B36 News - 13 October 2006

It's something of a bitter-sweet occasion today, but a lot more sweet than bitter. I'll soon be meeting the guy who's going to replace me here and will be working to get him spun up on how things work and what his responsibilities will be. As such, my attention may have to shift more away from the blog and towards handover preperation.

While this is most assuredly NOT the last news update, the past week is probably the last full week of daily updates. I haven't really figured out what kind of schedule that I'll keep posting on, but rest assured I'll still do my part to help raise awareness of the progress we're making.

I'm not sure if my replacement will continue the blog, I'd imagine that if he's anything like me, he'll be so busy trying to figure things out for the first few months that he'll barely have time to eat let along write in the blog. I'll pose the question, but no promises.

And now, the good news from Iraq-

'Lost' Anbar
Remember when it was reported that Anbar was 'lost' to the insurgents? I guess the 300 Iraqi Army Soldiers who just graduated from boot camp there in Anbar didn't hear that one.

“The (Iraqi Army’s) noncommissioned officers are really stepping up. They’re developing their own schedules and teaching all the classes,” said Army Master Sgt. Kary C. Allen, school commandant and senior advisor at the Regional Training Center here. “The instructors had a lot in front of them, and overall they’ve done an admirable job.”

Sadr City Raid
On the 10th I posted a story about a combined Coalition/ISF raid in Sadr City that resulted in the capture of IED builder. In yesterday's MNF-I press briefing, MG Caldwell released a chart with much more detailed information about that specific raid and made the following comment:

More specifically, you can see it there. You can see the troops from the operation that night coming in towards the objective site. They drove into Sadr City. Primary target -- it says two here -- it was actually five persons that were detained. There was one hostile that was killed in that engagement, but there was no escalation of force required other than that. So they were able to get the specific person in question.

The reason we went in -- that person we assessed to be an IED maker and key member of an illegal armed group that had links clearly to death squad activities. No question who this person was, and we wanted him. He had been on one of our high-value target lists, and he's now currently in detention, along with five other personnel we picked up at that site.

So I mean, we're conducting operations still throughout the city. It's not any one particular focus area. If we find somebody like this -- doesn't matter where they are -- and they're operating outside the law, we're going to go after them. We just did it on the 9th of October, just a couple days ago.

Man's Best Friend
While not strictly a "good news story", I couldn't not post this picture. It was taken by SGT Thomas Wheeler of the 138th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment.