sbsquared
12-27-2004, 05:09 PM
This is excellent - well worth the time it takes to read it!
The Cavalry Rides In
Following are extracts from a letter to The American Enterprise's editor from a young West Point-educated Army officer who has been at the center of intelligence operations connected to two of the trickiest and most successful combat actions carried out by the U.S. military in the last half century--August 2004's Battle of Najaf and November's Battle of Fallujah. He provides details on the Fallujah fight, including the previously unreported revelation that Muslim holy warriors traffic in illicit drugs.
On November 7, Prime Minister Allawi gave the green light to the American and Iraqi military. All day long, Air Force and Marine Corps aviators shaped the battlefield with laser-guided bombs and hellfire missiles. We had been collecting information for months through unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), human intelligence, and Special Forces probes. We knew exactly where the insurgents stored their weapons, where they held meetings. So the attacks from the air were precise, and very effective in reducing the enemy's ability to fight before a single U.S. soldier entered the city.
We threw our opponents a curveball by destroying any vehicle that had been parked in the same location for more than three days. We guessed they might be car bombs, and most were. Almost every vehicle we attacked produced a huge secondary fireball as the explosives packed within went up, so a major aspect of the enemy's defensive plan was literally shot to hell.
After 12 hours of air strikes, our U.S. Army cavalry task force was the first unit to enter the city. Our M1 tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles engaged every enemy strong point we came across. Moving deliberately and violently, it took until 10 a.m. the next day to get two miles into the city. Our three companies of armor killed many insurgents that first day, and weakened numerous defensive points in preparation for the Marines' attack.
Our intelligence shop was flying a UAV to determine where the enemy was. Our Raven is a very small plane with cameras, launched by being thrown into the air, then controlled remotely. We flew it for several hours and reported locations of insurgents on roofs and in the streets.
The Marines' mission was to follow the tanks and fight the mujahideen building to building. In the first day of fighting, the Marines took tough casualties, sometimes battling the enemy hand to hand. Along the way, they found huge caches of weapons, suicide vests, bomb-making factories, torture chambers and slaughterhouses, evidence of the presence of foreign fighters, and more than 650 roadside bombs.
They also found large amounts of drugs--mostly speed and cocaine. Many of these jihad purists apparently drug themselves up for pleasure and to give themselves the boldness and stupidity to fight. Insurgents in "the city of mosques" also used 60 of their 100 houses of worship as firing positions, weapons storage points, and bomb-making locations. They placed snipers, mortar observers, and men armed with RPGs in the minarets of their mosques. They faked being hurt and then threw grenades at Marines who approached to provide medical treatment. They waved white surrender flags only to shoot at our forces who approached to accept the surrender.
We fought around the clock and continued to support the Marines as they cleared houses. Whenever the Marines took heavy fire or RPGs from a building, our tanks and Bradleys responded with overwhelming firepower. After a few minutes of suppressive fire, the Marines would go in the door. There was rarely anyone left alive at that point.
There were too many buildings, though, and we couldn't provide suppressive fire on every one. When the Marines had to clear a structure without armored fire on the building first, they took heavy casualties, because the insurgents didn't stop shooting until the Marines got inside and killed them.
Iraqi Forces followed the Marines, to re-clear the buildings and clean up the enormous weapons caches. Sometimes insurgents who had managed to hide from the Marines would come out to fight the Iraqis, so they took some casualties as well. But they did a good job of securing the area and collecting thousands of AK-47's, RPGs, mortars, and IEDs that were stockpiled in these houses.
The Marines found that one out of every four city blocks contained a major weapons storage area. That shows how important Fallujah was to the insurgents. This city was the center of the resistance against the new Iraqi government. The insurgents wanted to keep their safe haven where they were able to train with weapons and explosives, meet openly and plan attacks, torture and behead Iraqis and Westerners working to make Iraq a better place, and assemble car and roadside bombs in assembly-line fashion (we found 26 bomb factories, which shipped their devices to cities across Iraq). Between April and October, when no coalition forces operated in Fallujah, they were able to get away with these atrocious acts without any interference. No more.
When the insurgents saw the size of our invasion from the north, many fled to the southern part of the city. So a little before midnight we led a second push through the rest of the city. Same mission, same purpose: To weaken enemy strong points and kill as many insurgents as possible to enable the Marines to follow us when the sun rose. The house to house fighting uncovered more weapons, more torture chambers, more ammunition, and more insurgents ready to fight to the death. Over several days, American forces killed 1,200-1,600 insurgents, according to Marine estimates. About another thousand fighters made the decision to spend 30 years in prison rather than end their lives in Fallujah.
Marines came across several houses rigged to explode. "Refrigerator bombs" were used as a last ditch effort against our units after they forced their way into houses. We were very disturbed to find one house with five foreigners with bullets in their head, killed execution style. Marines also came upon a house where a soldier in the Iraqi National Guard had been shackled to the wall for 11 days and left to die. Some of the torture chambers were extremely gruesome. These insurgents are sick people.
Several houses contained high-tech equipment where the enemy conducted meetings. In Fallujah, they had a military-type planning system. Some of the fighters were wearing body armor and helmets just like ours, and were armed with ex-pensive and hard-to-find armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and RPGs. Soldiers came across bodies of fighters from Chechnya, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Afghanistan. This was a city full of trained fighters from all over the Middle East whose mission in life was to kill Americans. It was the wrong city for them in November 2004.
The intelligence value of the 900 detainees is huge. We are getting a lot of information about other insurgents, their plans, and networks. The enemy never expected such a large or powerful attack, and were so overwhelmed they left behind all kinds of things: books with names of other fighters, records of where their money and weapons come from, etc.
The insurgents forced us to smash the city to win this fight. People back home should know that every responsible citizen of Fallujah is getting U.S. $2,500 (that's a lot over here) to fix up his house. I can assure you the money spent to rebuild the city is a small price to pay for the number of despicable men no longer alive.
It blew my mind to see how much might and capability our country has if evildoers force us to use it. Having been a part of the operations in Najaf and now Fallujah, I have a whole new appreciation for what our military can achieve.
We lost over 50 soldiers and Marines in the fight for Fallujah, including a sergeant major, company commander, eight platoon leaders, and dozens of good kids between the ages of 18 and 25. I can't tell you how proud I was to be part of this fight, and to know these soldiers who fearlessly and relentlessly went from building to building to take the battle to the enemy.
The losses were hard on our units. But anyone back home who thinks the world is a safe place needs to come here for a day and learn real fast that there are people out there who hate Americans enough to risk their lives to kill us. I see firsthand in Iraq that we cannot live peacefully back home right now unless we stay on the offensive against our enemies in their own backyards. The day we signed up, all of us soldiers accepted the risk of death as the price of defeating evil. There are some things worth fighting and dying for, and making America safer is one of them.
We have an officers vs. enlisted football game tomorrow where I am the quarterback, so I am excited to get the competitive juices flowing again. We also have a Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. The American government is doing a lot to take care of soldiers over here; quality of life improves every day. Despite the fact we have Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's away from family, friends, and fun, we are grateful to have gotten through this big fight, and to have played such an important role in the successful mission.
--Michael Erwin is a lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment in Iraq.
The Cavalry Rides In
Following are extracts from a letter to The American Enterprise's editor from a young West Point-educated Army officer who has been at the center of intelligence operations connected to two of the trickiest and most successful combat actions carried out by the U.S. military in the last half century--August 2004's Battle of Najaf and November's Battle of Fallujah. He provides details on the Fallujah fight, including the previously unreported revelation that Muslim holy warriors traffic in illicit drugs.
On November 7, Prime Minister Allawi gave the green light to the American and Iraqi military. All day long, Air Force and Marine Corps aviators shaped the battlefield with laser-guided bombs and hellfire missiles. We had been collecting information for months through unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), human intelligence, and Special Forces probes. We knew exactly where the insurgents stored their weapons, where they held meetings. So the attacks from the air were precise, and very effective in reducing the enemy's ability to fight before a single U.S. soldier entered the city.
We threw our opponents a curveball by destroying any vehicle that had been parked in the same location for more than three days. We guessed they might be car bombs, and most were. Almost every vehicle we attacked produced a huge secondary fireball as the explosives packed within went up, so a major aspect of the enemy's defensive plan was literally shot to hell.
After 12 hours of air strikes, our U.S. Army cavalry task force was the first unit to enter the city. Our M1 tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles engaged every enemy strong point we came across. Moving deliberately and violently, it took until 10 a.m. the next day to get two miles into the city. Our three companies of armor killed many insurgents that first day, and weakened numerous defensive points in preparation for the Marines' attack.
Our intelligence shop was flying a UAV to determine where the enemy was. Our Raven is a very small plane with cameras, launched by being thrown into the air, then controlled remotely. We flew it for several hours and reported locations of insurgents on roofs and in the streets.
The Marines' mission was to follow the tanks and fight the mujahideen building to building. In the first day of fighting, the Marines took tough casualties, sometimes battling the enemy hand to hand. Along the way, they found huge caches of weapons, suicide vests, bomb-making factories, torture chambers and slaughterhouses, evidence of the presence of foreign fighters, and more than 650 roadside bombs.
They also found large amounts of drugs--mostly speed and cocaine. Many of these jihad purists apparently drug themselves up for pleasure and to give themselves the boldness and stupidity to fight. Insurgents in "the city of mosques" also used 60 of their 100 houses of worship as firing positions, weapons storage points, and bomb-making locations. They placed snipers, mortar observers, and men armed with RPGs in the minarets of their mosques. They faked being hurt and then threw grenades at Marines who approached to provide medical treatment. They waved white surrender flags only to shoot at our forces who approached to accept the surrender.
We fought around the clock and continued to support the Marines as they cleared houses. Whenever the Marines took heavy fire or RPGs from a building, our tanks and Bradleys responded with overwhelming firepower. After a few minutes of suppressive fire, the Marines would go in the door. There was rarely anyone left alive at that point.
There were too many buildings, though, and we couldn't provide suppressive fire on every one. When the Marines had to clear a structure without armored fire on the building first, they took heavy casualties, because the insurgents didn't stop shooting until the Marines got inside and killed them.
Iraqi Forces followed the Marines, to re-clear the buildings and clean up the enormous weapons caches. Sometimes insurgents who had managed to hide from the Marines would come out to fight the Iraqis, so they took some casualties as well. But they did a good job of securing the area and collecting thousands of AK-47's, RPGs, mortars, and IEDs that were stockpiled in these houses.
The Marines found that one out of every four city blocks contained a major weapons storage area. That shows how important Fallujah was to the insurgents. This city was the center of the resistance against the new Iraqi government. The insurgents wanted to keep their safe haven where they were able to train with weapons and explosives, meet openly and plan attacks, torture and behead Iraqis and Westerners working to make Iraq a better place, and assemble car and roadside bombs in assembly-line fashion (we found 26 bomb factories, which shipped their devices to cities across Iraq). Between April and October, when no coalition forces operated in Fallujah, they were able to get away with these atrocious acts without any interference. No more.
When the insurgents saw the size of our invasion from the north, many fled to the southern part of the city. So a little before midnight we led a second push through the rest of the city. Same mission, same purpose: To weaken enemy strong points and kill as many insurgents as possible to enable the Marines to follow us when the sun rose. The house to house fighting uncovered more weapons, more torture chambers, more ammunition, and more insurgents ready to fight to the death. Over several days, American forces killed 1,200-1,600 insurgents, according to Marine estimates. About another thousand fighters made the decision to spend 30 years in prison rather than end their lives in Fallujah.
Marines came across several houses rigged to explode. "Refrigerator bombs" were used as a last ditch effort against our units after they forced their way into houses. We were very disturbed to find one house with five foreigners with bullets in their head, killed execution style. Marines also came upon a house where a soldier in the Iraqi National Guard had been shackled to the wall for 11 days and left to die. Some of the torture chambers were extremely gruesome. These insurgents are sick people.
Several houses contained high-tech equipment where the enemy conducted meetings. In Fallujah, they had a military-type planning system. Some of the fighters were wearing body armor and helmets just like ours, and were armed with ex-pensive and hard-to-find armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and RPGs. Soldiers came across bodies of fighters from Chechnya, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Afghanistan. This was a city full of trained fighters from all over the Middle East whose mission in life was to kill Americans. It was the wrong city for them in November 2004.
The intelligence value of the 900 detainees is huge. We are getting a lot of information about other insurgents, their plans, and networks. The enemy never expected such a large or powerful attack, and were so overwhelmed they left behind all kinds of things: books with names of other fighters, records of where their money and weapons come from, etc.
The insurgents forced us to smash the city to win this fight. People back home should know that every responsible citizen of Fallujah is getting U.S. $2,500 (that's a lot over here) to fix up his house. I can assure you the money spent to rebuild the city is a small price to pay for the number of despicable men no longer alive.
It blew my mind to see how much might and capability our country has if evildoers force us to use it. Having been a part of the operations in Najaf and now Fallujah, I have a whole new appreciation for what our military can achieve.
We lost over 50 soldiers and Marines in the fight for Fallujah, including a sergeant major, company commander, eight platoon leaders, and dozens of good kids between the ages of 18 and 25. I can't tell you how proud I was to be part of this fight, and to know these soldiers who fearlessly and relentlessly went from building to building to take the battle to the enemy.
The losses were hard on our units. But anyone back home who thinks the world is a safe place needs to come here for a day and learn real fast that there are people out there who hate Americans enough to risk their lives to kill us. I see firsthand in Iraq that we cannot live peacefully back home right now unless we stay on the offensive against our enemies in their own backyards. The day we signed up, all of us soldiers accepted the risk of death as the price of defeating evil. There are some things worth fighting and dying for, and making America safer is one of them.
We have an officers vs. enlisted football game tomorrow where I am the quarterback, so I am excited to get the competitive juices flowing again. We also have a Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. The American government is doing a lot to take care of soldiers over here; quality of life improves every day. Despite the fact we have Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's away from family, friends, and fun, we are grateful to have gotten through this big fight, and to have played such an important role in the successful mission.
--Michael Erwin is a lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment in Iraq.