Michael Yon is an independent journalist who's been in Iraq for what seems like forever. He has a blog that provides coverage of the US war operations that is distinct from mainstream news operations. For a sample I recommend his piece Bird's Eye View which provides detailed background on tactical operation centers from the company level (one guy a radio and a map) to the brigade level (30 or so officers clustered around computers and monitors at different stations), then looks at some of the tools that they use for reconnaissance and then segues into how the Army leadership is mentoring local Iraqis on how to manage their cities. A couple of my favorite excerpts include:
An aerial reconnaisance unit called a Raven that is hand launched (picture at left). Reminds me of the big gliders kids have been hand launching for years. Yon also has pictures of a larger aerial unit called a Shadow that is launched off of a catapult which is also pretty cool.
Yon's coverage of the seemingly mundane is also oddly fascinating given the context:
In the mornings after breakfast they hold the daily BUB (Battle Update
Briefing) at the TOC, where the happenings of the last 24 hours and
various important matters are discussed. The Safety Officer, Bob, says
that although people should be treating their uniforms with permethrin
to keep the bugs at bay (and they make you itch pretty badly if you
don’t—I’m scratching right now), that permethrin can reduce the
flame-resistant properties of Nomex. For those garments, the
recommendation is to put the bug repellent on the skin and not on the
Nomex.
At the end of Saturday’s briefing, Captain Pike showed a slide with
a bird from Iraq, stating that birds are cool. When it was over, I told
him that I am a birdwatcher, and that I’d even written about the birds I’d seen in Iraq. The Captain told me he goes birding every Sunday morning and invited me to join him at sunrise.
After the briefing, Safety Bob singled me out and quietly made sure
I understood the danger of treating my Nomex. (They really look out for
you here.) I told Bob that I’d put that in a dispatch so more people
would know.
Finally, is description of US personnel interacting with the Iraqis leads to some revelations (at least for me):
LTC Fred Johnson was about to head downtown in Baqubah to meet with
Iraqi officials, so I tagged along. Iraq has a voucher-based food
distribution system that predates the invasion, and hearkens back to
the sanctions and trade restrictions Iraqis had to live with because of
Saddam’s practices. Basically, there is one “food representative” for
about every 200 families, and those families get vouchers to pickup
food from local warehouses.
In Baqubah, the warehouse had been captured by al Qaeda—despots
always seem to go for the food supply first—but the people here are not
starving. Hefty Iraqis are everywhere. For instance, the grapes in
Baqubah vineyards are as good as any I get at home. Very sweet and
juicy. I was with 1-12 CAV yesterday and we got into a little fighting
yesterday (16 July) while we were in a vineyard. The grapes were very
sweet and juicy. As our folks clear the city of al Qaeda, the first thing people ask for is cigarettes,
not food. Cigarettes were outlawed by AQI. They celebrate the routing
of AQI by smoking and drinking cold water. (People say Al Qaeda also
outlawed cold water, but I have no idea why.)
and
LTC Goins explained that his soldiers had delivered chlorine to a
water plant, but they had a problem with farmers pumping water out of
the Nahr Khraisan tributary, which comes out of the reservoir, much
faster than it comes in. And when Al Qaeda recently blew up a bridge in
Baqubah, the explosion also cut some important electrical wires that
brought in current. (Much of the electricity in Diyala Province
actually comes from Iran.)
What our people are trying to accomplish here is simple. Simple in
the sense that a simply stated goal might be very hard to achieve.
After vanquishing al Qaeda (that’s what the Iraqis here call them), the
goal is to have no pause in the restoration of services. This is about
mental inertia and psychology. The idea is to jump-start the people and
facilitate their taking responsibility for their communities....
Even though LTC Goins must leave the meeting and return to the field,
each day he (along with other commanders) has to put his mind to work
on how to administer Baqubah, and he knows one of his problems is
water. Solve water, and lots of things can be carried forward on that
momentum. (Actually, solving the fuel issue comes first; many of the
water pumps and generators depend on the fuel, as do the vehicles, so
they are concentrating on the fuel issue while prepping the water
issue.)
The idea is to get the Iraqis to run their own cities but most of the
old leaders are gone, and the new ones are like throwing babies to cow
udders. Many just don’t know what to do, and in any case, most of them
have no natural instinct for it. So our soldiers are mentoring Iraqi
civil leaders, which is a huge education for me because I get to sit in
on the meetings. The American leaders tell me what they are up to,
which amounts for free Ph.D. level instruction in situ: just
have to be willing to be shot at. (The education a writer can get here
is unbelievable.) Meeting after meeting—after embeds in Nineveh, Anbar,
Baghdad and Diyala—I have seen how American officers tend to have a
hidden skill-set. Collectively, American military leaders seem to
somehow intuitively know how to run the mechanics of a city...
I have wondered now for two years why is it that American military
leaders somehow seem to naturally know what it takes to run a city,
while many of the local leaders seem clueless. Over time, a possible
answer occurred, and that nudge might be due to how the person who runs
each American base is referred to as the “Mayor.” A commander’s first
job is to take care of his or her forces. Our military is, in a sense,
its own little country, with city-states spread out all around the
world. Each base is like a little city-state. The military commander
must understand how the water, electricity, sewerage, food
distribution, police, courts, prisons, hospitals, fire, schools,
airports, ports, trash control, vector control, communications, fuel,
and fiscal budgeting for his “city” all work. They have “embassies” all
over the world and must deal diplomatically with local officials in
Korea, Germany, Japan and many dozens of other nations. The U.S.
military even has its own space program, which few countries have.
In short, our military is a reasonable microcosm of the United States—sans
the very important business aspect which actually produces the wealth
the military depends on. The requisite skill-set to run a serious war
campaign involves a subset of skills that include diplomacy and civil
administration.
I know this is a long post and it probably seems that I excerpted the majority of his article, but believe me when I say that there's plenty more there. I highly recommend you read his stuff for it provides a distinct, ground level view of US activity in Iraq that you aren't getting on CNN.
