'It Looked Weird and Felt Wrong' | Fighting the Insurgency

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One Unit's Aggressive Approach

'It Looked Weird and Felt Wrong'

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 24, 2006; Page A01

From its first days in Iraq in April 2003, the Army's 4th Infantry Division made an impression on soldiers from other units -- the wrong one.

"We slowly drove past 4th Infantry guys looking mean and ugly," recalled Sgt. Kayla Williams, then a military intelligence specialist in the 101st Airborne. "They stood on top of their trucks, their weapons pointed directly at civilians. . . . What could these locals possibly have done? Why was this intimidation necessary? No one explained anything, but it looked weird and felt wrong."

Today, the 4th Infantry and its commander, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, are best remembered for capturing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, one of the high points of the U.S. occupation. But in the late summer of 2003, as senior U.S. commanders tried to counter the growing insurgency with indiscriminate cordon-and-sweep operations, the 4th Infantry was known for aggressive tactics that may have appeared to pacify the northern Sunni Triangle in the short term but that, according to numerous Army internal reports and interviews with military commanders, alienated large parts of the population.

The unit, a heavy armored division despite its name, was known for "grabbing whole villages, because combat soldiers unable to figure out who was of value and who was not," according to a subsequent investigation of the 4th Infantry Division's detainee operations by the Army inspector general's office. Its indiscriminate detention of Iraqis filled Abu Ghraib prison, swamped the U.S. interrogation system and overwhelmed the U.S. soldiers guarding the prison.

Lt. Col. David Poirier, who commanded a military police battalion attached to the 4th Infantry Division and was based in Tikrit from June 2003 to March 2004, said the division's approach was indiscriminate. "With the brigade and battalion commanders, it became a philosophy: 'Round up all the military-age males, because we don't know who's good or bad.' " Col. Alan King, a civil affairs officer working at the Coalition Provisional Authority, had a similar impression of the 4th Infantry's approach. "Every male from 16 to 60" that the 4th Infantry could catch was detained, he said. "And when they got out, they were supporters of the insurgency."


article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300495_pf.html

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. How could the land of microsoft, ipods, mri machines and so on

let such dumb stuff happen? :sarcasm:

[genie_weenie]

2. Ah Asymetrical Warfare

Who's a *good* guy? Who's a *bad* guy? Who's providing food, shelter and supplies to the *enemy*? Whom do you target?

I guess one answer is everyone. And by your actions you turn ALL against you...

A guerilla force need not engage (Damn girlie Men!) but simply be able to credibly claim they still exist...

And so it goes...

To bad this will get lost on the Tide of Monday Morning News Blitz...

[don954]

3. Looked Weird and Felt Wrong'

describes this entire fscking war...

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4. entire Bush regime