[antimedia] antimedia: A different look at Iraq....

[Email subscription to blog articles]

Posted by antimedia:
A different look at Iraq....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1150070196.shtml


   ....from those who have been there.
   A reader sent me this, which I reproduce here, altered only by my
   highlighting of what I consider to be important points. The writer is
   a retired two-star admiral who attended the conference.

     Earlier this week I attended a retired general and flag officer
     conference at Fort Carson , hosted by MGen Bob Mixon, the 7th
     Infantry Division Commander which calls the Fort its home. For
     those of you who are unfamiliar with Ft. Carson, it is a huge
     installation located to the south of Colorado Springs; its in the
     process of becoming one of the larger Army installations in the
     country (26,000 soldiers); and it is the test location for the new
     modular brigade concept that will reflect the Army of tomorrow by
     2008. It is also the home post of the largest number of troopers
     who have served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and,
     regrettably, the largest number of troopers who have died in combat
     there over the past three years. There are Ft. Carson units going
     to and returning from the combat area virtually on a monthly basis.
     The conference was primarily organized to explain the modular
     brigade concept, and it featured a panel of officers who had either
     very recently returned from commands in the combat zone or were
     about to deploy there in the next two months. Three of the recent
     returnees were Colonel H.R. McMaster, Colonel Rick S., and Captain
     Walter Szpak.
     McMaster is the commander of the 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment, the
     unit that, through very innovative and population-friendly tactics,
     rid the city of Tal Afar of insurgents. The mayor of Tal Afar came
     back to Carson two weeks ago to thank the troopers and their
     families personally for freeing his people. (You say you didnt hear
     about that in the mainstream media?) McMaster is considered the
     foremost U.S. expert on modern insurgent warfare, has written a
     book on the subject which is widely circulated at the war colleges
     and staff colleges, and he was asked to testify before Congress
     when he returned from the 3rd ACR combat deployment. He is
     obviously one of the great combat leaders that has emerged from the
     war and is highly respected (some would say revered) by his
     troopers and his superiors alike.
     Colonel S. is assigned to the 10th Special Forces Brigade and he
     headed up all of the 31 special forces A-teams that are integrated
     with the populace and the Iraqi Army and national police throughout
     the country. Many of these are the guys that you see occasionally
     on the news that have beards, dress in native regalia, usually
     speak Arabic and dont like to have their identities revealed for
     fear of retribution on their families (thus the Colonel S.) Captain
     Szpak was the head of all the Army explosive ordnance teams in Iraq
     . He and his troops had the job of disarming all the improvised
     explosive devices (IEDs) and explosive formed projectiles (EFPs)
     that were discovered before they were detonated. They also traveled
     around the country training the combat forces in recognizing and
     avoiding these devices in time to prevent death and injury. IEDs
     and EFPs are responsible for the vast majority of casualties
     experienced by our forces.
     Despite the objective of the conference (i.e., the modular brigade
     concept), it quickly devolved into a 3½ hour question and answer
     period between the panel and the 54 retired generals and admirals
     who attended. I wish I had a video of the whole session to share
     with you because the insights were especially eye opening and
     encouraging. I'll try to summarize the high points as best I can.
     · All returnees agreed that we are clearly winning the fight
     against the insurgents but we are losing the public relations
     battle both in the war zone and in the States. (I'll go into more
     detail on each topic below.)
     · All agreed that it will be necessary for us to have forces in
     Iraq for at least ten more years, though by no means in the numbers
     that are there now.
     · They opined that 80% to 90% of the Iraqi people want to have us
     there and do not want us to leave before the job is done.
     · The morale and combat capability of the troops is the highest
     that the senior officers have ever seen in the 20-30 years that
     each has served.
     · The Iraqi armed forces and police are probably better trained
     right now than they were under Saddam, but our standards are much
     higher and they lack officer leadership.
     · They dont need more troops in the combat zone but they need
     considerably more Arab linguists and civil affairs experts.
     · The IEDs and EFPs continue to be the principal problem that they
     face and they are becoming more sophisticated as time passes.
     Public Affairs: We are losing the public affairs battle for a
     variety of reasons. First, in Iraq , the terrorists provide Al
     Jazeera with footage of their more spectacular attacks and they are
     on TV to the whole Arab world within minutes of the event. By
     contrast it takes four to six days for a story generated by Army
     Public Affairs to gain clearance by Combined Forces Command, two or
     three more days to get Pentagon clearance, and after all that, the
     public media may or may not run the story.
     Second, the U.S. mainstream media (MSM) who send reporters to the
     combat zone do not like to have their people embedded with our
     troops. They claim that the reporters get less objective when they
     live with the soldiers and marines they come to see the world
     through the eyes of the troops. As a consequence, a majority of the
     reporters stay in hotels in the Green Zone and send out native
     stringers to call in stories to them by cell phone which they later
     write up and file. No effort is made to verify any of these stories
     or the credibility of the stringers. The recent serious injuries to
     Bob Woodruff of ABC and Kimberly Dozier of CBS makes the likelihood
     of the use of local stringers even higher.
     Third, the stories that are filed by reporters in the field very
     seldom reach the American public as written. An anecdote from Col.
     McMaster illustrates this dramatically. TIME magazine recently sent
     a reporter to spend six weeks with the 3rd ACR as they were in the
     battle of Tal Afar. When the battle was over, the reporter filed
     his story and also included close to 100 pictures that the
     accompanying photographer took. TIME published a cover story on the
     battle a week later, allegedly using the story sent in by their
     reporter. When the issue came out, the guts had been edited out of
     their reporters story and none of the pictures he submitted were
     used. Instead they showed a weeping child on the cover, taken from
     stock photos. When the reporter questioned why his story was
     eviscerated, his editors in New York responded that the story and
     pictures were too heroic. McMaster had read both and told me that
     the editors had completely changed the thrust and context of the
     material their reporter had submitted.
     As a sidebar on the public affairs situation, Colonel Bob McRee,
     who was also on the panel and is bringing a Military Police
     Battalion to Iraq next month, invited the Colorado Springs Gazette
     to send a reporter with the battalion for six weeks to two months.
     He assured the Gazette, in writing one month ago, that he would
     provide full time bodyguards for the reporter, taking the manpower
     out of his own hide. The Gazette has yet to respond to his offer.
     Ten More Years: The idea that we will have troops in Iraq for ten
     more years sounds rather grim, even though by contrast, President
     Clinton sent troops to Bosnia and Kosovo nearly ten years ago. And
     theyre still there with no end in sight. While Iraq is clearly a
     different situation right now, the panelists believe that within a
     few years at the most, it will become very much the same a peace
     keeping, nation building function among factions that have hated
     one another for centuries. There is factionalism and there was
     bitter fighting in the Balkans before NATO intervened and with
     peace keepers, the panelists believe that Iraq will be a parallel
     situation. This, by the way, is why they all believe that linguists
     and civil affairs military personnel are so necessary for the
     future.
     Colonel S. went out on a limb by suggesting that if most of the
     troops in Iraq were deployed home tomorrow he could have the entire
     country pacified and the terrorist situation brought under control
     with just one brigade of special forces. Since these guys are
     linguists, civil affairs experts, among many other skills and
     talents, he may not be too far wrong.
     Iraqi Attitudes: The panelists agreed that the public affairs
     problem manifests itself most significantly in the American public
     belief that the people of Iraq want us out of their country which
     we are occupying. They have served in different parts of the
     country but each agreed that we are wanted and needed there. I
     refer you to the anecdote from Col. McMaster and the thousands of
     pictures available on the internet of the U.S. forces shown in very
     cordial relations with the locals. Of course, our medias obsession
     with Abu Graib and, if the initial reports regarding the small
     group of Marines at Haditha prove to be true, then those attitudes
     will change somewhat. But as one of the panelists pointed out, the
     atrocities suffered under Saddam were much worse and much more
     common.
     Morale and Capabilities: Two weeks ago, the local TV channels
     showed a 3rd ACR re-enlistment ceremony held at Ft. Carson and
     officiated by Colonel McMaster. Mind you, this unit has just
     returned from a one-year combat tour of hard and bloody fighting in
     Iraq and will likely return there again in eight to ten months. Of
     the 670 soldiers eligible for re-enlistment, 654 of them held up
     their right hands and signed on for another four years. Incredible!
     The Army goal for re-enlistments for fiscal year 2006 was for
     40,000 soldiers to extend their active duty commitments. With four
     months remaining in the fiscal year, they have already exceeded
     their goal of 40,000 and may have to go back to Congress for
     authorization to exceed their force structure manning limitations.
     Since Congress has been pontificating for the past couple of years
     that the Army is woefully under strength, that should not pose any
     difficulty.
     Iraqi Forces: Every one of the returning commanders had experience
     in joint operations with the Iraqi soldiers and in the case of some
     of them, with the local and national police. They are all are
     supportive of the quality of the forces, but culturally, they
     believe that we may be expecting too much from them as a
     pre-condition for handing over greater responsibility for area
     control. McMaster said that he worked with the army and the police
     at Tal Afar and was not the least bit reluctant to assign major
     responsibilities to them in the operations that were conducted.
     Col. S.s Green Berets, on the other hand, caught a national police
     lieutenant who was directing the emplacement of an IED by cell
     phone in order to disrupt a convoy immediately after the lieutenant
     had been briefed on the convoys route. The good news in this
     situation was that they were able to reroute the convoy, safely,
     and track the lieutenants entire network through the use of the
     speed dial on his phone. Having terrorist infiltrators in both the
     army and the police force remains a problem. But by no means does
     that detract from the courage and determination of those who are
     loyal to the new Iraq .
     Explosive Devices: The combined command in Iraq is becoming
     increasingly effective in countering the significant threat posed
     by the IEDs and EFPs. The frequency of attacks has decreased in
     large part through training to recognize the threat, the new
     technology (UAVs unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, for example)
     which help to discover where the devices are emplaced, the
     infiltration of some of the terrorist cells, etc. However, the
     technology being used by the terrorists is also improving
     measurably. In the past six weeks, two bomb making sites were
     found, raided and the bad guys arrested. In both cases, the head
     bomb makers were masters degree graduates (one in chemistry and one
     in physics) from American universities. Thats a lot of brain power
     to bring into the fight, but we also have some pretty talented
     people in the military, industry and academia who are doing their
     best to even the odds.
     Conclusion: This is more than I had intended to write on the
     subject so whats new a lot of you might say but it is a subject
     that doesnt get the proper balance from other sources, in my
     judgment at least. I trust the information that we received far
     more than anything that I have heard or seen in our usual news
     sources. The most disturbing thing that I heard was that our MSM is
     changing the stories filed by their own people on the scene because
     they sound too heroic.
     The over riding opinion that I came away from the conference with
     is that we have incredibly talented and professional leaders who
     are facing up to the challenges and are making inexorable progress
     toward the goals of our nation. We're fortunate to have courageous
     and valorous people on the combat front, even though there seems to
     be a serious dearth of these same types of people in Congress and
     the mainstream media.

   Perhaps we should be directing more of our anger at the media toward
   the editors who, sitting in a comfortable office in New York and going
   home to a warm bed at night, decide that the stories from Iraq, sent
   to them by reporters who are risking their lives in a war zone, are
   "too heroic".