With luck and good soldiering, regiment uncovers weapons cache

[Rose Siding]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - On Sunday night soldiers from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, hit the jackpot. It began when a sharp-eyed, soft-spoken sergeant noticed a suspicious truck that appeared to be following his Humvee on patrol. By the time it was over, at 3 a.m. Monday, the soldiers had detained five men and seized the biggest cache of weapons they'd seen in their 10 months in the country.

It was a big success for the regiment, which typically spends its days driving along dusty streets hunting for insurgents with weapons, often finding nothing. And it had added significance coming in the midst of a string of violent insurgent attacks aimed at disrupting next Sunday's parliamentary elections.

But the night's captures were also a typically messy and incomplete affair that shows just how tough it is for soldiers to stamp out the insurgency. While they seized a startling array of weapons and explosives that could have killed hundreds of people, the men they arrested appeared to be bit players who didn't know or wouldn't reveal the source of the cache. Three other suspected insurgents may have escaped.

In their haste to exploit new information found on the raid quickly, the soldiers barged in on one family in the middle of the night by mistake, leaving a house full of sobbing women and children with only a cursory apology.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10723447.htm

[FlemingsGhost]

1. They're chasing their tails. Propaganda won't change that fact.

Bleed for the Homeland, grunts. Exxon thanks you for your loyalty.

[alittlelark]

2. REEKING propaganda piece....

Goebbels would have been proud. Even if there is a grain of truth, it is written in a propagandist style.

[merwin]

3. They uncovered 5 men and a truck with weapons. 5 down,

199,995 to go.

[Rose Siding]

4. Gotta plus up for the women and children

that's a minimum of 4, but a "house full" could even top the 200k

[UL_Approved]

5. They story isn't that flattering

The story talks about how this is a first, after months of deployment. Just what the hell are we doing over there if it takes months for most soldiers to find anything? Why are we not getting better at finding details, weapons, and other items of the insurgency? And this sums up the night:

While this was happening, Charlie Company's commander, Capt. Rodney Schmucker, 30, of Latrobe, Pa., was leading a group of men to raid an address he found on a document in the first house, the one with the buried weapons. His men jumped the gate and ran into the structure screaming, rifles pointed. Within a few minutes, the Americans realized they had the wrong address.

"Hey, Willy, do the whole apology thing and whatever," Ellis said, as the men tromped out of the house. The interpreter told the family the Americans were only trying to help them be safe.

Later, outside the second house, four men were on their knees facing the gate, their arms bound behind them with plastic cuffs. One of the men turned to look at Willy, and the interpreter, who hides his identity to protect his life, kicked him and cursed him.

Good soldiering? Or is it that they just got one good soldier who did something right?

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. Even a blind pig turns up a peanut once in a while

or so they say.