Posted on 05/01/2004 11:00:56 AM PDT by Valin
Unconventional Combat by Williamson Murray and Robert Scales, Jr.
Battle Plan Under Fire homepage
The tip came late Monday evening on July 21, 2003. The young sergeant, an intelligence specialist with the 101st Airborne Division, had spent the day interviewing a string of Iraqis. They had filtered into his command post with bits and pieces of information, most of little consequence. This particular Iraqi, however, seemed different and triggered the sergeant's training and instincts. As the Iraqi's eyes flicked nervously about the room, he whispered that he knew where Saddam's sons were hiding—in plain sight at a distant cousin's house right in the middle of Mosul. The sergeant believed him.
His report set in motion an assault on the building the next day. A company's worth of soldiers surrounded the dwelling at 10 a.m. An Iraqi interpreter, using a bullhorn, ordered the inhabitants to come out. After ten minutes and no response, a small team from Task Force 20, part of the army's elite counterterrorist organization, knocked and entered cautiously. They searched the first floor and found it empty. As they inched up to the second floor, a fusillade of AK-47 fire erupted, and three soldiers fell wounded.
The commander on the scene was Brigadier General Frank Helmick. Like his boss, Major General David Petraeus, commander of the 101st, he was a lean, athletic infantryman, famous even within the airborne community for his stamina as a runner. On Helmick's orders, the soldiers surrounding the building initiated a "shoot-pause-enter" operation. They sought to escalate the level of violence directed at the inhabitants of the second floor until they either surrendered or died. Helmick began with small arms, followed by Mark 19 automatic grenade launcher and machine gun fire. The fusillade was directed into the structure with great precision to avoid hurting Iraqi citizens huddling for cover next door.
An explosive strike followed in the form of AT-4 antitank rockets, along with machine gun and rocket fire from Kiowa helicopters. At noon, another attempt to enter was met with a return volley. The air force offered the finality of a few JDAMs [Joint Direct Attack Munitions], but Helmick refused, preferring to capture the brothers alive if possible. Instead, he ordered ten TOW [Tube-launched Optically-tracked Wire-guided missile] antitank missiles to be fired into the structure. When the noise of that attack subsided, only one Iraqi remained alive to return fire, and he was dispatched with ease. Qusay, Uday, a bodyguard, and Qusay's son were taken from the building, dead.
(Excerpt) Read more at pbs.org ...
I love a story with a good, happy ending!
Misappropriators, perhaps.
Liberators, sometimes.
Pirates, occasionally.
But thieves? I deny the allegation and confound the alligator.
MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune
From the opening scenes, the Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigade figures prominently in the new NOVA TV special "Battle Plan Under Fire" tonight on Channel 9.
The documentary features extensive coverage of the Army's first Stryker brigade operating in Mosul and the second Stryker brigade training at Fort Lewis.
The joint production of NOVA and The New York Times examines the technology-driven changes in the U.S. military and their effectiveness in Afghanistan and Iraq - the "chat room war," as one expert calls it.
The producers' point: Precision-guided bombs and satellite communications toppled the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, but the high-tech U.S. arsenal has not proved as decisive in the guerrilla war that has taken hold in Iraq.
"Technology may win battles, but can it win the war?" the producers ask.
The Stryker brigades are highlighted as a leading example of the U.S. military's drive for greater speed, technological superiority and precision weapons.
Brigade commander Col. Mike Rounds and the brigade intelligence officer, Maj. Yvette Hopkins, and the cameras follow Stryker infantrymen on a night-time raid and to the scene of a roadside bombing that just missed their convoy.
In the convoy scene, agitated Stryker soldiers are shown detaining a motorist and yelling at him for information about the bombing, although it's not clear he was involved. In the raid, nervous women and children are shown trying to explain to the soldiers that the man they're after hasn't been there for months.
There are shots of the video screen on the vehicle's remote weapons station, where the gunner can see targets day and night, and of the vehicle's on-board navigation and communication networks.
Rounds is interviewed in the brigade's tactical operations center in Mosul, with the digital maps and communications systems in the background that provide Stryker soldiers with almost instant access to the latest conditions in the area where they're operating.
The show also documents the new drive for technology to help U.S. troops cope with conditions like the current ones in Iraq: more sensors, shatter-resistant glass, lightweight armor and robotics to clear mines, for instance.
But as former Iraqi Republican Guard chief brigadier Mohammed al Askrray put it, it remains for the U.S. forces to figure out how to use their technological advantage to combat the ideas that motivate Iraqis to fight.
"In such cases where a person is willing to blow himself up, that has to do with an idea, and you cannot really stop it with technology," he said. "You have to fight him with his own weapon, fight ideas with ideas."
Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921
mike.gilbert@mail.tribnet.com
I only steal from leftists. Does that count?
Thanks for calling it to my attention, I just set the Tivo to record it. Looks very interesting.
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