Free Republic

CAMP TAJI, Iraq – Task Force Baghdad Soldiers at Camp Taji are being given the opportunity to advance to sergeant or staff sergeant, even while deployed. The standard is the same here as it is back at home station: prospective noncommissioned officers must still appear before a promotion board. Prior to the board, however, a Soldier must get ready. Preparing good Soldiers for advancement is extremely important to Staff Sgt. Everick L. Moore, who is serving with the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq. “If I send good Soldiers to the board, the Army will have good leaders,” said Moore, a...

BAGHDAD, Aug 20 (Reuters) - An Iraqi general who commands the country's Border Police was shot and wounded while driving in Baghdad late on Saturday but U.S. forces denied that it was American troops who fired on his car. Major General Ali Hamadi was initially taken to the civilian Yarmouk hospital, where a medical source said he told doctors who treated him for an abdominal wound that he had been shot by U.S. soldiers. Sources at police headquarters, who like Hamadi report to the Interior Ministry, gave a similar account. But a spokesman for the U.S. military command in...

BAGHDAD , Iraq – Task Force Baghdad Soldiers provided medical treatment for two Iraqi children injured when a roadside improvised explosive device exploded in northwest Baghdad May 27. The children were hurt when a bomb targeting the Soldiers' patrol detonated prematurely near an Iraqi vehicle. The Soldiers tended to the children's injuries and sent them on their way. While the medics were helping the children, an Iraqi man brought his 4-year-old daughter to Soldiers providing security at the site. The little girl was bleeding from shrapnel wounds. The girl's father told the Soldiers his daughter had been playing with some...

Iraqi Soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division teamed up with Task Force Baghdad Soldiers to take down a former general from the old regime in a middle of the night raid carried out in west Baghdad May 29. The man captured was part of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence network and was also involved with the Fedayeen, a criminal secret police organization of the old regime. He now leads the military wings of several terror cells operating in the west Baghdad neighborhood of Ghazaliyah. The terrorist groups concentrate their attacks on U.S. troops using bombs, mortars and rocket...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb exploded on Baghdad's airport road Tuesday as a U.S. military convoy was passing by, wounding four American soldiers and destroying an armored Humvee, the U.S. military said. Around 10 civilian vehicles were also wrecked in the blast on the highway leading to the capital's international airport, a police official said. He said there were civilian casualties but did not immediately have an exact figure. Ambulances rushed at least two women, a child and three wounded men to a nearby hospital, doctors said. One of the women was covered in blood. Maj. Phil Smith of...