Sweathogs return to Air Station

[thedrifter]

Sweathogs return to Air Station
Submitted by: MCAS Beaufort
Story Identification #: 20049139755
Story by Cpl. Micah Snead



MARINE CORPS AIR STATION BEAUFORT, SC (Sept. 10, 2004) -- The last group of Marines from Marine Wing Support Squadron 273 returned to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort Sept. 3 and 4 after a six-month deployment to Iraq.

The squadron’s advance party returned Aug. 18 while the remaining 300 Marines returned Friday and Saturday.

“It feels great to be home,” said Maj. Brian D. Harrelson, executive officer, MWSS-273. “That was a long deployment.”

The squadron deployed to Iraq in February to join Marine Wing Support Group 37 in support of 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing operations. The deployment was a the second consecutive trip to Iraq for some of the Marines who were augmented to MWSS-272 based at MCAS New River in 2003.

The squadron provides support for forward operating air bases and all Marine aviation operations while deployed. While based here, they provide ground support to units such as airfield communications, weather services, expeditionary airfield services, aircraft rescue and firefighting, aircraft and ground refueling, essential engineer services, motor transport, messing, chemical defense, security and law enforcement and explosive ordnance disposal.

The Marines spent time at several different locations in Iraq, including Forward Operating Base Kalsu, Camp Al Asad and other sites in the country assisting security and stabilization operations.

After completing administrative work and safety training, the Marines will be given time off before returning to normal operations aboard the Air Station.

“We did our jobs and brought everyone home safely,” Harrelson said. “Now is the time to enjoy ourselves and appreciate our loved ones.”

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/200491391535/$file/040903-M-2147S-029low.jpg

Lance Cpl. Matthew J. Richtercorson, mechanic, Marine Wing Support Squadron 273, is welcomed home, Sept. 3. The Sweathogs returned to the Air Station last week after a six-month deployment to Iraq. Photo by: Cpl. Micah Snead

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/F61C91BF96E0A5B485256F0E004822D0?opendocument

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marines make progress in Iraqi village
Submitted by: 1st Force Service Support Group
Story Identification #: 200491422815
Story by 1st Lt. Robert E. Shuford



QARYAT AL JAFFAH, Iraq (Sept. 14, 2004) -- Marines assigned to 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, and 2nd Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, conducted a civil affairs mission by visiting residents here Sept. 12, 2004.

The morning visit to the town of a few hundred was part of an ongoing effort to strengthen community relations between the Marines and the citizens of Iraq.

“This is our chance to help at the grassroots level,” said Maj. Luke W. Kratky, 3/24’s information officer and 33-yr-old native of Bridgeton, Mo.

Kratky, and his future replacement, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Dwight Torres, 2/10's information officer, walked the streets with a translator in hopes of interacting with community leaders.

Around sunrise, the Marines left Camp Taqaddum, Iraq, where they are based, with the goal of talking to the town’s sheik. On a previous visit, the Marines gave the sheik a water bladder to provide the town with potable water. Marines later discovered he was selling the water for profit, not allowing the locals to use it as intended. When confronted, the sheik destroyed the bladder.

While the sheik eluded the Marines during this visit, they were still able to talk to locals about future projects they are planning and get opinions about what the town needs. Projects discussed included pumping clean water to the town and helping rebuild a rundown school.

The Marines hope to provide school supplies before school starts later this month, said Lt. Col. Michael H. Gellick, 45, a liaison officer assigned to the 4th Civil Affairs Group.

This visit was better than the last, said Gellick, a Cleveland native. Just two weeks ago, Marines had to knock on doors to get people to come out and talk, and gifts from the Marines were destroyed in the street.

This time around, Iraqi men and children approached the Marines to engage in conversations, demonstrating a willingness to work with their military neighbors. The gifts brought this time – soccer balls, foam footballs, softballs and baseballs – were graciously accepted and played with while the Marines were there.

Qaryat al Jaffah is one of three towns that 3/24, a St.Louis-based reserve unit, has focused on establishing good relations with since their deployment earlier this year. With their deployment coming to an end next month, they are preparing their newly arrived replacements of 2/10, from Camp Lejeune, N.C., for the work ahead.

Producing results for the local community reaffirms that the Marines are here to help the Iraqi people rebuild their villages, said Torres, 35, of Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico.

Both units are currently assigned to the 1st Force Service Support Group and are responsible for providing security around Camp Taqaddum and other bases throughout Iraq.

The 1st FSSG provides the logistical support for the I Marine Expeditionary Force, which is currently in command of all Marine forces operating in Iraq.

(Editor's note: 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment's companies are geographically separated from the battalion headquarters. They are based in Springfield, Mo., Broken Arrow, Okla., Nashville and Johnson City, Tenn. and Terre Haute, Ind.)

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/20049146525/$file/CivilAffairsTranslating2_lo.jpg

Through the help of an Arabic translator, Maj. Luke W. Kratky, information officer for 3rd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, speaks with locals about future projects the Marines are planning for the town of Qaryat al Jaffah and gather opinions on what needs to be done. Such projects include pumping freshwater to the town and rebuilding a rundown school. Three-24, a reserve unit from St. Louis, Mo., has focused on establishing good relations with local Iraqis since their deployment earlier this year. With their ticket home coming next month, they are preparing the Marines of 2nd Battalion, 10th Marines from Camp Lejeune, N.C., who recently arrived here, for the work ahead. The morning visit to the town of a few hundred was part of an ongoing effort to strengthen community relations between the Marines and the citizens of Iraq. Kratky is a 33-year-old Bridgeton, Mo., native. Photo by: Sgt. Luis R. Agostini

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/08DF2725EE62CD0085256F0F00238BB6?opendocument

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Two Pendleton Marines slain in Iraq

By: DARRIN MORTENSON - Staff Writer

CAMP PENDLETON ---- The violence-wracked region of Al Anbar, Iraq, claimed the lives of two more local Marines during the weekend, military officials announced Monday.

Marine Pfc. Jason T. Poindexter, 20, of San Angelo, Texas, and 1st Lt. Alexander E. Wetherbee, 27, Fairfax, Va., were killed in fighting Sunday, according to the Defense Department.

Both were based at Camp Pendleton. Their deaths bring the number of U.S. troops killed in the war to 1,012. There have been nearly 200 casualties from the Camp Pendleton-based I Marine Expeditionary Force,


Military officials gave no additional details on the deaths Monday, other than to say the two young men died "from injuries received due to enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq."

Officials said they do not release more specific information on combat casualties so that insurgents cannot gauge the effectiveness of their attacks.

Wetherbee was assigned to the 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion, one of several battalions of the tank-like armored personnel carriers that ferry troops around Iraq.

Poindexter was part of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, an infantry battalion that recently began replacing another Pendleton-based battalion just outside of the provincial capital of Ramadi.

Neither of the Marines' families could be reached for comment Monday.

Poindexter was the first Marine from the battalion reported to have been killed since the unit began arriving in the troubled region around Ramadi late last month.

The unit Poindexter's battalion replaced ---- Pendleton's 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment ---- saw its share of fighting and loss. More than 30 of its Marines have been killed in accidents and clashes with Sunni rebels in and near Ramadi since March. The last reported death in the battalion occurred on Aug. 27, just as replacements started to arrive.

News of two more local Marines killed in Iraq on Sunday arrived in the wake of a suicide bombing a week ago that killed seven Pendleton Marines outside Fallujah. All seven were assigned to Pendleton's 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment, which has also been fighting insurgents in Al Anbar since March and is due to be replaced by more local Marines by the end of the month.

Citing the Defense Department, both Newsweek and Time magazines Monday reported that the insurgency in that region is actually growing. Both accounts said that attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq reached an all-time high for the post-invasion period, jumping to an average of 87 a day in August.

Contact staff writer Darrin Mortenson at (760) 740-5442 or dmortenson@nctimes.com.




http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/09/14/military/20_37_069_13_04.txt


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Friends run in memory of fallen
September 13,2004
TIMMI TOLER
DAILY NEWS STAFF

For most Marines, running the distance of a 5K isn't that big of a deal - during their regular physical training, most Devil Dogs can easily cover the 3.1 miles, and then some.

Saturday, however, running that distance was a very big deal. They were running in remembrance.

Nearly 150 people came out to participate in the 4th annual Fallen Friends 5K Race and One Mile Fun Run held in Maysville, including a group of more than 30 Marines with the Marine Tiltrotor Test and Evaluation Squadron 22 based at New River Air Station.

The Fallen Friends event is held in honor and memory of the aviation pioneers who were killed in two MV22 Osprey crashes, including the Dec. 11, 2000, crash in Hofmann Forest that claimed Sgt. Jason A Buyck, Staff Sgt. Avery W. Runnels, Maj. Michael Murphy and Lt. Col. Keith M. Sweaney.

It was the first time since the event began that Jason Kanakis, a gunnery sergeant with VMX-22, was able to participate.

"I've always been on deployment or sent away. I was really glad to have the opportunity to participate this year - especially on this day," said Kanakis, of the race held on the anniversary of 9/11. "I don't think it's a mistake that the race happened to fall on this day. It sort of transcends everything."

Kanakis knew Buyck, the staff sergeant who died in the Hofmann Forest crash, and admired him as a Marine.

"He was the type of guy that always had a smile on his face. He hit the ground running every day," said Kanakis. "What happened was heartbreaking, but he believed in the (Osprey) program and in the Marine Corps."

Honoring Buyck and others who made the ultimate sacrifice to help bring the Osprey program into service was one of the reasons the VMX-22 Marines chose to run Saturday.

They left the starting line in formation - singing cadences and holding their unit flag high along the course that led through the small community of Maysville. They continued in formation during the race, drawing curious residents out of their homes as they passed by.

Dan Ryan, a retired Marine major who helped organize the event, said it was the first time the race had ever had a formation run.

"A lot of folks came out to see them. They could hear them coming," said Ryan, who is also a Maysville resident. "It makes the people of this community feel good. They're appreciative of what the military does."

The Marines stayed in formation through the finish line - they weren't there to win. They were there to remember the fallen, the families and to represent the Marine Corps.

"Compared to other military branches, the Marine Corps is small - there's only 172,000 of us," said Kanakis. "That makes us tight - we're a family. Today is about the ones we've lost."

Those losses, he added, are never easy.

"You never forget the Marines that have gone before you."


http://www.jacksonvilledailynews.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=25645&Section=Liberty


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Son probes strange death of WMD worker <br />
He believes agents murdered employee of Army to protect government secrets <br />
<br />
He was 9 years old when his mother woke him before dawn half a century ago in...

[thedrifter]

Among them is Army intelligence veteran Norman G. Cournoyer, 85, who worked with Olson at Detrick and became one of his closest friends.

"If the question is, did Frank commit suicide, my answer is absolutely, positively not," says Cournoyer, now frail and wheelchair-bound, living in Amherst, Mass.

Why would he have been killed?

"To shut him up," Cournoyer says. "Frank was a talker. His concept of being a real American had changed. He wasn't sure we should be in germ warfare, at the end."

William P. Walter, 78, who supervised anthrax production at Detrick, says Olson's colleagues were divided about his death. "Some say he jumped. Some say he had help," Walter says. "I'm one of the 'had-help' people."

So is James Starrs, a George Washington University forensic pathologist who examined Olson's exhumed corpse in 1994 and called the evidence "rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide."

Based on that finding, the Manhattan district attorney's office opened a homicide investigation in 1996. Two cold-case prosecutors, Steve Saracco and Daniel Bibb, conducted dozens of interviews, hunted records at the CIA and went to California with a court order to question CIA retiree Robert V. Lashbrook, who shared Olson's room the night he died. (Like everyone known to be directly involved, Lashbrook is now dead.)

In 2001, they gave up.

"We could never prove it was murder," says Saracco.

But Saracco, now retired, found plenty to fuel his suspicions: a hotel room so cramped it was hard to imagine Olson vaulting through the closed window; motives to shut Olson up; the ambiguous autopsy; and the CIA assassination manual.

"Whether the manual is a complete coincidence, I don't know," Saracco says. "But it was very disturbing to see that a CIA manual suggested the exact method of Frank Olson's death."

The son of Swedish immigrants, Frank Rudolph Olson earned a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin.

In 1949, Olson was recruited by Detrick's Special Operations Division. Within months, the Korean War was raging, Sen. Joseph McCarthy was launching his hunt for Communist agents, and pressure was on to build new U.S. germ weapons.

In October 1952, Olson was promoted to acting director of the division. Although his family didn't know it, he had also been recruited by the CIA for a program code-named Artichoke, part of a decades-long hunt for drugs to make enemy prisoners spill their secrets.

As his career prospered, Olson and his wife, Alice, built a dream house on a hillside above Frederick. They became regulars at Detrick's officers' club.

"He and his wife were both fun people," recalls Curtis B. Thorne, a Detrick veteran who pioneered anthrax studies at the University of Massachusetts.

But promotions and parties concealed Olson's qualms about his work. Suffering from ulcers, he left the Army and stayed on at Detrick as a civilian -- though he bridled at the Army's strict oversight. A 1949 security document reported: "Olson is violently opposed to control of scientific research, either military or otherwise, and opposes supervision of his work."

The same year, colleagues recall, Olson was influenced by a new book by a mentor. "In Peace or Pestilence: Biological Warfare and How To Avoid It," Theodor Rosebury said science should combat disease, not find devious ways to spread it.

Cournoyer, the Army intelligence veteran, says Olson began to raise ethical issues the friends had discussed during night courses in philosophy at the Catholic University of America. Colleagues were astonished to spot Olson chatting with the pacifists who protested outside Detrick's gates.

"He was turning, no doubt about it," Cournoyer says.

Whatever its source, Olson's disillusionment came to a head after the LSD experiment on Nov. 19, 1953, at a rented cabin on Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland. Olson -- who had stepped down to deputy chief of Special Operations -- joined six Army colleagues and three CIA men led by Sidney Gottlieb, the eccentric and powerful CIA liaison to Detrick.

By his own account, Gottlieb served Cointreau to seven of the men without telling them he had laced it with LSD, ostensibly to study the drug's effects.

Alice Olson would recall that her husband returned home deeply depressed. He told her he had made a "terrible mistake" but wouldn't elaborate. He said he planned to leave the Army and retrain as a dentist.

According to the official CIA version of events, made public in 1975, Olson became increasingly despondent and paranoid. On Nov. 24, concerned colleagues took him to New York to see a doctor, Harold Abramson, who had experimented with LSD.

Three days later, Olson agreed to be admitted to a Rockville psychiatric hospital. He and CIA officer Robert Lashbrook decided to spend the night at the Statler and head south the next morning.

But at 2:45 a.m., Lashbrook told investigators, he awoke to the sound of breaking glass. Olson had thrown himself through the closed shade and closed window, falling 170 feet to his death on the sidewalk below.

From 1953 to 1975, as Alice Olson descended into alcoholism and fought back to sobriety, she and her children were told nothing about LSD. When the story finally surfaced in the Rockefeller Commission report on CIA abuses, they received official apologies from President Ford and from CIA Director William Colby, who handed over CIA documents on the case. They later received $750,000 in compensation.

But 22 years of deception made it difficult to persuade the family that the new official story was the whole truth.

The betrayal was deeply personal. The LSD cover-up had involved Frank Olson's colleagues, particularly his boss, the late Col. Vincent Ruwet -- who had consoled Eric with the gift of a darkroom set and a jigsaw after his father's death.

"Whenever suspicions came up, the family would say: 'This can't be correct, because Ruwet would have known, and Ruwet wouldn't deceive us.' Our relationship to Ruwet was symbolic of our relationship to the whole Detrick community," Eric said.

As a teenager, Eric was a patriotic member of that community, where he became an Eagle Scout in the base-sponsored troop. But in college and graduate school, he grew skeptical.

If his mother shared his doubts, Eric said, she never acted on them: "My mother's mantra was: 'You are never going to know what happened in that hotel room.' It's an injunction, a kind of threat, a taboo and a prediction."

Eric's younger sister, Lisa, was killed in a 1978 plane crash along with her husband and 2-year-old son. Ironically, she died on the way to inspect a lumber mill as a place to invest her share of the government's compensation for Frank's death.

His brother, Nils, who was only 5 in 1953, consciously chose dentistry, the alternate career his father had considered.

But Eric, the eldest, couldn't settle down. He moved to Sweden, his father's ancestral home, and had a son, Stephan, with a Swedish woman. Then he returned to the family home, determined to explain his father's death.

One clue came from Armand Pastore, the assistant night manager at the Statler in 1953. He approached the family in 1975 to report what he'd heard from the hotel switchboard operator that night. Immediately after Olson's fall, CIA officer Lashbrook phoned Abramson, the physician. Instead of shocked and emotional voices, the operator had told Pastore, there was a brief and seemingly expected exchange.

"He's gone," Lashbrook said.

"That's too bad," Abramson reportedly answered.

A similar impression came from a CIA investigator's report in Colby's documents. Dispatched to New York immediately after Olson's death, the investigator listened through a closed door as Abramson told Lashbrook he was "worried as to whether or not the deal was in jeopardy" and thought "the whole operation was dangerous and the whole deal should be reanalyzed."

In a report to the CIA on the death, Abramson wrote that the LSD experiment was designed "especially to trap (Olson)." This conflicted with Gottlieb's story and raised a troubling possibility: that the LSD experiment was actually designed to see whether Olson could still be trusted to keep the agency's dark secrets.

And there was Frank Olson's mummified body, exhumed in 1994, the year after Alice Olson died. Starrs, the pathologist, found none of the facial cuts the original autopsy described, but he did find a contusion to the head that he thought was caused by a blow struck before the fall.

All these anomalies Eric Olson has duly recorded on a Web site devoted to his father's memory: www.frankolsonproject.org.

A half-century after his father's death, Eric Olson seems to be struggling to put it behind him. He says he believes he knows what happened, even if he doesn't know details of perpetrators and motives. "You can see the truth through the fog," he says. "But you can't quite make out what it is."

Sometimes, in moments of frustration -- which come often because he's struggling to earn a living -- he says he's sorry he ever looked into his father's death.

"I've ruined my life," he says in one interview. "I regret everything. I regret digging my father's body up. For me, the end has come with facing a hard truth, confronting my own naivete. I thought I wanted knowledge. I didn't think that if knowledge is knowledge of murder, then it's not enough -- because then you want justice. And you don't get justice with a secret state murder."

At other times, he seems eager for any new scrap of information. He explains the contradiction by citing the Shakespearean son who pursues the truth about his father's murder.

"Read 'Hamlet,' " he says. "Hamlet has become like a friend to me. Once you start looking into your father's death, you go to the end."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/09/12/MNG468MM8N1.DTL


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Motor-T grunt shines in new section
Submitted by: 24th MEU
Story Identification #: 200491311648
Story by Lance Cpl. Caleb J. Smith



FORWARD OPERATING BASE ISKANDARIYAH, Iraq (Sep. 12, 2003) -- When a convoy of Marines from Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, was attacked recently in the town of Musayyib, there was one Marine who stood out during the firefight.

That was Lance Cpl. Rattanaka Yun of the battalion’s motor transportation section, who was manning an M-240G machine gun mounted atop a humvee.

With rounds flying right past his head and bouncing off the gunner’s shield in front of him, Yun unflinchingly fired his machine gun at enemy insurgents who were trying to take him out with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.

His ability to keep firing in the face of danger was a big factor in allowing all the Marines involved to come away with no causalities.

“I saw him put his head down to look through the crack in the shield as rounds were bouncing off it,” said Cpl. Andre Queiroga, 21, a Ludlow, Mass., native and a motor transportation operator. “When other Marines would have bailed off the truck in that situation, he kept firing.”

But if it had not been for an unusual set of circumstances, Yun probably would not have been at this fight at all.

The reason -- he is an infantryman by trade who happens to be working in the motor transportation section.

“It’s rare to have someone with his [Military Occupational Specialty] with the section,” said Staff Sgt. Michael C. Mceachern, 29, a Hyannis, Mass., native and Motor Transportation Operations Chief.

According to Mceachern, Yun had been assigned to one of the rifle companies, but friction between Yun and other Marines there led to his transfer to Headquarters and Service Company.

Yun welcomed the new assignment.

“I knew if I went to H&S Company, I would go to Motor-T,” said Yun, 21, a Philadelphia native. “They taught me how to do the Motor-T thing, and I’ve taught them a little bit of the grunt thing,” he added.

Along with teaching his fellow Marines some basic infantry skills, Yun also works in the tool room.

“Yun is the tool room [noncommissioned officer]”, said Queiroga. “He checks and keeps track of everything the mechanics use to work on the vehicles.”

He also helps out the mechanics from time to time, lending a hand to work on trucks whenever he can.

“Motor-T has given me a second chance,” said Yun. “They took me in as their brother. Most people are surprised that I’m with Motor-T.”

Yun has made the most of the opportunity, shining in his new role while putting his infantry skills to good use protecting the BLT’s logistics train as it conducts convoy operations throughout Iraq.

Yun’s cool under fire in Musayyib drew praise from Queiroga, who was manning the MK-19 machine gun in the next vehicle.

“He would shoot in eight-round bursts,” Queiroga said. “I saw him fire on the insurgents when they first appeared at the end of the street, allowing the two Marines caught in front of us to get back to cover -- saving their lives.”

“I also saw him fire on two insurgents who ran forward with RPGs, both aiming for our trucks,” he added. “Yun strafed (with) the 240G, hitting the insurgents and causing the rocket propelled grenades to fly over our vehicles instead of hitting them. All the while, enemy fire was concentrated on him, bouncing off the metal shield he was sitting behind.”

After the firefight, the Marines who were standing in front of Yun when the insurgents appeared came up and thanked him for saving their lives and allowing them to get behind some cover.

“I think I proved (myself),” said Yun.

He has also earned the respect of the Marines in his new section.

Whatever problems he might have had in his old company, said Mceachern, “he’s doing a great job here.”

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/2004913113046/$file/040910-M-5121S-001lores.jpg

Lance Cpl. Rattanaka Yun of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit mans an M-240G machine gun during a convoy operation in Iraq.
Yun, 21, is a Philadelphia native and an infantryman with the motor transport section, Headquarters and Service Company, Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines.
The 24th MEU is currently conducting security and stability operations in Northern Babil Province.
Photo by: Lance Cpl. Caleb J. Smith

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/main5/FD8BB84F3182E58685256F0E00530576?opendocument


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Mobile-based Marines return from Iraq duty <br />
Third Force Reconnaissance Company arrived Monday night at Mobile Regional Airport <br />
Tuesday, September 14, 2004 <br />
By SUSAN DAKER <br />
Staff Reporter <br />
After...

[thedrifter]

Troops in Iraq to get new weapons systems


By Sandra Jontz, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Tuesday, September 14, 2004


ARLINGTON, Va. — A new sheriff is coming to town.

The Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation is designing a combined lethal and nonlethal weapons system to be fielded to Army and Marine Corps units in Iraq by summer, in an experiment called “Project Sheriff.”

The concept is to retrofit ground vehicles already in the services’ inventories with an array of new lethal and nonlethal systems, giving troops working in urban terrain more options, especially when deciding how to deal with potential noncombatants or civilians being used as shields, said program director and transformation strategist Col. Wade Hall, a 23-year veteran of the Marine Corps.

Like a sheriff, Hall says.

“He’s not there to cause destruction. He’s there to keep the peace, but has the option to go to destruction status if he needs it,” Hall said.

The Pentagon hopes to launch the system in Iraq in June or July, equipping four to six Army and Marine Corps vehicles with a combination of off-the-shelf technology and systems being developed.

Vehicles under consideration include the Army’s new Stryker armored personnel carrier or the Armored Security Vehicle, or ASV, and the Marine Corps’ Light Armored Vehicle, or LAV, already proven to work well in cities, said Hall.

A goal of the Office of Force Transformation is to cut through the years and years it used to take the department to introduce a new system, he said, while assuring that the technology employed is well-studied and the office is not sacrificing safety for the sake of speed.

Designers see the systems being used for missions such as armed reconnaissance, raids, crowd control, security patrol and vehicle checkpoints.

While no decisions have been made on which systems will be used, managers have narrowed the field to a few for consideration, Hall said.

Among them is Raytheon Company’s nonlethal Active Denial System, a counter-personnel directed energy weapon that projects a speed-of-light millimeter wave of energy that makes skin feel like it’s on fire.

According to studies done by the Air Force Research Laboratory, which developed the technology in a joint effort with the Marine Corps and Raytheon, the invisible beam penetrates the skin to a depth of less than 1/64 of an inch and produces heat that within seconds becomes intolerable, said lab spokeswoman Eva Hendren.

The sensation stops when the individual moves out of the beam. The beam does not cause injury because its penetration is so shallow, Hendren said.

Vehicles also could be equipped with high-powered lights to aid in searches, and an acoustics system such as the Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, a high-powered bullhorn of sorts that emits an ear-piercing noise.

Marines in Iraq already are using the LRAD system. No decision on LRAD has been made, but the office has no alternative if it is not picked, Hall said. Critics of the LRAD system have said the ear-piercing noise could cause permanent damage and deafness. He said the military still is conducting studies.

The lethal portion of the projects includes a mounted rapid-fire gun that will be able to carry a diversity of medium- and small-caliber machine guns at a high rate of fire. The system under consideration is called Gunslinger and is under development at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va.

An Active Protection System would place an array of sensors that could deploy decoys and detect chemical or biological agents.

While the Pentagon is taking the lead in developing Project Sheriff, other agencies interested in the experiment’s progress include the Justice, Energy, and State departments and the FBI, Hall said.

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=24359


Ellie

[thedrifter]

U.S. Attacks an Iraqi City With Double-Edged Sword <br />
Officials laud airstrikes aimed at Fallouja rebels. But civilians may pay dearly, fueling hostility. <br />
<br />
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Times Staff...

[thedrifter]

Issue Date: September 13, 2004 <br />
<br />
Blimps may give combat gear a lift <br />
Dirigibles are faster than airships and can avoid ports, proponents say <br />
<br />
By Jason Sherman <br />
Times staff writer <br />
<br />
<br />
The Pentagon...

[thedrifter]

September 14, 2004

Fallujah turnover was forced lesson in flexibility, Marines say

By Christian Lowe
Times staff writer


Marines were ordered into a street-to-street battle against insurgents in Fallujah by U.S. Central Command officials last spring, ignoring the judgment of Corps leaders and scuttling a long-term strategy Marine commanders had hoped would quell the insurgency there with less bloodshed, according to a senior Marine official.
“We were ordered to go into Fallujah against our inclination,” said Brig. Gen. John F. Kelly, 1st Marine Division assistant commander, at a joint U.S. Naval Institute and Marine Corps Association forum held Sept. 7 in Arlington, Va.

“That was not what we wanted to do in Fallujah,” Kelly said. “We had a different game plan. A longer game plan.”

Marine forces, who had deployed to Iraq little more than a month earlier, had to shift gears quickly from a force organized for security and stabilization operations to one designed to flush out insurgents in pitched urban combat.

Regional commanders ordered the Marines into Fallujah shortly after the March 31 slaying and dismembering of civilian security contractors. The resulting clashes killed more than a dozen Marines and wounded scores more during the nearly monthlong siege.

In the end, just as two reinforced infantry battalions were poised for a final assault from positions on the outskirts of the town, Marine commanders were ordered to withdraw, handing over the mission instead to a hastily assembled “Fallujah Brigade” made up largely of Iraqi police, local militia members and former Iraqi army leaders.

“To our surprise, before we had completed [the mission], we were ordered to cease fire and work with Iraqis who were presented to us by higher headquarters,” Kelly recounted.

Though Kelly was using the seesaw battle of Fallujah as an example of the Corps’ ability to quickly change gears, the decision to withdraw sticks in the craw of many leathernecks to this day. Many said the final assault, though bloody, would have put an end to the town’s use as a terrorist and insurgent base.

But ending the fight early was the right thing to do, according to another senior Marine who spoke at the forum.

“You can’t really be against the decision if the reasons were political, because it’s fundamentally a political struggle,” said Col. T.X. Hammes, a senior fellow at the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies.

Most people thought “if we’d just smash them it would be over,” Hammes said. “That’s just not the way insurgencies work. It’s a political problem.”

The Marine Corps needs to make significant cultural and organizational changes to meet the challenge of the war on terrorism, which has as many political dimensions as it has military ones, Hammes said.

Headquarters staffs should be cut back to free up field-grade officers for battlefield assignments; major training exercises should be unscripted, allowing for more innovation and free thinking — even if that means unit commanders lose a few simulated battles; and Marines should be encouraged to view the conflict as an insurgency rather than a force-on-force war.

As an example, Hammes cited tactics used by Afghans fighting Soviet troops in the heart of Kabul during the 1980s.

To move around the city, the Afghans simply checked out Soviet vehicles from military motor pools, disguising themselves as Soviet or Afghan government troops with uniforms taken from local laundry businesses in town — an innovative way to gain tactical advantage over their adversaries, Hammes said.

“We’re looking at the enemy we’re fighting now,” he said. “But one thing we know is that warfare changes, and the only thing that responds to change is a mentally flexible person.”

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-354431.php


Ellie

[thedrifter]

MP company returns home
September 14,2004
ERIC STEINKOPFF
DAILY NEWS STAFF

Military police at Camp Lejeune and New River Air Station usually greet traffic at the gates, search some vehicles or respond to trouble calls.

Overseas, where a vehicle search can bring trouble with a capital T, it's a different story altogether.

Lance Cpl. Andres Florentino, a 22-year-old MP from Newport News, Va., can attest to that. His seven-month deployment to Iraq was cut short in early April when a rocket-propelled grenade struck the procession of 20-plus humvees and trucks in which he was traveling.

The right side of his body was sprayed with shrapnel. His right knee was seriously injured, and a purple scar has stained his right forearm.

"Our entire convoy got hit," said Florentino.

On Monday, Florentino was at Camp Lejeune waiting for his comrades. About 140 members of Bravo Company, 2nd Military Police Battalion, 2nd Force Service Support Group returned to the base after serving in Iraq for seven months. About 150 members of their sister unit, Alpha Company, left two weeks ago to take their place.

In combat areas, the MPs provide security for convoys and secure supply routes, Florentino said.

"We make random stops of suspicious vehicles," Florentino said.

"When on guard at the gates, you search (all) vehicles. We use mirrors, have dogs sniff it and check every compartment."

They're looking for wires - anything suspicious.

As convoy escorts, MPs protect ammunition, food and mail, Florentino said. Mail, he noted, is a morale-booster for members of the detachment.

Sam Bolman was waiting Monday under a banner designed to welcome home her husband, 31-year-old Staff Sgt. Scott Bolman, a brig guard assigned to Bravo Company. Today is their son Keagan's second birthday - Scott's been gone for 12 of those months.

"The most-difficult thing was Â… knowing they went out on convoys - daily runs through Fallujah," Sam said.

The Sunni-dominated city west of Baghdad has emerged as a Baathist stronghold and a hotbed of guerrilla activity. Seven Marines from the West Coast's I Marine Expeditionary Force were killed there last week when a car bomb exploded.

"It was pretty nerve wracking," Scott said of the convoy duty. "A couple of my Marines came back early, and I didn't feel too good about that."

Monday's homecoming is the latest in a flurry of troop movements this week. The 2,200-member 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, which spent four months chasing Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, is due back at area bases, and elements of 2nd Tank Battalion are expected to leave for Iraq.

An undisclosed number of the 43,000-member II Marine Expeditionary Force, headquartered at Camp Lejeune, is expected to deploy to Iraq early next year to take over duties from I MEF.


Contact Eric Steinkopff at estein kopff@jdnews.com or 353-1171, Ext. 236.



http://www.jacksonvilledailynews.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=25672&Section=News


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Fallujah Battle Not Military's Choice
United Press International
September 14, 2004


WASHINGTON - The U.S. Marine general responsible for Fallujah opposed the April attack on the city as well as the order to withdraw his troops before they had gained control of it.

Lt. Gen. James Conway, the outgoing commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Unit, told the Washington Post he resisted called for revenge after four American security workers were killed and mutilated in Fallujah March 31. Instead, civilian authorities, Coalition Provisional Chief Paul Bremer and the White House, decided to send the Marines in to capture or kill the perpetrators.

Well into the siege on the city -- after President George Bush called a meeting at Camp David with his top security advisers -- Conway was ordered to withdraw his troops.

In their place, Conway was pressed into crafting something called the Fallujah Brigade, a band of largely former Iraqi military soldiers who were supposed to keep order in the city. Fallujah became a "no go" zone for U.S. forces, although there are frequent battles on the edge of the city, and the Fallujah Brigade became a large part of the problem -- even enforcing a decree by a local sheik that anyone wearing the uniform of the U.S.- backed Iraqi National Guard would be killed.

Two ING battalion commanders were kidnapped Aug. 9. At least one of them was killed after being forced to make a videotaped confession of collaboration with the United States, and his body dumped in downtown Fallujah.

The Falluajah Brigade was officially disbanded last week, but the foundation had been laid at least a month ago. Officials from the 1st Marine Division told the replacement ING battalion commanders the brigade would be taken apart by Aug. 21, and the local police would be disbanded as well.

The plan was to clear the city of any Fallujah Brigade and police members who could be convinced to cooperate with the U.S. military and to the government in Baghdad. They were invited to join the new Iraqi army or the highway patrol, respectively. Any one who did not want to join those units was expected to turn in their uniforms, weapons and ID cards.

The intention was to turn Fallujah into a blank slate -- that is, anyone who appeared on the street with a gun or in a unifom would be considered fair game if Baghdad asked U.S. forces to go back in and clear the city.

That order has yet to be given, but the Marines situated around Fallujah have stepped up the pace of operations in the last week. News reports say at least 15 Iraqis were killed in fighting there Monday.

Fallujah was a sore point for most of the 25,000 Marines in Anbar Province since April. At least seven battalions were sent to the fight there after the contractors were killed, and they were drawn into at least a three-week "siege" of the city, although they all point out that humanitarian aid was being allowed into the city and citizens were free to leave.

Most Marines interviewed believed they were within three or four days of beating back the insurgent force in town when they were pulled out by civilian authorities, who believed the operation was alienating Iraqis.

More telling is the fact that senior commanders universally said in interviews -- all of them on condition of anonymity -- if they were making the decision, they would not have gone into Fallujah at that time under those conditions.

It is a basic U.S. military tenet to choose the time and place of a battle. The streets of Fallujah may be an unavoidable and tricky battlefield, but the immediate aftermath of the March 31 killings was not the time to fight, they said.

First, that robbed them of the element of surprise. It was well known -- because it was announced from press podiums in Baghdad -- that U.S. forces were going in to find the perpetrators and bring Fallujah under control.

Second, it "taught" the insurgents that their provocative acts could draw the United States into an urban battle when they wanted it, rather than the other way around.

Third, finding the individuals whose faces were on the videotape of the contractor killings is in essence a police job. Fallujah being the tribal city that it was, it would be easy under peaceful conditions to have local police find the identities of the killers and arrest them. Hunting down a handful of men and boys is not the best use of U.S. military capabilities.

A senior Marine official told Marines just rotating into Iraq in July that U.S. forces were ordered into and out of Fallujah for political reasons, but it was "nothing to gnash your teeth about." Marines are there to follow the orders of civilian authorities.

Combining Fallujah with fighting in southern Iraq against the militia loyal to cleric Moqtada Sadr, 51 Marines, 68 soldiers and six Navy men died in action in April.


Ellie