Bobzhuman

A note from Col Mike Walker, USMC (retired)

Marines,

Here is the concluding piece of a three part series of articles published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

This is interesting look into how the war is protrayed in the midwest.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=729166

Semper Fi,

Mike

Enmity has evaporated
Marines return to calm in Iraq's Sunni Triangle
By MEG JONES
mjones@journalsentinel.com
Posted: March 17, 2008
Third of three parts

Hamimiyah, Iraq - It's midday as the Marines of Fox Company move out on a foot patrol under a sun obscured by swirling dust.

Clad in body armor and carrying M-16 rifles, they fan out to look for bombs and other weapons that insurgents may have buried in the countryside skirting the Euphrates River, which breathes life into the neighboring farm fields and olive groves.
Cpl. Jose Gonzalez, a 24-year-old carpenter from Kenosha, motions for his men to spread out and wait. On this day and this deployment, they're following a contingent of Iraqi police officers. One day very soon, the Americans hope, these men with their blue uniforms and AK-47s will take over security of their war-torn nation.

For the Marines of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines, the Iraq of their first deployment four years ago is not the Iraq they know today.

Here in the Sunni Triangle, Fox Company was attacked several times a day pretty much every day of its first deployment - by mortars, rockets, improvised explosive devices, suicide bombers, car bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, small-weapons fire and random potshots.

Four civilian American contractors were pulled from their vehicle not far from here and beaten to death by a mob, their burned corpses hung from a bridge. Not far from here, Fox Company lost five of its own to bombs and firefights.

Today the men of the Milwaukee-based Marine Reserve unit are surprised by the relative peace. They haven't been mortared. They haven't been shot at. Except to sight in on a firing range, they haven't fired their rifles. They've been hit by a few improvised explosive devices, but no one has been injured.

They're surprised by an Iraqi security force - one they knew in 2004 as mostly ineffective, lazy, clueless and corrupt - that appears to have its act together. Instead of leading the fight, the Marines are following and mentoring the Iraqis.
About one-third of the couple hundred Marines in Fox Company served a seven-month deployment in 2004-'05. Gonzalez was one of them.

"It's uplifting that our work is showing. Violence is down and the IPs (Iraqi police) are doing what they're supposed to be doing," said Gonzalez, who has been in the Marine Reserve five years and has two sons, 4 months and 2 1/2 years old, back home with his fiancée, Janette.

As Gonzalez keeps an eye on his Marines, the Iraqi police officers walk ahead of the Americans through farm fields and along the tops of irrigation ditches. They dig their toes into freshly turned dirt as they walk through the blackened remains of weeds and bulrushes burned by farmers. They check buildings and slowly pass metal detectors over the soil.

Every few minutes the metal detectors ring like circa mid-'90s cell phones, and the Iraqi officers use sharp knives to dig into the earth. The rusted, bent hulk of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher is found on a slope leading down to the Euphrates.
A Texas National Guard soldier points out to Gonzalez a house where three weapons caches have been found recently. Among the discoveries: grenades, rockets, 155mm mortar rounds, rocket-propelled grenades and large, lethal Molotov cocktails made from 5-gallon fuel cans primed with blasting caps.

Relatively few bombs are exploding and hurting people in Anbar Province, where violence has dropped significantly in the last year. Though suicide bombers and the deaths of innocents such as those in Karbala last month continue to make news, overall Iraq is a safer place, a fact borne out by the monthly drop in the number of terrorist attacks.

U.S. commanders say the surge of American troops and efforts to persuade former insurgents to fight with and not against coalition forces are working, and that years of training Iraqi police and soldiers are paying off.

Weary of terrorism

Most importantly, they say, the Iraqi people appear to have had enough of terrorism. Insurgents are losing the anonymity and safe havens they need to carry out attacks and build car bombs because residents, for the most part, no longer worry about men in black masks showing up at their homes at night and aren't afraid to report terrorist activity, said Lt. Col. Frank Charlonis, commander of 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines.

"I think al-Qaida overplayed its hand," Charlonis said. "There were a lot of nationalists and patriots who didn't want an occupying army, but al-Qaida hurt the people it was seeking for support. I think that's when many realized al-Qaida was a much worse option than us."

An Iraqi police supervisor identified only as Capt. Jamal, speaking through an interpreter at a police station in the Jazeera region, said that Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein but that many Iraqis don't trust the government.
"The United States is helping us," he said of the training effort. "Without the U.S. Army, we would have nothing here."
Though the Fox Company Marines realize a quiet Anbar Province is good for Iraq, it has been a bit of a letdown since they arrived in late January, particularly for the guys on their first deployment who heard the war stories of the veterans and were expecting the worst.

"I was ready for it to be what it was like four years ago. Last time, we didn't have time to think, we just did," said Lance Cpl. Alan Breger, 22, a University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh business student. "In five weeks I've seen less than I saw in two days the last time."

Breger knew two of the Fox Company Marines who were killed in the first deployment, and a third was from his hometown of Oshkosh. He knows their killers were never caught.

"I try not to think of them while out here, because it just pisses me off," Breger said.
He wears a dark green braided bracelet in honor of the five fallen Fox Marines and has a tattoo on his leg of the rifle and helmet that's common at military funerals.

"It's a different ball game than it was the last time," Breger said. "We haven't done much of what people think Marines do out here - the hard-charging thing. We've almost become beat cops."
Added Cpl. Ryan Lackey, 22, of Milwaukee: "We got them all pumped up by our stories, and now it's slow."

Hot showers, better armor

Living conditions have improved. The Marines have hot showers, good chow, regular mail delivery, Internet access. Last time they ate prepackaged MREs and drank warm bottled water, and the wait for a shower could be 50 days or more.
Some of their gear has improved as well. Fox Company platoons roll out in the new MRAP armored vehicles, which are designed to better withstand bomb blasts. They wear flame-retardant jumpsuits and shirts. Their new body armor is more cumbersome but includes side plates to prevent shrapnel from piercing rib cages.

Memories of the five Fox Company Marines killed on the last deployment haven't faded. The Marines know that some of the former insurgents they're now working with could be responsible for their buddies' deaths.

"That's where professionalism has to come in. It's something that burns our asses. But there's nothing you can do," said Lackey, a UW-Milwaukee student.

Back on the weapons sweep patrol, Gonzalez stops and tells Lance Cpl. Terry Medema, 24, of Waupun to radio in a position report to other Fox Company members back at an Iraqi police station. As Gonzalez waits, he hears a cow mooing.
"Kind of makes me think of home," Gonzalez says.

Soon the patrol comes upon a two-room mud brick building that had once been a terrorist stronghold. On the filthy floor lie glass shards, crushed soda bottles and other debris. Sunlight shines through holes in the thatched roof. On one wall, about head-high, dangle knotted ropes.

Gonzalez is told the rope was used to tie the hands of hostages as they were tortured. Spray-painted in black on an outside wall is the name in Arabic of a well-known terrorist who formerly used this area, an interpreter says. A building nearby has a ceiling fan spattered with blood from hostages who were tied to it.

Gonzalez silently looks at the frayed ropes for a few moments, shakes his head.
"Crazy," he says quietly as he walks out.

Lance Cpl. Matthew Rittner, 25, a Milwaukee police officer, kneels in the dust close by, cradling his M-16 and scanning the countryside. The last time he was in Iraq, Rittner was in vehicles hit by improvised explosive devices three times. He also was involved in the 4 1/2 -hour firefight on Nov. 12, 2004, that killed Brian Prening, 24, a Plymouth High School graduate who had been in Iraq for two months.

'Everyone was against us'

"Last time it was more like we were fighting the enemy. It felt like everyone was against us," says Rittner, a 2001 Greenfield High School graduate.

On this deployment "I expected there to be more to do, more enemies. I don't want to say we're not doing anything, but sometimes it feels we aren't at war anymore," Rittner said.

An Iraqi police officer shouts, and Gonzalez and a few others slide down an embankment into mud and high weeds next to the river. The Iraqis dig up two 67mm rockets and carry them to a car. An Iraqi demolition team will dispose of them later.
"Something like that would probably be used for an IED," Gonzalez says.

The group starts walking again through the fields, passing sheep, chickens and cows, on the three-hour patrol. Families with small children smile and wave to the Iraqi police officers in front and the Marines bringing up the rear.