The Cool Blue Blog

Phantom Phoenix update

In December 2006, before the Counter-Insurgency program known as "the Surge" began, this is how the map of Iraq looked with respect to al Qaida

As of last month, the map looks very different as a result of "the Surge"

Clearly, however improved the map may look, there is still work to be done. And on January 1st, 2008, Operation Phantom Phoenix was launched to hunt down, kill and drive out al Qaida in Iraq

- Operation Phantom Phoenix began on 1 January 2008 and has targeted and degraded extremists and AQI.  [Coalition Forces] CF have repositioned two brigades in areas where insurgents have taken a stronghold.  There is a significant non-lethal component to the operation which is striving for economic development and improved governance.  The non-kinetic operations gain the confidence of the people and solidify gains.

- There have been 10,000 members of the [Concerned Local Citizens] CLC integrated into the [Iraqi Security Forces] ISF with many more to follow.  The CLCs will remain on the US payroll as long as necessary.  There are members of [Al Qaida in Iraq] AQI and other groups who are trying to infiltrate the CLCs.  CF are closely monitoring the CLCs and have already found some who have tried to infiltrate and disrupt the gains of the Awakening Groups.  The CLCs are extremely resilient and have faith in the ISF and CF.

- CF are beginning to work with many Shia groups who desire reconciliation.  There are still many groups who are supported by Iran and want to see Iraq in a weakened state by inciting violence.  Iranians continue to pay and train extremists but CF are unsure whether weapons are still being smuggled into the country.

- The ISF continue to grow and their capabilities as a whole have increased.  They are not yet fully equipped, but we are fielding them with the necessary materials.  The ISF are much further ahead than they were only a year ago.  The ISF have increased their abilities to fight and continue to show steady progress.

- CF are currently releasing more detainees than they are capturing/detaining due to increases in security.  TF 134 is working to decide who should be released based on how they have been rehabilitated, what they did to be detained, and how they behaved while detained.

               

And operations continue

More than 10 targets were hit during an ongoing night air raid against suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq safe havens in Arab Jabour Jan. 20.

The joint operation involved precision air strikes by F-18 fighter jets and B-1 bombers, including Air Force, Navy and Marine aircraft.

The Air Force and Soldiers of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division worked in coordination to prevent collateral damage, and to prevent use of any area for attacks on Coalition Forces.

The raid follows the Jan. 10 and Jan. 16 air strikes in the same region which hit a combined total of 64 targets with a total weight of more than 80,000 pounds of bombs.

“The strikes that we conducted (Jan. 20) were focused on IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and caches that we have targeted, that will allow us to get our ground troops further into the zone,” said Col. Terry Ferrell, 2nd BCT, 3rd Inf. Div. commander. “These targets, the IEDs specifically, are designed as part of the defensive belt to prevent our Forces from entering into areas that we have not been before.”

The raid supported Operation Phantom Phoenix, the overarching operation that includes Operation Marne Thunderbolt, and is aimed at pursuing and defeating extremist elements throughout the country.

Bill Roggio has more

Captain Cook and Dora

A new report from the front lines of the Battle for Iraq says

About 75% of Baghdad's neighborhoods are now secure, a dramatic increase from 8% a year ago when President Bush ordered more troops to the capital, U.S. military figures show.

The military classifies 356 of Baghdad's 474 neighborhoods in the "control" or "retain" category of its four-tier security rating system, meaning enemy activity in those areas has been mostly eliminated and normal economic activity is resuming.

The data given by the military to USA TODAY provide one of the clearest snapshots yet of how security has improved in Baghdad since roughly 30,000 additional American troops arrived in Iraq last year.

The success of the Counter-insurgency plan can be credited as muc to the individual units on the ground as on their leadership. Representative of this is 1st Squad, 4th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division whose Area of Operation is the Dora neighborhood in Southern Baghdad

When Captain Nicholas M. Cook arrived in the Dora neighborhood of southern Baghdad in May, the place was like a ghost town. Nearly 50% of the homes were abandoned and the residents that remained rarely ventured out. Only the crackle of gunfire pierced the streets. "Everyday it was like clockwork — 10 to 11:30 am gunfire would start. They would break for lunch and then start up again in the afternoon," says Cook, a West Point graduate from Lansing, Michigan who is on his second tour in Iraq....

Cook's unit managed to turn the area around by patrolling 24-hours a day and putting up walls to choke off the flow of insurgents from the low-lying areas to the south. They went house to house, meeting every family they could find, asking about their problems, offering to help where they could and in the process building a network of reliable contacts and informants. They called these operations called 'close encounters'.

They also cleaned up the community, investing heavily in infrastructure, building sidewalks, clearing trash, painting walls, and installing generators and new sewage lines where the government failed to provide them, all while fighting off insurgents. They refurbished a clinic and paid to upgrade a primary school.

Today the neighborhood's abandonment rate is closer to 5%; where there used to be just 11 shops, 160 shops are now open on the main street. There hasn't been a major incident against Cook and his men for almost three months.

But this turnaround came with a front-loaded cost. Captain Cook

...lost five men while routing out insurgents and turning the neighborhood around; about a third of his men have been awarded Purple Hearts

But that story is repeated all over Iraq. When the new COIN initiative was first started back at the beginning of 2007, the Army, Marines, and Air Force took the fight to the bad guys, cleaning out former safe havens and other areas controlled by the Islamists. The won over hearts and minds, and built things up.

Now al Qaida is on the run, Iran remains a threat in Iraq, but life is returning to the peace that was present under Saddam: only now it is without the brutal and sadistic dictator. So much the better.

What's more, Iraqi security forces are increasing in size and capability, so much so that plans are in the works for US combat troops in Iraq to be rotated to support and quick-response functions and out of front-line combat roles.

With all of this good news, the public feels lied to....

by the media

A new Sacred Heart University Poll of 800 Americans nationwide finds the public and the media may be increasingly divided in perceptions of success in Iraq.

"Americans are discerning, through a maze of information sources, the truth about our status in Iraq. They see more success than the media is reporting," said Jerry Lindsley, Director of the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute. He added, "They are especially disturbed that negative media reports damage US troop morale."

Nearly three-quarters of all Americans surveyed, 70.7%, indicated they strongly or somewhat agreed that negative media reporting damages troop morale.

Over half of all survey respondents, 59.8%, agreed (strongly or somewhat) that negative media coverage damages prospects for success in Iraq because it encourages terrorists, and about half, 49.1%, agreed (strongly or somewhat) that things are likely going better for the US than the US media portrays.

Over one-third of those surveyed, 38.3%, agreed that media coverage of the Iraq conflict is accurate and under one-third, 31.2%, agreed that the coverage is fair and balanced.

The most trusted source for news?

You guessed it: Fox News Channel

At Tuwayhah

There are those who still doubt that Saddam's Iraq did not harbor, train, and support anti-US terrorist organizations. I've given evidence here, here and here of Saddam's connections to al Qaeda. But there is also hard and irrefutable evidence that within Saddam's Iraq, the anti-US Islamic Jihad organization; who was responsible for the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut in 1983, which killed the CIAs Near East Director Robert Ames along with 62 other people including 16 other Americans. One Islamic Jihad training camp of which we know was located just a few miles south of Baghdad. We know this because during the Invasion of Iraq in 2003, the 1st Marine Division's 2nd Tank Battalion inadvertently ran into an Islamic Jihad training camp during their march to Baghdad.

On April 4th, 2003, Marines with the 2nd Tank Battalion were heading towards Baghdad on Route 6.Their mission, before heading to Iraq, was to finish off the Al Nida Division of the Republican Guard. And while they did render Al Nida "combat ineffective" that day, it wasn't the Iraqi's who put up the biggest fight. As 2nd Tanks headed into the center of At Tuwayhah

Half a dozen men — dressed in black, wearing black stocking masks — stood up on either side of the highway with rocket-propelled grenade launchers on their shoulders. One fired; his grenade hit Lt. Markley's open turret hatch.

The blast was deflected into the hatch of the tank's cannon loader. Cpl. Bernard Gooden, a 22-year-old from Mt. Vernon, N.Y., was killed.

That was how the April 4 ambush at At Tuwayhah — the stiffest fight the 2nd Tank Battalion has faced in the war with Iraq — began

They weren't supposed to be in At Tuwayhah at all, but the shot that had killed Cpl Gooden also knocked out the lead tank, Second Lt. Adam Markley's "Devil's Advocate", GPS. Among Markley's Charlie Company were Marine Scouts in TOW armed Humvees. Bing West and Ray Smith, authors of The March Up, were monitoring the radios from further back in the column

Then we heard the grim news over the radio.

Scout Six is down.

First Lt Brian McPhillips of Pembroke, Massachusetts was dead, shot in the head while leading his TOW Humvees through Tuwayhah

With no time to lose

Cpl. Derric Keller, manning the machine gun of another Humvee, saw Lt. McPhillips fall. Cpl. Keller got his driver to speed along Lt. McPhillips' Humvee and jumped on. He took over the lieutenant's machine-gun post as the Scouts accelerated to get out of town.

Meanwhile Capt. Jeffrey Houston's tank was in trouble after an enemy bullet pierced a fuel bladder, and disabled the vehicle.

"I've gotta go," he said. Capt. Houston jumped to another tank to keep the company going. Lance Cpl. Peixotto also jumped out, grabbing a 9mm semi-automatic.

Iraqis and Islamic Jihad fighters swarmed behind the mounds of dirt beside the wounded tank. Cpl. Ramirez, of Oceanside, Calif., went after them with the "co-ax" machine gun mounted beside the tank's cannon. Cpl. Michael Ackerman, the tank loader from Riverside, Calif., fired the 7.62mm machine gun mounted on the loader's turret hatch. When that gun jammed, he picked up an M-16 rifle and a 9mm semi-automatic.

Capt. Houston jumped back down from his new tank and ran to "Let's Roll." He grabbed the telephone housed in the "grunt's box" on the tank's rear and started talking. While on the phone, he was shot in the face.

Getting Capt Houston medical attention and putting out the fire on his lead tank proved troublesome.

Meanwhile

Back in "Devil's Advocate," Lt. Markley regained his senses. He clamored out of his turret to retrieve his maps. Cpl. Julio Cesare Martinez of San Diego, the tank's gunner, helped restore the communications systems the RPG hit had knocked out. Without any hydraulic pressure, he had to crank the tank's turret, firing the co-ax machine gun with a manual trigger.

Without his Global Posititioning System compass, Lt. Markley had to ask another tank in his platoon to plot their location on the highway. When he realized where they were, he made an urgent radio call to Lt. Nicol.

"We have to turn around! We missed our turn," Lt. Markley yelled. "We are only four clicks (kilometers) from Baghdad!"

The company's executive officer, First Lieutenant Charles D. Nicol Jr., consulted with battalion command and ordered a halt. The battalion had to run through one of the most complicated battle maneuvers a tank column can face — doubling back on itself while under fire.

They also had to evacuate the wounded.

An ambulance, holding battalion surgeon Navy Lt. Bruce Webb, reached "Let's Roll," Capt. Houston's tank. Lt. Webb and the others managed to get Capt. Houston inside the ambulance. But the fight didn't pause for them: the ambulance driver, Cpl. Luke Holden, of Albany, N.Y., took a bullet through the hand he was holding on the steering wheel. Navy Hospital Corpsman Thomas Smith of Brooklyn took over the driving, while holding a bandage on the wounded man's hand and firing an M-16 out the window.

A Ch-46 was on the way, but they had to clear a landing zone. And that landing zone, no matter what, was going to be hot. West and Smith wrote

Two tanks and Dunford's Humvees were providing a tight protective circle around Houston, spraying the area on both sides of the road with M-16 and machine-gun fire. The attackers...didn't lack for courage, slipping in close to the trenches and irrigation ditches. And iron horse had been wounded and hobbled, and they saw they had a chance to kill it - only they couldn't close those last 20 meters. The firepower was too relentless.

Bardof and the battalion doctor, Lieutenant Webb, pulled up with the ambulance, which already held five wounded. They were helping Houston, who had stayed conscious through the fight, crawl into the vehicle when the ambulance driver, Corporal Holden, was shot though the hand. Webb now had seven patients....

A section of four Cobras was buzzing up and down the sides of the road, one or another of them peeling off to fire his 20mm cannon or loose rockets at some cement building or at any of the countless light-brown berms out in the fields....We watched the ambulance come back to our position, and after a while two CH-46s that had been circling overhead landed on the road, which was filled with dust and churning vehicles, all firing.

The column had turned around and were again on the right track, but the infantry still had work to do

Just as the CH-46 was lifting off with the medevac, Sam Mundy's 3/5 Marines were beginning their dismounted attack to mop up behind the tanks. The 2nd Tank Battalion had broken through, destroying the Al Nida Division regulars as they went, but there were still plenty of enemy fighters along the highway. Mundy's Marines still had their work cut out for them.

Mundy ordered Lima Company to clear the right (Northeast) side of the highway and India to clear the left. Tired from fighting all day, four kilometers of "fighting, sprinting, and flopping, lay ahead."

It was going to be a long day for the hoplites, but they went about their task with determination.

After 35 minutes of the most intense fighting 2nd Tanks had yet to see in Iraq, the battle was over. Three Marines were killed and seven others were wounded. When the Marines went into town after the fight they

found more than 100 bodies: Syrians, Egyptians, Yemenis and Lebanese. They were volunteers with the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad.

"There were enough rifles, RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), and other small arms in that town to outfit an entire Marine division — 15 buildings' worth," said Lt. Col. Mike Oehl, 2nd Tank Battalion's commanding officer. "These were Islamic Jihad guys from all over the Arab world. We have intelligence reports that they've been staying at the Sheraton in downtown Baghdad."

The battle at the terrorist camp in At Tuwayhah is just another heroic story for future Marines to have to live up to in a long tradition of such stories.

But it also another example of why we went to war in Iraq to begin with.

And its also the story of yet one more terrorist training camp removed, roots and all.