What went right in Iraq

[Comrade]

Article from National Review, May 9, 200520, Pg. 29

What Went Right

How the U.S. began to quell the insurgency in Iraq

By Richard Lowry


http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=40019


My favorite part:

In November 2004, with Iraqi officials in the interim government in place to explain and defend the coming assault and with more Iraqi forces on line, it was time to deal with it. "We worked the whole thing out with Allawi," says an administration official. "He and we prepared the ground. There could have been outrage in the Arab world. There wasn't. And the Iraqis were able to tolerate it."

Natonski too did his share of information work in the run-up to the assault: "We tried to drive a wedge between the insurgents and the people. We dropped leaflets and made broadcasts explaining how elsewhere we were rebuilding, and they were losing water treatment plants and millions in reconstruction funds."

There were probing attacks throughout the summer and early fall targeting the leadership around Zarqawi. The attacks also created a strategic ruse.

"They thought we were coming from the south," says an administration official. "The Marines were camped in the south. The probing raids were deliberately from the south." So the insurgents oriented their defense toward the south. Instead, we came from the north. And came in force. "We learned the lesson from April that you just can't do it piecemeal. You can't stop and start, stop and start," says Natonski.

Which doesn't mean the campaign was indiscriminate or immune to political considerations. For instance, we took the hospital first, which was used by the insurgents as a command-and-control center and to treat their wounded.

"There were military reasons for that," says an administration official. "But it was also because the first time, in April, al-Jazeera was in that hospital saying that the Marines were murdering children." About 2,000 Iraqi security forces were in the fight. "We used them in taking down sensitive sites," says Natonski. "The hospital was taken with Iraqi commando units in the lead. Several mosques and the government center were taken by the Iraqis." Iraqis had a particular nose for finding weapons caches and could immediately tell whether detainees were from a foreign country.

Six battalions of Marines and Army troops came slicing down from the north and kept on going. "The success of the attack," Natonski explains, "was based on speed. Tanks and Bradley vehicles penetrated quickly, to be followed by Marine infantry. The rapid penetration disrupted the enemy's command and control, a lot of it in the Jolan district [in the northeast corner of the city]." Weeks later U.S. troops found insurgents still holed up, awaiting orders that never came.

A favored insurgent tactic was using parked vehicles as bombs. They wanted to call on their cellphone to explode a car at the moment they saw it would do maximum damage. The speed of the U.S. assault disrupted that tactic, according to Natonski: "If you can either kill them or make them fall back, they can no longer see the vehicles they want to detonate." The insurgents were fierce and determined. "We found a lot of drugs," says Natonski. "They looked to be amphetamines, maybe speed. We think many of them were hopped up on drugs." :shocked: They also believed they were fighting a horrific foe: "The second- or third-order effect of Abu Ghraib is that many of the insurgents were brainwashed to think that that was the way they would be treated, so instead of surrender they fought to the death."

The performance of the U.S. forces was spectacular. Marines got shot and kept on fighting. When the battle ended, there was a rash of reports of
previously ignored wounds. "Headquarters asked, 'Why are you reporting 35 wounded so late?'" says Natonski. "We were reporting them so late because these kids didn't report it when they were wounded. The Corpsmen bandaged themselves up and stayed in the fight. The Marines at Iwo Jima, Chosin Reservoir, and Vietnam set the bar pretty high, and they lived up to the
standard."

'We had turned the corner'

Awesome read from someone on the ground and in the know. Highly recommended.

 

[onedomino]

I assume the article refers to the battle of Fallujah. Indeed, it was a magnificent performance by the US military. It is thoughtful to post this article on Memorial Day. Before the war, I remember reading in the MSM that US armor was going to be unsafe and take a beating in urban fighting. The reality was different: a book called Thunder Run outlines how successful the Abrams and Bradleys are in Iraqi urban warfare. Apache helicopters, on the other hand, have been less useful than initially hoped (at least according to the book).

 

[5stringJeff]

I read the whole article this weekend. Great piece that everyone should read.