APPENDIX C


CIVIL SAMARRA


This paper depicts the experiences of B/1-8 IN (Company B, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry) during its tenure in Samarra from 12 December 2003-7 February 2004. We were supposed to conduct battalion-level operations for seven to ten days and return to our Forward Operating Base (FOB) by Christmas ... it went on a bit longer. Our mission was to increase the amount of infantry conducting dismounted patrols, action on all previously collected intelligence, and deny the enemy sanctuary in this unique city previously described. We learned a great deal during our time in Samarra operating under both 1-8 IN and 1-66 AR (1st Battalion, 66th Armor). This paper meanders chronologically through this second go-around and attempts to offer the changing viewpoint we had following our October experience.

THE FIRST 72 HOURS

We started our Samarra redux with the division's Operation Ivy Blizzard that consisted of hitting every target built up in 1-66 AR's, THT's (Tactical Humint Team's), and ODA's (Operational Detachment A's) queue. Bravo Company had Zone 7, the area I specifically asked to never return to again. We gave giant Op Orders and had multiple synchronization meetings, but in the end I knew that the only platoon I would see would be the one I traveled with and that the reinforcements in the town would come from within the company. The city is platoon actions with "Company C2." If you want to understand the fight, you have to operate on the squad-leader level-that is where the true interaction and actions occur.

We dropped ramp fifty meters from the Golden Mosque, and the squads quickly moved into the alleyways in cover of darkness. They kept a good spread, and we had the textbook Rolling T going along the wide streets and in-your-face alleyways. No one had to convince us how dangerous this place could turn-22 rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) ambushes and 107 RPGs shot at the company kind of makes you paranoid. The men know every gun in every alley, door, and window and their assigned sectors-high through low, methodically soft-clearing everything with their eyes rapidly. We extensively trained military operations on urban terrain (MOUT) live


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on our Hogan's Alley range at Lion FOB and knew how fast and furious the engagements would come. Any amount of time spent standing still in downtown Samarra under the lights of the Golden Mosque makes me absolutely cringe. The pluggers (encrypted military global positioning systems) and Garmins took forever to pick up satellites in the multistoried downtown streets, and you need those 10-digit grids if you want to use demolition breaches. The falcon-view imagery is great but not enough when you talk of using demo. We needed to use the breaches to make the statement to Samarra that "We are stronger and can bring more force than you can imagine." They understand and respect you for bringing it.

At 0200 we moved down the street, got the Garmins working, and placed the charges on the outer doors. We used tent pegs filled with C4 (a very simple tamped charge that you could blow fifteen meters away using shock tube without incident)-one for the weaker doors and two for the bigger ones. The physical damage from the charges proved quite minimal, but the noise volume and psychological gains we attained proved quite robust. The 48-hour period of conducting all entries with demolitions enabled us to set the tone for the subsequent deluge of money and Civil Affairs project ... you have two choices: cooperate and enjoy the money or we can go back to demolition entries. It's what works-big stick diplomacy.

We quickly worked through the queue in a few days but became inundated with walk-up sources. We had to rapidly turn around the intelligence gathered from these sources and prove that we would act quickly to gain the trust and confidence of the populace and encourage the great deal of cooperation we received from the locals. Most informants agreed to travel with us provided we disguised them. Since we don't use Humvees, our tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) with informants was to place them in the back of the Bradley with the troop hatch open. Our interpreter would give us directions on a manpack radio, guiding us to within 400 meters of the target. We would dismount at a distance to establish an infantry outer cordon while maintaining surprise and protection. This TTP evolved over time; initially we botched it a couple of times-the first raid ended with our Iraqi interpreter beating the informant with the radio hand mike. Once we got the interpreter fully integrated with what we wanted, we could work the informant raid flawlessly. This type of raid proved far more beneficial than the 10-digit grid or name/neighborhood raid, and we learned to always request


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that the informant go with us. On one occasion we caught two divisional HVTs (high-value targets) driving to the objective area of another target. Having sources and trained interpreters proved key to our successes on the 75-plus raids during this 60-day period.

While the infantry continued to work off the sources, other units developed and resourced the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) and police and fire departments at breakneck speed. The actions of the continuous raids created a gap between the populace and the insurgency. Once we established this gap, we had to keep it open with the ICDC and police. No city wants the amount of combat power we placed in Samarra permanently, so they turned against the root cause of the problem-the insurgents. Gapping the populace is easy: you just inundate the region with combat power and lots of action. The more violent you seem and the more scared they are, the more they cooperate. Some say this smacks of a war we didn't do too well in, Vietnam, with the idea of destroying the village in order to save it. However, we were far from the point of wanton destruction, and the entire intent of this operation was to get the town peaceful enough to get money moving for the infrastructure and government. The psyops battle with flyers and loudspeakers proved a huge ticket to the peaceful acceptance of the overwhelming American presence, and we used that angle daily. The locals love getting flyers.

The follow-on to gapping the populace and insurgency represents the tough part and ultimately determines the path of the city. After three days of blow up your door and drag out the "accused" bad guys, known to us as "Jerry Springer" raids, we converted to a more psyops, hearts-and-minds campaign. We revisited multiple target homes and paid for damages if we assessed the accused as not deserving detention. Taking the individuals directly to their homes and turning them over to their mothers had a twofold effect. It gained us the moral high ground and positive interaction with the populace. We also drank tea and ate "repatriation" meals with each of the accused, which made those unending patrols a little more bearable. The released individuals provided us a source to the inner workings of the city, and they all had some level of unprovable dirt. At this point in the operation, it became more detective, intelligence-type work that we struggled through.

Company commanders need money. The gathering of intelligence and destruction of things happens at the company level. We hit cars, talk to shop owners, meet rock-throwers' parents, break windows, receive intelligence


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tips, knock down doors, run over sewage lines, cut electrical wiring, etc. The immediate payoff for hot information and minor damaged goods creates a huge network of informants and allies. We could also keep them at bay for larger claims and change awkward situations of writing notes for bureaucratic claims processes into rapid turnaround intelligence and street-side popularity. I am talking about $20 payouts' making the difference here. You have to work the streets like a cop with your series of narcs, petty criminals, and people who owe you a favor. Your ability to fix problems and bring money to bear determines the populace's attitude toward Americans in the city, and that is the fight that we will wage for the foreseeable future.

CONTACTS

The enemy fought us much more asymmetrically this time than last. We brought a lot more firepower, a more offensive approach, and a caged trailer that bad guys really didn't like to ride in behind a Bradley during the cold January rain. The abundance of combat power coupled with the 30 November smackdown from Red Platoon disrupted the enemy's normal fight patterns. They moved away from the RPG and mortar as the weapons of choice in favor of the mine and 107-mm. rocket. They moved a lot of the popular IED (improvised explosive device) operations out to Route 1. The city seemed completely foreign to me as the "lemming" portion of the populace waved and cheered for the Americans like the sunflowers they are ... they quickly sided with us because now we were winning.

We fired 25-mm. and below on a test-fire berm across the street from the old FOB DdaAnielsLS, which aided our psychological domination tactics. As the sources and information dried up, we found ourselves conducting a lot more close-quarters marksmanship (CQM) training and test-firing of our larger weapon systems. Our first contact this go-around came during one of these test-fires. The insurgents had the old FOB dialed in with 107-mm. rockets that they fired from a berm thirteen kilometers away. We heard one of the rockets launch-they are quite loud-and we just sat around joking about the random loud noises you could hear in the distance. We heard another one of these noises a couple of seconds later as proof of our humor. About thirty seconds later we got the incredibly loud boom with the accompanied shockwave from the first rocket landing across the street. Clamoring up the front slope and into the turret knowing one of those rockets is still hurtling toward you makes for a very uncool experience in self-control.


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Fortunately, they fell short and all we got was the terror of the noise, vibration, and shockwave. We got the Q36 grid from battalion and destroyed two more dud rockets with 25-mm. after a goose chase and interaction with a farmer at the vicinity of the point of origin (POO). He knew the location but wouldn't tell us until we described the space shuttle bomb in great detail to him (we told him that our sensors in outer space know that a rocket fired from a field he owned and that we would destroy it unless he showed us where they fired from). He did not like this bomb and decided to show us the canyon where they basically laid these rockets on their side against a berm, fused them with time fuse, and aimed them with a compass. Truly a weapon of terror that has just as much likelihood of hitting the Golden Mosque as it has of hitting the test-fire area, but the bad guys really don't care-after all, the mosque is Shiite. Their TTP for shooting at us out there involved a spotter at the minaret traffic circle (that we identified in hindsight), a Thuraya cell phone, and then the rocket crew with cigarette lighters. They wanted to fight us on the periphery of the city since the imams had started preaching against the collateral damages caused by actions within. We did not return fire at the POO because of farmhouses. That is a huge mistake if you want to discourage them from firing. The people know and support counterfire. If there is collateral damage you work the psyops piece to get the locals on your side supporting you in rooting out the Fedayeen that fire from their fields. I know this works-I have seen my battalion commander work it magically for another unit.

The test-fire area became a contested piece of ground over the next few days as the other infantry companies ran over landmines. The insurgents watch your patterns and will get you if you use the same off-road paths. We mitigated this by creating a new route into the test-fire area with each use. However, it's still a nerve-racking experience going cross-country after the tank-destroying IEDs, and you can imagine my displeasure when our source took us to that site to dig up a weapons cache. We uncovered 137 82-mm. mortar rounds using mine detectors without incident, but it proved a little disheartening to know they were buried across the street from an FOB in our test-fire area. Our days fell into a tedious process of taking a source out, digging up someone's yard, finding a bunch of weapons, detaining some bad guys, coming home, and eating pork cutlets. We have taken enough weapons off the market that the going rate of the RPG has gone from $40 in October to $125. This threefold increase is heartening, but the fact remains that it's still less than my weekly grocery bill for two humans and two canines.


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We normally drop off the infantry and move the Bradleys to the outskirts of the city while the infantry squads move independently through zones. We stage the Bradleys south of South Park Road in the trash heaps while the infantry patrols through Zone 10. Once they reach the LOA (limit of advance), we push our Bradleys forward to 50 Yard Line Road to pick them up and move onto the next mission. It was the Iraqi weekend, Thursday, 8 January, and we had been back in Samarra nearly a month without the donk of the RPG. We were just talking about how peaceful the city seemed, but we could never relax down there. First Lieutenant Higgins called that they had reached the LOA, and we bounded his Bradleys forward to pick him up. Second Lieutenant Amick called the same, and we moved to send his Brads forward with the HQ Brads in tow. I took off my Kevlar to swap out for the CVC (combat vehicle crewman) helmet on the track.

Donk! goes the RPG.

"Sh-!" goes the infantry.

Kaboom! goes the RPG.

"Contact right, we are engaging," goes Sergeant First Class Harkness, the experienced platoon sergeant. I yell for my driver to haul ass as I try to gain situational awareness, put on my CVC, and observe White Platoon's Bradleys thumping away with 25-mm. down the street. I think the insurgents shot at the wrong group of guys ... Staff Sergeant Legendre is a master gunner in the BC slot and Hansen is a super-experienced gunner with several Eagle Plays of the Day under his belt for favorable contacts. As I swallow the terror lump in my throat and finally get my CVC on, Legendre spits out the target description and Hansen splits the car right down the center in low magnification-adjusting his aim point for the offset of the ISU (integrated sight unit). Yeah, you should see what he can do in high mag. They switch to high mag and smoke four of the five cars used by the shooters for travel and cover. I breathe deep and turn the corner behind the lead Brads of White Platoon. The cars and stores are smoking, and a large electrical fire is developing above a bike store.

I push their Brads down the street to seal it off and try to secure the engagement area with the two headquarters Bradleys, but we don't have any infantry with us. I start calling for the company to assemble on the giant black smoke plume moving into the air. I think everyone was a bit


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concerned about moving that way during the engagement, but now they come running down from all over the place. 2d Platoon's infantry moves past the Bradleys and immediately sets up far-side security and takes over rooftops for vantage points: Kapheim and Robertson move them into great urban fighting positions without anyone even hinting to do so. I run back up the street and look up to see Lillie on the rooftop directing his squad and assigning sectors of fire. Reagan's squad is doing the same at a building to the north while Jarell secures some witnesses. More Bradleys move into position as well-it makes you feel so much better when you get more guns into the fight. It's also really nice being around guys that know how to fight in the city. Once security is established, we set the medics to work on patching up guys-civilians first, shooters later. This doesn't go quite as well, and there are some pretty gruesome scenes.

The ICDC shows up and sets up an outer outer-cordon, and the police and ambulances arrive on the scene. We were all amazed to see these forces in action, but the real kicker came when the fire truck pulled up and doused the fire. I thought I was in a really bad Cheech and Chong routine. Lieutenant Colonel Sassaman and Major Wright arrived, and we got to work immediately with the psyops piece and questioning. It's great having a battalion commander and S-3 willing to fight like squad leaders, and we all breathe easier when they get there. Eagle Six wants to have an awards presentation on site, but we had to keep things moving. If you want to destroy the insurgency, this is the type of contact you need to have-an incredible display of overwhelming combat power toward the bad guys. You cannot pussyfoot around when they shoot RPGs at you because that will embolden them to shoot more. I have thought through the violence-begets-violence argument that a lot of people cling to, but the statistics and my personal experience have led me to a different conclusion about the surgical application of controlled violence. I witnessed a city that averaged three attacks per day drop to one attack per week when we took off the gloves. That represents a 95 percent drop in contacts. Trust me on this argument: I have seen both sides.

Always trust your instincts and investigate the things that don't feel right. The next Iraqi weekend, we went across the Huwaish cut en route to a mission with ODA, and we observed thirteen military-age males hanging out by the train tracks. I called it up that they looked up to no good but kept moving because we were late to the raid. We linked up with ODA and hit the first gas station objective. I knew we should put the tanks up front


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versus the soft-skin vehicles and kept on volunteering to do so, but it wasn't our intel and mission to run. ODA had the source up front in a Land Cruiser, and we sped off to the next objective on Power Line Road. ODA had to move more slowly because of our tanks and Bradleys, and it made for the opportune IED target. As I scanned right, I saw a guy on a black motorcycle acting totally suspect. As I passed off the target to observe, he disappeared down a back alley.

Boom! An IED goes off on the lead ODA vehicle and they speed out of the kill zone. There is dust and confusion everywhere as we attempt to regain contact with them and assess the situation. We establish security, call the medevac, and set up the helicopter landing zone (HLZ). We have one seriously wounded, a phenomenal Special Forces soldier. I watch the 18D [Special Forces medic] work miracles to keep him alive, cutting and inserting a tracheotomy and bandaging the head. My medics assist the 18D, Andy Sinden is talking to the helicopters, and Red Platoon sets up the HLZ. I know how long the bird takes to get there and I just can't sit still, so I grab the interpreter and start reducing the IED kill zone with a tank. I end up with about 100 detainees and some destroyed walls. I already know who did it, the guy on the black motorcycle, but he is long since gone-I am just hoping to get a name. The helicopter lands and leaves as do we, knowing that the wounded is not going to live. That day I knowingly violated the rules of speed and protection; the situation just didn't feel right. Our vehicles slowed the team down without offering any Chobham armor protection out front. Sassaman always stresses to us that all deaths here are preventable. This one was, and it was my fault.

We continued on with the raids that day, nabbing some bad guys, and then headed back to our FOB. As we moved through Huwaish cut, we passed Alpha 1-8 IN and gave them the situation brief via FM. Boom! Their Brad hits a mine and blows shrapnel everywhere. One of my tank commanders took some shrapnel to the face but luckily nothing serious. The thirteen jackasses from earlier had placed a mine in the cut. It was a day of not trusting my instincts. We should have searched the thirteen guys, put the tanks up front, and engaged the guy on the black motorcycle. We had a long discussion about following your instincts, but it cost us one killed and one wounded in action. The price of learning in Iraq is incredibly high.

The next day we searched some shops that everyone agreed looked suspect, and we all tried to follow every instinct. I had the THT with me doing a


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target reconnaissance while the infantry searched the shops. Bingo, we got fifteen RPGs, IED material, and a bunch of small arms. Roger, we'll blow the cache in place-a must-do in my book. We do some on-site psychological questioning and then grab three sticks of C4, clear out the populace, and place the charge internally. I blocked off the doors and tamped them with a couch and generator. We cut two minutes of time fuse and moved down the street about fifty meters. The charge is impressive, but it knocks the walls down and turns the cache shop into a causeway. Unfortunately, we ruined a small street vendor's store in the process. It's an easy psyops fix. I give them the rehearsed, emotional RPG speech in pigeon Arabic, and they give us the name of the leaser and owner, whom we pick up later. They love the American "ana mejnuun" speech (basically I let them know how crazy it makes me that they store RPGs in their shops). I then gather all the local shop owners together and we work out the value of the store. There is a ton of bargaining going on and a lot of feigned illnesses and chicken pox scars that doubled as bullet holes from the Saddam Hussein regime ... proof that they are clearly on our side. We work this piece for awhile and then write out some receipts.

I got the money from higher and returned a week later. I walked up to the adjacent shop's owner and asked him the location of our guy. He goes on some big speech about "Bono" making him rich, etc. I told the guy I was Bono, and we soon had the entire mob scene going on. Our friend finally broke through the mob, and we held hands and walked over to his house where he had a huge spread of food and the whole nine yards' worth of service. All the leaders of the area came over, and we discussed Iraqi politics, Samarra, families, and America. We then rebargained and paid up following all the TTP I got from the books The Arab Mind and The Hajj. We exited the neighborhood with "porn star" popularity. They respected our martial exploits coupled with the payback and made us honorary members of the tribe. We did the "brother" kiss and promised to return once a week for dinner. We bought the loyalties and respect of a neighborhood with three sticks of C4 and $1,000. We haven't had any trouble with them since, and they have reported multiple "Ali Babbas" and turned in extra weapons.

The insurgents continued to fire rockets and rocket-assisted mortars at the FOB, but in general the city proved far more peaceful than the incredibly violent month of Ramadan. They did start utilizing car bombs both at the Tribal Council next to the CMOC (Civil-Military Operations Center) and out on Route 1 as an IED. I don't have any conclusive after-action comments


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from those contacts other than car bombs are really loud. The ability to place them anywhere creates an incredible amount of paranoia for all those who perform the thankless job of walking the streets on patrol for hours on end. Just ensure that you always stay spread out and keep good standoff at your living areas.

The day before we left we got the call from the police to investigate a possible IED at a grid that didn't make any sense. My Blue Platoon attached to "Aggressor" went down to link up with the police and investigate the IED. When they got to the grid, they found no police and no IED. They moved to pack it up when the police called and told them to stay in place and that someone was coming to show them. Donk! RPG contact north. The infantry returned fire and the Bradleys fought through some of the initial confusion to join in the fray. They got the report of a red vehicle and found one shortly thereafter ... with a police truck. As the Brads moved in, both vehicles fled in a "as high a speed as the Bradley can get" chase. The gunner disabled the car with coax while traveling at forty-five mph and proved the validity of the stabilization system that allows the Bradley to shoot while moving.

ICDC confirmed the car and its driver as one of their targets. Ten minutes later the police reported a cache of RPGs at their headquarters ... could you please come pick them up? We are not dealing with a very smart enemy, just a tenacious and corrupt one. I was of the mind to arrest the entire police force and lock them in their own jails under ICDC control; but cooler heads prevailed and they decided to work through the police leadership to find the bad apples. I don't think they will have to look very far in that organization to find bad apples. ICDC later reported that they believed it was a police setup but could not confirm it. I wish the ICDC could train the police.

INFRASTUCTURE

The Samarra hospital sucks. Samarra is used to a higher standard of living due to its enormous historical fame, hydroelectric dam, and position within Iraq. The ICDC, police, fire station, and road network are far better than anywhere else because the Samarrans had these things before and understand organization and technology. Their hospital is far worse. The drugs have run dry despite the State Drug Industry (SDI) in town, and they have no equipment. If I had money, it would go into the hospital. The locals at every level concur.


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The ICDC is America's jewel in Samarra. Their camp with all the Soviet weaponry, uniforms, plethora of animals, and rank cooking fires reminds me of a bad seventies movie set in Colombia. We started working with them a lot more, and they proved eager to learn and train as well as share their animals and food. With the CB radio system and the standing up of the Joint Operations Center (JOC), our interaction with them and performance improved greatly. The connection and friendships we developed aided greatly in the sharing of information, and they began actioning on targets independently from us. They provided outer cordon on numerous raids, but we learned to trust and use them much more inside the buildings as they spoke the language and could identify the targets far easier then we could. Their lieutenant colonel is a class act, replete with "Bogota" shades and a Colt . 357 that he normally carries at the ready surrounded by his posse of ICDC toting AK-47s. The joint raids resembled a classic movie-quality funny. Although some of the joint actions were JV, the strides we made in empowering the locals will ultimately be our ticket home.

The police in Samarra are the most corrupt collection of humanity assembled in one city. They represent an internal affairs wet dream. The difference between the ICDC and police stems from their creation. We stood up, selected, and trained the ICDC. The police came from local mob-type hire and represent all the problems we are currently facing. They set us up for RPG ambushes, ambushed us with IEDs, and generally did a poor job working cases and bringing forth information. Whenever I visited them, they were asleep and requested more bedding to better accomplish their missions. I am not sure how blankets and more beds will help a police force perform better, but that is probably why I aligned myself with the ICDC. They have more personality too.

The electricity in Samarra functions very well, probably a byproduct of living right next to a major hydroelectric site. Few people complained about a lack of electricity compared to other areas I have operated in. We destroyed the roads in town with our vehicles, and I have watched them slowly deteriorate with each subsequent visit. Many of the streets turned into packed gravel roads from so many tracks driving on them. The fire department is fully functional, but you must drive to the station and get them as we discovered during one of our rather large blazes. The firemen proved eager and brought water with them, a task some of the other fire trucks failed at in the past-with quite disastrous consequences for the building they wished to save. Many of the civil issues continue to improve, but the next unit will have to


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fight the phone system and cabling issue that has come to the forefront of Samarra's agenda.

CONCLUSION/VIEWPOINT

We worked out a lot of the kinks in our street movement and perfected our methodology of fighting each of the different Samarra zones with battle plays. Although our focus remained the direct firefight, we found the endeavor tending more and more toward the civil service side: empowering ICDC and police through spontaneous joint patrolling and urban operations training. It seemed like we were winning the hearts and minds through our engagements, sometimes with dialogue and sometimes with 25-mm.-both proving equally effective. Some accuse me of not understanding the larger psyops fight, and that may be true. However, I am an honorary member of five of the twelve major Samarra tribes, and I have had countless offers to help me convert to Islam so I can marry into their bloodline. While this was a very generous and humorous proposition that reminded me of Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, I explained to the sheiks that I was very happy with my wife in particular and Catholicism in general. They appreciated this, and we drank more tea-"in shaa' Allaah."

The nature of the fight in Iraq has many faces depending on the area you operate. Samarra is not Balad, which is not Tikrit, which is not Kirkuk, etc. Each area requires a different approach and an on-the-ground understanding that you can't get from books or reports ... although they do definitely help, as does learning a bit of the language. The hearts-and-minds campaign will decide our success in Iraq, but don't in a million years think that they will love you, respect you, and cooperate with you because you rebuild the hospital and schools and fully equip the ICDC and police force. You are smoking crack if you think that money and projects can buy you these things. You have to interact with the people daily and convincingly demonstrate your ability to destroy the bad guys' opposing stability. They respect this kind of action. Iraq is moving from a brutal dictator that used the movie series The Godfather as a methodology to run the country.

B/1-8 IN continues to fight organizations that resemble mafias and organized crime versus a Ho Chi Minh-flavored guerrilla war with a hierarchal construction. If we were faced with that kind of organization, the attacks would have stopped after we knocked off the various high-ranking members of the local organizations. However, we haven't seen the attacks stop. A lot


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of people compare our efforts here to the Philippine Insurrection; however, I compare it to taking on the well-armed Gotti, Capone, Malone, Gambini, and Escobar families all at the same time in a very foreign language-the problem being that these families have numerous connections to pick up the slack and a penchant for revenge. Note: I speak only for my microcosm called B/1-8 IN; making macro assessments of the nature of violence like this gets you into a lot of trouble.

Saddam ruled the people of Iraq with fear, intimidation, and torture. His regime survived for thirty years through unadulterated physical abuse. We are attempting to fill the power vacuum left by the Ba'ath Party with a Western-style democracy based on freedoms and liberties that most of the individuals I deal with simply do not understand. You don't wake up after thirty years of that kind of rule and immediately assimilate all the values and mores that we grew up with. I deal daily with a culture that I desperately attempt to understand and help. At times, I realized I accomplished far more for the Iraqis and the soldiers using the psychological intimidation tactics of a mob boss than I could ever accomplish through some "good ol' boy from North Carolina" routine. You have to adapt your leadership style according to the populace-sometimes you are the overbearing drill sergeant, and other days you are the ambassador of diplomacy and good tidings. The trick remains knowing when to play these different roles, and playing the wrong role will set your area back. At this point in the fight, you should err on the side of the drill sergeant-it's been my experience that people respect and cooperate with authoritarian figures much more. Respect and cooperation enable you to root out bad guys, eliminate attacks, and create stability, which enables the NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and Civil Affairs to operate-eventually leading to our victory. Bottom line: you have to understand and play within the mob psychology if you want to win. Otherwise, just stay at home.

If you have read this far in the monologue, you are either really interested in the fighting going on in Iraq or a really close relative. As I look back on the things I wrote, I realize that I have become a far more aggressive person over the past year in ways that my mother would not necessarily approve. A year over here will change you. A year ago seven of my close friends, Ranger squad members, and classmates were still alive and 15 percent of my company didn't have Purple Hearts. I had never seen a dead or dying American soldier in uniform or had American soldiers' blood physically on my hands. While you block all those things out and continue your mission,


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it still changes who you are, directly affecting your motivation and ability to deal with the daily vagaries of rebuilding this country. As new people flow in, I realize that they look much fresher and cleaner than I do and they will be the ones to truly rebuild Iraq and watch it reach its potential. It's much like the changing of the American guard in Nazi Germany following the war; time and interaction will bridge the gap. Iraq is getting better, and you are set up to make great strides.