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thedrifter
08-30-05, 10:14 AM
Michael Fumento:
Despite media blackout, good news from Fallujah
By MICHAEL FUMENTO
Guest Commentary

AFTER CRISSCROSSING Fallujah by foot and Humvee in May, I reported on tremendous progress being made to restore "the city we had to destroy to save." Actually, fighting left most of the town unscathed; most damage was from three decades of neglect under Saddam Hussein. And rebuilding began almost immediately.

Good news from Iraq rarely gets a single story compared to the Texas stake-out that generates many thousands on a war protesters. Yet it occurs nonetheless. The following is from an e-mail by Navy Lt. Cameron Chen, head of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit of the 8th Engineer Support Battalion at Camp Fallujah, with which I had a short embed. You'll see Chen doesn't wear a miniskirt and shake pompoms, but he's certainly optimistic.

Chen writes in his e-mail:

"The city is slowly rebuilding and returning to life. Some report that it's now the safest city in the Sunni Triangle because of the heavy presence of Iraqi police and army. Every major intersection now has unarmed Iraqi police directing traffic in crisp short-sleeve button down shirts, white gloves, black flack vests, and dark blue pants. More frequently we're responding to IEDs (improvised explosive devices) reported by local children, police and informants.

"The 10 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew is still in effect. But people can be seen on the streets up until the last minutes before 10. The streets remain unlit at night, although there are green neon lights around the minarets of the major mosques. Lines at the gas stations can be over a hundred cars long. Ironic since we are in the heart of oil country.

"A reason for this, which the media rarely report, is that the Iraqi government subsidizes gasoline so that it's virtually free. Sell tickets to a pro football games for five cents apiece and see what kind of line you get. The subsidies also encourage smugglers, who can buy dirt cheap and sell exorbitantly high.

"On the main strip, restaurants and electronics shops are open for business. I have seen some sit-down diner-type restaurants and others where people line up for food at teller-like windows. There is still a great deal of trash on the streets by Western standards but noticeably less than when we first arrived. Many people are moving back into the city and buildings are in various stages of repair. There are more vehicles on the streets; many are BMW's and Mercedes."

On the other hand, Chen adds:

"I still don't understand why there isn't more commerce. It seems plain that hardware stores and gas stations are in demand. I read that many fundamentalist Muslims still consider any form of interest as being usury and have not embraced the cycle of debt and capital that feeds our economy. Most property is not used to secure collateral because of lack of deeds or titles and there is no entrepreneurial spirit. Maybe I am not reading the signs properly but I have yet to see a bank."

Regarding safety, Chen writes:

"There's still talk of foreign fighters entering the city to attack Iraqi and Coalition forces. Yesterday in (Fallujah's outskirts) an IED detonated across the street from a busy new electronics and cell-phone shop. Luckily nobody was hurt, but obviously the locals didn't know about the attack and whoever set the device was not a member of the local community. I was encouraged hearing English-speaking motivated Iraqi army officers and non-commissioned officers who were optimistic about weeding out the insurgency.

"The insurgency continues despite the changes. We are seeing a lot of IEDs and we were inadvertently involved in a firefight that lasted for about half an hour (seemed like hours) up in Saqlawiyah (near Fallujah). There are four different Iraqi army battalions based within the city and each has a U.S. Army advisory unit of about 20 officers and senior NCOs who have done an admirable job in training the Iraqis. It's arguably the most difficult job in Iraq but also perhaps making the biggest difference."

No, Fallujah doesn't rival Jamaica as a vacation resort. But last year at this time it was the epicenter of Iraq terrorism, filled with decapitators and bomb-makers. If progress can be made there, it can be made anywhere in Iraq. Don't listen to the "quagmire" crowd. This war is being won.

Michael Fumento, a former paratrooper who was embedded with the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Fallujah, Iraq, is also a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. His e-mail is fumento@pobox.com.

Ellie

thedrifter
08-30-05, 10:20 AM
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Sgt. LaDaunte Strickland, sweat pouring down his face, stared at the four Iraqi soldiers sitting in the shade of a truck....

thedrifter
08-30-05, 02:13 PM
Bomb experts are new face of the US war in Iraq



On a dusty road near the former rebel bastion of Fallujah, deep inside the restive Sunni heartland, a team of US military explosives experts sifts through the smouldering wreckage of a car.

The air is thick with the acrid smell of burnt metal and rubber, as well as the stench of fried human flesh.

The blast occurred minutes earlier when a suicide car bomber detonated himself in a failed attempt to inflict casualties on a passing US convoy.

"I've got his thumb, an index and a middle finger," US Navy officer Todd Neal triumphantly announces to his colleagues. The body parts are placed in a clear plastic bag and then the examination continues.

Neal's team is the new face of the US-led coalition's war on Iraq's insurgents -- a mixed US Navy and Marines response unit of Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) experts based at Camp Fallujah, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

Roadside bombs, or Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), are currently the biggest killer for US-led forces in Iraq and the crudely-made bombs have exacted a particularly heavy toll on US troops in recent months.

On August 3, 14 Marines died when their heavily-armored troop vehicle was completely destroyed by a roadside bomb blast close to the Syrian border in one of the deadliest single attacks against American forces in Iraq.

Whenever a roadside bomb is spotted or explodes, Neal and his colleagues come racing to defuse the ordnance or pick up the pieces for analysis, looking for vital clues which could lead to the capture of a bomb-maker.

"We're like the fire brigade, only different," Neal says with a grin, stowing his collection of scrap metal and body parts in the back of a Humvee before leaving the site.

Back at headquarters, the team lays out what they found at the scene while their commander makes notes and takes pictures before compiling a report to be sent on to military intelligence counterparts and even the FBI.

In less than an hour, the EOD experts found enough crucial evidence littered around the blast site of around 100 square metres (1,075 square feet) to piece together how the bomb was made and establish a forensic profile of the bomber.

The team found the bomber's detonation switch and even his car keys.

"The push-button looks consistent with a lot of the ones we've seen lately," said Lieutenant Cameron Chen, the unit commander, busily taking measurements of the shard metal to discover what type of ordnance was used.

Chen identifies minute differences in the color and dimension of the fragments and immediately accesses a computer database to narrow down the possibilities from lists of mortar and projectile-rocket shells.

"They've used a 122-millimetre Russian OF56 and a 120-millimetre Chinese mortar," he eventually concludes.

Iraq's insurgency is greatly facilitated by vast amounts of grenades, rockets and mortar shells stashed around the country -- a legacy of Saddam Hussein's huge military spending in the years before the 2003 US-led invasion.

After significant losses to IEDs, the US military is placing an increasingly strong emphasis on the work of its EOD teams to track down insurgents using ordnance to such an unorthodox but deadly effect.

Chen said around 50 EOD experts -- many are naval officers like himself -- operate in the restive Sunni Anbar province, whose principal towns Fallujah and Ramadi are, with Baghdad, the top three hotspots for roadside bomb attacks.

EOD traineeships had doubled since the war ended, Chen said, but added that EOD experts from the US Navy had vital experience after years of clearing underwater mines and working with special operations teams like the navy SEALS.

In recent weeks, US officials have publicly noted an apparent increase in size and sophistication of roadside bombs, claiming that Iraqi rebels are receiving weaponry assistance from Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, with the compliance of Tehran.

"There's always a concern that IEDs are becoming more technically advanced," said Chen.

Although Chen refused to divulge the particular trends his team had identified, he said the reports were sent to an American-led agency in Baghdad composed of specialists from the FBI, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and experts from Britain and Australia.

"The goal is to tie a bomb-maker to a scene from their style," Chen said, but he added that expanding EOD expertise was not the key to US success in Iraq.

"We're really dealing with the symptoms of a wider problem... it's like we're trying to stop the tide."

Ellie