Bomb Explodes Near U.S. Convoy

[thedrifter]

Bomb Explodes Near U.S. Convoy
Associated Press
November 29, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Two U.S. soldiers were injured early Sunday when a car bomb exploded next to their military convoy on the road leading to Baghdad's airport, a military statement said.

The bomb damaged one of the vehicles, the military said, and two soldiers were taken to a military hospital.

The military statement said there were no reported civilian casualties. But the interim government's Youth Ministry reported that its general director, Ahmed Faiq, and his bodyguard were injured in the attack.

Fadhil Jawad, a resident who said he watched the attack from the roof of his home, described a late-model luxury car overtaking the six-vehicle convoy moments before exploding in a ball of fire.

Jawad said that two of the Humvees in the convoy were destroyed by the blast and the rest scattered off the road. Two Blackhawk helicopters arrived and evacuated wounded soldiers, he said.




A military spokesman said he couldn't comment on the report that two vehicles were destroyed.

The highway leading from downtown to the international airport is considered one of the most dangerous stretches of road in Iraq for U.S. troops. Insurgents regularly target military convoys and combat patrols on the busy thoroughfare, which cuts through central Baghdad.

On Saturday, a bomb detonated near two armored buses on the same road, damaging both but causing no casualties.

Meanwhile, several mortar shells exploded Sunday near a police station in the town of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said. Two officers and a woman were injured in the attack.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Michael Jordan's Brother Going To Iraq
Associated Press
November 29, 2004

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - Army Command Sgt. Maj. James R. Jordan has much in common with his younger brother, retired basketball star Michael Jordan. He loves his job, believes in helping his team and expects maximum effort from those around him.

And like his brother, James Jordan likes to leave on his own terms. He has asked to stay in the Army for a year beyond his mandatory retirement date so he can complete a full yearlong deployment to Iraq with about 500 other members of the 35th Signal Brigade.

"We are currently at war," Jordan said before the unit started shipping out Sunday. "We are doing things, and it requires leaders to do certain things. That's what I am, a leader."

Under normal conditions, the 47-year-old Jordan would wind down his Army career in the spring as he approached the 30-year mark, but he has no intention of getting on an airplane April 29 and coming home.

"That's not the way you want to end a 30-year career," Jordan told The Fayetteville Observer.

"People ask 'Why?'" said Col. Bryan Ellis, the brigade commander. "The answer is, he is completely selfless. We all want to see it go well."




Jordan is a no-nonsense noncommissioned officer with a shaved head and a wry sense of humor. He stands 5-foot-7, while his younger brother is about 6-foot-6. As the senior enlisted soldier in the brigade of 2,450 soldiers, he has kept a low profile at Fort Bragg and avoided calling attention to his family connection.

"If you don't believe in selfless service, you are not going to make it in this business," said Jordan, the oldest person in the brigade.

He was 36, wearing the stripes of a first sergeant, when he went to airborne school, where most soldiers are in their teens or early 20s. He still runs eight miles and expects soldiers to be alongside him.

Three years of Junior ROTC during high school in Wilmington helped convince Jordan that the Army was for him.

"I figured I wanted to be a soldier, plus I was the oldest of five kids," he said. "I wanted to get out of the house and do something myself."

He said some of his relatives don't really know what he does.

"They know I'm in the Army. That's about it," he said. "My immediate family and my wife, my kids, not extremely happy, but they are on the team. They say: 'Daddy, do what you've got to do.'"

"I've been doing this by myself for so long, being my own person, being my own soldier," he said. "I'm going to continue doing it the same way until the day I feel like I need to hang it up, not when they feel like I need to hang it up."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

November 26, 2004

Friend of Marine killed in Iraq gets call from Bush

By Ben Dobbin
Associated Press


GREECE, N.Y. — Lance Cpl. Nathan Clarke was granted a highly unusual 10-day leave to attend the funeral of his best friend, Brian Schramm, a fellow Marine killed in combat in Iraq last month. On Thanksgiving Day, Clarke got a call of condolence from President Bush.
“He thanked Nathan three times for his service to his country and expressed his very deepest sympathies for the loss of his very good friend,” Clarke’s father, Allan, said Friday.

Clarke, 21, was serving with the 8th Tank Battalion in Djibouti in eastern Africa when he learned that Schramm, 22, had been fatally wounded by shrapnel in an attack south of Baghdad on Oct. 15. The pair, who had been friends since kindergarten in the Rochester suburb of Greece, spent a summer together as high school exchange students in Germany.

Schramm’s parents asked the Marines to allow three of his friends in the military — Clarke and two others stationed at U.S. bases — to attend the funeral. The Marines normally grant such requests only to immediate family members.

Getting the telephone call from the president was humbling but also bittersweet.

“Nathan still can’t get over Brian being gone,” his father said. “He wondered, ‘Why me, what have I done to deserve this?’ Where he is in Africa is not a hotbed and they’re thinking all the time about their brother Marines in Iraq getting hammered and taking casualties.”

Clarke, who joined the Marines out of high school, returned to his unit earlier this month and expects to remain on tour until February.

On Thursday morning, Bush called 10 members of the military representing all five branches of the service.

“As the men and women of America’s armed forces are sacrificing for the liberties we all enjoy, the president wanted to express his gratitude for their service and sacrifice, and to wish them a happy Thanksgiving,” White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said.

Lance Cpl. Schramm was assigned to the 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Since he was a youngster, his lifelong dream had been to join the Marines, his family said.

He spent five months in the Middle East and Iraq last year during and after the invasion, and was deployed again in June.

“He was the most genuine person you’d ever meet in your entire life,” said friend Jon Zodarecky, who graduated from high school with Schramm in 2001 and later enlisted in the Army.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

More bodies discovered in Mosul; two Marines killed in Fallujah

By Mariam Fam
Associated Press


BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. forces found 13 more bodies in and around the northern city of Mosul, the military said Friday, bringing to 35 the number of corpses discovered in the past week in the area shaken by an insurgent uprising.
In Fallujah, insurgents ambushed U.S. troops as they entered a home during house-to-house searches in the former rebel bastion, killing two Marines and wounding three others, the U.S. military said Friday.

Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said the Marines responded with gunfire, killing three rebels hiding inside.

U.S. troops have continued clearing operations in Fallujah, which came under a massive week-long U.S.-led assault that began Nov. 8. Sattler said about 50 percent of the houses in the city have already been cleared.

“We will continue to clear out houses till every one is secure. We’ve taken more and more of their safehouses. They’re running out of places to hide,” he said.

Sattler vowed that the city 40 miles west of Baghdad will be safe in time for next January’s nationwide elections, adding that “We want every Fallujan to vote from their house.”

Also Friday, Navy Secretary Gordon R. England warned of more violence in Iraq ahead of the country’s nationwide elections in January but said that U.S. and Iraqi forces will prevail in securing the vote.

“There will be efforts to disrupt the elections,” England said on a visit to Marines at a camp outside Fallujah. “The insurgents don’t want the elections to be held and certainly not that they be successful. But we will prevail. We will provide the necessary stability.”

In Mosul, the U.S. military said that 11 of the 35 bodies found have been identified as members of the Iraqi security forces, who have been targeted by insurgents. The others have not been identified.

U.S. forces patrolling Mosul and nearby Tal Afar on Thursday morning found nine bodies on the western side of Mosul, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman with Task Force Olympia. Two more bodies were found in the city later in the day.

In Tal Afar, one Iraqi National Guard soldier was found dead while a second body discovered in a different location was unidentified.

The military late Thursday had reported the discovery of another two bullet-riddled bodies in western Mosul. U.S. and Iraqi troops were hit by mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire as they were retrieving the bodies, according to Lt. Col. Eric Kurilla of the Army’s 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment.

The U.S. military spotted at least one team of insurgents firing at them. One Iraqi National Guardsman suffered minor injuries, according to Kurilla.

All the bodies found Thursday have been turned over to the Iraqi authorities, said Hastings.

Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, was the site of a mass insurgent uprising in apparent support of Fallujah guerrillas following the U.S.-led assault. In the wake of the mass attacks, U.S. and Iraqi forces were sent in to retake parts of the city but insurgents have managed to hit back.

Twenty other bodies have been found in Mosul since last Thursday. At least 10 of the bodies — nine of them shot execution-style — belonged to the Iraqi regular army, based at the Kisik military base about 31 miles west of Mosul, near Tal Afar. Four of the bodies found were decapitated.

Meanwhile, Iraqi forces arrested four insurgents who said they were planning attacks against coalition bases and police stations in the southern city of Basra, officials said Friday, a day after a joint British-Iraqi operation netted three dozen men in the area.

Iraqi National Guardsmen arrested the four after a brief gunfight at the Al-Yarmouk Hotel. Three of the men came from Fallujah and the fourth from Samarra, according to an Iraqi National Guard official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The four men told Iraqi officials they were planning a series of attacks in southern Basra, which is the headquarters for some 8,500 British troops, in an attempt to relieve the U.S. military pressure on Fallujah.

One of the insurgents was injured during the gunfight and weapons were found in their hotel room, the Iraqi official said.

The arrests followed a larger operation Thursday where Iraqi National Guards and police commandos, backed by coalition forces, raided several locations in the town of Zubayr, just west of Basra, said British spokesman Maj. Charlie Mayo.

About 60 British soldiers and 30 Danish soldiers maintained perimeter security as another 60 Iraqi National Guards and police swept through several buildings in Zubayr.

A total of 36 people were detained, all of them from outside the Basra area, along with quantities of weapons, ammunition and drugs, he said.

Iraqi officials said the group included Iraqis, Afghans, and other Arab foreign fighters, though there was no breakdown.

The raiding forces also found a safehouse for the insurgents in the city of Basra. The house was considered the main base where weapons and money were kept to be used by the insurgents.

Basra Police Chief Brig. Mohammed Khazim said the raids over the past two days arose out of information revealed by five Arab foreign fighters arrested Wednesday night at a checkpoint in Qurnah, about 37 miles north of Basra. Two were from Saudia Arabia, two from Tunisia and one was from Libya.

Near the northern city of Kirkuk, gunmen attacked a police station, killing one policeman and injuring three, police said Friday.

Insurgents used machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in their assault on a police station in Rashad, 30 miles southwest of Kirkuk, on Thursday night, according to police Brig. Sarhat Qadir.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

In the Mideast, many find faith as they face death in battle


By Steve Liewer, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Sunday, November 28, 2004



FORWARD OPERATING BASE MACKENZIE, Iraq — When the back end of Spc. Derrick Lawson’s Bradley fighting vehicle jumped from the force of the explosion, he thought of one thing to do.

“I saw the smoke and the flames, and I knew we’d been hit,” said Lawson, 21, of the 1st Infantry Division’s 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment. “My first reaction was to start praying.”

The Bradley lurched to a halt, its driver already dead. Amid the screaming, shouting, confusion and thickening smoke, Lawson saw his platoon sergeant, Staff Sgt. Metoyer Jordan, struggling with the jammed rear hatch. He closed his eyes and desperately said a second prayer.

Someone answered.

“Then I looked up, and the door was open,” Lawson said, 3½ months after the July 21 attack. “I just jumped out and ran down the street.”

Walking daily through the valley of the shadow of death has not necessarily produced a lot of road-to-Damascus religious conversions among combat troops, chaplains, say. But it has pushed some back toward the religion of their youth.

“Every individual fortifies themselves in different ways,” said Capt. Gary Fisher, 39, of Alexandria, La., the 1-4 Cavalry’s chaplain. “A lot of life’s questions are being asked and answered.”

Lawson spent some time in the hospital recovering from smoke inhalation and burns before returning to duty. He’s had a lot of time to reflect. He attended church with his family growing up in Spring Lake, N.C., but God has taken a more central place in his life now.

“It was a wake-up call. You can go at any time,” Lawson said. “I’m in an environment where, every day, people are out there trying to kill me. (Now) I do things differently. I try to be a better person.”

Sgt. Orville Whitlock, 30, of Lynchburg, Va., is squad leader for a 9th Engineer Battalion platoon attached to the 1-4 Cavalry. On May 5, someone fired a rocket-propelled grenade at his Humvee. Shrapnel injured Whitlock and the four other soldiers inside, but no one died.

“I’m thankful to God that nothing worse happened than that,” Whitlock said. “Before I go out the gate, I say a silent prayer that we get through everything we experience.”

“I pray more in Iraq than I have in years,” said Capt. John Trylch, 30, of Los Angeles, commander of the 1-4 Cavalry’s Troop B “Bulldawgs.”

Spc. Steve Wetmore, 20, of Union City, Pa., serves in Whitlock’s engineer platoon. He said he doesn’t go to church, but he does believe in God.

To hedge his bets, he wears a cross on his dog tags.

Under fire, Wetmore said, he thinks about his job more than religion. Two weeks ago, he was manning a traffic checkpoint when rebels fired mortar rounds directly at their position.

“When we got mortared the other day,” he said. “The last thing I was thinking about was praying.”

Spc. Jose Bartual, 26, of New York City, said he is a nonpracticing Roman Catholic, but he comes from a religious family. He’s been in several intense firefights and survived the explosion of a bomb underneath his armored personnel carrier.

“My 8-year-old niece won’t let a day go by that she isn’t praying for me," Bartual said. In fact, the girl worried so much that after his midtour leave her family told her he wasn’t returning to Iraq.

Sgts. Eduardo Colon and Carlos Torres both are 25 and both grew up in Puerto Rico. Now they both serve with Trylch in the 1-4 Cavalry’s B Troop, based in Schweinfurt, Germany.

Together they’ve dodged bullets and survived roadside bombs. They also share a fatalistic philosophy about life and death and combat.

“I believe,” Torres said, “if it’s your time, it’s your time.”

“I pray to God and whatnot, but I don’t go to church,” Colon said. “But when I get back, I’m going to start.”

Pfc. Joshua Schmidt, 21, of Sacramento, Calif., arrived in Iraq last spring without religion. But after surviving a mine strike, an RPG attack, and several gun battles, he’s beginning to wonder.

“I was agnostic when I first came down here,” said Schmidt, of the 9th Engineers. “I’d still say I’m agnostic, but I definitely believe he’s out there.

“I’m either damn lucky,” he added, “or somebody’s looking out for me.”


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Zarqawi: U.S. 'Infidels' Have Us on the Ropes

The world's most dangerous terrorist, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, announced on Wednesday that the battle of Fallujah was a massive defeat for the Iraqi insurgency, blaming the debacle on Sunni Muslim clerics who failed to support his reign of terror.


"Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence," Zarqawi said in an audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site known as al-Qala'a, which has been a mailbox for Islamic militant groups.

Story Continues Below


"You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy," the notorious mass murderer complained. "You have stopped supporting the holy warriors."
The finger-pointing tape from Zarqawi is the clearest indication yet that the U.S. offensive in Fallujah has been a massive success and could be the beginning of a rout for terrorist forces in Iraq.

The tape reveals the Jordanian-born terrorist sounding desperate as he admits that his forces are "surrounded" by U.S. troops, who are "cutting the throats of the holy warriors."

"Are your hearts not shaken by the scenes of your brothers being surrounded and hurt by your enemy?" he asks plaintively.

"How long will you continue to abandon the nation to the tyrants of the east and of the west, who are inflicting the worst suffering, cutting the throats of the holy warriors, the best children of the nation, and taking its riches? ...

"You made peace with the tyranny and handed over the country and its people to the Jews and Crusaders by resorting to silence on their crimes and preventing our youth from heading to the battlefields in order to defend our religion," he complained.

Though the Zarqawi tape is the best news to come out of Iraq since Saddam Hussein's capture last year, the American press has downplayed the story.

The New York Times, for instance, covered the top terrorist's stunning admission on page A22 of its little-read Thanksgiving Day edition.

The Washington Post buried the bombshell news in a Thanksgiving Day report headlined "American Envoy Killed in Baghdad," where quotes from the Zarqawi tape weren't even mentioned until the 17th paragraph.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Army Base Readies For Expansion <br />
Associated Press <br />
November 29, 2004 <br />
<br />
COLUMBUS, Ga. - With Fort Benning preparing for its largest troop expansion since the Vietnam War, barber Anthony Brock...

[thedrifter]

Anti-U.S. Propaganda Leaflets Found
Associated Press
November 29, 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Leaflets urging people to "count all the American tanks you see and report them to us" were strewn across the courtyard of a two-story building that doubled as a hospital for those who fought U.S. troops in this former insurgent stronghold.

The leaflets were unsigned and unnoticed until the Marines' Iraqi interpreter, nicknamed Sam, picked one up over the weekend as his unit was searching for weapons in the building, which was the local headquarters of the Iraqi Islamic Party.

"To stop American tanks, you must trust your religion," the leaflets read. "Keep away from people who work for the American forces. Keep praying. Count all the American tanks you see and report to us."

After finding the leaflets, the Marines decided to look closer inside the freshly painted building - affluent by Fallujah standards and only slightly damaged during the U.S.-led assault this month. Its windows were blown out and walls pockmarked with bullets.

The ground floor's sprawling auditorium, which could seat several hundred people, had been transformed into a makeshift hospital, with beds neatly stacked on the stage next to stands for intravenous drips.

Hundreds of boxes of medical supplies, vials, syringes and wound dressings packed the rows and corners.




A Marine civil affairs officer, Lt. Col. Leonard De Francisci, said the array was impressive for a field hospital: Cipro antibiotics, tranquilizers, sedatives - even a chest tube, the type used to treat gunshot wounds to the lungs. Many of the boxes were marked with insignias of the Red Crescent, the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

"It is all pretty sophisticated by Third World standards. They were obviously preparing for a long, drawn-out conflict," De Francisco said. "We had seen so many things stashed in weirdest places, yet this was a surprise."

Lt. Col. Ed Howell, of Melbourne, Fla., said the Marines would try to see whether the medicine was still usable, so they could "give it to the Iraqi people, for a good cause."

Elsewhere on the ground floor, Marines also found logbooks with records of attacks on American troops and a list of "safehouses" with directions such as: "go behind this mosque, find" that.

The inside courtyard wall was plastered with notices for damages allegedly due to American attacks.

Inside, many-colored posters depicted crying Iraqi women and children, wounded by "evil Americans."

Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Dayton Swann, 28, said the propaganda was simple but powerful.

"Most of it was just bashing Americans, telling everyone how bad we are," said Swann, of Jacksonville, Fla. "But they were rather effective. They understood the culture, interacted with the people. They got their message out. They ruled this city."

A Marines intelligence specialist, Gunnery Sgt. Christopher Boiling, said it was unlikely the hospital had actually been used.

"It's hard to tell whether this was donated directly to the insurgency or looted from elsewhere," said Boiling, of Lexington, Ohio.

The discovery of the hospital Saturday came as U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to fight sporadic gunbattles with the last remaining insurgents as they clear Fallujah of weapons, hoping to launch reconstruction projects and prepare for the return of over 250,000 residents of this city along the Euphrates river.

In the bombed out, charred city, regular explosions punctured the calm as Marines elsewhere blew up weapons caches and buildings too dangerous to remain standing.

"Every day in Fallujah is a very difficult, long challenge," said Maj. Wade Weems, 34, as another "contact" - military shorthand for firefight - took place Sunday in the northwestern Jolan district.

"But we take it one step at a time," said Weems, from Washington D.C. "This time, we are here to stay."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Two marines killed in the triangle of death to the south of Baghdad
Iraq, Military, 11/29/2004

Two American marines soldiers were killed in the large scale operations carried out against the area known as the "triangle of death" to the south of Baghdad. One American military spokesman said the two soldiers were killed on Sunday evening in the north of Babel governorate but gave no other details.

The two killed American soldiers were the first of human losses in the American forces since the launching of the "Plymouth Rock" operation since six days to eliminate the armed men in the areas to the south of the capital Baghdad.

Some 5,000 Marines forces are taking part besides British forces and the Iraqi national guards.

This coincided with news reports statements to journalists accompanying the American forces that five American military men were killed in the past three days in confrontations in al-Anbar governorate to the west of Baghdad which includes the two cities of al-Ramadi and Fallujah.

The reports explained that three of the five soldiers were killed on Sunday while the two others on Friday. No comment was made by the American side on the killing of the said soldiers. However, a statement by the American army announced that one of its soldier from the first squad was killed in a traffic accident on a road to the north east of Baghdad during which his car fell in a water canal.

Meantime, the Iraqi police and national guards forces announced the killing of 17 gunmen and wounding of other 9 in clashes between the gunmen and the British and the American, British and Iraqi forces in the area known as the triangle of death to the south of Baghdad on Sunday evening especially in al-Lteifeh and al-Mahmodeyah areas. However, one American spokesman in the area denied these outcome and referred that three gunmen were killed in frequent clashes in this area. Iraqi security sources said that the American- British campaign against southern Iraq resulted in detaining scores of suspected forces.

In Sameraa to the north of Baghdad, five Iraqis were killed and other four injured a booby trapped car explosion. One American spokesman said that two American soldiers were injured in an attack by a booby trapped car against one American convoy on the airport road in Baghdad.

Meantime, the marines forces continue the breaking in operations and search for weapons in Fallujah to the west of Baghdad which had invaded several weeks ago.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Shadow of Vietnam Falls Over Iraq River Raids
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By JOHN F. BURNS
New York Times
Nov. 29, 2004

CHARD DUWAISH, Iraq, Nov. 28 - As marines aboard fast patrol boats roared up the Euphrates on a dawn raid on Sunday, images pressed in of another American war where troops moved up wide rivers on camouflaged boats, with machine-gunners nervously scanning riverbanks for the hidden enemy.

That war is rarely mentioned among the American troops in Iraq, many of whom were not yet born when the last American combat units withdrew from Vietnam more than 30 years ago. A war that America did not win is considered a bad talisman among those men and women, who privately admit to fears that this war could be lost.

But as an orange moon sank below the bulrushes on Sunday morning, thoughts of Vietnam were hard to avoid.

Marines waded ashore through soft silted mud that caused some to sink to their waists, M-16 rifles held skyward as others on solid land held out their rifle barrels as lifelines.

Ashore, sodden and with boots squelching mud, the troops began a five-hour tramp through dense palm groves and across paddies crisscrossed by deep irrigation canals.

There were snatches of dialogue from "Apocalypse Now," and a black joke from one marine about the landscape resembling "a Vietnam theme park."

But behind the joshing lay something more serious: the sense expressed by many of the Americans as they scoured the area that in this war, too, the insurgents might have advantages that could make them a match for highly trained troops, technological gadgetry and multibillion-dollar war budgets.

The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit conducted the river raid as part of a weeklong offensive billed as a sequel to the battle for Falluja, less than 20 miles upriver from the village where the marines landed Sunday.

The 40-foot river craft they used are called Surcs, for Small Unit Riverine Craft, a high-tech update on the Swift boats used in Vietnam. The craft were flown into Iraq aboard giant C-5 transport aircraft and were first deployed with five-man crews during the battle for Falluja this month, patrolling the stretch of the Euphrates that runs along the city's western edge to prevent attempts by insurgents to escape that way after American troops had thrown a cordon around the city.

Those patrols were judged a success by American commanders. Now they are eager to exploit the potential the patrol boats give them for mounting fast, unexpected attacks along the Tigris and the Euphrates. The rivers run through many of the cities and towns that are rebel strongholds, and the long stretches of verdant riverbank provide ideal hiding places for insurgents and their weapons caches.

The raid, backed by air cover from attack helicopters and pilotless drones, gave the Americans a chance to exploit another new dimension of their strategy for winning the war: twinning American combat units with newly trained Iraqi troops.

After failures earlier this year, when many Iraqi units deserted or refused to fight, the American command wrote a new blueprint for training tens of thousands of Iraqi fighters and used Falluja as the first, critical testing ground. Considered a qualified success there, the best Iraqi units have been an integral part of every major raid in the follow-up offensive here.

In many raids, they have heavily outnumbered American troops, as they did in the operation on Sunday, which included 40 marines and 80 members of a special Iraqi commando unit assigned to the country's powerful Interior Ministry.

As much as they wanted to test their new river boats, American commanders wanted to see how the commandos - many drawn from elite units of Saddam Hussein's special forces - would respond to an arduous and potentially risky mission.

This day, long before the three-mile sweep through the palm groves and citrus orchards and paddies was ended, the mood among the marines had soured as the Iraqis adopted a mostly dilatory attitude toward the tedious business of spreading out in long lines and moving methodically across the terrain, poking haystacks, running metal detectors over piles of palm fronds, peering into thick clusters of bulrushes, and digging in places of freshly turned earth.

"They've just about given up," said Lt. Jerman Duarte, 34, of Houston, his voice edged with exasperation.

Lieutenant Duarte, a native of Guatemala, led the raid in his capacity as commander of a reconnaissance and surveillance platoon that has honed its skills in many of the marines' toughest raids and stakeouts during their five months in Iraq. Among his men, he is known as "El Guapo," the handsome one, for his fine features and his bristling mustache. But his sense of urgency and do-it-by-the-book briskness appeared lost on the Iraqi fighters, who used their rest breaks in the morning sunshine to trade quips about the Americans, not all of them friendly.

As in so much else about the American venture in Iraq, cultural differences played their part. At one point, Lieutenant Duarte bridled when some of the Iraqis resisted his repeated urging that they spread out along the line, preferring to cluster together, ineffectively, at one end. A Marine sergeant told him that the Iraqis were officers and did not feel that they should be asked to work side by side with common soldiers.

One of the Iraqi officers, asked if he spoke English, replied snappily, "English no good. Arabic good. Iraq good." The message seemed clear.

Although recruits in the new Iraqi units undergo strict vetting, American officers say rebel sympathizers have infiltrated some of the new units - some of the soldiers have been caught tipping off rebel groups. If there were sympathies for Hussein loyalists among these raiders, though, the area chosen for the sweep would likely have stirred them. One American officer described the stretch of the Euphrates that runs southeast from Falluja as "Saddam's Hamptons" for the clusters of luxurious villas set along the riverbank, mostly built by favored stalwarts of Mr. Hussein. The territory controlled by the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, across the southernmost reaches of Iraq's Sunni heartland, served as an arsenal for Mr. Hussein, with dozens of weapons research facilities, munitions factories, and vast weapons storage sites, including the one at Al Qaqaa, which made headlines last month when the Americans discovered that more than 350 tons of high explosives were missing.

Recent American sweeps in the area have uncovered some of the largest weapons caches found in post-Hussein Iraq. And the raid here on Sunday, about five miles from Al Qaqaa, followed a tip that more large caches might be found there.

But either the tipoff was flawed or the raid missed the target. Altogether, Lieutenant Duarte's men discovered only an old shotgun and three Kalashnikov rifles, two of them in plastic bags that were clumsily buried in a paddy field. They also found two sets of identity documents belonging to a high-ranking member of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party. After a marine stumbled across a yellow plastic bag lying in an irrigation panel with what he identified as a severed human head and intestines, Lieutenant Duarte radioed to headquarters and was told to leave it for investigation by the Iraqi police.

In the end, the day's main yield came not from the raid, but from the brutal chance that comes with every foray into the Iraqi hinterland. On the road back to the Marine base at Camp Kalsu, 40 miles from the raiding site, the unit's convoy of armored trucks and Humvees was attacked near the town of Latifiya with a huge roadside bomb.

Unlike a similar device that killed two marines in a nearby incident later in the day, the bomb caused no injuries or damage. But two Humvees broke away from the convoy and pursued two fleeing men with Kalashnikovs into a house about a mile back from the highway, shooting one dead and capturing the other. The men were said to have been found with a cellphone that could have been used to set off the bomb.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Family tries to comprehend death of Marine after return from Iraq <br />
<br />
<br />
12:47 p.m. November 24, 2004 <br />
<br />
BELCHERTOWN, Mass. – Jeffrey Lucey was just an ordinary kid from small-town America. He grew up...

[thedrifter]

From tossed slips of paper, insurgent plot is thwarted

By Richard A. Oppel Jr.
The New York Times





Mosul, Iraq - At first the man was merely one of 115 Iraqis whom U.S. troops had corralled for questioning Saturday night in a particularly nasty part of Mosul. But his belligerence stood out.

And then he made his move.

Sitting where the troops had ordered him to sit - in front of an open-air cigarette store - the suspect flicked out of his pocket several folded sheets of handwritten notes.

It was clear he hoped the pages would land unnoticed amid the clutter of the store just a step away.

They did not.

A soldier scooped them up and handed them to an Iraqi interpreter working for the Americans.

"Who has this? He is an insurgent!" shouted the interpreter, known only to the soldiers as Jeff the Fighting Kurd.

Jeff and another interpreter quickly translated the pages for the U.S. officers who gathered around.


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One passage mentioned a proposal for a large-scale attack against U.S. troops, according to the interpreters. Another urged attacks on the families of Iraqis thought to be working for the Americans. Another described "how to get money and use the money for jihad," an interpreter said. And still another underscored the importance of "bringing information about who is working for the U.S. forces."

A U.S. commander told embedded journalists not to report other passages - more specific, descriptive and pointed - for fear of jeopardizing efforts to gather intelligence and to prevent attacks on U.S. forces.

Suddenly, the night's operation was not over.

Soldiers found keys on the suspect and took him the short distance to his two-story home in Old Mosul, a densely populated warren of rundown homes in central Mosul thought to be a haven for hard-core insurgents in this northern city of 2 million.

They walked inside, through a 15-foot-square courtyard, past two women, an elderly man, a small child and a young boy, to another room packed with papers.

They moved upstairs, past a flower bed, and found two rooms that contained all sorts of electronic materials, the troops said.

"There was a large stash of bomb-making material, switches, wires, just a trove of stuff," said the commander, Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla, whose battalion controls much of western Mosul. "Papers on how to launder money and others that talked about the ineffectiveness of some of their weapons systems against us and how they need to change."

A 55-gallon drum of bomb- making material and 2.5 million Iraqi dinars - about $1,700 - was also found, he said.

The papers retrieved from the man in front of the cigarette stand, he said, were "minutes from some type of meeting of terrorist cells where they discussed money laundering, recruitment, weapons effectiveness and future operations."

This is how it goes in the war against the insurgents in Mosul.

Apparently having learned that direct attacks on U.S. troops and their heavily armored vehicles are a difficult if not suicidal approach, insurgents often keep to the confines of sympathetic neighborhoods. They come out to try to pick off troops patrolling the city or to launch mortars at U.S. bases. But most of their efforts lately have been to kidnap, brutalize and kill young Iraqis who have joined the nation's new security forces or who are thought to be helping the Americans.

So for U.S. troops here, success often means catching a break or two from a steady routine of raids and searches into places like Old Mosul, a 1- square-mile district in the center of the city that is home to as many as 500,000 people.

Sometimes troops go into insurgent areas for the principal purpose of drawing their fire - so the Americans can shoot back and capture or kill them.

But Saturday, the troops had help. Riding in a 19-ton armored Stryker vehicle was "the source," an informant who, despite never leaving the vehicle, was bedecked in a full-face scarf, a Kevlar helmet and large black sunglasses.

Using informants can be tricky business, Kurilla is quick to concede. They can be motivated by revenge, and some do not have a good track record.

With the informant in tow, troops raided an Old Mosul mosque and surrounding homes in the morning, detaining eight people whom the informant - peering through an on- board video monitor linked to a large camera atop the Stryker - identified as insurgents. But there was not much evidence.

But for the troops, Saturday night offered a welcome payoff.

They arrived at an intersection in Old Mosul around 5:30 p.m. and began rounding up people near a mosque and a social club where men were playing cards on the second floor. Only toward the end of the mission did the handwritten notes appear - confirming, in the view of the soldiers, that they had found some bad guys.

"This is a very good night," said Capt. Matthew McGrew.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Mideast notes: Body-building competition held at FOB Speicher


Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Sunday, November 28, 2004



Soldiers at Forward Operating Base Speicher in Tikrit, Iraq, got a little “flex time” recently at the base’s first body-building competition.

Organized by Sgt. 1st Class Woody B. Carter of the 67th Combat Support Hospital, the event drew 15 male and female body builders and more than 350 spectators, according a U.S. Army news release.

A five-member panel judged participants on overall body symmetry, confidence in posing, endurance and attitude. Winners of each class were awarded Army and Air Force Exchange Services gift certificates, a trophy, protein supplements and a subscription to Muscle Fitness magazine.

Burger King opens in Kandahar

U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan got another taste of home recently when the Army and Air Force Exchange Service opened a Burger King at the Kandahar Airfield.

The new fast-food outlet fired up its grills for the first time last month, drawing throngs of whopper-seekers to its southeastern Afghanistan location, according to a U.S. Army news release. It is the second Burger King opened by AAFES in Afghanistan. The other is at Bagram Air Base, near Kabul.

At FOB Paliwoda, it was run, then eat

Soldiers at Forward Operating Base Paliwoda in Balad, Iraq, decided to burn off a few calories before eating their Thanksgiving meal this year.

The troops started their holiday with a 1.5-mile run, dubbed the “turkey trot.” The race, run in full body armor, was won by Maj. Kirby Hanson, Task Force 1st Battalion, 77th Armor Regiment’s executive officer, according to a U.S. Army news release.

“It was a good run,” said Maj. David Hubner, commander of Task Force 1-77. “I think wearing the body armor made it a lot more fun.”

After the run, Brig. Gen. John G. Morgan, 1st Infantry Division assistant division commander for maneuver visited the base to thank the soldiers.

When it came time to eat, Maj. Hubner and Col. Randall Dragon, 2nd Brigade Combat Team Commander helped the cooks serve the Thanksgiving meal.

“It was our way of thanking the soldiers for all they do for their leadership and their country ever day,” Hubner said.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Suicide Bomber Kills 12 in Attack on Iraqi Police

By Andrew Marshall

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber plowed into policemen waiting to collect their salary at a police station west of Ramadi Monday, killing 12 people in the latest insurgent attack on Iraq (news - web sites)'s beleaguered security forces.


At least 10 people were wounded in the blast, and 90 percent of the casualties were policemen, said Nazar al-Hiti, a doctor in the town of Hit around 155 miles west of Baghdad, where the dead and wounded were taken.


In Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded as a U.S. patrol went past, killing two American soldiers and wounding three. At least 968 U.S. troops have been killed in action in Iraq.


Insurgents trying to drive out U.S.-led soldiers and topple the American-backed government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi have repeatedly attacked Iraqi police and soldiers.


The U.S. military has warned that violence will worsen in Iraq as elections scheduled for Jan. 30 approach.


Leading Sunni Arab political parties have urged a delay in the elections, saying their supporters will not be able to vote freely due to guerrilla violence mainly in Sunni areas of Iraq.


Sunni Arabs make up only around 20 percent of Iraq's population but dominated the ruling elite during the rule of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites). Several Sunni parties say they will boycott the elections unless the government agrees to a postponement.


But parties representing Iraq's 60-percent Shi'ite majority, oppressed under Saddam, are demanding that the polls go ahead on time to cement their political dominance in the new Iraq.


Backed by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered religious leader, Shi'ite parties have refused to accept any delay, saying that would mean giving in to guerrilla violence.


CAMPAIGN OF MURDER


The U.S. military has said it will move into rebel-held areas by the end of the year to pacify them ahead of the elections. Earlier this month, a major U.S. offensive crushed guerrillas in the insurgent bastion of Falluja, west of Baghdad.


U.S. Marines, British troops and Iraqi forces have also launched an operation to hunt down insurgents and criminals in a cluster of lawless towns on the Euphrates just south of Baghdad.


Marines said they killed several insurgents and captured 32 suspects in a series of actions south of Baghdad Sunday that included a high-speed riverborne raid on suspected weapons dumps on the Euphrates. Two Marines were killed in the area Sunday, when a roadside bomb exploded beside their convoy.


Insurgents have been largely driven out of Falluja, which is now a ghost town with few civilians seen on streets scarred by days of heavy fighting. But they have regrouped elsewhere and violence has surged in other areas, particularly Iraq's third largest city, Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad.


The U.S. military says Jordanian guerrilla leader and al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, its top foe in Iraq, may have moved to Mosul ahead of the Falluja offensive.


Guerrillas stormed and ransacked several police stations in Mosul earlier this month, forcing some U.S. troops to be diverted back from Falluja. Since then, insurgents have mounted a campaign of killing Iraqi National Guardsmen and policemen and dumping their bodies in the city as a warning to others.


More than 50 bodies have been found since Nov. 15, and Zarqawi's Al Qaeda Organization of Holy War in Iraq has claimed responsibility for killing dozens of soldiers and policemen.





Most of Mosul's police deserted during the rebel offensive in the city this month, and officials are concerned that repeated attacks on police and Iraqi security forces across the country will further undermine security ahead of the elections.

ELECTION FEARS

"The Iraqi police, by design, were the cornerstone of security for the elections," Brigadier General Carter Ham, commander of U.S. troops in Mosul, told BBC radio.

"Without the numbers of Iraqi police that we would like to have, it significantly increases the level of difficulty of establishing the environment that we need for elections."

But Allawi says there is no guarantee that delaying the election would ensure greater participation, although he has not completely ruled out a postponement.

Air Force Brigadier General Erv Lessel, deputy director of operations for the U.S. military in Iraq, told Reuters in an interview that security arrangements were on track.

"We will have a good enough security environment by the end of January so that the majority of the citizens in Iraq can participate in free and fair elections," he said.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Thanksgiving in Iraq
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By W. Thomas Smith Jr.
National Review Online

Home, family, and a grandmother's culinary expertise are what some Marines in Iraq say they missed Thursday. That said, their Thanksgiving Day was relatively quiet, and will no doubt never be forgotten.

Cpl. Matthew S. Richards, a combat correspondent with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (11th MEU) in Najaf, tells says the best thing about Thanksgiving in Iraq was the pumpkin pie.

"The day was like most, but I got a little time off in the morning to sleep in, just for the holiday," says Richards, a native of Mobile, Alabama, tells NRO. "The highlight of my day was most likely the pumpkin pie in the chow hall. Oh yeah, also the secretary of the Navy [Gordon R. England] showed up, and I guess that was interesting."

Richards says, he "ate dry turkey, grainy mashed potatoes and undercooked green beans, but actually that all tasted fine considering where I am. I could be eating MREs [the plastic pouch of field rations known as "Meal Ready to Eat"], like while in combat in August, right? And aside from lacking a little whipped cream, the pumpkin pie was damn good."

He adds, "Conversation was usual. The overall mission in Iraq, politics, and the typical re-occurring debates in American society. Trust me, that's the norm when you have men and women from all walks of life living together for so long."

Richards describes his chow hall as being "decorated with an evocative, autumn montage of brown and orange with cardboard pilgrims and turkeys sprinkled throughout the place."

Still, there is no place like home.

"The only difference was a few sporadic memories of Thanksgiving back home," he says. "It's the little things that you hardly notice when you're there that make home the place you can't wait to get back too. For instance, how your grandmother puts just the right amount of marshmallows on her sweet potato pie, while the chow hall had none. There are hundreds of those seemingly insignificant details for each and every one of us, but that's what makes us miss home no matter where we're from."

Capt. Jeremy Thompson, the 11th MEU's force-protection officer, agrees.

"I got a cute e-mail from my little girls back home, and that made my day," Thompson, a native of Bellingham, Washington, says. "That was the highlight of my Thanksgiving, and my day was great. It was the first time that I met the SECNAV [secretary of the Navy] and I felt appreciative that he left his family on Thanksgiving to come spend the day with the Marines."

Col. Jenny M. Holbert, who served as escort to Secretary England, describes her day as "a most unusual Thanksgiving," but one which she was "fortunate" to spend with "so many people who have truly volunteered of their lives to help rebuild this country."

Cpl. Tasha Wyatt, an Enhanced NBC [nuclear, biological, chemical defense] Chief, from Hodgenville, Kentucky began her Thanksgiving Day at 6:30 A.M. to prepare for a morning brief.

"Then I enjoyed a continental breakfast at the chowhall," she says. "After breakfast, I ran a few errands, then went to afternoon chow. The chowhall was decorated very nicely - the crew here does an awesome job for the holidays. I had sliced ham, mashed potatoes, and pecan pie for lunch."

Like her fellow Marines at Forward Operating Base Duke, Wyatt attended a briefing by the secretary of the Navy.

"After formation, I went back to my tent for a nap, woke up, worked some crossword
puzzles, cleaned my living space and went to evening chow," she says. "I walked back to
my work space and checked my e-mail, where I responded to some nice holiday greetings. I walked back to my living space, showered, then took my laundry to the self-service building. I finished at 2330 [11:30 P.M.]. I closed my eyes and went to sleep around mid-night. Gotta love life in Iraq. I really appreciated that everyone kept the holiday spirit, but really, I'm still in Iraq, and it just doesn't feel like the holidays."

The high point of Wyatt's Thanksgiving Day? "Listening to the new 'Good Charlotte' CD," she says.

Like most Marines, Thompson admits he ate too much. He and other Marines and sailors feasted on "prime rib, turkey, cranberries, shrimp cocktail, pumpkin pie, ice cream, eggnog, and sparkling juice," he says.

At the table, discussions ranged from military matters to politics to what each Marine was thankful for. "Most of us were most thankful for each other," says Thompson.

Included in those thanks were prayers for fallen Marines.

"I gave thanks for being in the shadow of giants this year," Maj. Francis P. Piccoli of the 1st MEF, tells NRO, adding he prayed "for those families that won't enjoy the presence of their loved one for all Thanksgivings hereafter. A call for comfort, to embrace their hearts, a call for memory so they may see their son for always standing tall in a Category Five hurricane."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Collapsing the Triangle of Death
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By W. Thomas Smith Jr.
National Review Online

"We're starting to suffocate them, and they're panicking" - Col. Ron Johnson, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, on the reaction of enemy forces in Iraq's Triangle of Death

In an isolated region of the Iraqi backcountry, said to be "the worst place in the world," thousands of Coalition troops are systematically wresting control of weapons caches and staging areas from insurgent forces falling back from recent defeats in Fallujah and elsewhere in the Sunni Triangle.

The operation, code-named "Plymouth Rock" (because it was launched Thanksgiving week), began last Tuesday when Coalition forces struck enemy forces in the town of Jabella, some 50 miles south of Baghdad. The strike was followed by a series of precision raids - conducted by a 5,000-man combined force of U.S. Marines, members of the famed British Black Watch regiment, and Iraqi soldiers - aimed at cleaning out a region of southern Baghdad and northern Babil Province known as the Triangle of Death. The triangle - its three points connecting at Fallujah, Baghdad, and then south to Najaf - is located just below the Sunni Triangle where the Coalition has focused much of its efforts over the past several months.

If not the "worst place in the world," the Triangle of Death - so-named because of its profusion of bombings, kidnappings, execution-style killings of civilians, and overall banditry - is certainly one of the most dangerous in Iraq. For months, the region's isolated towns and unsecured highways have served as a permeable haven for Iraqi criminals and terrorists. Recently, the region has been a point of refuge for embattled guerilla forces escaping south from thrusting U.S. forces in Fallujah.

Operating in an environment that more closely resembles the American Wild West of the 19th century than the tightly packed urban centers of Samarra and Fallujah, has forced some units to re-tool their battle plan. That's not a problem for tactically flexible U.S. and British forces, and they are training Iraqi security forces to be equally adaptable.

"This is not a Fallujah-like mass assault, marked by determined resistance and heavy fighting," Capt. David Nevers, spokesman for the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (24th MEU), tells NRO. "The environment here south of Baghdad is very different, requiring a different approach. Our operations are surgical rather than sweeping in nature, more precision than mass."

In the Triangle of Death, Coalition raids have been characterized by collecting and processing intelligence on a specific enemy stronghold, planning a raid, then attacking that stronghold with a modicum of surprise by units trained to fight both as shock-troops and room-clearing commandos. In nearly all cases, large numbers of insurgents have been killed or captured, weapons caches seized, and new intelligence gleaned which serves planners for the next raid on the next town.

It's not an easy task. An estimated 6,000 insurgents - former members of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, followers of Abu Masub Al Zarqawi who slipped through the Fallujah net, as well as unemployed locals or those coerced into fighting the Americans - are believed to be operating in the region.

Still, the success of Plymouth Rock has been overwhelming. And much of that success can be attributed to the Iraqi SWAT team (see here), a U.S. Marine-trained police-commando force that reportedly leaves postcard-size calling cards at raid sites that say, "Are You a Criminal or Terrorist? You Will Face Punishment."

Capt. Thomas "Tad" Douglas, commander of the Marine Force Reconnaissance platoon that has trained and led the Iraq SWAT team since July, points to a bond between his Marines and the Iraqi commandos that is as strong as any found in any elite unit in the world. With that combined force "we are taking advantage of the enemy while he's reeling from Fallujah to push the fight to them," Douglas told NRO on Thanksgiving Day. "We conducted a combined ground/air assault yesterday with my Force Recon guys and Hillah SWAT [the Iraqi SWAT team is also known as Al Hillah SWAT because most of the team members are from the town of Al Hillah], and it went off flawlessly, netting us 43 detainees."

Douglas, a key leader in the dramatic rescue of Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch in April 2003, added, "To my knowledge, this is one of the first successful joint Iraqi/American air assaults."

Col. Ron Johnson, commander of the 24th MEU, tells NRO that the operations have been seamless and effective. "We can tell by the reaction of the enemy," he says. "We can tell by the increase in their activity, for example the fever pitch at which they're laying IEDs [improvised explosive devices]. We're starting to suffocate them, and they're panicking. We have a large target list, and we're going to continue to stay after them."

On Thanksgiving Day, elements of the 24th MEU, the 1st battalion of Britain's Black Watch, and the Iraqi SWAT team attacked a number of targets near Yusufiyah, netting 81 guerrillas (55 bad guys for the Americans and Iraqis, 26 for the British).

"Iraqi security forces, Marines and British soldiers, with close air support provided by Marine aircraft, moved swiftly to their targets, rounding up the suspected insurgents," says Johnson. "At least a couple dozen were of intelligence value. We collected multiple weapons systems, including IED-making materials. The extent of the coordination between forces that have been working together only a short time was unparalleled."

Early Saturday, the Iraqi SWAT team and the 2nd Ministry of Interior Commando Battalion (also an Iraqi special operations team), supported by U.S. Marines, descended on an insurgent stronghold near Lutafiyah. The raiders captured nine suspects and gathered fresh intelligence that led to a second raid on two houses later in the day. Eight suspects were detained in the second raid.

"If the insurgents thought they were going to catch a break after their pummeling in Fallujah, they're going to be disappointed," says Nevers. "They're reeling and scrambling for new sanctuaries, and by staying in the attack, we and the Iraqi security forces south of Baghdad will deny them any reprieve."

He adds, "This fight requires patience and persistence, and we have it in abundance. Time is on our side, not the enemy's. With each passing day, the Iraqi security forces get stronger and the day the Iraqi people are in full control of their destiny draws nearer."


Ellie

[thedrifter]

U.S. Marines dispute claim about supplies
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By Shane Benjamin
Durango Herald Staff Writer

Family and friends of two Marines serving in Iraq say they are not receiving adequate equipment for the war on terror, but the Marines said last week that those claims seem highly unlikely.

The Durango Herald reported Nov. 19 that Arboles residents have been raising funds to buy body armor for a local Marine in Iraq, and another Marine took out a $1,200 loan to buy equipment before deploying to Iraq.

But Eric Knapp, a spokesman at Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base north of San Diego, said each Marine is deployed with a prescribed load, which includes body armor, boots, uniforms and other equipment that is necessary for fighting.

Knapp, who has deployed to Iraq twice with the First Marine Division, said he is familiar with reports in the media that Marines are not adequately equipped, but he finds those reports "confusing" and hard to believe.

"This isn't the first time I have heard of this," he said. "The information is inconsistent with what our Marines deploy with."

Not every Marine requires a GPS unit, he said, but those who need them receive them. They also receive body armor and boots. Not every firearm is equipped with a flashlight, Knapp said, but flashlights are relatively inexpensive, and if a Marine decided to buy one, he or she would not need to take out a loan to afford it.

Family and friends of Lance Cpl. Christopher Peskuski, 22, of Arboles, and Lance Cpl. Donnie Lincoln, of Arboles, said the government is not providing Marines with modern equipment.

Arboles resident Karen Torres organized a fund-raiser to buy Lincoln a flak jacket. As of last week, she had raised $135 by placing three cans around town with Lincoln's picture and a short explanation about his situation:

"Donnie, an Arboles resident, is stationed in Iraq with the United States Marine Corps. We, the family and friends of Donnie, are asking for any donations to help with the cost of adequate armor to help protect him. The government, unfortunately, does not provide our troops with adequate gear to protect themselves; the flak jackets they are provided with are from the Vietnam era. The cost is approximately $500 to $1,500. Any and all donations are greatly appreciated. Please help us in keeping one of our boys just a little bit safer."

Karla Peskuski, a member of Blue Star Moms, said her son took out a loan to buy equipment before deploying to Iraq and sent home $150 so she could buy combat boots to send to him.

Families trying to raise funds to support their soldiers are probably just being concerned about their loved ones, said an Army spokesman at the Pentagon.

"I can't blame anybody for being concerned about (a lack of supplies)," the spokesman said, adding there is plenty of body armor for troops in Iraq.

The spokesman, who declined to give his name, said soldiers might be deployed to Iraq without all the necessary gear, but they receive the gear in Kuwait. If a soldier happens to wear out his or her boots, it might be faster to get a replacement pair by having family and friends pay for new ones, but the military has a process for receiving new boots, the spokesman said.

After reading about Lincoln and Peskuski in The Durango Herald, Stephen Giordanella, owner and president of Protective Products International, a body-armor manufacturer based in Sunrise, Fla., said he is willing to donate body armor to the Marines.

He said the government is placing orders as fast as it can for new supplies, but the companies that make the materials are maxed out.

"I'm willing to send the family two vests to help this family out," Giordanella said.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Newest battle sharply different from Fallujah
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Jackie Spinner
The Washington Post
Posted November 29 2004

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU · Through the scattered towns and along the dangerous roads of an area that one commander described as "kind of like the worst place in the world," U.S. Marines, British soldiers and Iraqi security forces are waging an offensive they say is vastly different from the urban warfare waged elsewhere in Iraq in recent weeks.

Unlike the massive military push into the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, the operation here in Babil province has involved few firefights. It consists mostly of gathering intelligence and launching raids on homes and suspected weapons caches. Insurgents here are not clustered in urban neighborhoods but scattered over wide areas of what many Iraqis call the "triangle of death."

"We have to go out and hunt them down," said Col. Ron Johnson, commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is conducting Operation Plymouth Rock, so called because it started around Thanksgiving.

Beginning Tuesday, a combined force of more than 5,000 U.S., British and Iraqi troops has mounted raids in a region south of Baghdad that resulted in the detention of more than 130 people. Most recently, the troops have targeted the dusty town of Yusufiyah, where 856 projectiles were discovered, the U.S. military said.

Officers say those numbers do not reflect the actual scope of the operation. U.S. military officials estimate that they could be fighting as many as 6,000 insurgents in the region, most of them disgruntled and unemployed local residents.

Johnson said the importance of northern Babil stems from its geographic location along major transportation arteries that link Baghdad with southern Iraq and also extend west to Fallujah and beyond. "It's a natural line of drift" for insurgents, he said.

"The problem is all roads lead to Latifiyah," Johnson said, referring to a town near the center of the region.

At least 32 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the region in recent months, executed at illegal checkpoints the insurgents have set up, Johnson said. "These are bad guys," he said. "They don't care who they kill."

In an office in Latifiyah that used to belong to the city's police chief, Ishmael Jubouri contended that the insurgents in Babil cared deeply about what they were doing.

Jubouri, a member of a Sunni tribe from an area south of Baghdad, is the leader of the Islamic Army in Iraq, one of the armed groups that the Americans and their allies are trying to defeat.

Jubouri said the Islamic Army, which has kidnapped and executed Iraqi security troops, had thousands of fighters trying to force foreign troops out of the country.

"Fallujah was a mistake because it is not possible to fight in a city," he said. "We want to open more than one front in the same time to disrupt the U.S. forces and defeat them at once."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Iraqi commandos don't yet make the grade, say U.S. Marines
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FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Iraq (AFP) Nov 29, 2004
Interior ministry commandos hunting for weapons caches on the banks of the Euphrates in Iraq's "triangle of death" have some way to go before they become an effective fighting force, said U.S. Marines helping to train them.

"Keep moving, come on! Jesus Christ!" barked one exasperated Marine, urging the men to pick up the pace as they marched through orange groves and along irrigation channels, chatting and smoking as they went.

The commandos, billed as a fledgling elite unit in Iraq's emerging security force line-up, had been on the go since a chilly 2:00 am start and by early afternoon were clearly flagging.

After a high-speed boat trip up the Euphrates, the 80-strong unit, supervised by 40 Marines, waded ashore and fanned out to comb fields, woods and date palm groves.

Insurgents had been firing mortars from this area near the town of Yusufiyah at the British army's Camp Dogwood on the far side of the river.

British soldiers from the Black Watch regiment provided cover from the far bank for the commandos' boat landing, and U.S. helicopters gave air support.

The region lies in the heart of an area south of Baghdad that many troops call the triangle of death where kidnappings and deadly attacks on civilians and security forces are an almost daily event.

U.S.-led forces last week began a major operation called Plymouth Rock in a bid to bring the region back under government control ahead of landmark elections planned for January 30.

It is the third major assault on Sunni rebel strongholds this month after crackdowns on the cities of Fallujah, west of the capital, and Mosul in the north.

Coalition forces -- now nominally under orders from the Iraqi interim government -- like to spearhead these operations with small units of Iraqi forces, from the national guard, the interior ministry commandos, or, in at least one province, Iraqi SWAT teams.

The commandos, a special police that can be dispatched anywhere in the country, were at the forefront of an operation to reclaim the city of Samarra in October. The force has three battalions of about 350 men each.

Last weekend a unit was dispatched from Baghdad to the U.S. Marines' Forward Operating Base Kalso, near the town of Iskandariyah, to take part in the sweep Sunday on the banks of the Euphrates.

The operation also served as a training manoeuvre for the commandos, who undergo an initial three-week course at an academy in Baghdad.

But by the end of the day many of the exhausted men seemed to have lost interest, to the frustration of the Marines accompanying them.

"They're just not ready," said one Marine following behind the commandos, clad in forest green and carrying Kalashnikov rifles, as they crossed a ploughed field after walking for several hours in warm sunshine.

"There is clearly some frustration" with the force, said U.S. Marine spokesman Captain David Nevers.

Captain Tom de Triquet, who has been involved with the training of the commandos, said he was very impressed with an Iraqi SWAT team the Marines have been coaching.

The SWAT team, under the command of the governor of Babil province, which takes in most of the targeted region, has been living at this base and training intensively with Marines.

"We're not yet at that stage with the commandos," said de Triquet.

Sunday's operation netted only a handful of rifles hidden in fields as well as some identity documents of what appeared to be a senior former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

The Marines also found what they said might be a severed human head in a plastic bag dumped in a ditch, but an AFP correspondent with the patrol could not ascertain that it was a human skull.

The operation, which ended with a drive in a convoy back to this base, had at times seemed like a Sunday stroll in the country, with the commandos picking fruit from trees as they went along.

But the drive home provided a reminder of the threats security forces face.

A homemade roadside bomb went off as the convoy of five trucks and several humvees passed. No-one was injured, but Marines who chased two men who ran from the scene shot one dead and detained the second.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Sergeants recognized for heroic actions
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November 29, 2004
CYNDI BROWN
DAILY NEWS STAFF

Michael Cooley regrets not having the chance to get to know Marine Capt. Seth Michaud - what kind of car Michaud drove, his favorite sports team, what his son Ian looked like.

"My only memory of him is that day," said 25-year-old Cooley, referring to the June 22, 2003, training exercise where Michaud lost his life.

Marines from Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron-461 were in Djibouti, Africa, and taking part in a two-day exercise at Godoria Bombing Range when an Air Force B-52 Stratofortress dropped nine 750-pound bombs in the wrong area - killing Michaud and injuring eight others.

Cooley and Rob Pfeil II, both Marine sergeants, were each awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism for their reactions to the training accident. They received the medals during an early morning ceremony - where Sgts. Brad Barnes and Christopher Munzinger were awarded Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals for professional achievement - at the HMH-461 hangar aboard New River Air Station Wednesday.

Cooley, a mechanic from Algonquin, Ill., was observing the training exercise from about 300 meters away when the bombs fell.

"There's not much time to think; it's just kind of reaction," said Cooley, whose citation credits his facing exploding ordnance to help move Michaud away from the area and then providing first aid that helped keep a critically injured flight surgeon alive. Cooley said being both an Eagle Scout and a Marine had prepared him to react the way he did. "All this stuff is second nature. It's what we train for. It's what we do."

It's not, however, something he had told his new bride about.

Susan Cooley, 20, married the Marine sergeant Nov. 6. But she did not hear about the Djibouti incident until the night before the ceremony - when her husband was told he would be receiving the award.

He had mixed feelings about the recognition.

"You're awarding me for something anyone else would have done. Why me?" asked Cooley.

Pfeil, the other Marine who received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, felt nonchalant about the medal and the ceremony that marked to him only "another day."

"It's more of a reminder of what happened that day. Any other Marine would have done the same thing. I like to think so anyway," said Pfeil, who understands that risk comes with the job.

"Every time I take off I think we have an inherently dangerous job here," said Pfeil, a CH-53 crew chief.

That threat became a reality during what should have been a routine training exercise.

"I knew something was wrong," said Pfeil, who was blown back from the blast and received minor burns. "My initial reaction was to run away."

Instead he ran toward the burning helicopters.

Pfeil, according to his citation, disregarded the exploding ordnance, single-handedly transported the pilot and a crew chief to a casualty collection point and then returned to the burning aircraft and helped carry a critically injured flight surgeon to a safe distance from the area.

"The whole thing was a matter of two minutes. I'm like, 'How the hell did this happen?'" said Pfeil, who didn't know if they were under attack or if it was "friendly fire" that caused the explosion. It would help some, he added, if it had been the former.

"It would make it easier knowing it's not your own guys. It would help me filter some of the anger I had," said PFeil, emphasizing the past-tense. Most of that anger has dissipated, he added, "with time. You know what they say about time."

Sometimes still, however, his head still plays tricks on him - making him second guess his actions that day.

"You always think, 'What if?'" said Pfeil. "But you know in your heart you did everything you could."


Ellie

[thedrifter]

In Harm's Way
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 29, 2004
by Burt Prelutsky

As I recall, Americans began emasculating our armed services during the Gulf War. Understand, I'm not referring to the military's throwing the doors open to women and gays. Anyone who elects to serve his or her country is aces in my book. I refer, instead, to the unseemly coddling of our soldiers. I refer to the insistence by way too many civilians that members of the military never be placed in harm's way. I beg your pardon!

Believe me, please, when I say that I don't wish to see our young people treated as cannon fodder, sacrificed needlessly on foreign battlefields. But that is quite a different matter from swaddling them in baby bunting. They are not porcelain figurines; they are supposed to be America's fighting force.

At what point, I wondered, had we begun to confuse the army with the Cub Scouts? It seems to have begun, oddly enough, after we went to an all-volunteer military. At least it would have been logical during the time of the draft for friends and relatives to have voiced concern with the comfort and safety of those inducted against their will, the kids who went off kicking and screaming to basic training. But, for a number of years now, the only folks in uniform are those who chose to be.

Now, I realize, of course, that many of the youngsters who enlisted simply joined up in order to get a free education. Which is fine and dandy. But they knew going in that there was a fairly good chance that, along with being all they could be, they just might be called upon to fight for their country. That's the way it works when you sign up with Uncle Sam. Go work for the post office and you have to worry about pit bulls and disgruntled co-workers; go work for the military and you have to worry about the Axis of Evil.

I'm pretty certain that my fellow Americans stopped seeing soldiers as heroic warriors in the John Wayne mode and, thanks perhaps to all those MASH re-runs, more like Alan Alda, during our first showdown with Saddam Hussein. I still remember the national frenzy when the media reported that the chocolate bars in the G.I. mess kits were melting in Kuwait! The way people carried on, you'd have thought the treads were falling off our tanks and our guns were exploding.

Whereas during World War II, the entire nation mobilized to build planes, buy bonds and tend Victory Gardens, this time America rolled up its sleeves and came up with a candy bar that could stand up to a blowtorch. I recall trying to picture Humphrey Bogart, Randolph Scott or Dana Andrews, griping to his army buddies about the way his Baby Ruth crapped out just when the going got rough on Guadalcanal. I tried, but I failed. I mean, I think it's fine that we Americans care deeply about our soldiers, sailors and marines--and that we take it to heart when we get word of casualties. But, it's time we quit acting as if these youngsters signed up for summer camp and, through some sort of high level skullduggery, wound up dodging bullets in the Arab desert.

They deserve better than to be patronized. They deserve our respect. And that begins with accepting that in harm's way is just exactly where they're supposed to be.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Al-Zawahri Vows to Keep Fighting U.S.

By SALAH NASRAWI, Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s top deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahri, said in a videotape aired Monday — but apparently taped before the U.S. presidential election — that there was no difference between the two candidates. He also vowed to keep fighting the United States until Washington changed its policies.


In a brief excerpt broadcast on Al-Jazeera television, al-Zawahri said: "As for elections in America, the two candidates are competing to win the satisfaction of Israel," saying that fact proved "there will be no solution with America without forcing it to surrender to justice."


President Bush (news - web sites) won re-election over Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) in the Nov. 2 election.


In the tape, al-Zawahri said: "The results of the elections do not matter for us. Vote whoever you want, Bush, Kerry or the devil himself. This does not concern us. What concerns us is to purge our land from the aggressors."


Days before the election, bin Laden said in similar video footage that the United States must stop threatening the security of Muslims if it wants to avoid "another Manhattan" — referring to the Sept. 11 attacks. Addressing the American people, bin Laden also said, "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry, Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands .... Any state that does not mess with our security has naturally guaranteed its own security."


It was unclear if Al-Jazeera planned to show more of the latest al-Zawahri tape.


In the segment broadcast, al-Zawahri also offered the American people what he called "one last advice," adding, "I am sure that they will not heed it."


"You have to choose between one of two methods to deal with Muslims: either on mutual respect and exchange of interests, or to deal with them as if they are spoils of war," al-Zawahri said. "This is your problem and you have to choose yourself. You have to realize that we are a nation of patience and endurance. We will stand firm to fight you with God's help until doomsday."


The bearded and bespectacled al-Zawahri sat before a brown background that was half-covered by a brown blanket, a gun leaning against the wall next to him. His voice sounded calm and steady, as in previous tapes.


The United States has offered a $25 million reward for the capture of bin Laden and al-Zawahri, who are believed to be hiding in the border area of Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Pakistan.


Two Zawahri messages were aired in September and October: an audiotape on Oct. 1 that called on young Muslims to attack the United States, and a videotape broadcast on Al-Jazeera on Sept. 9 in which he predicted the United States would ultimately be defeated in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marines Aided by Robotic Airplane in Iraq

ST. LOUIS - A robotic airplane called ScanEagle has done more than 1,000 hours of intelligence and reconnaissance work for the Marines in Iraq (news - web sites), its developers said.


It was developed and built by the St. Louis-based defense unit of Boeing Co. and the Washington-based Insitu Group.


Boeing officials said they could not comment on specific ScanEagle missions, but spoke generally of its use.


It travels above insurgent positions and sends real-time video images to Marines on the ground. The unmanned device can relay facial expressions on enemy soldiers, and can transmit in such detail that it shows steam rising from their coffee.


The 4-foot-long aircraft has a 10-foot wingspan and can fly up to 15 hours at a time on less than two gallons of fuel, Boeing officials said.


Unmanned aircraft such as ScanEagle are expected to play an increasing role in future battles because the Pentagon (news - web sites) sees the planes as an integral part of combat missions. Weapon systems are in the works that will share a common operating language so soldiers, ships, submarines, planes and satellites can share information in a battlefield network.


Executives at Boeing, the lead integrator on the Future Combat Systems program for the Army, said unmanned combat aircraft will complement piloted planes.


"In general, unmanned combat aircraft will be able to provide the dull, dirty missions that you don't want pilots involved in," Dave Martin, the Boeing program manager for ScanEagle, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in Sunday's edition.


Chicago-based Boeing and the Insitu Group of Bingen, Wash., received a contract in June from the Marines to provide two ScanEagle mobile-deployment units in Iraq. Each unit consists of several ScanEagle planes as well as related computers, communication links and ground equipment.


ScanEagle evolved from Insitu Group's idea for miniature robotic planes that would fly weather reconnaissance over the Pacific Ocean.


The planes would collect data to help with forecasting from areas where weather balloons don't go, said Steve Nordlund, vice president of business development at Insitu.


Before the war in Iraq started, Insitu Group developed its SeaScan unmanned aircraft to serve the commercial fishing industry to spot tuna. The fishing venture has been sidelined as the 50-person company builds planes for the military, Nordlund said.


Nordlund said Insitu Group plans to introduce a ScanEagle that can stay aloft for 30 hours next year.


"Taking the pilot out of the cockpit lowers cost and lowers risk," he said. "That's the perfect unmanned solution. Anything we can do to keep Marines out of harm's way is adding value."


ScanEagle doesn't need a runway because it takes off from a catapult launcher. A 50-foot pole with a rope snags the aircraft when it's time to land.


ScanEagle has a global positioning system and flies programmed missions. Its real-time video can be sent to troops carrying laptop computers. The images also are sent to a ground-control station where intelligence officers can analyze feeds and relay information.


The plane costs about $100,000 to build, not including the ground-control center. Venture capital and Boeing research funds have underwritten the cost of the ScanEagle project, Nordlund said.





Martin said the ScanEagle's price will drop when the number of planes in production increases.




Ellie

[thedrifter]

3/5 Marine becomes Time Magazine�s newest coverboy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




FALLUJAH, Iraq (Nov. 25, 2004) -- U.S. Marine Cpl. Eric M. Shelvy never thought his face would end up on the front cover of a magazine and in millions of bookstores, newsstands and coffee tables across the country.

Shelvy, a squad leader with 2nd Squad, 2nd Platoon, Company I, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, was in the heart of Fallujah, Iraq, during Operation Al Fajr when the photo was taken by Time Magazine�s photographer Max Becherer. Shelvy can be seen with dirt on his face and screaming for support from his squad while on a patrol in the city.

His emotional �war face� while going house-to-house in search of insurgents and weapons caches was printed on the front cover of the Nov. 22 issue of Time Magazine. The photo caused a stir of media attention for this young Marine and his parents.

�I really didn�t think about the picture till I called my mom and she told me that everyone back home was making a big deal out of it,� said Shelvy.

Shelvy�s �fifteen minutes of fame� will always be on the cover of a well known magazine but he understands that he is still fighting in a war.

�The picture of me on the front cover of Time Magazine represents the company as a whole,� said Shelvy. �The intensity of the situation can be shown on my face but it is the realism that we are in a war against insurgents that should also be seen.�

With a family history rich with patriotism and men serving to protect their country, it was no surprise that Shelvy joined the Armed Forces to fight the war on terrorism. However, his uniformed forefathers were shocked at his decision to join the Corps.

�My dad was in the Navy and my grandfathers were in the service as well but none of them were in the Marine Corps,� said Shelvy.

Shelvy�s parents are both natives of St. Louis. Robert Shelvy is a sergeant with the St. Louis County Police Department and Dianne Guerra is a Public Relations director with Marianist Province of the United States.

�I grew up influenced by my father, he taught me the value of hard work and dedication,� said Shelvy. He also showed me the importance of setting goals for myself.�

After researching all of the different services, Shelvy decided to join the Marine Corps during his junior year of high school.

�I wanted a challenge so I chose the Marine Corps,� said Shelvy. �I figured that in order to be the best you have to join the best.�

Shelvy graduated boot camp from Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego Oct. 11, 2002, with Platoon 2100, Company G, 2nd Battalion.

�It was a great sense of accomplishment to graduate and carry the title �Marine,�� said Shelvy. �While on boot leave I was able to spend time with friends and family before I started infantry school.�

During the school of infantry at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Shelvy was taught how to live and survive on the battlefield.

From SOI, he was assigned to 3/5. Less than a month after arriving, Shelvy was deployed to Iraq Feb. 9 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

�It was a very fast pace for me, to graduate high school and less than a year later I was fighting in a war on the other side of the world,� said Shelvy.

When joining the Marine Corps, Shelvy knew he wanted to be on the front lines, making a difference with the Marines around him.

�When I joined the Marines I didn�t know there was anything other than infantry,� said Shelvy. �I take pride in the fact that I am a Marine.�

With the experience gained from being apart of the first part of OIF, Shelvy has been able to pass on his knowledge, as a squad leader, to his young Marines in the current fight against terrorism.

�(Shelvy) is an extremely good influence on his squad and the Marines around him,� said Staff Sgt. Jesse G. Thompson, 29, a native of Orlando, Fla., and a platoon sergeant with 2nd Platoon, Company I, 3/5. �All of the squad leaders in this platoon are the reasons why this platoon is as strong as any other platoon in the company.�

�Even though (Shelvy) is a young squad leader he is as smart as our senior squad leaders,� said Lance Cpl. Jeremy G. Miller, 22, a native of Deer Park, Texas, and a team leader with 2nd Platoon, Company I, 3/5. �With the experience that he has you can always learn from him.�

After Shelvy�s seven month tour in Iraqi s over, he is scheduled to be a Marine Security Guard for an embassy.

�With my luck, they will look at me and notice the two combat tours in Iraq, and send me to an embassy in Baghdad,� laughed Shelvy.
http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/image1.nsf/Lookup/2004112731955/$file/SHELVYlow.jpg


Ellie

[thedrifter]

November 29, 2004

Court: DoD can’t withhold funds from colleges that bar recruiters

By David B. Caruso
Associated Press


PHILADELPHIA — An appeals court on Monday barred the Defense Department from withholding funds from colleges and universities that deny access to military recruiters.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a federal law known as the Solomon Amendment infringes on the free speech rights of schools that have limited on-campus recruiting in response to the military’s ban on homosexuals.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought by students and professors at New Jersey law schools, a three-judge court panel said that the threat of a withdrawal of federal funds amounted to compelling the schools to take part in speech they didn’t agree with.

“The Solomon Amendment requires law schools to express a message that is incompatible with their educational objectives, and no compelling governmental interest has been shown to deny this freedom,” the court wrote.

By a 2-1 vote, the panel overturned an earlier decision by a federal judge that the people challenging the law were unlikely to prevail at trial.

Similar suits have been filed around the country, but Monday’s ruling represented the first time a court had enjoined the government from enforcing the law.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

November 29, 2004

Landstuhl treated 21,000 since war began

Associated Press


BERLIN — About 21,000 American service members, most of them from units sent to Iraq, have been treated at the biggest U.S. military hospital outside the United States since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, the hospital said Monday.
The Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany handles many U.S. combat casualties, but it did not break down the figure into battlefield and noncombat patients.

Landstuhl doctors treated 17,878 U.S. troops from Iraq and 3,085 from Afghanistan through Sunday, hospital spokeswoman Marie Shaw told The Associated Press.

The patients were treated for anything from gunshot wounds to noncombat ailments such as kidney stones, she said.

Since the end of the Cold War, Landstuhl has treated victims of war and terrorism, including those wounded in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, the October 2000 attack on the destroyer Cole off Yemen, and, more recently, men and women serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Army Helicopters Borrow NASCAR Windshield Technology
By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29, 2004 -- A laminate that protects NASCAR racecar windshields from rocks and debris will soon give extra protection to Army helicopters flying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army's Aviation Applied Technology Directorate at Fort Eustis, Va., started testing the concept in March and just got the green light to begin applying the Mylar polyester coating to the windshields of operational aircraft.

Nathan Bordick, an engineer working on the project, said the Army borrowed the idea from NASCAR, where teams have been applying multiple layers of the peelable coatings to vehicle windshields for years to resist cracking, chipping and scratching. Periodically throughout a race, pit crews peel away a layer, leaving a clear, undamaged windshield for the laps ahead, he said.

Field tests on Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters showed that the coatings, which cost about $100 to apply, could significantly extend the life of aircraft windshields, which run $3,000 to $5,000 apiece, Bordick said.

First priority for the new coatings will go to helicopters flying in Iraq and Afghanistan, where sand and harsh desert conditions quickly batter windshields and render them unsafe. But, Bordick said, the Army would eventually like to add the coatings to all its aircraft windshields.

The coatings go on much like a typical window tint, Bordick said, but must be applied in a relatively controlled environment -- inside a building or hangar or within a bag constructed around the aircraft. Initially, the coating will be applied at the depot level, but the Army will begin training aircraft maintenance crews to apply it themselves, he said.

Bordick called the Army's use of a ready-made solution to its windshield problem a "proactive" decision that's saving tax dollars. "This is an example of incorporating technology for military uses so we don't have to reinvent the wheel," he said.


Ellie