Maj. John Braun patrols the skies over Langley Air Force Base, Va., on July 1 during a combat air patrol mission. Braun is an F-15 Eagle pilot with the 94th Fighter Squadron. (Tech. Sgt. Ben Bloker / U.S. Air Force)
Iraq Update
This article was sent by Maj Gen Ben Harrison (ret), as many of you know Gen Harrison was 3rd Bde commander during battle of Ripcord and is active in Ripcord Association. Hello folks-- Dan McGowan sent this quite different report from a cameraman just returned from a visit to Iraq. I think you will appreciate this different perspective.
Jpdgoc writes :
Hello to all, I have returned from my 27 day trip to Iraq. It was a good trip but I can tell you that I think I have had enough of that place. We shot a lot of good stuff but the show itself won't be on for a year or more. I will tell you about some interesting things I saw.
I will say that things seem to be much better than they appear in the news reports. I was there during the big increase in violence but I can tell you that it doesn't seem to be having much affect on the people of Iraq and certainly not on the US troops.. The general feeling is that what we are seeing is the dying breaths of an insurgency. The insurgents no longer shoot at the soldiers. Most of the guys we are with haven't made contact with enemy in weeks. All they talk about is that they wish these guys would show their faces so that they can have a fair fight. The only weapon that they have left is the car bomb. Most of the big roads used to be littered with bombs but those are way down because the Iraqis are now doing the patrolling so the bad guys are now down to car bombs that they can make while in hiding. I was at the site of a car bombing shortly after the explosion at the gate of a base I was on and the Army soldier who was at the gate when it happened said as the man drove up he saw that his hands were handcuffed to the steering wheel. Intelligence reports indicate that they are kidnapping men's families and then telling the man he must drive the car to a location or his family will be killed. They then follow him in a second car and remote detonate the explosive when he gets near the target. There have been cases when the driver has detoured and the car was exploded with little effect because the driver was trying to get away.
The bombs are now being blown in public places because the bases are very secure and the Iraqi forces have learned to protect themselves, so all that is left are the people. Speaking of which, I spent a lot of time on the street in and around Baghdad and I can say that in all of my trips to Iraq I have never seen so many people coming up to soldiers on the street to give them tips about bad guys. You have to be careful because sometimes it's a tribal or neighborhood feud that you are hearing about. One guy is just trying to get his competition in trouble even though he may have nothing to do with the insurgency. But it was exciting and encouraging to see a few people trying to cooperate with soldiers. I had never seen that before.
I also could not believe that almost every patrol I went on and every single raid I was on was done in tandem with Iraqi forces. In the case of the raids, the US guys are no longer kicking in the doors. They are only rolling for backup and in almost every case the commanding officer mentioned that while these guys are no Navy Seals but they are improving by leaps and bounds. In parts of Baghdad the Iraqis have been assigned battle space without everyday US supervision. And they plan to turn over huge chunks to the Iraqis in the next few months. I was told several times that where they had tough neighborhoods and bad stretches of bomb filled roads they just send the Iraqis in and in a week and a half the insurgent activity goes down to nothing. I know that even as I say all these wonderful things there was a big operation out at the Syrian border. We were told about the operation the day before it started and a general said that they believe that the previously uncontested area was the last good hide out for bad people. And a few days later when the numbers stared rolling in we were told that as the marines were fighting street to street that the locals were coming out of their houses and pointing out the locations of all the bad guys. I certainly have never seen that before. Things are getting much better and at a pace I never thought possible and I hope and believe that by the end of this year that there will be no more need for [ our soldiers ] memorial services. We will have troops in Iraq for years to come I imagine but I see the Iraqi people standing up for themselves for the first time. We may never see an Iraq that looks, acts and holds close the values that we have as Americans but I can see the forming of a stable government and a military able to defend itself and to rid the country of radicals wanting to inflict terror. That's all we need to start bringing people home. The morale was incredibly high...the food was great...the sleeping and showering conditions were at an all time high. Hopefully the end of 2005 will see huge strides in our withdrawal of troops. I believe us to be on that path
