RobTheDrummer wrote:How was the progress over there Hal? I like the perspective of the ones who are actually over there.
Well Rob,
The situation is different in every province in Iraq. It is fairly calm in the north near Turkey where there is a high population of Kurds and it is also fairly calm in the southern region of the country where there are mostly Shiites. So I'm only gonna comment on my tour and the region I served in.
I was in Anbar province which is western Iraq and was stationed in Ramadi. Fallujah (to the east) was about 30 minutes from the area where we did our operations. Syria (to the west) was probably about an hour and a half away. So, we were in the middle of two wonderful places!! Western Iraq is almost all Sunni and Ramadi is considered by media and some military personnel an insurgent stronghold where they are the ones in control of the city. Ramadi's population is around 300,000 from what I've been told. It sure as hell is a dangerous place I can tell you that as a fact.
You don't hear much about Ramadi because there was no media with us at all. Some events would get media coverage but only about 2 sentences. If someone would get killed in Baghdad, the incident would have a few paragraphs written about it because every reporter and their brother is in Baghdad. But we would have mass casualties (several people killed in one incident) and it would rarely be publicized.
We didn't build any schools or anything like that. My unit is combat engineers and we were pure ground combat forces. We were infantry/engineers/military police/civil affairs all in one. Like a lot of units in Iraq. Our mission was not at that point to be doing the community things you hear about elsewhere. We were too busy clearing routes of IED's and cache and house searches and all that shit. Ramadi is still very much uncontrolled in some sections.
We did have an Iraqi army unit on our camp and we did take them out with us and do missions, or let them do certain types of missions with us watching over them. They were so horrible at first I would have rather had a boy scout pack with us. But they did get better as the year went on. In the beginning, we would load them up in the back of a cargo truck and that's how they got around.
Well, eventually the US trainers that were permanently assigned to them got them into driving. Well, we didn't have the best Humvees at first. We had the models that had the up armor kits on the doors. Eventually about half way through we got the 1115 models, which are fully armored. We, as well as the other units on our camp, loaded up our older Humvees and sent them down to Kuwait to get a good maintenance and painted the Iraqi camouflage with the Iraqi flag also painted on the doors. These then came back and were handed over to the Iraqi army unit. By the time we left Ramadi, they were doing mounted patrols (patrolling by vehicle). So, I guess that would be a major improvement over the year.
Overall, I think the situation where we were at was a little better I guess when we left but it was still crazy there. IED's, mortar and rocket attacks, small arms ambushes, car bombers,.... all the time. It is still pretty crazy there from what I've heard lately. President Bush last night committed 4,000 more troops to Anbar province.
There were some units that did some of the good will stuff. To be honest I don't know if that area is a winnable situation. Well let me rephrase....as I don't this at all as a win or lose war. In the end of all this mess, I think that there are going to have to be some things that are just going to have to be accepted. Kinda like having the mob or corrupt government activities. We know it's going on but a lot of times there actually is only so much you can do. So I'm gonna end it there cause I'm getting wildly off track. Plus I could talk about this shit for hours and I'm tired of typing!!!
So, I just wanted to give you all a little summary from where I was at. Actually that was a big summary for as much as I type!!