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Troops make impact in Iraq 11/16/06
The commander of the 10th Mountain Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team says they don't need more US troops in Iraq; they need more Iraqi troops. Colonel Michael Kershaw held a video teleconference from Camp Striker Thursday to give an update on the unit's mission. As News 10 Now's Amy Ohler explains, the brigade is making significant accomplishments in Iraq.
Update from 2nd BCT in Iraq Updated: 11/16/2006
By: Amy Ohler The 2nd Brigade Combat Team deployed to Iraq in August. They've only been there a few months, but they're already making progress in the war-torn country.
Brigade Commander Colonel Michael Kershaw said since they've been there, they've discovered more than 240 roadside bombs.
"We have seen our casualties go way down as a result of really everybody's efforts, but in particular, the Gladiators Battalion effort on that," said Col. Michael Kershaw, 2nd Brigade Combat Team Commander.
While in Iraq, the brigade is working with the Iraqi security forces and training them to govern themselves. Colonel Kershaw said the Iraqis are making progress, and some units are now leading operations.
When Kershaw was asked if he thought more US troops were needed in Iraq, he said more Iraqi troops are needed hands down--not US troops.
"Today we were searching cache areas, and I tell you it's both a US and Iraqi mission, and the Iraqi soldiers, and I mean I think we have the greatest soldiers in the world, but they can smell out these caches better than we can," said Col Kershaw.
He also spoke about our recent election and mentioned the Iraqis are interested and tuned in to our political government.
Kershaw said their biggest accomplishment so far has been taking over the Yusufiyah power plant. Terrorists had been in control of the plant, which dates back to the Saddam Hussein regime.
MND-B Soldiers seize 123 weapons caches during ‘Operation Commando Hunter’ By Staff Sgt. Angela McKinzie, 2nd BCT PAO, 10th Mtn. Div.
Oct 26, 2006, 08:12
Blackanthem Military News, BAGHDAD, Iraq – Multi-National Division – Baghdad Soldiers continue to find weapons caches as part of Operation Commando Hunter.
The Soldiers from 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, seized 55 weapons caches Oct. 14-20, bringing the total to 123 caches seized in the area near Yusufiyah, which is located 20 miles southwest of Baghdad.
The 55 additional caches consisted of an AK-47, 53,000 7.62mm AK-47 rounds, 4,000 14.5 mm anti-aircraft rounds, 12 23mm rounds, seven 90mm recoilless rifle rounds, 100 pounds of artillery propellant, 100 pounds of plastic explosive, 265 pounds of home-made explosives, a mortar tube, 82 60mm mortar rounds, nine 105mm artillery rounds, 104 120mm mortar rounds, 17 82mm mortar rounds, ten 130mm artillery rounds, 40 pressure plates, 97 directional charges, a ready-made improvised-explosive device, 17 armor-piercing IEDs, two rocket-propelled-grenade launchers and various bomb-making materials.
Operation Commando Hunter is a 2nd BCT, 10th Mtn. Div. operation intended to deny the terrorists sanctuary near Yusufiyah, south of Baghdad.
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Air Force F-16s provided close-air support to troops in contact with anti-Iraqi forces near Al Yusufiyah and Fayyad. - CENTAF Airpower Summary for Oct. 24
http://newsblaze.com/story/20061024092536tsop.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Stories.html
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U.S. seizes plant, once an insurgent haven
Troops' fortification of power facility comes during push to rid small Sunni towns of rebels.
Josh White / Washington Post
YUSUFIYAH, Iraq -- When U.S. troops effortlessly occupied an enormous power plant that had been used by insurgents, they found blankets littering the steel risers, one room with the air conditioning running and a pot of tea ready to pour, and machine-gun cartridge cases strewn about.
They saw cages -- one containing a pair of shoes and what appeared to be human feces -- on the bottom floor, what U.S. commanders said they believe is an indication that prisoners had been held there and possibly tortured.
The power plant is a half-finished relic. Though it never came close to being operational, it was a major target for the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, because of its long-standing use as a transient base for insurgent fighters. Its smokestack juts high above the horizon, and its beautiful vistas of the lush Euphrates River valley belie the sometimes chaotic battlefield below.
The move to take the plant comes amid an aggressive operation to push the insurgents out of a haven that has existed for years. U.S. officials said that the area's string of small rural Sunni towns has played host to leaders such as the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and that teams of insurgents continue to intimidate the local populace while attacking U.S. patrol bases. Soldiers at the bases, which have been plunked down right on the edge of the most hostile areas, are charged with rooting out the insurgents and winning over the local people, a task they acknowledge is not going to be easy.
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The Pentagon has released yet another mysterious video allegedly discovered in April by US forces in a hideout in the Al-Yusufiyah neighborhood of southern Baghdad. The video portrays "Terror Mastermind" Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi acting in a "foolish" and "incompetent" fashion. He appears "confused" on how to handle a US M-249 squad automatic weapon (SAW), which every US serviceman learns from day one.
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:RN-LkStFhZ8J:www.globalresearch.ca/index.php%3Fcontext%3DviewArticle%26code%3DCHO20060515%26articleId%3D2446+Yusufiyah+weapons+of+mass+destruction&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4
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U.N. inspectors wear out their welcome at one Iraqi plant Director lashes out at U.S., rejects report of new construction
John F. Burns, New York Times News
Sunday, December 1, 2002
(12-01) 04:00 PST Al Yusufiyah, Iraq -- After the first three days of international weapons inspections, Iraqi officials at suspect sites have already established a pattern sharply different from the hostility that prevailed during inspections from 1991 to 1998. They have been cooperative, have smiled a lot and have been genial, mostly, to reporters who have followed the U.N. inspection teams to the 11 sites visited so far.
But the pattern broke down on Saturday, at least as far as the smiles and the geniality were concerned, when the inspectors arrived in a drizzling rain at Al Furat, an industrial plant outside this town about 20 miles southwest of Baghdad.
The Iraqi military officer who is the plant's director general, Brig. Samir Ibrahim Abbas, had some irritated things to say about the inspectors interfering with the plant's work, along with much harsher words about the United States, which has named the plant as one where Iraq appears to have been preparing to resume work on developing nuclear weapons.
Last month, after President Bush issued one of his bluntest warnings of American military action if President Saddam Hussein persists in secret efforts to acquire banned weapons, the White House circulated satellite photographs of Al Furat with an arrow pointing to one of the sprawling buildings on the site.
A notation said new construction on the building appeared to signify an effort to revive the plant's past efforts -- admitted by Iraq in the mid-1990s -- to develop gas centrifuges required for enriching uranium, one of the steps it would have to take to build a nuclear arsenal.
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