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While the dramas in Fallujah and Najaf come to a conclusion, the Army's soldiers are still riding the roads of Iraq in inferior armored vehicles while the better-protected armored personnel carriers are waiting for them in Kuwait. We're asking our troops to perform a job with the wrong tools, a mistake rooted in the 1999 decision by President Clinton's Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki to take the Army off tracks and put it on wheels. When, in July 2003, acting Army Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane laid out the overall Army plan to rotate the units stationed in...

When Spc. Michael Merila was killed in Iraq in February, relatives and friends of Stryker brigade soldiers grieved online. One message in particular stood out. "During the long few months he's been deployed, I've already experienced 2 near misses and it never gets any easier trying to relax," wrote a young woman who called herself JakesKatie. She went on to offer heartfelt condolences to those who weren't so fortunate: "Although we cannot physically hold them in our arms, they will forever be held in our hearts. They are resting, out of harms way. May peace be with your souls, and...

<p>Most know the soldiers from 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (SBCT) as the Army’s first Stryker Brigade Combat Team. But in some parts of Iraq, they’re known as the “Ghost Soldiers.”</p> <p>That’s what came out of reporters round-table meeting at the Pentagon Monday, where Army acquisitions officials praised the performance of the first Stryker brigade in Iraq.</p>

After four months in Iraq, the Stryker brigade up in Mosul lost its first Stryker armored vehicle to an RPG attack on March 28th. Two RPGs were fired at the vehicle and one got past the Slat Armor. The vehicle caught fire and was destroyed. None of the crew were hurt. Only the driver was aboard, and he got out. The rest of the crew (an infantry squad) were on foot patrol at the time. About half a dozen RPG rounds have previously been fired at the brigades 309 Strykers, only causing minor damage. Two Strykers were damaged when hit...

HAMAM AL ALIL, Iraq — Two weeks after Pvt. Seth Tribble was wounded by a grenade in the northern Iraqi town of Gab Adr, his buddies went back to send a message to his attackers. The 2nd Infantry Division’s Company B, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment marched into Gab Adr on Sunday along the newly named Phase Line Tribble, which runs past the place where the grenade attack occurred. Soldiers raided several nearby houses searching for weapons and terrorists, but there was no all-out attack by anti-coalition forces that informants had warned would happen the next time Company B entered...

MOSUL, IRAQ (Feb. 20, 2004) - With the help of a concerned citizen, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment under the operational control of Task Force Olympia, took explosives and an arms dealer off the streets of a small village outside of Qarrayah Feb. 19. Company A responded to a tip from an informant who came to battalion headquarters and reported the presence of mortars in the village and identified a weapons dealer who was responsible for selling them. "We had intelligence from the battalion level that a source knew of a man trafficking arms and could take us there," said...

MOSUL, Iraq - For a while, Capt. A.J. Newtson considered removing the slat armor cages from his company's Stryker infantry carriers. The big steel cages make it tough to maneuver the vehicles through some of Mosul's narrow streets. Then two of his trucks got hit by rocket-propelled grenades. "We're going to keep it," said Newtson, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment's Charger Company. The cages, so far, are working as advertised. Strykers have come through four RPG hits with no major damage. One soldier was injured - a small shrapnel cut on his face. Soldiers on board say...

MOSUL, Iraq - A Stryker brigade soldier was killed and another wounded Monday when their Humvee struck a roadside bomb, brigade officials said. The incident near Tall Afar, about 35 miles west of Mosul, marked the first death of a Stryker soldier as a result of hostile action since the Fort Lewis brigade arrived in Iraq nearly three months ago. Eight others have been killed in accidents. The attack was one of two roadside bombings carried out against Stryker troops Monday. In the other, about 9:45 a.m. near a village southeast of Mosul, the explosion caused no injuries and minor...

February 9, 2004 Release Number: 04-02-14 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE STRYKER BRIGADE DETAINS SUSPECTS, COLLECTS WEAPONS MOSUL, Iraq – Soldiers from 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team) under the operational control of Task Force Olympia detained personnel suspected of anti-Coalition activities and recovered weapons and other explosives in northern Iraq Sunday. One person suspected of anti-Coalition activities turned himself in to 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment headquarters in Mosul. Members of the Coalition for Iraqi Unity, a concerned group of citizens in northwestern Iraq, came to the 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment and turned in 750 rounds of...

MOSUL, Iraq - The lifeblood of northern Iraq flows through a muddy truck yard north of Mosul that U.S. forces call Linkup Point Foxtrot. Six hundred to 800 fuel trucks laden with gasoline, diesel, kerosene and propane roll in from Turkey each morning for delivery to gas stations and depots across Nineveh, Dohuk and Irbil provinces. At Foxtrot, Stryker troops and Iraqi fuel company representatives sort out the trucks by destination and send them on their way. The operation is complicated by black market activity, profiteering, ethnic tensions, the constant threat of roadside bombs and ambushes, and garden variety crime....

MOSUL, Iraq - The Army's new Stryker vehicle had its first combat encounter with a rocket-propelled grenade Friday. The round struck the front of the vehicle above its slat armor cage, cutting a hose inside the engine compartment. The vehicle commander suffered a superficial cut near his nose, officials said. But the Fort Lewis crew was otherwise unhurt and drove the vehicle out of danger, their company commander and 1st sergeant said. It was one of four RPG attacks on Strykers on Friday in Mosul. The other three rounds missed. Soldiers throughout the brigade had figured it was only a...

MOSUL, Iraq - Three Stryker brigade soldiers and at least two Iraqi policemen remain unaccounted for today after a tragic sequence of events Sunday along the Tigris River. The search will continue today for a Stryker soldier lost when the Iraqi police boat he was aboard capsized and for two pilots attached to the brigade whose helicopter crashed while they were looking for the missing soldier. Two Iraqi policemen who were on the boat also are missing, and a third drowned. Later Sunday, a policeman was killed and another wounded, most likely by Stryker troops who opened fire on a...

MOSUL, Iraq - Three Stryker brigade soldiers were injured when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb as their convoy rolled down a highway Wednesday morning. One soldier was hit in the abdomen by shrapnel and was reported in satisfactory condition after surgery at an Army field hospital. His wounds were not considered life-threatening, but he will require further surgery after he's flown home to the United States, brigade officials said. The other two suffered minor injuries and were returned to duty after treatment. The soldiers are from B Battery of the 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment. The attack was the...

MOSUL, Iraq - They're turning the mail back on now that the Stryker brigade is in Mosul. The troops from Fort Lewis living on the Mosul palace grounds got hundreds of packages delivered Wednesday, with many hundreds more on the way over the next few days. And soldiers still waiting to head north from Camp Pacesetter are getting their first delivery there in a couple of weeks. Regular service at the base camp near Duluyiah was shut off for the brigade's move to Mosul. Some of the postmarks on boxes delivered Wednesday were as old as Dec. 4, but it...

MOSUL, Iraq - It looks nothing like the land of milk and honey. For a few weeks now, Stryker brigade soldiers have been hearing how great it would be for them once they left the windy, muddy, dreary Camp Pacesetter for their permanent home in Mosul. Quarters with heat. Hot, tasty chow. Hotter showers, every day. All that might eventually come true, but when the first major chunk of the brigade finally arrived in Iraq's third-largest city Saturday, they found the streets weren't quite paved with gold. They pulled into one of their new forward operating bases, called Glory, to...

CAMP PACESETTER, Iraq - With a month of combat operations under its belt, the Stryker brigade is moving on to its next mission: Mosul. The Fort Lewis-based brigade will relieve the 101st Airborne Division, which has been restoring order and public services in Iraq's third-largest city and the surrounding areas since April. The 101st has been doing the job with some 25,000 U.S. troops; the Stryker brigade brings just over 5,000. But it won't be the brigade's mission to do the same work as a force five times its size. Just the opposite: Stryker troops will be trying every day...

CAMP PACESETTER, Iraq – With a month of combat operations under its belt, the Stryker brigade is moving onto its next mission: Mosul. The Fort Lewis-based brigade will relieve the 101st Airborne Division, which has been restoring order and public services in Iraq's third-largest city and the surrounding areas since April. The 101st has been doing the job with some 25,000 U.S. troops; the Stryker brigade brings just over 5,000. But it won't be the brigade's mission to do the same work as a force five times its size. Just the opposite: Stryker troops will be trying every day to...

<p>The military has begun a rotation of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan that amounts to the largest movement of American troops in decades, Army officials said Thursday.</p> <p>The changes present an enormous logistics challenge not only for the Army and Marine Corps, but also for the Air Force and Navy, whose planes and ships are ferrying the troops to and from Iraq.</p>

NEAR DULUIYAH -- They do jumping jacks, push-pits and sit-ups every morning. Then there's the guys practicing Brazilian ju-jitsu. This, for sure, is the active-duty Army. I am now with the Stryker brigade (3rd Brigade, 2nd Division) from Fort Lewis. In December, some 5,000 soldiers attached to the brigade made their way from Kuwait to a location that -- due to security concerns -- cannot be reported. But you know you have arrived when you come upon row after row of big white tents and hundreds of eight-wheeled, green fighting vehicles lined up across a flat, treeless expanse of land....

CAMP PACESETTER, Iraq - Spc. Christopher Byers got a 21st birthday "present" he'll never forget: an explosion directly under his backside. Soldiers with Company A of the Fifth Battalion, 20th Infantry, patrol the town of Samarra, Iraq, on Dec. 23. Their Stryker vehicle is at right. The Stryker driver was ferrying his squad to a raid in Samarra when a bomb buried in the road blew up beneath his driver's compartment. It demolished the left front wheel and filled the vehicle with dirt and debris, but no one was seriously hurt and the vehicle was still drivable. "It was like...