homes in the area that were built for Saddam’s family or for his Baath Party brethren to use. Most of the palaces, even some with holes for ceilings, are used by coalition forces now. Victory is just west of Baghdad by the airport. I will have to admit that while visiting Al Faw, I did take some leisure time and I swatted golf balls off of a 3rd floor balcony into the surrounding lake.

Most of the palaces in Iraq were built after the Gulf War and after sanctions were placed on Iraq. Saddam took the oil for food money and used it to build mansions all over the country for himself while his people went hungry.

While in Baghdad, I also went to the International Zone, which is also called the Green Zone. The international embassies are all located in that area, as well as Iraqi government facilities. I was never really clear as to what the Green Zone was like until I visited it. I pictured it as an area completely cleared of local Iraqis to keep the diplomats safe. There are actually Iraqi homes and Iraqi citizens living in dumpy homes all throughout the Green Zone. It has the Washington DC feel about it, with nice buildings surrounded by slums. To get back and forth from the Green Zone to Victory, you ride in a rolling safe called a Rhino. It is making its final journeys, though, as MRAPs will soon take its place.

The other palace in the pictures is called the Mother’s Palace. Saddam built this one in Tikrit for his mom, who counted the 365 rooms and decided that she wasn’t going to get stuck cleaning that sucker, so she never lived in it. I visited the mommy palace as I was patrolling with another Police Transition Team (PTT) in the Tikrit area. The police in Tikrit are in pretty decent shape compared to some cities. The station that we visited was the station that handled the Trojan water truck attack that I mentioned a few weeks back. These guys have the incident on video and they couldn’t help but show us the video over and over again. They even have it set to music now, and who knows, they may have it posted on their version of Youtube already. Unlike us, they have no prohibition against videotaping the dead enemy, and they had what was left of the AQI members all laid out in the back of their pickup trucks like big game during hunting season. They were very proud, but they should be. They handled it well, even the choreographed music.

That PTT patrol took place on the 4th of July, and for lunch, we ate chicken kabobs from a local Tikrit vendor. Chicken, freshly made pita bread, humus and an imported Pepsi made for a great July 4th lunch in Iraq. For the record, no stomach issues arose, so we picked the right vendor.

During the PTT patrol, we found a large group of Iraqis and we stopped and released a pigeon. Believe it or not, there was a military reason for that release, and I will have to let you ponder that event using your best cloak and dagger thought process.

It was pointed out to me recently that the US press will talk about the security gains in Iraq, but they don't ever talk about how other areas are progressing. While in Baghdad, we received a briefing that covered every topic from security to governance to economics, and there are improvements in all areas across the board. In a counterinsurgency, the security issue is tremendously important, obviously, or these other activities cannot occur. Interestingly, while everyone here is waiting for the big up-tick in violence that usually occurs during the summer months, it just hasn't happened yet. That is referred to as a "good thing."

What is occurring in large numbers is a reconciliation process. Wanted insurgents are being given the opportunity to turn in weapons or to lead the authorities to weapons caches in exchange for clearing their names and giving them a chance at a fresh start. They are appearing before Iraqi judges and most are having their records expunged in exchange for them renouncing the insurgency. They only get one chance and if they screw up, they get put away for a long time. Thousands of rounds of ammunition have been turned in, and nearly 1,000 insurgents have reconciled in the past few months in the northern regions alone.

Everyone take care.

Looking for bombs

This should be my last catch-up post.

Rain, anyone?

Just a couple of months ago I was reading an article on how global warming was going to turn the center of the US back into a dust bowl comparable to the 1930’s. I’m thinking that this will not be the major problem this summer. On the topic of rain, it actually began to rain here a couple of weeks ago during a sand storm. The result was basically mud globs falling from the sky. The rain part didn’t last very long.

Everyone is probably already aware of the fact that IEDs are the main killer of our troops over here right now, with 80% of US casualties being caused by IED strikes. My guess is that I don’t even have to define what those initials stand for, but just in case, they stand for Improvised Explosive Device. There are now several variants on the IED term. A VBIED is a vehicle borne IED, while a SVBIED is a suicide vehicle borne IED. The difference is that a person is in the SVBIED when it is detonated, while the VBIED is a parked vehicle that is detonated by remote control or timer. There is also the HBIED, or house borne IED, and then there is the SVEST, or suicide vest. Basically, it seems that if anything explodes and belongs to the insurgents, it has the term IED attached. The most deadly to date has been the Iranian provided EFP IED, which is an explosively formed projectile IED. These devices have copper placed inside of them and upon explosion, the copper shoots out towards the target at super high speeds and in a molten state so that it penetrates through armor. The EFP has been a Shiite weapon due to their close ties to Iran. The Sunni up here in the north have fortunately not been able to get their hands on those things yet, although they are trying to make their own version.

While I was eating dinner last week, I was approached by a couple of lieutenants who informed me that they have used the Lessons Learned handbook on route clearance, but that this handbook, being two years old now, was outdated due to the rapidly changing enemy tactics and procedures. They wondered if I would be interested in working with them to update the information in the publication. That happens to be one of the reasons I am over here, so of course I was interested. These lieutenants are combat engineers who work in a route clearance company. Their purpose in life over here is to clear routes of IEDs, so naturally they invited me along to watch them practice their trade.

Needless to say, we have convoys and patrols out on the roadways constantly. These route clearance units are some of the most appreciated units out here. Their priority is to find and clear any IED that is along their assigned route. To clear it is to make it safe before it explodes. If they do not successfully recognize an IED, they will tell you that their second goal is to have that IED explode on them rather than on another US or Iraqi convoy against vehicles that are less protected from the blast than the vehicles they use. This is what these route clearance units do, every day and every night, all over Iraq.

The big vehicle in the attached picture is called a Buffalo. It is a 25 ton monster, and that mechanical arm on top is used to poke around at suspicious objects. The caging that you see is used to defeat rocket propelled grenades, or RPGs. While the route clearance crews have to keep a sharp eye out for IEDs, they also have to keep an eye out for the angry insurgents, who obviously are not happy when these crews remove their IEDs. While the Buffalo is by no means invincible, it can take a pretty big punch and keep on moving.

I jumped in and rode in the Buffalo on a morning route clearance mission that took us on a round trip from Tikrit all the way south to about Samarra and back. We were clearing a well traveled divided highway with 2 lanes in each direction. The route clearance patrol is made up of four vehicles, and they take up both sides of the highway, with 2 vehicles driving against traffic and 2 driving with traffic. The locals understand the drill by now, so when they see the vehicles coming, they pull over and stop. This does tend to tie up traffic, but the other option for the locals is for them to hit more IEDs themselves if the Americans weren’t out clearing their roads.

There are different ways for an insurgent to detonate his IED on a vehicle. One way is through a remote control device, such as a cell phone. They also use pressure plates over their IEDs, or crush wire, which is exactly what it sounds like. If you have never seen an Iraqi roadway (and chances are that you haven’t), they are strewn with trash and discarded tires and anything else you can imagine. All of this stuff makes for great hiding places for IEDs. The crews travel these roadways enough that they are very good at recognizing when something is out of place. It is a technique called change detection. There are blast holes all along the route from previous IED attacks, yet these guys will notice when a hole looks as if it has been re-used. Among all of the trash, they are able to recognize when something looks out of place, and they are great at noticing wires on the roadway. They don’t take chances by passing on something that looks suspicious. Just because a hole was empty yesterday doesn’t mean that it will be empty today, so the patrol is slow and meticulous.

The crew poked and prodded at several objects during our patrol, but we didn’t find anything IED related. A couple of impatient locals tried to weave their way through the patrol at one point, but that isn’t allowed due to the VBIED threat. They kept coming despite the flashing lights and blowing air horns, but the site of a .50 caliber machine gun aiming down at them made them reconsider. For the record, the patrol does move off of the roadway on several occasions to allow the cars to pass. An unfortunate side effect of that nice gesture is that the locals sometimes find the IEDs that the route clearance team may have found. The insurgents will watch for the route clearance patrol, and they will try to arm their munitions to hit the US trucks when they see them coming. They know that the cars have to remain behind the patrols. On occasion, the patrol has pulled off to allow traffic to pass, not knowing that an IED has been armed just up the street. The result is obvious. AQI is losing its popularity right now, so they really don’t like to kill locals unless they are police or army, so these types of incidents don’t go over well for their cause.

While there are still plenty of IEDs being placed, total IEDs found and hit have been reduced significantly up here in the north in the past six months. Route clearance crews are on the job both day and night, and yes, they are even spotting these IEDs at night.

The big Iraqi Army (IA) push up in Mosul is having some pretty decent effects. While the IA arrested over 800 suspects up there, our guys estimate that about 200 were high value targets. Not a bad haul. While many AQI headed west to escape back to Syria over the open desert, the US had some task forces out there waiting for them. Over 300 AQI were killed trying to get to the Syrian border in the past couple of months, and many more were captured. It now appears that some of the AQI who escaped Mosul are heading back in this direction down the Tigris River Valley. Looks like it’s time to call on those Navy Riverine forces to come into action up here. The Marines have actually been using the Navy forces over in Anbar Province in the Euphrates River Valley, so maybe they will let our side borrow them for awhile. Unfortunately, over the past couple of days, AQI has gone to Iraqi Police homes in Mosul and placed RCIEDs (Remote Controlled IEDs) next to their front doors. They have also killed 2 Sheiks up in western Mosul for calling on the locals to help the IA defeat the insurgency. As I have said before, AQI vowed never to be pushed from Mosul, so they aren’t going to leave quietly.

To give you some idea about the reduction in the level of violence in Iraq, there have been fewer enemy attacks in the rest of Iraq combined than there were in the north last week. I am not pointing that out to suggest that things are out of control in the north, but that things are settling down in the rest of the nation. The Sunni are still battling up here the best they can, and Syria is close enough to keep offering sanctuary and support. To put the numbers in persepective, one year ago, there were as many attacks per province per week in the north as there now are in the entire northern region per week. An attack does not mean killings, by the way. It is just enemy action directed against coalition forces or IA or other local nationals. The battle is certainly not over, but the violence is heading in the right direction.

Let me give you a quick Vince Lombardi quote. He once said, “It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever, the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it.”

I write that quote to segway into the fact that Saturday was the Army’s 233rd birthday, and I have to put in a plug for my service. The Army is doing some heavy lifting over here and over in Afghanistan. Our sister services are here as well, but the Army is carrying the bulk of the load. Its forces are taking the heaviest casualties, both in killed and wounded. That isn’t surprising since this is mainly a ground fight. However, as I have mentioned before, there are several other federal agencies that are missing in action, and the Army is filling in where they are absent.

We use the term, “The Army,” but that Army is made up of individual soldiers who get up, suit up, and head out into the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan to perform their duties – every day. It really isn’t possible through email to do justice to the work they are performing or to the situations that they are encountering, but I can tell you that they are definitely “doing” and they are “achieving” – every day. They aren’t running from AQI, or Ansar al-Sunnah, or al-Mahdi, they are running after them. It is a pretty amazing feeling to link up with a platoon of soldiers, gather in a circle and unashamedly say a prayer, then load up and go search for bad guys. I am honored to be having the opportunity to work with these soldiers who are, in their words, just doing their jobs. I can tell you that you can be proud of the soldiers in your Army as it turns 233.

A disappointing update on the soccer tournament up in Kirkuk. So far, the Iraqis are up 2 games to 0, after whipping the US 6-1 and 4-1. Nobody listens to the lesson’s learned guy, but I’m telling you, football; play them in football. On second thought, I’ve watched the Army football team in recent years, so maybe that isn’t such a smart idea, either. In all seriousness, these games are attracting hundreds of people from the community. They are really enjoying it.

Everyone stay dry, and take care.

Salah Ad Din

I am slowly cathcing up to myself. I originally sent this in early June.

Hello everyone,

For my latest travels, I didn’t go all that far, but I did switch gears from the Police Transition Teams to a Military Transition Team, or MiTT. I spent some time with one of our MiTT teams just a little south of Tikrit in Salah Ah Din Province. The MiTT is housed at a little outpost called Forward Operating Base (FOB) Dagger, which sits on a bluff overlooking the Tigris River. To get to Dagger from Speicher, there was no air travel option this time. We went by ground convoy, which can be a little more interesting with the constant IED threat. The route from here to there is covered heavily with Sons of Iraq (SoI) and Iraqi Police (IP) check points, so the IED implanters are having a tougher time getting too many IEDs buried out there right now.

Dagger used to be a US FOB, but it was turned back over to the Iraqi Army (IA) a couple of years ago. In the one attached picture, you can see the old palace, which is now the headquarters for the 4th Iraqi Army Division, or 4IA.

One of the initial differences between being with a PTT and being with a MiTT is that there is a much greater level of trust between our soldiers and the Iraqi Army than between our guys and the Iraqi Police. The police units are much more infiltrated by insurgents than are the army units. When in an IP station, none of the US soldiers go anywhere without several other soldiers. On Dagger, it is common for our MiTT members to walk over to the IA headquarters by themselves without a problem.

When I arrived at Dagger, the MiTT Operations advisor showed me around camp. The Iraqis operate quite a bit differently than we do. The operations officer and I walked over to the Iraqi motor pool and we looked at a small privately owned car that had its front end blown off. The car belongs to the Iraqi Division Engineer, a full-bird Colonel. The Colonel was ordered by his commanding general to drive down the oil pipeline and check for saboteurs. In our army, the engineer would normally not be the first person chosen to go hunting for saboteurs, but more importantly, our guys wouldn’t jump in the old family car to complete that task. Lucky for the Colonel, he lived through the IED blast. The family, however, will be needing to look for other transportation.

The 4IA Division is a very large Iraqi division, but it is not a mobile unit. The 4IA soldiers are tied to an infrastructure protection mission, which keeps them in checkpoints along the oil pipeline that crosses Salah Ah Din, and it keeps them guarding power lines and highways. The fact that the division engineer takes the family car on missions with him probably makes it obvious that, unlike their sister divisions up in Ninewa Province who are engaged in the big AQI fight right now, these guys don’t move around a lot. The good news is that they are good at protecting the infrastructure, which is good for growing the economy, which is good for keeping citizens from joining the insurgency.

The 4IA leadership is fairly diverse, which should be a good lesson for other sectors of Iraqi society to emulate. The Commanding General (CG) is a Turkoman, his assistant is a Shiite, his Chief of Staff is a Sunni, and his Operations Officer is a Kurd. The CG tries hard to squash corruption in his forces, so he rotates his forces around fairly frequently. He thinks that if a unit is in one location too long, those with tendencies to start extorting money from the locals will start to do just that. By rotating his forces, he has actually run a pretty clean ship. If the 4IA was actually engaged in a lot of combat actions, it might not be such a good idea to shift people around like this, but these guys are essentially moving from one check point situation to another.

When I was getting the grand tour of Dagger, the MiTT Operations Officer and I walked over to the palace to look at the IA Tactical Operations Center, or TOC. A US Division TOC is a busy place. Representatives from each staff section are on duty 24 hours per day in our TOC. When we walked into the IA TOC, there was one Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) sitting behind the phones, sound asleep. We startled him, of course, and he jumped up, buttoned his shirt and put his shoes on. We said our hellos and moved on so that he could get back to sleep.

The next morning, we attended a battle update brief at the IA TOC, and it was full, although every one of the staff officers had his cell phone ring at some point during the briefing. After the briefing, the IA Operations Officer (called a G3), invited us into his office for Chai tea (of course). He had a lot on his mind and he wanted to share some of his thoughts, most of it dealing with the tactical situation with his forces. During our visit, the Deputy Commanding General (DCG) came into the office and he ordered another round of Chai tea for everyone. I am getting my share of Chai tea, which is OK because it is good stuff.

The DCG wanted to talk about my job and the Center for Army Lessons Learned. We just helped the Iraqis start their own lessons learned center a few months back, so he wanted to see if the Iraqi center was operating like ours. He thinks that his center has too many civilians working in it, so he is not sure how much they will know about military operations. The DCG had a pretty good grasp on the English language and he was very friendly and interesting to talk to. It shouldn’t be surprising, but they are just as interested in our world as we are in theirs, so we talked quite a bit about the US.

Our MiTT team feels like they are making slow but steady progress with the Iraqi Army. The Iraqis will never operate like we do, so the MiTT members have learned to not get frustrated by the Iraqi system. The Iraqi Army tends to be further ahead in their core competencies than the Iraqi Police, but again, they come from a very different culture than we do. Keeping in mind that they are engaged in a war, the schedule under which they operate is 10 days on, 10 days off for every soldier. Each soldier literally only works half a year under this schedule. This schedule includes the commanders and staff, so you can see the challenges in conducting a war this way. The Iraqis don’t understand the concept of planning to the extent that we plan. They tend to simply get up and go without really thinking things through too much, such as where they are getting their fuel or water. The MiTT teams used to cover all of this for them, but now they are making the Iraqis think through these issues or live with the consequences if they forget to include these issues in their “plan.” There is one request that the Iraqis submit any time they actually do plan, and that request is for Apache air support. I had to put that plug in for my old aircraft. Conducting a raid? They want Apaches; manning a checkpoint? How about some Apaches. They love our Apaches, and the MiTT members say that they actually fight harder when Apaches are providing cover for them. That shouldn’t be all that surprising considering the fact that our guys like the air cover as well.

I understand that this is war, but you have to find humor where you can. This probably falls into the category of pathetic humor, but you’ll get my point as you read about a recent event here.

The SoI at a checkpoint just south of Dagger stopped a water truck and asked to look into the tank, just as they are supposed to do. The driver reached down and offered the SoI a handful of money to let him drive through without a search. The SoI called for Iraqi Police backup for a suspicious truck. He then informed the driver that he was going to search the vehicle. As the SoI member walked to the back of the truck, the driver jumped from the cab, yelled something, and then blew himself up with the suicide vest that he was wearing. As I understand the purpose of a suicide vest, called a SVEST, it is supposed to be used to kill a lot of other people as well. Mass casualty vest is probably a more accurate term. Well, this poor AQI member took the “suicide” term literally, so he blew himself up with no one standing anywhere near him. One enemy gone. After this stunt, an AQI member jumped out of a hole on the top of the tanker portion of the truck, jumped over the side, yelled something, and then blew himself up as well. Two enemy down. As #2 blew himself up, he blew the side of the tanker open, exposing seven of his best AQI buddies to the SoI and Iraqi Police. The seven remaining AQI members started firing at the SoI and IP, but the good guys took out all seven without any casualties of their own. A US convoy was rolling past and was prepared to assist, but they didn’t have to. The SoI and IP performed very well with no US intervention at all. I hope you can see the weird humor in the hapless AQI actions at this checkpoint, but if you can’t, sorry.

The good news is the way that the SoI and IP performed. They didn’t call for US help, and it is a huge deal that the SoI member turned down the bribe. The insurgents often get around through bribery and threats, and this SoI member put his life on the line and became a real hero. No doubt these AQI members intended to kill a lot of people.

Over to our east in Kirkuk, the situation has stabilized to the point that one of our brigades is hosting a series of 5 soccer tournaments against local Iraqi teams. Soccer is fine, but when you hear that they are hosting football tournaments, then you will know that we have really crossed the Rubicon.

Our CG, who does not take 10 days off for every 10 days worked, pointed out to the Division that things are going well enough right now that it makes him nervous. He obviously doesn’t want complacency during the summer months when activity usually gets a little heavier. With the Iraqi election registration about to begin, I imagine that all of the insurgent groups will try to step it up a little bit in the coming weeks. We will just have to see how it goes.

The second attached picture is obviously me after a patrol, and the colorful picture is of the Tigris River running past FOB Dagger. It actually looks pretty nice down there.

Baquba

This is from early June.

Hello everyone,

I have spent several days at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Warhorse, which is in the city of Baquba. Baquba is located northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province. Diyala is one of those provinces in the north that is still somewhat volatile. Having said that, just about 18 months ago, Diyala was more than just volatile – it was a massive killing field. As the US surge began, Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) began heading north out of Baghdad. As they moved north, they set up slaughter houses all throughout Diyala. Diyala is a mixed Shiite/Sunni province, and it is split with about 50% of each sect living there. Baquba is the largest city in the province, and it is also split evenly between Shia and Sunni. AQI was obviously targeting Shiite victims, and the Shiites began to go after Sunnis in return. Over 100 people per week were being murdered in Diyala during parts of 2006 and 2007.

As the US forces moved into Diyala 15 months ago, AQI began moving further north. Diyala was one of those provinces where the Sons of Iraq (SoI) citizen groups began to stand up, which was a large reason that AQI left the area. The SoI in Diyala were mainly Sunni at the time, and this lack of support by their own sect made it tough for AQI to stick around. They still have a small presence in Diyala, but they haven’t been able to create too much trouble there. They are hard at work trying to recruit female suicide vest wearers, and they have managed to find a couple of “volunteers” for that task in the past couple of months.

The main Shiite criminal elements in Diyala are the al-Mahdi army militants. Sadr city sits on the northeast edge of Baghdad, so the al-Mahdi thugs don’t have all that far to go to get up to Diyala.

During my trip to Baquba, I spent time with another Police Transition Team (PTT). This one was the 202nd Military Police (MP) Company out of Ft. Eustis, Virginia. They are responsible for training all of the Iraqi Police (IP) in Diyala province with the exception of a few stations in the northeast tip of Diyala. They are a busy group of MPs.

I went with one of the PTT squads as they patrolled Baquba, which included a visit with a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) station and a regular police sub-station. QRF police are a little better trained and equipped than are the police at the regular stations. Unlike many of the regular IP stations, this station had functioning staff officers in place, such as an armorer, a training officer, a supply officer, etc. The chief was an ex-army officer, so he runs a tight ship as far as discipline. He even brought one of his police officers in to chew him out in front of us for not being in proper uniform. I didn’t understand a word the chief was saying, but it was clear that this officer was getting a thorough tongue lashing.

Like the chief in Mosul who I met, this chief had a decent sense of humor as well. Apparently one of the most important pieces of equipment to these police chiefs is their TV set and satellite TV hookup. When we went into this chief’s office (Chief Hussein), he was watching the Blue Collar Comedy show – the one with Larry the Cable Guy and his buddies. The chief thought that I was a wimp for not smoking his cigarettes with him. I did the chai tea and I even ate a hometown Baquba apple, but I wouldn’t go for the cigarette. So I guess I’m a wimp, or whatever the corresponding trait is in Arabic.

The big internal challenge that the PTT teams face is the lack of qualified translators. It was painful to listen to the translator struggle with his English and then try to communicate to the IP in Arabic. Some of these chiefs understand English better than some of the translators, and the PTT members say that the chiefs will have to correct the translators on occasion. The best translators are those who are US citizens and who have returned to work for the US here. Meanwhile, these translators who are recruited locally have to be watched carefully. One of them stood there on Warhorse and called in rocket fire on the base using his cell phone. The dope is lucky that he didn’t get hit himself, but he is now in US custody.

Although Diyala province is one of the more active northern provinces, I need to put that in perspective by pointing out that the enemy activity is down to a few of contacts per day between them and IP or US forces in that province. The situation is similar to Mosul in that the heavy presence of police and army checkpoints has severely limited the ability of the insurgents to plant IEDs or to move freely around the cities, so they have resorted to suicide vests and cars packed with explosives, although there haven’t been all that many instances of those types of explosives recently. A suicide bomber tried to drive his car into an IP station a couple of weeks ago, but with the better protection that the police have put in place for their stations, the driver had to blow himself up outside of the barriers. Unfortunately, he did manage to kill one IP who was outside at the time. One of the police officers showed me a plaque in the QRF station that listed names of 169 police officers from that station alone. These were all of the officers who have been killed by terrorist activity since 2003 from just that station. The station has 475 officers right now, so you can see that they are literally making sacrifices by holding down these jobs. Most of those police deaths occurred in the 2005-2006 time period.

The calming of Diyala has been accomplished in large part due to a good US operation combined with a very determined Iraqi police commander at the provincial level. The large US Brigade in Diyala is departing next month as part of the surge drawdown, leaving a smaller US presence in the province. The commander of this US Brigade had two years to prepare for his deployment, so he did some smart training during that time period. He put hundreds of his soldiers through intensive Arab language training, so that proved valuable with the lack of translators. He had his junior leaders conduct ride-alongs with the police in the Ft. Lewis, Washington, area to get a feel for how to get information from the public and how to earn their trust. COL Lehr and his staff also met regularly with mayors and city managers back home to learn the basics of running cities and towns so that they would be better informed on how to teach the Iraqis the basics of city management.

The US Commander also regularly used the carrot and stick approach with the communities in Diyala. Despite the new existence of elected government officials in the cities and towns, the Sheiks still have great influence all around Iraq. Anytime attacks against US forces or civilians in an area would begin to rise, COL Lehr would cut off money for the local projects or electric power to the towns in that area. He would also conduct what is called “terrain denial fire” in areas that have been hot with attacks on US forces. He said that before long, the local Sheiks would come in and tell him that they have put a stop to the attacks and they would ask him to please turn on the power and resources again. The higher levels of security have given the people a chance to get businesses running again and the police have had a chance to become a little more proactive rather than strictly reactive. As business has picked up, people are making money off of the economy rather than by participating in the insurgency.

Although Diyala has a governor, the man who is making a difference in the province is named General Ganum. He is the head of law enforcement in the province. He tends to have a strong concern for the people and they know it. There are a couple of towns in Diyala that went without power for a long time, and the Iraqi officials in Diyala kept promising that power would be in place by certain dates. GEN Ganum got fed up with the false promises, so he arrested the top three officials who were responsible for the power projects in Diyala. He told them that as soon as power was being provided to the towns, he would release them from jail. Electric power was running to these towns in no time, and GEN Ganum even paid these arrestees for the work that was finally completed. I’m not sure that this technique would go over so well in the US, but hey, this isn’t the US.

During a bridge opening ceremony, while others were applauding the bridge that the US engineers constructed over the Diyala River, GEN Ganum was looking at the water level of the river. He noticed how high the water was flowing, and he ordered that irrigation equipment be brought in to route a good portion of the water to the farmers in Diyala, who have been suffering through a drought. He scored huge points with the citizens, which is pretty important in a counter-insurgency fight. On top of this, GEN Ganum is relentless in his push to get the captured insurgents convicted of their crimes. He is another ex-Saddam era military officer.

As far as the Iraqi operation in Mosul, it is moving along nicely. Iraqi army commanders have been asking what they should do as AQI members approach them and ask to surrender. They have never seen anything like this (except when their army was surrendering to us), so they weren’t sure how to handle this. The Iraqi army is literally conducting door-to-door house searches in Mosul to confiscate weapons and evidence of insurgent supporters. Their intelligence has been pretty good as far as identifying the insurgents up there. They have been finding weapons dumped in trash bins, and they are uncovering massive weapons caches. One cache contained over 1800 rocket propelled grenades, which will be 1800 grenades not fired at our guys. AQI types seem to be laying low for awhile until they can figure out how serious the Iraqi army is. The Iraqi general in Mosul is realistic in that he understands that AQI will try to return as soon as the current operation ends, but they have lost a lot of arms and ammunition (and supporters) to the operation so far.

The attached pictures are from Baquba. One is just a traffic circle in town. The other one is obviously a couple of Baqubian kids – future allies or future terrorists? We didn’t stop to give them candy, so they were probably leaning towards terrorist that day.
Take care