Labels: Blogwatch, Iraq, Michael Yon

[...]Although there have been some grumblings from journalists that illiterate ISF have been hired, there is a literacy standard for the Iraqi police. I have seen literacy tests administered in Anbar, for instance [...] Meanwhile, an increasingly capable ISF is being formed from the available men and women in Iraq [...]

[...] It’s been more than three years since I first started watching ISF up close, and there is no mistaking that there are more ISF, and their quality is improving. They fight well and courageously, taking far more casualties than we do. Iraqi soldiers and police are increasingly adopting the habits of the Americans they work with. So I will say with certainty that the Iraqi Army is getting better, and fast, because I have seen it firsthand across Iraq [...]

Labels: Blogwatch, Good News, Iraq, Michael Yon

Even criminal gangs—like local mafias—who feed off the chaos al Qaeda drags around like a fetid shadow, are now feeding information about them to American forces.

The government infrastructure that I referred to as being “demolished” was of the human order. It was as if we spared a fleet of Iraqi aircraft, but disbanded the crews while they were in flight. The crews mostly parachuted out and landed in places like Syria. Subsequent to sparing most of it, a lot of the infrastructure has fallen to crooks and insurgents at worst, or is just succumbing to natural entropy.

Labels: Blogwatch, Good News, Iraq, Michael Yon

Labels: Baqubah, Blogwatch, Good News, Iraq, Michael Yon, Operation Arrowhead Ripper

Labels: Blogwatch, Michael Yon, The Thunder Run

At this point in time, I was sitting in my truck, settling in for the hour or so it would take for the meeting to wrap up and for us to continue our patrol to another town and other activities. Suddenly, I see smoke and dust billowing out from the row of shops along the front right of my truck and then the truck rocks hard. I knew immediately that it was an explosion, and IED [Improvised Explosive Device], and that I needed to check my people. I heard someone say over the intercom, "what was that?" I answered, "an IED, get in the truck and shut the door!" I ask each guy in my truck if they are alright. Everyone is. Then we hear the IA start shooting

Labels: Blogwatch, IED, Iraq, JackArmy, US Army, VBIED

Michael Yon is seeing firsthand what Operation Arrowhead Ripper is all about:

"By the time you read this, we will be inside Baquba, and we will be killing them. No secrets are spilling here. ... The idea this time is not to chase al Qaeda out, but to trap and kill them head-on, or in ambushes, or while they sleep. ... It will be horrible for al Qaeda. Horror and terrorism is what they sow, and tonight they will reap their harvest. They will get no rest."

Click the picture below, taken by Michael in Baquba on January 11, 2005, to go to his latest dispatch - Be Not Afraid



Michael Yon's photos are posted with permission, and should not be reposted or republished without same.

Labels: Baqubah, Blogwatch, Iraq, Michael Yon, Operation Arrowhead Ripper

"The shepherds know every rock and cranny out there, and they know where the explosives are. Treat those shepherds bad, and soldiers get blown up. Treat them with humanity and respect, and they can be business partners."

Labels: blogging, Blogwatch, Michael Yon

Labels: Blogwatch, British troops, Coalition Forces, Iraq, Michael Yon

Labels: Blogwatch, Coalition Forces, Iraq, Michael Yon

Labels: Blogwatch, The Thunder Run

Labels: Blogwatch

Labels: Blogwatch, British troops, Coalition Forces, Iraq, Michael Yon

Reducing this mess to the street level of the 1-4 Cav battalion from Fort Riley, Kansas, their job is something like playing “zone” basketball. Their job is not to look at the whole court but to — as in playing zone – win their little space. The job of 1-4 is to work with Iraqis to bring their sector under control, and if the battalions around them do the same, and the people way up top play the zones right, maybe we can make something less than genocide follow.

Labels: Blogwatch, Michael Yon

Often the most dangerous places in Iraq are at the front gates of bases where suicide attackers roll in. Outside the wire—and often inside the wire—is bad-guy country. A block away from a base might as well be a hundred miles away. We rolled out in humvees for what would be about a 1,225 mile trip inside Iraq, and another portion to Germany and back.

...we must stick with our people who have been mostly abandoned at war. I understand the position of the journalists. Especially the ones who get blown up or shot at fairly regularly, but the informed interest of ordinary Americans is critical to the outcome of this war. And the truth is that our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, most of whom rarely (if ever) see a writer, are abandoned by default.

...I watch morale very closely. More closely than all else. Low morale in a particular unit can be the result of poor leadership in that unit, or just not getting mail, for instance. But gauging morale is not a simple affair of asking a few soldiers. A person has to live with them across Iraq. Having done so, my opinion is that overall troop morale is good to high. (If their morale could be bottled, it would probably would sell like crack, then be outlawed.)...

Labels: Blogwatch, Iraq, Michael Yon