PDA

View Full Version : Pendleton Marines to start third combat tour



thedrifter
02-28-06, 12:18 AM
In Iraq
Pendleton Marines to start third combat tour
By Otto Kreisher
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
4:48 p.m. February 27, 2006

WASHINGTON – The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force will assume responsibility for Iraq's volatile Anbar province Tuesday, starting the Camp Pendleton-based command's third combat tour in the conflict that already has killed 657 Marines and sailors, and injured 5,255.

Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer, commander 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Forward, will lead the force of more than 29,000 Marine and Army troops of Multi-national Force-West in Anbar. Lt. Gen. John Sattler, 1st MEF commanding general, will remain at Camp Pendleton.

Zilmer and his personnel also will be directing, training and mentoring the expanding Iraqi security forces that are assuming a greater share of the fight against the insurgents, who have made western Iraq one of the most dangerous areas.

The 1st MEF headquarters will relieve Maj. Gen. Stephen Johnson and the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force staff, which have been responsible for western Iraq for nearly a year.

In a recent video news conference from Iraq, Johnson noted that when he assumed command last year, shortly after the 1st MEF forces had waged a bloody fight against insurgents in Fallujah, “there were very few Iraqi security forces out here ... There were no police, there were no governments, there had been no elections, and so forth.”

Now, he said, there were two Iraqi army divisions with nearly 20,000 soldiers.

“Currently, three brigades have the lead in counter-insurgency operations in their own area, and across the region Iraqi army battalions are bearing an increasingly larger share of the counterinsurgency fight,” Johnson told Pentagon reporters.

There also are 1,200 trained Iraqi police on the streets in Fallujah and enough in training to bring the police force to its authorized strength of 1,700, he said.

Johnson also noted the three successful elections held last year, with sharply increasing voter turn out in his sector.

He said 2006 is being called “the year of the police,” because of the increasing focus on building an effective police force that answers to the Iraqi government, not to local militia leaders.

Gen. Michael Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant, told reporters recently that “the standup of the Iraqi (army) forces is going quite well. One of the long poles in the tent is how the police go.”

The turnover of responsibility in Anbar already has started, with the Pendleton-based 5th Regimental Combat Team formally relieving the 8th RCT, from Camp Lejeune, N.C., in the eastern part of the province Feb. 22, after several weeks of familiarization.

Col. Larry Nicholson, 5th RCT commander, said his forces “look forward to building on the tremendous successes” of their predecessors and would “continue to serve as a windbreak for the emerging” Iraqi security forces and government.

Although the command of the U.S. forces in Anbar will shift from 2nd MEF to the Pendleton-based headquarters, the Marines in Iraq will continue to come from all three of the Marine's active expeditionary forces and from the Marine Reserves.

Nicholson's force, for example, has two infantry and one reconnaissance battalions and an artillery battery from Camp Pendleton; and infantry, tank and amphibious tractor battalions from Camp Lejeune.

During the year of 2nd MEF command, at least 70 of the 204 Marines and Navy corpsmen killed in Iraq were from 1st MEF units.

Ellie