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Thursday, May 26, 2005
Preparing for a long ride on a dusty road
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Buehring, Kuwait — As the time for leaving Kuwait and entering Iraq approaches, soldiers are making final preparations for themselves and their equipment.
Most of the 4,400-member 48th Brigade Combat Team will travel to Baghdad by air — a 90-minute hop in the cargo hold of a C-130 Hercules transport.
The fun comes at the end of the trip with a plunging descent and corkscrew turns to avoid possible insurgent ground fire.
The rest of the brigade will head north in a weeklong series of convoys.
It’s about 400 miles from Kuwait to Baghdad by road, or roughly 15 hours driving time depending on the speed of the convoy.
Most convoys take two or three days to make the one-way trip. They refuel and spend nights at heavily defended and completely remote desert refueling stations. And they only travel by day when air support is available.
AJC photographer Curtis Compton and I are planning to go to Baghdad by road. That should make for better pictures, and I’m looking forward to getting a look at the countryside as it changes from desert, to marsh to the green farmland.
I’m not sure how much I’ll see from the thick, porthole that serves as a window on the armored vehicles the 48th Brigade is bringing, but it’s bound to be better view than from the rear of a C-130. They have no windows at all.
A soldier strongly recommended that I bring a pillow the car ride.
I told him I could stay awake for the whole trip. He gave me the look of utter exasperation I’ve become quite used to on this trip.
“You’ve obviously never ridden in a Humvee for 15 hours,” he said. “The pillow’s for your butt.”
Georgia Guard troops to train Iraqis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Buehring, Kuwait â€â€? Just a few days before they are scheduled to depart for Iraq, about 90 soldiers from the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team have learned they will be part of a new mission that could significantly increase their risk in the war zone.
Although they have not specifically trained for it, these Georgia soldiers will be sent to live with and train units of the fledgling Iraqi army, whose members have been targeted by the largely Sunni Muslim-fueled insurgency as “collaborators” of the Shiite-dominated administration.
Government officials estimate about 1,500 Iraqi police and military personnel have been killed over the past two years in these attacks.
Once embedded, the Georgia soldiers will live with the Iraqi soldiers in the same kind of tent cities U.S. forces use and provide instruction in tactics, logistics, medical, administration and personnel.
The initial plan was for the Georgia soldiers to eat the same meals as the Iraqis but there was concern a new diet might make them sick so they’ll have access to what other U.S. troops eat.
The soldiers assigned to the new mission have not been notified officially, but most of the 90 are aware their names are on the list.
They declined to comment until after they have received their new orders.
“I’m taking key people from my staff for this mission,” Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, commander of the 48th, said Wednesday. “They are getting my best and brightest.”
Rodeheaver said all those chosen will be experienced officers or enlisted soldiers with the rank of staff sergeant or above.
The 48th Brigade soldiers will be split into three teams of about 30 soldiers each and assigned to an active duty Iraqi army brigade.
All the trainers will get special instruction when they get to Iraq and each will be assigned a translator, Rodeheaver said. The number of trainers could change depending on training needs.
Some 48th Brigade members attended a weeklong class at Fort Hood, Texas, on Arabic language and culture, but the training mission wasn’t emphasized during the unit’s five months of preparation leading up to the deployment.
Rodeheaver declined to say to which Iraqi units the Georgia troops would be assigned or where they would be located.
“We want the Iraqis to secure and control their own country â€â€? and they absolutely want to do that,” Rodeheaver said. “They’ve got some very good soldiers. All we’re doing is adding some new skills and capabilities.”
The new mission is part of a U.S. effort to embed as many as 10,000 Americans in adviser roles with the Iraqi army, even though it is widely believed the Iraqi ranks have been infiltrated by insurgents and U.S. forces could be easy targets.
The purpose is to provide training and give the Iraqis examples of military professionalism they can incorporate into their own command structure.
The Iraqi army has been plagued by poor leadership, desertions and an unwillingness to confront the insurgents.
Earlier this year, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers told a Senate committee that less than a third of Iraq’s 136,000 police and soldiers were fully trained and able to fight on their own.
Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, now president of the World Bank, has testified that Iraqi army units have had absentee rates of up to 40 percent.
Despite that, recruiting drives for police and army jobs continue to attract thousands of applicants, some of whom served in the army under Saddam Hussein.
U.S. military officials had hoped to use the remnants of Saddam’s army as the basis for a new defense force for Iraq.
But those plans were shot down by Paul Bremer and the civilian Coalition Provisional Authority in the summer of 2003 because of a desire to rid the Iraqi forces of Baath Party members and include more Shiites and Kurds.
Many of those disgruntled veterans are believed to have been a significant factor in fueling the insurgency.
Their attacks on the security forces have also taken on the tincture of the sectarian strife plaguing the country, with the largely Sunni military veterans gunning for the mainly Shiite and Kurdish government troops.
Staff writer Ron Martz in Atlanta contributed to this article.
