The "Battle of Basrah" from a Soldier on the Ground

Feel free to pass on to whomever -- I have Mike's approval. You can tell he was fired up. You may agree or disagree with this war, we all hate war and wish our boys weren't there, but how about some factual reporting. It's got me fired up!

Many of you have written over the last two weeks, and I appreciate it. A lot of you have asked questions, based on what you’ve seen or read in the news. Since so many of you have asked many of the same questions, I thought it was time to share my experiences (at least pertaining to the “failure” of this operation). We’ll call this a ‘preview’ of my upcoming ‘Update’ in which I’ll share a little more about my personal experiences, as well as everything else that’s happened since Groundhog Day, when I last wrote.

The “Charge of the Knights” was the official name of the operation. I wrote down the Arabic pronunciation of that at work; maybe I’ll share it with you next time I write. Yes, it’s true, Prime Minister Maliki flew in the night before, didn’t tell hardly anyone what they had planned (to include even the name of the operation) and the whole thing kicked off Tuesday morning, much to the surprise of the Iraqi Air Force and everyone else.

Here’s what virtual every media outlet (and half the senators that are currently grilling General Petraeus right now on Capital Hill) has said about the operation: ‘it was a failure, Sadr won, there were mass desertions, after five years the Iraqis proved they are incapable of fighting, Maliki was weakened, the Iraqis can’t do anything without the American’s help, there’s been a huge upsurge in violence as a result.’

Now, I think you all know how much I adore the high quality and journalistic integrity of our reporters back home. I seem to have a different perspective than them. I’ll qualify my remarks with the following credentials:

The Green Zone in Baghdad is exactly 276 miles away from the center of the city of Basrah. I was flying 3000’ overhead. That means I was exactly 275 miles, 2280 feet closer to the fighting than the next closest reporter to file a story on this fight!!! That’s right, there has not been a single news report that I’ve seen where the lead reporter wasn’t reporting from the Green Zone. There were some independent Iraqi journalists that took some stock video, and mailed it to the different networks for their use, but all the ‘reporters’ have filed their stories from either Baghdad or Washington.

I also work with about 120 Iraqis, 30 or so who live in Basrah. That means I personally know, by name, exactly 30 more residents of Basrah than any of the above said reporters (or senators for that matter).

I beg you to read the following article, written yesterday by a columnist for the New York Post. It is three pages, but they’re short (I promise). Yes, he is no more qualified than the reporters above, but somehow he seems to have extracted his head from his you-know-what and has actually objectively looked at the whole issue, what succeeded, and what didn’t.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04072008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_iraqis_step_up_105417.htm

He pretty much nailed it, so I’ll just gloss over the highlights and add some fill-ins from a personal perspective.

Yes, the planning was poor, more troops should have been mobilized ahead of time; there should have been better integration of assets (to include airpower). Guess what, the US military still screws this one up… routinely! This is not unique to the ‘incompetent’ Iraqis. Yes, there were also about 1,000 deserters. This is out of the 30-40,000 army and police forces that participated. That’s between 2.5 and 3.3%. Not great, but to put in perspective, the desertion rate for the US Army in 1944, was 6.3%. The majority of the Iraqi deserters came from one single unit that had just competed training and probably shouldn’t have been thrown into the fight to begin with (again, reference the mediocre planning). The others came mostly from the Iraqi police. Now, it’s no secret that they are heavily infiltrated with militia. That was part of the point, to clean out the militia, to include those within the ranks of the police. Furthermore, imagine fighting a war where the enemy lives within your own neighborhood, knows who you are, and can walk up to your wife and threaten to kill her if you don’t immediately stop fighting. Can you really blame them for quitting? We as Americans can’t comprehend a scenario like this.

Now, here’s what I saw first-hand. On Tuesday morning the Iraqi government launched an initiative against the militia. The militia did not start this, forcing the government to get involved, the government took initiative completely on their own to clean up their country. In five whole years of being in charge down here the British did nothing. They took the most peaceful city in Iraq and allowed it to deteriorate into the most violent. On average, there were around 15 murders per day. Mostly doctors, teachers, and women. The British didn’t do a thing to stop it, they just sat back and tried to keep from getting involved. The Iraqis took it upon themselves to do what the British (supposedly the second most capable military in the world) refused to. Our guys who live downtown were stuck in their homes, under martial law. In the first hours of the operation and as fighting was erupting everywhere one of our troops took an old ambulance, thinking it would be able to pass through the fighting with the least amount of resistance, with the windshield blown out from a rocket attack earlier this year, and drove it into downtown and the middle of the fighting in order to pick up the Iraqi general who’s in charge of the air force here in Basrah and get him to work. The next two days, when the fighting was the most intense, our pilots who were trapped downtown tied white flags to their cars so the army wouldn’t accidentally shoot them, and drove as fast as they could, braving militia and IEDs that were littering the roads, in order to get to work so they could do their part. They left their families behind, not knowing what would happen to them, and not knowing when they would even be able to go home (they stayed at work here for several days). No, our pilots did not desert!

Yes, the US had to help, but most of the assistance came in the form of combat air support, and logistics. These are two pretty complicated areas, air support in general, and just plain too much for them to handle right now. This was a major battle that they undertook and it is unrealistic to think that they could handle an undertaking of this size with absolutely no help at all. One day, but not yet. That being said, they still did a lot. Within eight hours of the fighting four additional Iraqi helicopters had arrived from their base north of Baghdad and they began flying resupply and medical evacuation missions, under fire and taking battle damage in the process, almost immediately. The two Iraqi C-130 cargo aircraft started flying round-the-clock missions into Basrah, delivering thousands of troops to the fight, and evacuating the dead and wounded. Yes, the 97% of the Iraqis who didn’t desert fought, many of them to the acclaim even of the US special forces, and many of them died. They didn’t die for their religion, they didn’t die as Shiia, Sunni, or Kurds, they fought and died as Iraqis, for their country and for its security. Period.

As for the ‘failure’ part, this is what a ‘failed’ operation looks like. First of all, it is still ongoing, and the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF which is an acronym that refers to both the army and the police) are clearly in control. Hundreds of militia have been killed. Dozens of the worst militia leaders have been captured. Sadr called for a cease fire,not the Iraqi government. The guys who live downtown say the crime rate has dropped to virtually zero. There are Iraqi military and police (the good ones, no longer infiltrated by militia) all over the streets, and people feel that they can go outside for the first time in a long time without worrying about running into militia. The day after the heavy fighting stopped more than 1,000 men showed up at the local army division headquarters wanting to join. They were motivated by the knowledge that their government was actually willing to do something, and heeding the (supposedly politically weakened) prime minister’s call for the sons of Iraq to step up and serve. We have pictures. Somehow, the journalists in Baghdad seem to have missed this.

Most important to me is this statistic. As of four hours ago we have not had a single attack against the base in 10 days now! That is unprecedented and hasn’t happened in well over a year. To put things in perspective about how ‘peaceful’ it was under the so-called ceasefire that Sadr had previously declared, in the last three days of January we were attacked nine separate times (yes, that’s once every eight hours) and we were attacked at least 25 different times in the month of March. Now, we’ve gone 244 hours without an attack! As for the ‘rise in violence’ this is a war. When you fight back, it gets violent. The violence did not intensify against the people, it intensified because the ISF started fighting back for once! You can’t capture or kill the bad guys if you’re not willing to accept the fact that they are probably going to fight back in the process!

I’ll leave with this parting observation. Some of you have called this a ‘religious war’. That’s the way the media portrays it. It is far more complex than that, but that would take too long to explain. Down here, this is more about Iran trying to take control of this region than anything else. Keep in mind, Sadr stayed in Iran throughout this whole fight. The media always refers to the militia as ‘Sunni’ or ‘Shiia’. This is about as relevant as the media labeling every single criminal, police officer, and murder victim in the US as ‘Catholic’ or ‘Protestant’ as if that is some how the reason why the crime happened. If crime in America was reported the way this war is you would think that the Catholics and Protestants must be running around killing each other over their religion too. It’s so absurd, and yet they keep doing it. Sure, religion factors in to some of the issues here, but this was a prime minister (who just happens to be Shiia), fighting against the militia (who also are predominately Shiia though really just fighting because they are thugs). The ISF troops doing the fighting aren’t organized into Sunni, Shiia, or Kurdish brigades, they’re organized into Iraqi brigades. This was not about religion, if anything, it shows that Maliki is willing to take action and stand up even to his own religious sect if necessary.

Okay, I hope that clarifies things. Like I’ve said before, you can’t get a straight answer in the news, yet we continue to make very critical decisions about the management of our country based on the crap that the media pumps out. This is the way I saw it. Take it for what it’s worth.

This is how the MSM is portraying it even though the Government controls almost all of Basra.

****The failure of government forces to capture Basra****

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24110560/

In five whole years of being in charge down here the British did nothing. They took the most peaceful city in Iraq and allowed it to deteriorate into the most violent. On average, there were around 15 murders per day. Mostly doctors, teachers, and women. The British didn’t do a thing to stop it, they just sat back and tried to keep from getting involved. The Iraqis took it upon themselves to do what the British (supposedly the second most capable military in the world) refused to.

Bears repeating...loudly.

Hotlink to the NY Post story mentioned in the article ....FR thread:

THE IRAQIS STEP UP

************************EXCERPT* INTRO******************

WITH Gen. David Petraeus returning to Capitol Hill tomorrow, I asked a senior Coalition officer in Baghdad late last week what key trends he sees in Iraq. I suspect my friend's views resemble those of the general, so I'll let him speak for himself:

"Overall, civilian deaths remain substantially below those at the height of the sectarian violence. Security incidents were [down to] levels not seen since early 2005. Thanks to help from local civilians [in] former al-Qaeda-in-Iraq safe havens, we've found more arms caches so far this year than were found in all of 2006."

My old comrade went on to lay out the beating that al Qaeda's getting up in Mosul

“Furthermore, imagine fighting a war where the enemy lives within your own neighborhood, knows who you are, and can walk up to your wife and threaten to kill her if you don’t immediately stop fighting. Can you really blame them for quitting?”

Crazy as it sounds, there are some on FR who would condemn and blame them.

“We have pictures. Somehow, the journalists in Baghdad seem to have missed this. “

Kinda like this? Here's a video clip of the Iraqi Army going at in Sadr City - with backup from our Spec Opts. (Looks like we've trained ‘em up GOOD - and one thing they understand is “GO-GO-GO!”

Bookmark this video for a feel-good play after you read the backwards media spins.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3tMDhVu-f2Q

These actions by the Iraqi Gov’t/Army are a MAJOR advance in our goal of a free Iraq. The people are now trusting that there own Gov’t/Army can and will protect them...the fact that 1,000 qued up to join their army after the fights, testifies to that...and also, the stories coming out that ordinary Iraqis now dare to start up businesses that weren't allowed by the clerics, upon pain of death, before.

That is going to have tremendous consequences - much to the dismay of peeelosi and reedy and gang. (Sorry to have posted the video. I'm sure you're sick of seeing it by now, what with all the exposure it's had on MSM. What? You haven't seen it? s/)

Untie our troops and commanders hands. Let them WIN this frakking thing and then let them come home!

Our biggest enemy in this war is either Iran or the Pentagon. It’s hard to tell who has killed more US servicemen and cost us more time and money.

The Iraqis took it upon themselves to do what the British (supposedly the second most capable military in the world) refused to.

It only bears repeating if you're an ignorant flid.

Read up Michael Yon's dispatches from his time with 4 Rifles. Read up on Operation Arezzo. The Iraqis in Basra wouldn't be fighting today without the British MiTTs and embeds, and five years of mentoring and combined ops. Or do you think the Iraqi army just worked it all out for themselves?

Same MO in Afghanistan. Afghan artillery fighting alongside NATO forces in combined ops. How did that happen? Was it magic? Or was it the result of scrupulously careful formation by British forces?

The British have been training local forces to fight for themselves as far back as the Chindits. It's their country remember.

“Our biggest enemy in this war is either Iran or the Pentagon”

That is so true, I have read multiple accounts of the seizing of Fallujah, political bullcrap got in the way so many times and cost the marines lives.

The day after the heavy fighting stopped more than 1,000 men showed up at the local army division headquarters wanting to join. They were motivated by the knowledge that their government was actually willing to do something, and heeding the (supposedly politically weakened) prime minister’s call for the sons of Iraq to step up and serve. We have pictures. Somehow, the journalists in Baghdad seem to have missed this.

Funny how you never hear about things like this on CNN...

My old comrade went on to lay out the beating that al Qaeda's getting up in Mosul

That's encouraging. I've heard, not through as good sources, that AQ in Iraq is about finished and the main problem now is breaking the pro-Iranian militias. Does that square with what you are hearing?

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