Guiding Iraqi forces through the war effort

Capt. Cole Derosa, a member of the 2nd Iraqi Army Division Military Transition Team, shares intelligence with Lt. Col. Sagvon Mirani, commander of 1st Battalion, 8th Brigade, 2nd Iraqi Army Division, during a search operation Wednesday in Mosul.


Guiding Iraqi forces through the war effort
By James Warden, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, May 24, 2008

MOSUL, Iraq — A cluster of Iraqi army soldiers was pressed around Mosul’s mayor and police chief when Col. David Brown came upon them while inspecting troops with an Iraqi commander Thursday.

The soldiers were ostensibly protecting the city officials, but most were actually listening to their conversations instead of scanning the surrounding areas for possible attackers.

Brown plowed into the throng when he saw what a target they made, and started telling individual Iraqi soldiers to pay more attention. You need to focus on where an attack will come from, he said, not on the person you’re protecting.

Eventually he came to police chief Khalid Hussein Ali Al Hamdani, only to find that he was wearing neither helmet nor body armor. When Al Hamdani finished talking, Brown put his arm around the Iraqi warmly and urged him to protect himself better. He told the chief he was warning him only because he did not want to see him hurt.

Al Hamdani thanked him and laughed good-naturedly as he walked away from Brown, who has a term for these types of encounters: "Slow, ambiguous progress."


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=55043