Trigger-Happy US Troops 'Will Keep Us In Iraq For Years'

British defence chiefs have warned United States military commanders in Iraq to change their rules for opening fire or face becoming bogged down in a terrorist war for a decade or more.

The Telegraph has learnt that the warning was issued last month in response to a series of incidents that led to the deaths of Iraqi civilians, mainly at checkpoints, after soldiers opened fire in the mistaken belief that they were being attacked by suicide bombers.

The warning is said to have taken the form of advice from senior officers who accompanied Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the General Staff, on a recent trip to southern Iraq and Baghdad to visit British troops.

A conversation took place between officers on the differences between British and American rules of engagement, during which British commanders expressed their concerns over the use of US tactics.

They attempted to explain that in their experience of post-war counter-insurgency operations it paid to adopt a low-key and less aggressive stance.

American officers were told that when the British Army had made mistakes, such as in Londonderry in Northern Ireland in 1972 when troops shot dead 13 civilians during a civil rights march, the political and military consequences had been disastrous.

In the past month alone in Iraq there have been more than 130 car bombings and 67 suicide attacks that have killed more than 400 people. The attacks have led to renewed fears among coalition officials that American and Iraqi forces are losing the fight against the insurgency.

According to senior British officers, US military operations are typified by "force protection" - the protection of troops at all costs - that allows American troops to open fire, using whatever means available, if they believe that their lives are under threat.

By contrast, the British military has a graduated response to a threat and its rules of engagement are based on the principle of minimum force. Troops also have to justify their actions in post-operation reports that are reviewed by the Royal Military Police, and any discrepancy can lead to charges including murder.

A British officer said that some of the tactics employed by American forces would not be approved by British commanders.

The officer said: "US troops have the attitude of shoot first and ask questions later. They simply won't take any risk.

"It has been explained to US commanders that we made mistakes in Northern Ireland, namely Bloody Sunday, and paid the price.

"I explained that their tactics were alienating the civil population and could lengthen the insurgency by a decade. Unfortunately, when we ex-plained our rules of engagement which are based around the principle of minimum force, the US troops just laughed."

Until the Black Watch moved north, the British military had been operating exclusively in southern Iraq, where the violence has never matched the mayhem in the American-occupied sector around Baghdad. The relative calm allowed the British to adopt a less bristling posture on patrol, to wear their soft regimental berets instead of Kevlar helmets and keep their weapons lowered rather than peer at Iraqis through gun sights.

It also gave rise to a certain smugness among British officers and media, which cast the contrast as one between the "heavy-handed" American approach and the less hostile tactics of "the lads." There were jokes over beers in Basra that, to an American, the concept of winning Iraqi hearts and minds meant one bullet to the heart, one to the head. The British media even coined a phrase to describe the British style: "softly, softly."

The Black Watch tried to bring that culture north with them when they merged operations with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit based south of Baghdad in a deployment that ended Saturday.

The British began the assignment patrolling in their berets. They handed out leaflets in Arabic explaining they were a "Scottish" regiment in case Iraqis mistook them for Americans, and proclaimed they had only come to help build a safe and free Iraq.

Insurgents responded with two suicide car bombings and a roadside bomb in the first week of operations, killing four British soldiers and gravely injuring two.

The shooting of the Iraqi driver at the checkpoint occurred just an hour after the second car bomb had blown the legs off two of the Black Watch gunner's colleagues.

"The threat here is at the other end of the spectrum from what we faced in Basra," said Black Watch Capt. Stuart MacAulay, sitting on the edge of a bunker at Camp Dogwood with a map of the area spread in front of him.

"After the suicide bombings against us, I went to an American soldier I know here and put my hands up. I said, 'I confess, I was one of those who sat around in Basra criticizing your approach.'

"And I'm embarrassed that I criticized American tactics without ever being here and without having met them."

He was hardly alone. The British self-perception of superiority to the Americans took hold in the first days of occupation, feeding on outrage over the handful of British deaths by U.S. friendly fire during the March 2003 invasion.

The feisty British media did the rest, turning modest differences in style into a clash of military cultures.

Critics characterized American troops as testosterone- fueled products of a congenitally xenophobic culture, unable or unwilling to absorb the complexities of the country they had invaded.

The British, in contrast, were portrayed as scarred veterans of an imperial history that demonstrated the futility of trying to suppress national uprisings. In particular, the 30-year war against the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland had taught them that paramilitary groups couldn't be crushed by force alone.

In Iraq, the words "Northern Ireland" became code for the British conviction that the American approach was doomed to fail.

American commanders grew increasingly resentful of suggestions that Iraq could be sorted out if only the Yanks would behave more like the Brits.

"The one thing I quickly learned during my time working with the Americans is that you don't mention Northern Ireland," said British Lt. Col. Ben Bathurst, who worked in strategic planning under U.S. command at coalition headquarters in Baghdad and has seen the cultural divide from the other perspective. "It has very little relevance in Iraq, and I found that any American you mentioned it to immediately switched off.

"The British media has promulgated a perception that is not subscribed to by any thinking person in the military. 'Softly, softly' is not even a phrase we use in the military. It's a media term."

Not that the media image lacks basis. Ride in a British patrol through the south and you'll see Iraqi civilian cars passing the military vehicles at high speeds, the drivers sometimes waving, sometimes glaring or leaning impatiently on the horn.

Elsewhere in Iraq, most drivers have long since learned to pull way over to allow an American convoy to pass. Those who don't yield quickly are treated to a burst of warning gunfire or have what Marines call a "flash-bang" stun grenade tossed at their vehicle.

But all the armchair-general chatter about the superior British approach is a gross oversimplification, U.S. commanders say.

"It only comes up because the media and the outside world think we're failing here, so they are all looking for another solution," said Col. Ron Johnson, who commands the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, under which the Black Watch fought.

"But there's no British solution or French solution or American solution. Iraq is not Malaysia or Northern Ireland or Vietnam. It's like a cookbook: You mix different ingredients to get your dish."

To American soldiers here, the more laconic British style and the boasting that goes with it are founded on nothing more than the good fortune of being based in southern Iraq, populated by Shiite Muslims who hated Saddam Hussein.

Come to the Sunni Triangle, U.S. troops would tell their British counterparts with an edge in their voices, and you'll see the real Iraq.

In October, the British did, and found themselves on a steep learning curve.

"For the IRA, the biggest part of the plan was the escape route after they attacked us," said Cpl. Jay Kinge, a British paratrooper who served in Northern Ireland and joined Marines on 11 joint patrols south of Baghdad in November. "The difference between the insurgents here and the IRA is that these guys are willing to die to hit us."

See Link

My letter to the Telegraph editors, that I just emailed:

Dear Editors:

Regarding Sean Rayment's article "Trigger-happy US troops 'will keep us in Iraq for years" (15/05/2005), may I inquire as to how many times you plan to recycle this particular article? I'm almost certain I've read nearly identical articles in the Telegraph several times, always citing unnamed officers.

Perhaps you'd be interested in this Los Angeles Times article about the brief time some British troops spent outside their Basra comfort zone several months ago. Interestingly, this article actually contains quotes from named officers.

http://lists.stir.ac.uk/pipermail/media-watch/2004-December/001732.html

It seems your British troops brought their rules of engagement north, were promptly hit by car bombs and roadside bombs and just as promptly proceeded to fire on cars approaching checkpoints, killing innocent people. Not so easy, is it, boys?

As one of the British soldiers, Black Watch Capt. Stuart MacAulay, said:

"After the suicide bombings against us, I went to an American soldier I know
here and put my hands up. I said, 'I confess, I was one of those who sat
around in Basra criticizing your approach.'

"And I'm embarrassed that I criticized American tactics without ever being
here and without having met them."

Lesson learned, at least by those on the ground who actually know what they're talking about.

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