A Counter-argument to the Rules of Engagement Meme

A Counter-argument to the Rules of Engagement Meme

Instapundit has linked to a blog misleadingly titled, the Captain's Journal, concerning the military's Rules of Engagement in the Iraqi theater. There are several myths being perpetuated, with faulty analyses that combine to sow discontent among the people of this nation and even people in the military. Sergeants and lance corporals surf the internet and hear of these so-called problems and conclude that the ROE are problematic.

I want to address these fallacies in a reasoned way from the perspective of someone who has been there and knows what the ROE were one year ago. Although I don't think you need to have been over there to understand the issues, I will state that I am a combat veteran of the Hit-Haditha corridor in Al Anbar Province, Iraq from February to October 2005. I served with the Third Battalion, 25th Marines as the communications officer. Although I make no claim to being a war hero, I was in all the battalion level operations and was on the roads frequently. There are many, many who did a lot more than me, but I was there and I'm very familiar with the subject.

First, I'll list the fallacies.

Fallacy #1. The ROE are radically different than in past wars.

Fallacy #2. The ROE are too restrictive and put our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in danger.

Fallacy #3. The ROE are too complicated.

Fallacy #4. If we change the ROE our troops will be able to act without fear of harrassment.

Fallacy #5. If we change the ROE we will win the war.

All of these are fallacies, but the first point to make is that the ROE are made by people who are in theater, who see and do the actions defined in the rules, and who have a grave sense of responsibility to the people entrusted to obey these rules. The purpose of the ROE is to ensure that the coalition forces accomplish their mission, and to ensure that force is employed consistent with our war aims and the need to safeguard innocents.

Fallacy #2. The ROE are too restrictive and put our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in danger. People making this argument are generally ignorant of the content of the ROE. This is because the ROE are classified. No one without a security clearance should have seen what the full ROE are. In addition, the ROE change per circumstance and location. Much has been made of a news article claiming that "new" proposals to the ROE now put unit safety above individual safety, and that commanders can locally limit the use of force in self-defense.

I am in no way confirming or denying these claims, both because I wouldn't do so because the ROE are usually classified, and also because I am not privy to these supposed changes.

Fallacy #3. The ROE are too complicated. It is true that the ROE are complex. They are written by lawyers and they are very long, I vaguely recall at least 50 pages, probably a lot longer. When I pointed this out to some people as evidence that most people can't argue the merits of the ROE since they haven't seen them, many people jumped to the conclusion that the rules are too complex and unwieldly to expect anyone, especially Private Smith from small town, USA to understand.

The best illustration of the incorrectness of that conclusion is to compare the ROE to the rules of a sport. The rule book for the NFL is in the range of 200 pages, and I don't have the time nor the inclination to count the pages in the Major League Baseball rulebook. The important point is that I don't know all those rules by heart, I probably don't even know a tenth of those rules. But that doesn't stop me or anyone else from playing football or baseball competently. If I'm a left guard, all I really need to know is that I keep still until the ball is snapped, I stop the guys in the other colored shirts from getting past me, and I can't hold the guy or hit him from behind when I do that. I should know some more rules about fumbles and interceptions, but that's about it. I don't need to know about roughing the kicker or the passer. I don't need to know about touchbacks, or illegal pass protection. In baseball, all I really need to know is to hit the ball when I'm at bat, and I have to do that without exceeding three strikes, and a few other rules about fouls, and the batting box. There's lots more out there, but that suffices for most people. On defense, the most complicated rule is the infield fly rule, but otherwise those volumes of rules are uninteresting and unnecessary for me.

The same is true for the ROE. If you're in a mobile assault platoon, you need to know the rules for setting up a snap vehicle checkpoint, and convoy protection for most days. If you're part of an overwatch of an area, you need to know a few simple rules about what constitutes behavior that marks someone as an enemy combatant, and that's about it. These summaries are often put on small cards that easily fit in a breast pocket. Anyone who can understand the infield fly rule can handle any of these ROE quite easily.

The same is true for other jobs in the area of operations. Pilots have their rules. Battalion commanders have much more rules. Just as coaches and umpires need to understand more of the rules than the left guard, so commanders have to know more about the rules that they must follow when employing the forces at their disposal.

Fallacy #4. If we change the ROE our troops will be able to act without fear of harrassment. This is probably the real crux of the issue that people have with the ROE. Whenever someone gets killed by our forces and the circumstances warrant an investigation, people naturally become fearful that the investigation will go badly for them and they can get in trouble. Trouble from violating the ROE can be in the form of a formal or informal counseling, up to jail time, or even execution. Knowing that there can be very serious consequences naturally makes people apprehensive. But if you examine the record, no one I am aware of has been prosecuted or convicted of violating the ROE except in very extreme cases where the individuals lost contact with the idea of being a human being, let alone an American, and commited atrocious acts. Even the massacre at Haditha is still pending prosecution, but I expect that it will progress in that direction. In all other instances, the military has acted consistent with the intent that actions taken that are reasonable to the situation aren't punished. These are very liberal ROE when viewed in this light.

But what if we did decide that somehow the ROE were too restrictive, and that there is some way to make them more liberal? What would change? The CNN factor would be exactly the same. That is, we know that Marines are able to defend themselves if they think they or their unit is in danger unless someone makes special exceptions for the situation. We have seen that a Marine in Fallujah can kill a man lying wounded in a Mosque. The ROE supported his decision to kill that wounded man because he had a reasonable concern that the wounded man was an enemy with a grenade and was preparing to use it on him and his comrades. That Marine made the right decision and the ROE and a team of lawyers supported his decision. Now let's say that the ROE are changed so that it is even clearer that he can do what he did. I'm not sure how it could be clearer, but let's say that there is some spectrum past "allowed to shoot people when they are suspected of holding a grenade" that we can somehow attain. What would happen now?

What would happen is that if a cameraman is there and films the Marine shooting the wounded man in the Mosque, that even though he is justified and even more allowed to do what he does, the press will still be likely to put this incident in the press, either because they support the enemy, or hate the war, or just because they think the issue will increase viewer numbers. They might even have good intentions combined with a quioxtic interest in publishing "truth," which seemed to be the case in the real story. When that happens, it again will not matter that the Marine is correct in his actions, what will matter is that hometown USA will see someone writhing in pain on the floor of a Mosque getting killed. The pity factor will cause many to recoil, and a big national debate can ensue. Thus, to protect the Marine, the commander has to do a credible investigation. The investigation will find that our fictitious new even more tolerant ROE allowed the killing and nothing changes. You'd still have a Marine afraid of a very serious investigation, and others will take that in and be likewise affected.

My point is that the ROE are more than adequate, it's not the ROE that are the problem. The problem that most people complaining about the ROE perceive is the reaction in the press that causes investigations. These reactions have little to do with the ROE.

Fallacy #5. If we change the ROE we will win the war. Changing the ROE will not allow a torrent of military actions that will end the war. Some people are under the impression that changing the ROE will allow us to kill more of the enemy. The truth is not that clear. With our pathetic troop levels, it's very easy for the enemy to act with relative ease in almost any location. For example, my battalion used two line companies and a weapons company (about 500 Marines) to cover more than a hundred miles of the Euphrates River along the well populated Hit-Haditha corridor. The best we could do most of the time we were there was play whack-a-mole with the insurgents.

Later we got our third company returned to us from defending the local air station and as we left to go home an army battalion took control from us of Hit while our replacements took Haditha. Each was augmented by one or more of the new Iraqi Army battalions. After we left to go back to the United States the area was largely pacified by them to a certain extent. This is pretty positive evidence that doubling the troops in an area has a significant effect on enemy activity. Without an increase in troop strength we cannot have the ability to find the enemy in enough quantity to stop them, and we don't have the ability to stay and convince the locals that they are safe. We already have authority from the ROE to kill or capture the enemy when we find them, it's the finding part that is hardest. More permissive ROE will not serve to help us be more places at more times to see enemy preparations and actions.


Captions to pictures:
1. Gunnery Sergeant Fifer, Communications Chief, Sergeant Arnold, Radio Watch Supervisor, Staff Sergeant Kozar, Radio Chief preparing to go on an ad hoc foot patrol looking for an enemy mortar team.

2. Gunnery Sergeant McIntire, Battalion Gunner, riding in the command and control amtrac on the way into Operation New Market.

3. Lance Corporal Rasic, Data Technician, serving as a radio operator in the command and control amtrac for operations in Kubaysa.

4. First Lieutenant Lobb, Assistant Intelligence Officer, and Major Rentner, Communications Officer in the command and control amtrac riding into Haqlaniyah.

5. Major St. Romain, Intelligence Officer, leaving Hit after Operation Sword.

Friday - November 10, 2006

George McGovern is Back and Saying Stupid Things

George McGovern is Back and Saying Stupid Things

McGovern is before my time, but I've never heard anything much good about him. But now he's back, reportedly to advise the new congress on how to end the war.

Here's the latest words of idiocy coming from him,

"The best way to reduce this insurgency is to get the American forces out of there," McGovern said. "That's what's driving this insurgency."

I don't know where this nonsense comes from, but I can assure you that the Somalians, Chads, Chechens, Syrians, Saudis and Egyptians, among other nationalities that we captured and killed in Iraq would have come to establish their Emirate regardless. And if America weren't in Iraq how can anyone say that there wouldn't still be inter-Iraqi fighting for control of the government.

I think it's a good thing that guy wasn't elected back then if this is the kind of idiocy that he's going to spout.

end

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Tuesday - October 31, 2006

It's Official. Iraq is another Viet Nam

It's Official. Iraq is another Viet Nam

We shamefully taken orders again from our enemy in Iraq, the Iranian-backed Shia government when they told us to leave our blockades of militias.

John Kerry is slinging his anti-American, anti-military rhetoric again.

America has given up. It's time to leave, if we're not going to win. We should just give up and let the Arabs control the world and convert us all to Islam because we don't have the moral fiber to stop murderers.

end.

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Sunday - June 11, 2006

3/1: Manslaughter in Haditha?

3/1: Manslaughter in Haditha?

I've not discussed the controversy regarding Haditha here yet because I'm waiting for the investigation to conclude. It disturbs me that so many people are rushing to acquit the accused Marines with less to base their opinions on than even those that are rushing to convict.

But now some of the accused Marines are talking to the press. They should keep their mouths shut because what they're saying is plenty enough to convict them, or at least it's being spun that way by the people reporting what they're saying. Because they have chosen to speak, I feel it is now appropriate to discuss their claims.

Below is how Marines would typically analyze this if it were included as another hypothetical incident in our ROE classes.

The battalion in the controversy replaced my battalion in Haditha. Although they, like us, were split between Hit and Haditha, they left Hit to a US Army National Guard battalion and the entire battalion operated out of Haditha Dam within a week of the transfer of authority from 3/25 to 3/1. At some time soon after we left, 3/1 sent their companies with the Iraqi Army to occupy the nearby cities of Haditha, Haqlaniyah, and Barwana.

I encourage all interested to read the statements of these Marines linked above. If these statements are really complete statements from them, these Marines should be locked away for a long time.

First, I want to go through the Rules of Engagement in Iraq as they are typically published. Some operations may have different ROE, but these are standard. They are very complex, and detailed, but there are some basic rules that are easy to remember.

1. If a Marine believes he is under attack, he may shoot the attacker. If he believes he is in danger he may take appropriate and proportional action. However, he needs to be able to justify his actions to reasonable scrutiny.
2. Prior to using deadly force, there must be clear hostile intent or hostile acts.
3. There must be a positive ID on every individual displaying hostile intent or hostile acts before using deadly force.

The whole crux of the ROE is to understand what is allowed to be interpreted as hostile acts or hostile intent.

There are many times when these rules are murky, and individual Marines must be trusted to use sound judgement. In every instance, reports of escalation of force or deaths were reviewed by the Commanding General. If the reports are reasonable and show that the Marines used good judgement and a sound thinking process, no action was taken. We learned early to be sure that all reports included sufficient detail to demonstrate how the Marines acted in accordance with the ROE.

The Commanding General emphasized continuously that he would ensure the rules were followed, without exception. He further explained that escalation steps when required might all occur simultaneously depending on the circumstances, but they must still occur. No one is allowed, normally, to kill anyone in Iraq without strictly observing the ROE.

So, that raises the question, did the Marines of 3/1 follow the rules when they killed twenty-four Iraqi civilians?

From their own statements, no.

They were attacked by an IED. Okay, that's a hostile act. But they still need positive ID. Instead, they make this claim, according to the Washington Post,

Puckett [SSgt Wuterich's attorney] said that while Wuterich was evaluating the scene, Marines noticed a white, unmarked car full of "military-aged men" lingering near the bomb site. When Marines ordered the men to stop, they ran; Puckett said it was standard procedure at the time for the Marines to shoot suspicious people fleeing a bombing, and the Marines opened fire, killing four or five men.

Marines are not policemen, but even in Iraq you can't shoot someone just for running away. These "suspicious people" are not displaying hostile intent or hostile acts. They may very well have been bad people, but there is no reason given for killing them. That SSgt Wuterich's attorney claims such shootings were standard procedure strikes me as very odd. It was not "standard procedure" to shoot people for appearing suspicious when my battalion operated out of the same area 45 days prior to this incident. I suspect there is more to the story, I'd be interested in knowing what made them appear "suspicious." The Post isn't doing these Marines any good.

But then, the Post is sloppy here. A careful reading shows that these MAM's (military aged males) were in a vehicle. If they were running through a road block or snap vehicle check point, then they needed to be stopped, without question, but only after a proper escalation. If they were going in the opposite direction, then it's not so clear. In light of the IED going off mintues earlier, these may have been justified deaths but it's not clear from the Post's report. It's already a very murky and questionable story.

Here's more,

Gary Myers, a civilian attorney for a Marine who was with Wuterich that day, said the Marines followed standard operating procedures when they "cleared" the houses, using fragmentation grenades and gunshots to respond to an immediate threat.

Houses are not cleared with fragmentation grenades and gunshots as a standard operating procedure. Standard procedure varies, but normally you only shoot into homes when you see people with weapons. Again, you need positive ID and hostile intent or hostile acts. So far as I can tell from the sloppy chronology of the Washington Post report, they only suspected that gunfire came from this house, and even then, it is not permitted to toss grenades into houses without having a very clear and significant threat or a known target, because who knows, there might be women and children inside. Gee, imagine that. Later, the Post points out that one Marine claimed to see gunfire coming from one specific house, and they were told by the platoon commander to clear the house. Again the Post's chronology is poorly laid out.

A four-man team of Marines, including Wuterich, kicked in the door and found a series of empty rooms, noticing quickly that there was one room with a closed door and people rustling behind it, Puckett said. They then kicked in that door, tossed a fragmentation grenade into the room, and one Marine fired a series of "clearing rounds" through the dust and smoke, killing several people, Puckett said.

Where was the threat? Did they have any clear idea of what was behind that door? Obviously not. But let's assume that this was a tragic error. These things can happen, it's a war zone after all. I'm inclined to not get too over-wrought by a mistake, even a big one like this. But then after discovering the horrible truth, what was their next action? They did it again.

. . . they also noticed a back door ajar and believed that insurgents had slipped through to a house nearby, Puckett said. The Marines stealthily moved to the second house, kicking in the door, killing one man inside and then using a frag grenade and more gunfire to clear another room full of people, he said.

Now there is no hostile intent, no hostile act, and no positive ID. The weak justifications they had for deadly force in the first house are gone completely, yet they use more grenades and kill more civilians. That they used these procedures that resulted in innocent deaths a second time with even less justification is perplexing.

What's even more perplexing is this quote,

A Marine who served near Haditha in November said it was not unusual for Marines to respond to attacks "running and gunning" and that it was standard practice to spray rooms with gunfire when threatened. "It may be a bad tactic, but it works," he said. "It keeps you alive."

It appears that this is a quote from an unnamed source in the same battalion. This is a very disconcerting statement, even taking into account that it could be from a lance corporal from the supply section or some other poorly informed individual. This is definitely not a legal tactic. That it is being stated this way indicates a lack of control over the Marines in the battalion. It's another data point I would add to the appalling lack of curiosity of the company and battalion commanders in accepting the reports without looking into the issue more thoroughly.

The rest of the Post's story lacks details necessary to make an informed judgement. Two men dressed in black are seen running from the houses that were cleared and were killed. They don't say why they were killed. I'm curious why someone is running from a house that had been cleared. I'm curious what hostile act or intent the men in black displayed. Wearing black isn't uncommon. Ninja-like suits are very suspicious, but normal black clothes are common. What excuse do these Marines have for killing them? My point in asking is not to question whether they should have been killed, but to point out that the Post isn't very good at reporting for leaving these questions unaddressed and unaswered.

I now understand why LtCol Chessani and two company commanders were relieved of command. It is unfathomable that this many people can be killed without a very clear understanding of what happened. I doubt that the commanders intended this tragedy to happen, but I find it hard to understand that they did such a poor job investigating and reporting it. Again, there are too many unknowns.

And that's my conclusion. We still know too little, and I look forward to the conclusion of the investigations. In the mean time, the Marines being targeted by this investigation would be smarter to keep their mouths shut. They're not making anyone look good. If the charges are true, I hope they are locked away for a long time because I resent these accusations being associated with my good name as a Marine.

It appears that 3/1 may have completely misunderstood what their role was. The military war is over in Iraq. Yes, there are still bombs being planted, people getting killed, but there is no military question to the war now. The war is now fought completely in the press. It is a struggle of wills between the people of the United States, Britain, coalition members and the terroists. It is the Marines' purpose in Iraq to help the Iraqi people establish security and trust of the United States. It is tragic when a Marine dies and that should never be accepted. But the people in the city of Haditha are not all terrorists. They didn't all kill the Marine. It's better to act with measured response and win the good will of the people, than to over-react and destroy that hard won good will of people all over Iraq. This incident is a clear loss in the battle for the will of our people. It is irresponsible that 3/1 allowed this victory for terrorism.

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Monday - May 22, 2006

Irony

Irony

The radios weren't lost, we knew exactly where they were and they were in US custody, but there was still a lot of paperwork to declare them lost and then somehow find replacments. They weren't lost, they may even have worked, there was no way to know. The problem is that they were now radioactive. As was the rest of the tank.

When you're near a tank, you know it. They are big. They are loud. They look dangerous. They are dangerous. To others.

The enemy fears tanks. Infantry love tanks. Having a tank along makes the enemy go away. Our aviators hated tanks because they make the enemy go away, the aviators don't like targets to go away. Aviators have their own iron to drop on the enemy.

It's ironic that the most dangerous weapon on the battlefield is the safest place to be. Inside the iron tank, the crew are safe. Tankers are fearless, nothing will hurt them, unless they get out of the tank.

A double or triple stacked anti-tank mine, with a few artillery shells lay waiting for who knows how long. It was the dust storm season, the sand had a consistency of talcum powder, we called it "moon dust." Foot steps and vehicle tracks tended to be obscured by the strong winds. Most objects, including mines and artillery shells were invisible.

The tank crew didn't see the bombs and rolled right over them.

US tanks are brilliant designs, they may not be invulnerable but the crew almost always survives.

The crew got out safely. They had their bells rung, but they were generally fine. The other tank crew called on the radio for help and stood guard while they watched the breached tank hull cook off its ammo and melt.

The iron melted, but the crew was safe.

Help came, the mobile action platoon came to carry the tankers home. They must have felt great relief at this deliverance from the hell they just survived. The sun had set, Marines own the night, they were safe. Just a quick ride home, and then they would tell the story to all their friends of how they survived the bomb.

A mobile action platoon has four vehicles, one is typically a "high back" with an open cargo bay and thin armored sides. The tankers and some of the MAP crew climbed into the high back. Usually the high back is the third truck when they travel. Somehow the first two trucks missed it. The high back didn't.

And that's the irony. The tankers survived a bomb that melted their tank, only to hit another bomb just as big on their way home.

Three tankers and two infantrymen from the MAP were killed.

This time a section of amtracs were sent to recover the crews. They finally arrived at the dam safe. As safe as the dead can be.

As the night dragged on, the bodies were loaded onto helos, the amtracs were hosed out. The ground was hosed off. Weapons were accounted for. Personal gear inventoried.

The night dragged on, I was the last officer to stay up. The guys from the tank platoon did all the work. The anguish on their faces was painful to watch. This was one of those times they don't train us for. Leaders need an instinct for knowing what to do. What is the right thing to do? I was torn between staying and providing an officer's presence, or leaving them to their own grief, to sort out their emotions without an outsider watching, intruding on their tight family.

I left about 2am, I don't know how late they stayed up. The weapons and other controlled gear were all accounted for. The bodies were sent to Al Asad. Everything was picked up and orderly.

I'll always wonder if I did the right thing to leave. There's no way to answer that question. I mentioned to someone there that I was leaving. I don't know if he cared.

The melted tank was moved the next day. They sent out a tank retriever and a heavy equipment transport to get it. Last I saw it, it was still sitting by itself in a field in Al Asad because the radiation from the melted components made it too dangerous to be near.

Al Asad is where we send dead people and dead tanks. Iron tanks, iron men.

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Tuesday - March 28, 2006

New Market

New Market

One of the watch officers sent out a few emails on SIPRNET, the secure internet protocol router network, calling it Operation New Market Garden. He was confusing the Civil War battle of New Market with the Second World War battle of Operation Market Garden and somehow combined them into one name. I sent him a chat poking him in the ribs and told him the correct name. I think he graduated from the Virginia Military Institute which fought the battle of New Market so he was pretty embarrassed. I laughed with him over his faux pas.

It's good to laugh about these things. New Market was the most kinetic operation I was on. Some of our companies had been in much worse west of us near the Syrian border, but not with our battalion. Major Steve White did a great job planning this operation, going through all the school house planning steps and ensuring that we had a solid plan. The maneuver elements were three companies. We had Kilo Company, 3d Battalion, Second Marines. We also had Lima Company from our battalion, 3d Battalion, Twenty-fifth Marines coming from the west. Finally we had Kilo Company from 3/25 who came up from Camp Hit and did a helo insert on the east side of the river. Alpha Company, 1st Tank Battalion screened north and south. Weapons company from 3/25 screened east and west.

The comm platoon was getting good at supporting the battalion staff on these operations. Each time out we raised the bar. This time we put an EPLRS network in place, using line of sight UHF radio routers, kind of like your home wireless network on steroids, and connected our COC to our data network back at Haditha Dam, our battalion headquarters. Everyone yawned when I told them we could have SIPRNET on the operation. Either they didn't believe it possible, or they didn't grasp the utility of the venture.

We had been testing the EPLRS network extensively before the operation and I knew it would work. The success in this operation is what convinced me to make bolder promises in our later Operation Sword. As promised, EPLRS worked fabulously and Steve raved for weeks afterward about this new capability.

I couldn't have been more impressed by the comm platoon Marines. The comm chief, GySgt Eason, was brilliant in training them and preparing them and the equipment for the operation. He stayed behind at the dam this time and supported the back end of the comm systems, especially data and EPLRS. LCpl J. A. Williams was tossed in, reluctantly at first, and was told he had to make EPLRS work with minimal training. This is when native intelligence and having good character becomes so important to key positions. J.A. wasn't anxious at all about going on the operation, but never balked and took his responsibility with the greatest seriousness. Although I lavished great praise on him, I don't think he really bought into how impressed I was at how he jumped in and made everything work. With Marines like him we will never lose any war.

And he wasn't alone. Both of the sergeants were tremendously strong, I felt like Sgt Byrnes and Sgt Francis were like Ruth and Gehrig. Sgt Francis was the radio chief and his energy was absolutely endless. They set the standard for all the radio operators and made the radio watch function with crisp professionalism. They made my job boring, I had very little to do except increase my demands for higher and higher standards, which they never failed to meet.

But not everything was rosy on this operation. Shortly after the companies entered the city they were attacked. My friend Capt Ray Lopes, a fellow Portuguese and in my company at The Basic School in 1985 was shot in the hip, and another Marine was injured. Around the same time Maj Crocker was killed by an RPG round.

Shortly after we took over the neighborhood technical school for our combat operations center, an amtrac hit a mine 30 yards from us. Then came several mortar rounds. Major Catalano, the Sergeant Major, a few gunnery sergeants and I patrolled outside the perimeter of the school a few times to find the mortar impact craters. By analyzing the crater you can get a general idea of which direction it was fired from. It took a long time to find where the rounds landed. I think there were about seven rounds the first salvo, and there were two or three attacks, maybe more.

At one point when things were hectic, the air officer was calling in air strikes, the ops officer was directing the companies, amtracs were blowing up, tanks getting shot at by mortars and roaring around trying to find the mosquitos shooting at them, the battalion surgeon decided that some of the casualties were too serious to drive the 30 minutes to the dam for medical evacuation, our preferred evac point, and called for the blackhawks to fly directly to the COC for evac.

With the officers in operations so busy, I went out to make sure everything was ready for the medevac. People were jumpy because of the mortar attacks, though no mortars hit us then. I commandeered some Marines and assigned them to be stretcher bearers. I don't suppose we would have had trouble finding any, but I wanted them identified ahead of arrival so we didn't have to go looking for any. I think we needed three or four teams and I have no idea who some of those Marines were, I just grabbed them and told them to grab stretchers.

While I was busy doing that, I was out with some of my comm platoon Marines in the courtyard. I think we were discussing how the helo would be landing, and I heard the characteristic crack of bullets passing by. Later we estimated it was about 21 shots, most wildly missing, but they started getting closer and closer. When a bulllet passed just a few feet from me and another between two of my Marines, we suspended our medevac preparations and got under cover. We finished getting the area ready for medevac a few minutes later when the shooting stopped.

Maybe if you get shot at a lot and see the bullets hitting people, your reaction might be a bit more vigorous. Maybe we were just too oblivious. But mostly we just shrugged off the small arms fire and kept about whatever we were doing until we could no longer ignore how close they were getting.

I remember looking towards the direction the shots came from, and seeing nothing for a few kilometers except for two houses about 500 meters away. The rules of engagement prohibited returning fire unless we could positively identify the shooter. So we didn't shoot back from the courtyard, but our snipers returned fire for us. My whole time in Iraq, in all the operations I went on, I never fired a shot in anger. But I suppose as a staff officer that is as it should be.

Haditha had become a center of insurgent operations after they lost Fallujah and Ramadi. Fallujah was almost entirely destroyed and was completely pacified (there's a lesson in there somewhere) and Ramadi was occupied. The muj were active in Ramadi, but their freedom of movement was severely hampered. Haditha was one of their last holds along the Euphrates River and became a primary point for them to transit across the river to northern and eastern Iraq from Syria. New Market disrupted their operations, kept them guessing what we were doing next, and cost them a lot of equipment, money, and people.

From a strategic standpoint, we were waiting for trained Iraqi army units to join us before we established a permanent presence there, so when we left the enemy was able to regroup, retrench and again terrorize the people living there. Although we disrupted enemy activity, one side effect was to shake the locals' trust in our willingness to stay and help free them from the thugs. I suppose it could be argued that it might have been better to leave the city alone until we could go and occupy it permanently, and many have said as much.

I don't agree. I don't care too much about Iraqis that allow terrorists to live among them, no matter the threats, and I'd much rather keep the enemy reacting to our plans and not living comfortably where they can relax and plan more and more ambitious attacks on us.

New Market was no more than a raid, and it wasn't until after we left that the battalion replacing us was able to finally make a permanent presence there, but New Market was successful in keeping the enemy rocking back on their heels and licking their wounds. They might have bragged to the Iraqis that they "threw us out of the city in a big defeat" and maybe some Iraqis believed it, but the enemy themselves knew better because they were usually reacting to our operations and struggling to keep their own forces from collapsing.

That's what the USMC got out of the operation. What I got was something entirely different. I had friends shot, killed, I saw amphibious tractors destroyed nearby, I was shot at by the most prolonged mortar engagements I saw my entire time overseas, I was shot at by small arms fire. Yet I never saw a single Marine afraid.

Not once did I see a single Marine balk at going outside the wire. Not once did any express fear. Even the men in weapons company who repeatedly got hit by roadside bombs were fearless. Even after getting their vehicles blown out from under them on several occasions, even in MAP-7 where so many were killed or shipped home on a stretcher that only a handful were original members of the platoon, not once did I see a single Marine act with anything but enthusiasm when heading out on a mission. The importance to me of Operation New Market was that I knew that although Marines of earlier generations were in worse wars and experienced far more hellish combat, I knew that the Marines we have today are their equals. After New Market, if I ever had any doubts about the current breed of Marines they were fully dispelled. I was proud to be among heros every day, and ever more determined to not let them down.

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Tuesday - March 21, 2006

Night Driving (w/addendum)

Night Driving (w/addendum)

It was time to go. It was late at night, and we were loading up our vehicles to begin movement to our attack positions. Normally I rode in the command and control vehicle but for some reason the Operations Officer directed me to ride in his vehicle. Everything was going as planned. Everything except one thing. My thing.

Normally he is extremely even tempered. I admire Steve White more than just about any officer I've ever known. Professional, inclusive, brings everyone onto his team with respect and provided consistent, decisive leadership. This was the only time he lost his temper with me.

"So we're screwed! We've got no comm."

Surprised by his anger, I responded in kind and immediately regretted it. "How do you think that? We've got VHF and SatComm, just like always. And we'll get data running soon."

Steve was angry that our CONDOR data network, which no one had ever used yet outside of testing, wasn't yet functional. It was an experimental system that we only had in our possession for a few days and only got a critical cable an hour earlier. But now we were rolling into battle and he believed my early promises for delivering miracles. I normally didn't promise anything that I didn't know I would deliver. This time I miscalculated. It was much harder to get this untested equipment working than I had anticipated. But we had all our other systems up and running and this system was just an extra one. It was a very powerful extra system, but nothing we had ever needed before.

Steve is a thorough professional, sloughed off my retort, and we all climbed in the up-armored Humm-vee and moved out in darkness to our initial combat operations center (COC) location. Really, it was nothing more than an open field nestled among some small hills in the desert just south of the city of Hit.

I was riding in the right seat up front, one of my radio operators was driving, while Steve and Woody, our air officer, were in the back seats. It was a pitch black, moonless night and I couldn't see a thing. We drove with our lights out, the driver wearing night vision goggles. I sat in the humm-vee with nothing to see except glowing lights on the radios.

But then something else didn't go according to plan. Some of our new up-armored humm-vees had bad fuel controls. These trucks had bigger engines to compensate for the extra armor and the vehicle I was in was so new that even the air conditioner worked great. But the fuel controls presented a problem. If the ground was flat the truck was merely sluggish. But if there were any rise in terrain, anything as mountainous as a speed bump, if we didn't already have some forward momentum, we couldn't move. It was almost comical.

Except that it wasn't.

After we got south to where Route Bronze and Route Uranium split, we turned north and drove through the desert to our night's destination. Now it was the driver's time for expressing frustration. The dust in Iraq's deserts in the summertime is often called moon dust because it is light and puffy like aerated talcum powder. Sure enough, as soon as we got off road the dust billowed and obscured everything. We had to drive exclusively by the bright night vision reflectors on the vehicles ahead of us. But whenever we hit a small rise in the terrain, we fell further and further behind. We lost our way several times, dragging along all the vehicles behind us.

Steve dug out a set of night vision goggles so I could help the driver find and stay in contact with the leading vehicles. Several times we had to stop and investigate why we seemed stuck. We didn't yet understand the fuel control problem. I also had to wander out in front, to link up with the vehicles in front who had stopped to wait for us. It was slow going.

All this time, our communications chief was continuing to talk via satellite to get our data systems working.



We finally reached where we were going, and anxiously monitored the progress of the three line companies -- K/3/25, L/3/25, and the army's magnificent Company C from the "first of the ninth" regiment -- as they entered the city. Weapons company screened to the north, and a company from the 2d Light Amphibious Reconnassaince battalion screened east and west.

I can't describe the elation I felt when the sun rose and the murky, dusty desert turned into a bright and clear day, with the city spread out below us. The mystery was revealed, for the first time I saw where we were and where we were going. About that time, our data network came up, in a limited way, and we started getting email from our amtraks, Lima Company, and our advanced logistics operations center. In a couple more hours, we broke the code on connecting to the regular military classified network.

Steve finally got his data package, and stayed in touch with everyone through our chat rooms. The regimental staff continuously stayed in touch to a degree never before possible. Bandwidth was limited, but usable, and we were able to provide a much clearer picture of operations to higher headquarters than ever before. The system was finicky, and took a lot of attention to keep it running, but it worked.

Shortly after sunrise we moved into the city, and moved to three more locations, finally settling in what became Firm Base 1. I remained there for over two weeks with the battalion staff until we relinquished it to Lima Company and returned to Camp Hit, five miles north of the city to continue on going control from there.

*******

Addendum. Skyler's dad made a comment that it was too bad we had a bad day. Here was my response.

It wasn't really a bad day. Everything went well except that my humm-vee was a dog. We were stressed because we thought we were going into a battle that would be like Fallujah. We fully expected a very bloody greeting. We had gotten rough welcomes in Hadithah and Haqlaniyah, and Barwana and most other places. Only Kubaysa was quiet. Hit was a place that had very bad ambushes on the battalion before us and we'd not been there since. So we were a bit jumpy.

After we moved from that position we drove into the city. The line companies had advanced through the area and cleared a building for us to use as a headquarters. But they were long gone by the time we got there. I was the first one out of the vehicle when we arrived and the S-3 and air officer were busy directing the battle. So I took it upon myself to clear the building. Me and two other Marines did old fashioned infantry stuff, busting the doors open and making sure no muj were there. It was empty, but I had fun playing John Wayne, if only for a brief time on a building that was cleared once already.

I really had a ball over there. I wonder if I'll ever get to do it again.

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Wednesday - December 14, 2005

How to Win Over the Locals

How to Win Over the Locals

Major Nick Visconte was the company commander of India company. He took over from Major Steve Lawson, the commander of Lima company, for Firm Base 1 in the city of Hit. Two better men would be harder to find. Steve was there for the initial invasion of that city, and Nick took over shortly after. We were glad to have India company back with us, they were detached to the air wing guarding the air station our entire time overseas until then. Nick proved to be the right man for the job of dealing with the Iraqis in Hit.

The Marines have two main schools of thought on how to win over the locals to the idea of supporting us. One is to go through existing power wielders, the other is to appeal directly to the people. There is no one method that always works, sometimes one works where the other won't, but each officer tends to have his own trend.

Each method has strengths and drawbacks, and you can say that the history of the counter-insurgency in Iraq has seen the US see saw back and forth. We disbanded the Iraqi army and all of its government, yet we let engineers continue running infrastructure like dams and refineries. We brought back Iraqi army units in the first battle of Fallujah only to disband them almost immediately.

This same see sawing occured at lower levels too. Here's a story of what happened with my battalion in the city of Hit.

When we set up a permanent presence in that city, we shocked the city leaders. The city had been totally controlled by the enemy, and not so much by foreign elements as by former regime elements and local strongmen.

This was a critical phase of the non-kinetic battle, where Information Operations and Civil Affairs are most important. Civil Affairs deals with the well-being of the locals, they're the softies that build schools and make water treatment system repairs, and they get a lot of press. Information Operations is often confused with them, but it's not a group as much as it's a way of thinking and acting. Information Operations is a euphemism for Propaganda Activity. It's the attempt to influence the indigenous people to be on our side.

Sadly, IO is not a very well developed concept yet. Oh, you can attend lots of classes on the topic where people from various puzzle palaces will tell you how important it is to provide all your people and assets to IO. Mostly that is simply empire building from on high. After three hours of such classes before we deployed I asked the following question: "You've shown us examples of how the enemy uses IO against us, and you've shown how we can use IO at a national level, but can you give me an example of how we can use IO at the battalion level." I expected a quick and ready answer. Instead I had to repeat the question, without an answer, so many times that I was finally asked to let someone else ask a question. They could not cite a single example of how IO is to be used at the battalion level, and didn't seem to regard this as unexpected.

So, in empire building for a task that is poorly defined, you can expect a lot of in-fighting and some less than stellar people being assigned the job.

The city leaders in Hit took advantage of us at every opportunity that they could. Like all Iraqis they denied that any insurgents had ever been in the city. Finally, we invited them over to a site, without explaining why, and took pictures of them standing in front of recently discovered weapons caches. They stopped denying that insurgents were in the area only after having proof like that. They wouldn't admit insurgent activity even if they were shown the weapons cache, only having them in a picture with it were they finally able to admit it.

Our Civil Affairs officer had set up a system where we give the city leaders money to pay to those whose property was damaged. This was an attempt to recognize them as leaders and bolster their standing in the community. It's the nature of military operations that things break. Marines are not gentle people. When we drive our tanks down the street, the water pipes are buried too shallow and tend to break. Gates and doors are broken. But we always pay for damage done, it's important to us. The theory was that they would appreciate this and support us, or at least this is what the IO officer seemed to think would be the case.

But it didn't work. Here's where my hero of the day, Nick Visconte comes in.

Nick understands people. He understands strongmen. He likes to imply that his family "knows" mafia members in the US and this helps him understand Iraqis. On his last trip to Iraq the locals made him a sheik of their tribe, he has all the paperwork to go with it. He is the tribe's sheik for the New York region!

One day Nick decided to go to the city plaza and make restitution to the people directly. One effect was that we now knew as a fact that injured parties were compensated the full amount. The other effect was more dramatic and much more important.

Before the city leaders were quite haughty and disdainful of us. They had power and felt secure in their power. But this one act of going around them and directly to the people suddenly made them aware that they were not as all powerful as they pretended -- and we knew it. The farce of tribal power was brought right out into the open.

At the next meeting with the city leaders, amazingly all the city leaders showed up and were very attentive. They didn't like losing power and would do everything to convince us not to take it away again.

This one small act did more to win over both the people and the leaders than anything else we did.

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Sunday - December 04, 2005

A Man Will See What He Wants to See

A Man Will See What He Wants to See

And will disregard the rest.

Congressman John Murtha has been in the news a lot recently, mostly bad mouthing the military and saying how hopeless it is for us.

I have no idea where he got that idea from. When he came to visit our battalion in Haditha Dam, Al Anbar Province, Iraq, we told him an entirely different story.

 

This is a picture of him with some army guy I don't know, our battalion commander and the battalion sergeant major.

There's no telling what our CO told Rep. Murtha. But I am pretty sure he didn't tell him that we need to cut and run. We had a dog and pony show with samples of how much our equipment had improved in the short time we had been there, especially regarding armored vehicles. I'm sure he bragged at our recent permanent presence in the city of Hit.

And I'm pretty sure no one told him that we needed to be pulled back home before finishing the job we were doing.

But a man will hear what he wants to hear. See what he wants to see. And make any kind of crazy claim to support his political agenda.

His aides walked about handing out little keychain fobs with his name on them. I didn't keep it, wish I had now, so that I could mail it back to him with appropriate comments of disapproval.

He and the other congressman, who's name I don't remember because I didn't get a key chain fob with a name on it, had some really hot-looking aides with them. It caused a small stir when they came to the top of the dam.

Here LCpl Fencil, our photographer, seems to be chatting with him, but I suspect he was really checking out his aides. I was too discreet to take pictures of them.



Rep. Murtha retired as a Marine officer. It's a pity he didn't seem to learn much about warfare from that experience. But a man's agenda will influence what he sees and hears first hand. Or at least what he'll say he sees and hears.

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Wednesday - November 30, 2005

Die Strong

Die Strong

RIP, LCpl Lance Graham.

I remember when I first saw it. He was shooting the breeze with the guys and one of them pointed it out. It was a green band on his wrist. I think it may have been taped up with duct tape, I'm not sure. He had had it made in Las Vegas, I think, while on our brief liberty before coming to Iraq.

Less astute people may have thought it was mocking the Lance Armstrong yellow band. This one said "Die Strong." More astute people knew better.

He was in weapons company, in one of the mobile action platoons, MAP-7. MAP-7 had already gotten an early reputation for finding roadside bombs the hard way. They were the battalion commander's personal security detail and usually in a hurry to get someplace, I'm sure. And they went just about everywhere with the commander.

But they also did their fair share of route security. Major roads, main lines of communication went through our area of operations and we had to keep them open to traffic at all times. The MAP's drove up and down the roads every day looking for bombs, looking for muj, looking for trouble.

He didn't say much, he seemed laconic. He quietly showed it to me. After he left I listened to the guys talk about it. All agreed that Lance Graham had a great philosophy and admired him for putting it into a tangible form. Of course, being young Marines, they didn't say it that way.

Living strong is important and our yellow shirted hero is right to urge us to make ourselves strong and devote at least a part of our lives and outlook to become physically and mentally tough. That's not so easily done, but it's only an incremental step in our lives. What Lance Graham was saying was more profound, at least to us.

Not too long after that, the muj fired some mortars at us up at the dam. I'm pretty sure that no one was hurt, the muj were usually terrible at aiming. We reacted by sending our boats down river where they came under intense fire from the shores. One group of Marines was on the east shore giving support, MAP-7 and a tank platoon section were sent down to assist as well. When the enemy shows himself, we like to oblige him by killing him.

MAP-7 went south of their meeting point with the tanks, turned back north and came to the main plaza, right by the Haditha hospital. We've been to that hospital many times in the past, even very recently. The hospital staff was at the least neutral, possibly supportive. They knew they had a lot to gain from us if they cooperated with us.

But on that day, everything was different. Our boats returned to the dam, the enemy was engaged by the Marines on the far side of the river, and the hunt commenced on the near side with the tanks and MAP-7 pushing hard to find them. As they passed the hospital, a truck accelerated at them from a small alley and disappeared again just as rapidly.

It disappeared in a huge explosion. Some murderous muj decided to selfishly seek out paradise and an illusion of a guarantee of virgin attendants. He probably couldn't find female companionship by any other means. At the same time, machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenade attacks erupted from inside the hospital and from across the street. Islamic fanatics and murderous thugs had come into the hospital very recently and occupied it. They threatened the hospital staff, moved out the patients, some of whom were squeezed into a small area remaining, and constructed fortified gun pits and firing positions. It was a long planned ambush, with MAP-7 caught in the crossfire.

I don't claim an infallible memory, I'm sure I have many details wrong. But here's how I remember it, from the vantage of a Marine sitting at the dam waiting for the casualties. While the survivors loaded the six wounded and then the five dead into the bed of the seven-ton truck, one Marine kept up a vicious return fire with a machine gun. Another got on the radio and reported the situation. Somehow the tank section got on station and assisted them. The seven-ton was half demolished, and I will have everlasting admiration for the engineers in Osh Kosh making a truck that can take so much damage. Somehow Sgt Pace got that beast back the 10 miles or so to the dam with two shredded front tires, no radiator, and pretty significant structural damage.

I don't remember where Graham was in all of this, I wasn't directly there and even this short time has caused me to forget details of the after action reports that were prepared. I think only one Marine in MAP-7 wasn't hurt, and all behaved heroically.

Second Lieutenant Slater, the tank platoon commander realized that the wounded had to leave at once. But if they left, he would be stuck in the middle of an urban environment with enemy infantry all around, and he wouldn't have any infantry support. This isn't a generally smart idea for tanks. Slater has my undying admiration because he didn't hesitate. He ordered MAP-7 back and held the scene with his two tanks while waiting for another MAP to assemble and reinforce him.

Eventually, an ad hoc platoon arrived, consisting of the XO, the S-3A, the Operations chief, the watch clerk and any number of cats and dogs. They assaulted through the hospital, put out the fire that the enemy set, and drove out the enemy from the area.

Meanwhile, MAP-7 arrived at the dam. The wounded were piled on the truck, with the dead on top of them, it took a while to sort everyone out.. The H&S company commander hurled himself on top of the truck and created order out of chaos, Unlike the movies, no one cried and looked on in a catatonic trance. No one went crazy. Even the wounded responded to orders or acted without them. Marines acted as Marines have always acted. I remember hearing about Cpl Childress hopping around with shrapnel wounds and a bullet wound, but still jumping in and helping out his buddies.

When we returned home from Iraq many months later, Graham's parents met us coming off the bus. I talked with them briefly, they stoically smiled and welcomed us home. Pain was on their faces, but they looked proud to be there and see the men who went to war with their son. After I shook hands with his father, he gave me a small package. It was a black wrist band, with his son's name on it and the words that he chose as his mottto half a year earlier, "Die Strong."

I don't normally wear jewelry or faddish gee gaws like yellow wrist bands. I proudly wear that band.

They were strong. They were Marines. LCpl Graham, a Marine, a strong man, died like he lived. Strong. And the rest of us will live out our lives remembering to always be strong, because we know from his example why it's important to die strong.

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Monday - November 21, 2005

Operation Sword, Invading Hit

Operation Sword, Invading Hit

Our battalion, 3/25, invaded the City of Hit. Here's a few snippets from the perspective of the battalion headquarters. Click on the drivel link to see it. It's about 18MB so the download will take some time. Compressing it tends to distort it quite a bit, but I don't want to make it any bigger than it already is. I hope it's adequately legible.

Addendum, jan 4, 2009:  I decided that this wasn't worth 18MB of bandwidth, and since I've been having trouble with the blog software, I've decided to delete this video.

.

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Monday - October 31, 2005

Sgt Muniz Falls Down a Hole

Sgt Muniz Falls Down a Hole

Here's another movie from Iraq. No battles, no attacks, just a story of how dangerous it can be even without an enemy. Without OSHA requirements, there are lots of industrial hazards around. The movie is about 23MB, so be patient during the down load.

Click on the "drivel" link to see it.

Addendum, Jan 4, 2009:  I decided that this wasn't worth 23MB of bandwidth, so I've deleted it.

Per special request, here's some more background information. Sgt Muniz and Sgt Francis were working on laying some phone lines from our switchboard to the sections working down below the dam. These wires had to be replaced frequently because it seemed like if a mortar landed within ten square miles of us, somehow the phone lines would get cut. Scientists should investigate this phenomenon.

As I note in the running commentary, Sgt Muniz stepped back when pulling the wire from the tenth deck (I erroneously said it was from the seventh deck at the time), tripped on a rock, and fell down the hole.

He was rescued quickly by the amtrac dudes after Sgt Francis yelled down to them. They jumped up and ran, dragging with them some rope that they always carry in their vehicles. They lowered a man down, who tied the rope to Sgt Muniz and then they pulled him up, followed by the rescuer shortly thereafter.

I wrote more about the story in Fishing for Rifles .

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Mortar Attack on Haditha Dam

Invading Kubaysa

Over There?

"But We're Socialists"

How I Spent My Summer Vacation in Iraq

Sgt Brad Harper, Rest in Peace

Fishing for Rifles

The Chicken Ranch

Shoot Fast

Entering Hit

Who's in Charge?

Vivid

Feeding Sparrows in Iraq

Learning the Easy Way

Giving and Taking

Those Who Serve

Defending Nowhere

Yellow Sticker Patriotism

Long Shadows

Slaughterhouse One

Well, that didn't take long

Another Way to Look at Fallujah

War, Morality, and Victory

Freedom of the Press in Iraq and Russia

Iraq from an Australian Perspective

More of Iraqi Irony

Does Anyone Else Think it Ironic that Iraqis have More Freedoms than most Americans?

LtCol West has seen too many movies

Iraqi Occupation: How Long Will it Last?