I met Karl Zinsmeister before and at the end of our incursion into Iraq. Boots on the Ground was followed up by a much superior work, Dawn Over Baghdad, which provides tremendous detail on our Brigade Combat Team’s challenges and successes conducting counterinsurgency operations in Baghdad in 2003-2004.

Basically our mission after toppling the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein was to restore order and implement governance among a traumatized, frightened people who had zero trust in ANY kind of government. The Sunni dominated Ba’ath Party ran every aspect of the lives of the Iraqis and when Baghdad fell, they looted everything owned and run by the Ba’athists.

The only organizations remaining after the collapse of Baghdad were the religious heirarchy of the Shiites, a complex and heirarchical structure of religious clerics; the Sunni Imams and mosque leaders; and the tribal leaders who were completely beholden to the clerics. My supervisor, Army Chaplain Major Jim Murphy and I were sent out to do outreach to the religious leaders of Baghdad to include the more militant types that were bent on destroying us. I do not blame them; the message we seemed to be communicating was that we had come to destroy Islam, and it took a great deal of effort to pursuade Iraqi clerics that we had no interest in diminishing Islam in the new Baghdad.

Chaplain Murphy conducted over 100 religious leader engagements, trying to figure out this complex cultural maze while living in the cross hairs of an ubiquitous insurgency employing IEDs and suicide bombers as a weapon against us.

The Iraqi people were terribly thankful for eliminating Saddam from tyranny over their lives but also frightened about the future. They were intimidated by the Sunni insurgents who brutally exploited the fears of the ordinary Iraqis and fomented a sectarian war. These Sunni terrorists were evil incarnate. Anybody who says that Al Qaeda was not in Iraq until we arrived is blowing smoke up your back pockets. Ansar al Islam operated openly and with tacit support from the Saddamist government in Fallujah and Anbar since 2000. This is not difficult to prove, but I will keep my remarks unclassified.

What made Iraq spin out of control was the enemy’s exploitation of our retreat into forward operating bases, or FOBs. These super bases reduced our footprint on the Iraqi street, separated us from the people, cut off the flow of human intelligence, and yielded the streets to the insurgency. Most analysts believe the decision to move us off the streets and out of the villages of Iraq was a response to political pressure from Washington, DC – can you guess which party? The liberation was nearly lost because of this foolish decision that Gneral Petraeus reversed immediately upon taking command.

I served under LTG Petraeus at the US Army Combined Arms Center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas while FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency was being developed. I served as a consult to the US Army/US Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center and as an adjunct redactor for the Center for Army Lesson Learned. General Petraeus’ command chaplain was tasked to draft a religious leader engagement policy for Iraq-wide implementation in order to pacify Iraq’s powerful clerics. I was sent to Baghdad as a subject matter expert on religion and counterinsurgency to help hammer out a policy and a strategy for engaging the religious leaders of Iraq in support of the new government.

Iraq is a new reality. All the second guessing about why we should not have deposed Saddam is counterproductive to any progress we hope to achieve in the new Iraq. The challenge before us now is, ‘how do we demonstrate to the traumatized Iraqi people that we are reliable partners for peace and prosperity in the new Iraq?’ Certainly not by leaving them holding the bag against terrorists, insurgents and hostile neighbors. Please think about that as you vote this Novemeber.

Thanks, Johnny!

The Americans, for the most part, were treated as conquering heroes. Young Iraqis put flowers in the pockets of their body armor. Kids begged for money.

There was a lot of smiling and laughing. One Iraqi slapped high-fives at passing Marines and Western reporters.

Some American and European “human shields” were there, antiwar activists who had come to Baghdad and placed themselves in front of power plants and other potential targets. They chastised the Marines for attacking Iraq and promoting war.

That angered some of the soldiers. “I didn’t bury two of my fellow Marines just so someone like that could call us murderers,” said one, angry and teary, referring to an Iraqi artillery attack that killed two of his colleagues on Monday. “They died for this country.”

Meanwhile, two Iraqis held up a sheet bearing the message: “”Go home Human Shields, you U.S. Wankers.”

The Marines posed for pictures with Iraqis and traded knickknacks.

plus the following:

Karl Zinsmeister, a frontline reporter who traveled with the 82nd Airborne Division during OIF, writes in Boots on the Ground, page 172:

When I was on combat patrols with soldiers, I saw Iraqis wave and smile. More significant, I saw them miming danger and pointing out the windows from which snipers were firing, putting themselves at risk to aid Americans battling Saddam. I met locals who expressed gratitude that the Baathist rogues had been killed with minimal destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure. This care won the United States goodwill from Iraqis (if not from Western opponents of the war),

Marines welcomed as heroes, confront “human shields” in Baghdad
John Koopman, Staff Writer, The San Francisco Chronicle, Wed., April 9, 2003.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/04/09/MNbaghdad.DTL

What war was Nobama watching?

An Obama administration would be floccinaucinihilipilification.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/09/28/family-told-obama-not-wear-soldier-sons-bracelet-where-media

LOL… yeah, we bought it to make ice cream cones! Delicious yellow ice cream cones.

It stayed in Montreal’s Old Port for a week before it was ship to Toronto. I live in Montreal and I was very anxious it would be remove from there. It was supposed to be a top secret, but the stupid leftists medias got it all over the news… so terrorists could easily know where it was.

Don’t try to tell the lefties about the hundreds of tons of yellowcake removed from Iraq, it was useless (by their standards, which are no standards) that’s why the dumb folks from Canada paid millions of dollars for it. Saddam had one thing on his mind, nuc’s, just like Hussein O’s sleep over pal in Iran.

This is another great thread Wordsmith, your videos and blog entries are keeping me from my gardening today, tomorrow’s another day, it will get done. Thanks!

Missy, enjoy your gardening. Thanks for the compliments, all. I wish I had pieced this together better, but wanted to post something up on the heels of Obama’s comments at the debate. The derision from the anti-Iraq war liberals whenever they say “mission accomplished” and “you said we’d be greeted as liberators” shouldn’t stand. They’ve taken two actual positives, and turned them into an indictment of the belief that Iraq was a tragic misadventure and the wrong war at the wrong time. This myth should be challenged.

If there’s one thing I found frustrating with McCain last night, it’s his not addressing Obama’s direct challenge as to the judgment in 2003 to invade Iraq. He only sidesteps and talks of the surge success and Iraq’s future. Certainly important to point out; but he should also answer Obama’s challenge and call him on his non-consequential judgment regarding Iraq. Obama was on the sidelines as far as having access to the 2002 classified NIE to make an educated judgment (not that most Senators bothered with even looking at the classified version). But McCain made a consequential decision- to vote to authorize the use of force in removing Saddam, and has to live with whatever consequences that decision entails. I think he needs to defend that judgment call, unlike the Democrats who gave authorization but now want to run away from their votes, scapegoating President Bush and claiming they were misled.

Also missed is the massive convoys (written about in the NY Times, even) going from Iraq to Syria just before the invasion of Iraq.

I often worried that insurgents would find him, he was a clear, dedicated and honest voice for Iraq. A true patriot.

This is another great thread Wordsmith, your videos and blog entries are keeping me from my gardening today, tomorrow’s another day, it will get done. Thanks!