Road trip

Ok, I had fun. I was out convoy riding with Rambo’s team on a Sunday afternoon. I'm sure glad I wasn’t a lone journalist driving around Baghdad knocking on terrorist’s door. My travel companions and I drove up-armored HMVWW’s with .50 cal machine guns mounted on turrets.

It most definitely was a different perspective. Can you picture Mogadishu with white people? That’s how it struck me, such a poor country. And yet, there are road-side stands and people standing around talking in small villages. Lots of kids…so many kids and nice to know that even on the ground they wave at you, except for that one that threw the rock, but the gunner got a clean shot on him, so that worked out too.

0700 mission brief. They’re all business as we get the latest intelligence report on the roads we’ll be traveling. Rambo’s team has gone out now about a dozen times, so they’re in a routine and the kidding is flying back and forth, someone got lost once, someone’s been using too many pen flares to warn away drivers. Very loose but professional.

They gave me three seats to fill. It’s me and then one of the specialists I know so she could decipher the technical talk. Then, I invited a Major from a separate command. His people work at the depot we’re going to visit and because it’s so hard to get up there they usually jump at the chance to visit. If, that is, they can fly. Nobody flies there, it’s too romote. At first he said yes, but he didn’t show yesterday morning. I had no notice, either, I could have filled it with people that wanted to go.

He’d sent me an email asking if I knew they’d had 3 IED’s within the last two weeks in that area. I didn’t know that, but Rambo’s team did, even knew where they were. Turns out one was successful, one of the contractors had died just that last Friday. They hadn’t had a memorial, they didn’t know if they were going to either. Those guys get taken care of by their companies and they usually don’t have services like we do.

But during the mission brief, I get a chance to tell them more about our trip and why we’re going.

The U.S. leaves when the ISF is self-sufficient. That means the ISF can fight the insurgency on their own and resupply themselves when they’re out of something, like water, food, ammo, parts, coats, hats, shoes, socks, supplies, everything and anything that keeps their army running day to day. Our part is to build a system they’ll use and get them to use it.

Our team decided to pick a class of supply and force them to use it correctly. That’s not actually true, because that implies we’re forcing them to use the system that the US uses. We’re looking for a system that will survive after we leave, something that works for them. Currently, we re-supply them in a pinch, and that’s been happening a lot. We put them on missions and don’t let them fail. They know that, they’ve gotten use to it and now we have to wean them off the teat. So, off I go to this depot to get a tour and see if it will support our requirements. Its run by U.S. contractors but this entire system will be turned over to the Iraqi’s at some point.

It turned out to be a non-eventful trip, the depot is perfect, but I was extremely interested in the trip itself and the perspective from the ground. The one major theme that struck me, was our control of the roads.

We control the roads. And when I say that, I mean that when our convoys drive down the roads, everybody else gets off, the civilian traffic pulls over. The IED’s are on the sides of the roads and in the medians, so we drive down the middle. From half a mile down the road, you can see cars pulling over to get out of our way. Want to know how we trained them to do that? We shoot at them. It’s called escalation of force.

Without giving away too many details, the first thing we do is wave at them to get off the roads. If that doesn’t work, we show them our weapons. If that doesn’t work, we fire a flare at them. If that doesn’t work we fire warning shots into the ground in front of their vehicle. If that doesn’t work, we assume intent and are free to blast them. It doesn’t take too long for the word to get out that we open fire with .50 cal machine guns which go thru engine blocks and I’ll be damned, they stop. Everybody pulls over, the whole countryside is trained.

It’s a little different driving up behind people. Most of them pull over, but you’ll catch the odd truck driver lumbering along half-asleep who jerks his vehicle off the road with a start, or the guy carrying furniture that’s piled way to high and not tied down too good and you see him hitting the sides of the road and almost loosing loads and feeling bad. Half of me think it’s a little harsh. The other half hears how many IED’s get emplaced and have killed our guys every day. The population is starting to turn bad guys in and we hear about that at least a couple of times a week. Its still a very dangerous place and our safety is ahead of anybodies feelings. We will leave here, but it will be safely. They'll just have to be patient.

I can say that since the referendum overall attacks are down and I hope it stays down. Here's a picture with the crew, hope it posts. It was a unique experience, going to have to try it again.

Best wishes from Iraq.