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.

Bucca

Hello everyone,

I am back at Speicher for a little while after spending a couple of weeks down in the southern reaches of Iraq. Although the trip to and from Bucca was somewhat grueling, it was nothing compared to getting back in time to watch the Ohio State football team embarrass itself on national TV once again. I suppose that this is as good a year as any to miss the opportunity to watch much football. As for that Army football team, when the head coach has to apologize to the Army for the performance of his team, you know something isn’t right over on the Hudson River.

I spent the past couple of weeks presiding over a Multi-National Force Release Committee (MNFRC) down at a place called Camp Bucca. Bucca is a Theater Internment Facility (TIF). It currently houses about 17,000 guests, and that number is decreasing as the MNFRC boards do their work. Bucca is located about 800 meters north of the Kuwait border and it is south of Basra.

The purpose of the MNFRC boards is to review the case file for each detainee to determine which of the detainees no longer present a security threat to the multi-national forces in Iraq or to the Iraqi government or citizens. Each detainee, no matter what their reason for being in the TIF, is given a hearing at a MNFRC board once every six months. Each board consists of three US military representatives (senior NCOs and officers) who review the files on one day and hold a hearing with the detainee present the next day.

Note that the people being held at Bucca are called “detainees” and not Prisoners of War. By international law and Geneva Convention statutes, they are unlawful combatants if they were fighting against coalition or Iraqi forces. In plain language, to be lawful combatants under the Geneva Convention standards, a person must be fighting while in a distinguishable uniform, he must have a command structure, he must carry his weapons openly, and he can’t hide among the civilian population. The actual verbiage of the Convention is a little more official sounding, but that is the gist of it.

Despite their unlawful status, the US treats the detainees like no other nation would consider treating captured enemy personnel. The commander of the TIF operation at Bucca makes it clear that the press has an open door to visit the facility any time they choose. He says that there is nothing that the US will hide down there. A few weeks ago, a western reporter did visit Bucca, and he asked to speak to Iraqi families who were visiting. As you can imagine with a “Western reporter,” this guy was looking for an Abu Graib moment. He interviewed 20 different sets of families after they conducted visitation with their relatives in the TIF. Of the 20 families, none told him that their loved ones were suffering any mistreatment or abuse. Many told him that they were grateful for the educational opportunities being offered, and one mother, who has 2 sons in the TIF, told the reporter that this is the first time in her sons’ lives that they were “making something” of themselves by taking advantage of the educational offerings in Bucca. She said that she actually hopes they finish their education before they are released. Naturally, the reporter reported none of this and instead wrote a story of how bad these families missed their loved ones (I’m sure that they do). By the way, the US pays the families mileage for traveling to see their kin at Bucca. While at the facility, they are fed a meal and the kids are given gifts.

While in the TIF, the detainees each have the opportunity to take a wide variety of educational and vocational courses. It probably won’t surprise anyone to learn that many of these detainees cannot read, so they are taught to read and perform math, among many other courses. They are also offered an Islamic studies course, and no, it is not the Saudi extremist version. Many of the detainees are here because they were told that Islam demands that they commit certain acts against the infidel. Not being able to read, they don’t know any different. The Islamic studies courses are taught by Iraqi clerics who provide a very different take on Islam than what so many of the detainees were taught. The detainees are served 3 full meals each day, and they receive medical and dental treatment at the same facility and by the same medical personnel that the US forces use at Bucca. Many of these Iraqis see a dentist for the first time in their lives at Bucca. Many have surgeries that they would have never have been able to receive in their hometowns. The conduct of the US forces towards the detainees at Bucca is designed to teach the detainees that the lessons they have been taught about the evil Americans were probably incorrect lessons. Obviously, no one wants to be stuck behind high walls and concertina wire for several years, but my point is, these detainees, most of whom have engaged in some type of activity designed to hurt or kill US or Iraqi forces, are given first class treatment regardless of what they were accused of doing to earn a spot in the TIF.

As for the board itself, it was interesting duty. To determine whether a person should be recommended for release or not, we were not simply supposed to focus on the charges against the detainee. We were not conducting a criminal trial to determine guilt or innocence for past conduct. We were conducting hearings to determine who we believed could be released with a high expectation that they would no longer commit negative acts against us. (The recidivism rate after several years of MNFRC boards, by the way, is only .7% - that is “point 7 percent”). One of the factors that we had to take into account is the detainee’s willingness to admit that what they did was wrong. Unfortunately, none of these guys admit that they did anything in the first place. They can be caught on tape laying an IED or shooting at US forces, or they can be shot while engaged in a fire fight, or they can have a hand blown off while emplacing an IED, but that doesn’t matter. In their version, they were just walking down the street heading towards the mosque to pray when out of nowhere shots rang out and here they are. How about the explosive residue on your hands? (What is an explosive?) How about the anti-aircraft weapon buried in your back yard? (Those damn neighbors probably snuck it there one night). How about the 152 millimeter field artillery round sitting on your dining room table with wires hanging out of it? (You know, I never even noticed that). Like I said, it was interesting. There were certainly people in the TIF who were swept up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. These brave AQI/ISI souls and their Jaysh al-Mahdi counterparts do fight amongst civilians, so oftentimes these civilians get hurt or they get detained. The MNFRC boards are a way to help sort this out.

On the other hand, we came face to face with some hard core killers as well. Some came in with their horns clearly visible, and some were very sophisticated. There is a way to ask the right question in the right way to shine the light on what is really inside a person. You have all heard the stories of the medieval brutality that some of these people inflict on others, and when a person is capable of doing something like that to other people, that piece of them comes out. No, you don’t have to waste time wondering how many of these types are recommended for release.

The leaders of the insurgent groups are generally intelligent people. Unfortunately, there were a high number of high school teachers and college professors among them. They have easy access to young people and they use this access to recruit for the insurgency. These are the people who would come in and explain that an insurgent is a dumb and poor young person who can be easily manipulated to carry out senseless acts of violence against others and, as educated and respected community members, they certainly wouldn’t fit the profile of an insurgent. At that point, I would agree that they did not fit the profile of an insurgent fighter, but then I would ask them to do the board the favor of describing the people who recruit these poor, easily manipulated young people. Not one of those who we thought were the recruiters and leaders would go down that road. None of them would take the chance of describing themselves to us. That was telling in and of itself. If a detainee is recommended for release, the US Brigade Combat Team in the area to which they would be released has the opportunity to object to that release based on their knowledge of the person. The obvious goal is not to release the real bad guys or the leaders who can easily assemble another group of fighters.

I know that everyone has been hearing that Iraq is calling for a specific date for the US to leave Iraq. Publicly, that is a true statement, but also publicly, and not widely reported, is the real story that Prime Minister Maliki is looking for a pull out date based on conditions. Immediately after Maliki told his party faithful last month that he is demanding that the US be completely out of Iraq by 2011, one of his aides came over to a reporter and said the following: “The agreement (with the US) will be met with significant discomfort, so Iraqi officials will resort to using the dates mentioned in the agreement to sell it to the public, even though they might be used in a guidance way. If you ask the Prime Minister, ‘What happens if the situation on the ground changes before 2011?’, then he would obviously say that the dates might need to change.” Keep in mind that it is election season over here, too.

I didn’t get many pictures this trip. The aircraft you see is the Marine Osprey touching down at Bucca. We hooked up with the Marines over in Fallujah and rode to Bucca in that thing. It has a unique feel to it as it tries to figure out if it is a plane or helicopter. I know people have heard that things are looking up over in the Marine sector in Anbar Province, so you may be wondering if I can confirm this. I was only over there a couple of days, but I can tell you that I did meet two Marines who could both read AND write, and I met a third who could speak in complete sentences, so yes, I would say that things are looking up in Anbar. The second picture is from the outside of the TIF looking in. That is just a small portion of the TIF as the complex can hold over 20,000 detainees if needed.

Everyone take care and enjoy the rest of your September.

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.