--- Page 1 ---
94Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
While 1st Marine Division had been reducing the
Baghdad Division near Al Kut, the Army's 3d Infantry
Division, with the 101st Airborne Division in trace,
had continued its march up through the western
desert, reducing resistance in and around the cities of
Najaf, Karbala, and As Samawah. The relationship be-
tween these two divisions was not unlike the rela-
tionship between 1st Marine Division and Task Force
Tarawa, with the heavier force in the lead and the
lighter force securing the lines of communication. By
3 April, the 3d was on the outskirts of Baghdad,
ready to move on Saddam International Airport, soon
to be renamed Baghdad International Airport, or
"BIA.P," as it came to be known to most American
military personnel. (General McKiernan viewed the
airport as one of the enemy system's key nodes, both
as a symbol and as a useful piece of real estate; he
placed considerable emphasis on seizing it and plant-
ing his own flag on it.) On the same day, the Marine
division was once again on the march toward Bagh-
dad, from the southeast. Along the way, the 5th
Marines fought one of the fiercest engagements of
the war on Route 6 near the town of Al Aziziyah.
The enemy was a mix of Republican Guard
troops, Saddam Fedayeen, and foreign "volunteer"
fighters from Syria, Egypt, and other Arab countries.
During the day, the division lost an M1A1 Abrams
tank to a mobility kill and three more to bad luck,
transmission problems and mud, making it one of the
worst days of the war for Marine armor. Neverthe-
less, there was no stopping the advancing Marines, or
the tank recovery teams, for that matter, which over-
came significant obstacles to get the tanks off the bat-
tlefield and back to friendly lines.309
By 5 April, the 3d Infantry Division was ready to
launch the first of its "Thunder Runs" from the west,
its version of the "in-and-out" raids into Baghdad.
There was some hard fighting on the way in and out
of town. As usual the losses were disproportionate.
The Army lost one M1A1 Abrams, but the Iraqi losses
were far greater. At the same time, other units from
the 3d Division moved west and north to isolate
Baghdad.
One of the most amazing things about the "Thun-
der Runs" is that they, and subsequent forays into
Baghdad, were filmed by television crews and broad-
cast, in real time or near real time, almost as if they
were sporting events. But not everyone could watch.
The frontline commanders at the regimental level and
below did not have much information about what
was going on in the "outside" world, the world out-
side their regiment, perhaps their division; there was
a "digital divide" between them and their seniors in
the rear, where the amount of information available
was simply staggering. The more senior headquar-
ters had a staff with a mind-numbing array of com-
puters, televisions, telephones, and the like. The
CFLCC command center at Camp Doha, Kuwait,
looked something like mission control in Houston,
an amphitheater with enormous screens at the front
of the room and rows of desks with computer termi-
nals and telephones. The I Marine Expeditionary
Force Main was in the "Bug," the somewhat less com-
prehensive but still very well connected portable
command post. Television sets tuned to news chan-
nels were ubiquitous at the higher headquarters, in
offices, mess halls, gymnasiums, and berthing spaces.
It was almost literally impossible to get away from
televised images of the war on the Cable News Net-
work or on the Fox News Channel, whose embedded
reporters were popular both with military audiences
and with the troops themselves.310
On this, the "high" side of the digital divide, there
was, arguably, too much information available. It was
difficult to know which data stream to enter, how to
extract what was relevant, and how to combine
streams. Assessment played an important role in
managing data. At I MEF, the future operations sec-
tion was charged with assessing progress toward
goals and laying out upcoming decision points. In
the vernacular, the calculus was here is where we
are, here is where we are trying to go, and here is
where we will have to make a decision about the
route we need to take in order to get there.311 At
CFLCC, General McKiernan and his chief of staff,
General Robert Blackman, had organized the staff by
function rather than by traditional Napoleonic sec-
tion, and created the effects board in order to think
of the battle in terms of the effects they wanted to
have, rather than the objectives they wanted to seize.
Then they instituted the battle update assessment
(BUA) in place of the battle update brief (BUB). Vir-
tually every day during the fight, either the com-
manding general or one of his principal staff officers
chaired this virtual staff meeting, which was an at-
tempt to manage the data flow and distill it into a
useful form. Run by the CFLCC staff,it was con-
ducted by secure video teleconference and included
as participants senior officers (usually flag rank) from
all of the major subordinate commands. Eschewing
the awkward-sounding acronym "BUB," General
McKiernan had opted for the more euphonious
"BUA" because he wanted to make the point that the
meeting was not about information as much as as-
sessment. He described the battle update assessment
as an attempt to lay the foundation for "decision su-

--- Page 2 ---
Baghdad 95
Command in the Information Age
A t senior headquarters there has probably
nnever been so much incoming information as
there was during the Iraq War, whether it came
from official sources or from unofficial sources
such as Cable News Network or Fox News. Putting
more information into the hands of senior com­
manders looks, at first glance, like setting the con­
ditions for micromanagement. But generally that
did not happen. First, most seniors seemed to ex­
ercise restraint the majority of the time. Lieutenant
General David D. McKiernan, for one, understood
he was there to shape the fight and then leave the
details up to subordinate commanders. Second,
even if he had wanted to micromanage, the pace
of operations generally outstripped the pace of in­
formation, especially of good information. Gen­
eral McKiernan commented that since first reports
were so often wrong, it was better not to act on
them. Finally, even if a higher headquarters had
good information and wanted to micromanage, it
was often difficult to do so, especially if the sub­
ordinate command was moving or was at or
below the digital divide. Communications with
mobile units or units in built-up areas were just
not that good.
Even routine management was difficult. The
staffs who tried to stay ahead of the curve and
"paper the war" often failed, at least between 20
March and 9 April. Events happened faster than
anyone could write old-fashioned operations or­
ders, especially fragmentary orders, before they
were overtaken by events. One of the operations
officers at the 1st Marine Division, Lieutenant
Colonel Paul]. Kennedy, commented that the op­
erations tempo was such that he could not wait
for the actual fragmentary orders, but found it pos­
sible to work off the preliminary warning orders
put out by I MEF.* This was even true at lower lev­
els. At Regimental Combat Team 5, Colonel]oseph
F. Dunford found he could not control his com­
mand through any kind of systematic planning
process after the Opening Gambit.** Interestingly,
the special operations community appeared to
have an unusually long planning cycle, up to 96
hours, which did not make for happy customers at
I MEF. As one senior commander commented, "If
they cannot plan and execute any faster, we are
*LtCol Paul J. Kennedy intvw, 6Nov03 (MCHC, Quantico, VA).
**Col Joseph F. Dunford intvw, 17May03 (CAT, Studies and
Analysis Division, MCCDC).
going to have a lot of highly trained guys doing
flutter kicks in the rear during ops."* Along the
same lines, comments were made about the
process for generating Coalition Forces Air Com­
ponent Command sorties being far too slow.
The result was more and more instances of
"healthy," straightforward command and control.
Imaginative commanders brought "new" products
on line to replace the older, barely manageable
processes that looked in many ways like a return
to the basics. Effects-based planning was one such
product. When it worked as intended, General
McKiernan's battle update assessment was an­
other. Written or "audible," most operations orders
in Operation Iraqi Freedom were about desired ef­
fects and reflected the commander's intent. Speak­
ing for division, the operations officer during
Operation Iraqi Freedom, Lieutenant Colonel
Clarke R. Lethin, made a pitch for communicating
that intent:
How many times have we seen comman­
der's intent developed by the staff, lethargi­
cally reviewed by the commander, and then
delivered in a briefing without the least bit of
emotion? [By contrast,] the division fought by
[traditional] commander's intent-a state­
ment of intent that reflected the comman­
der's personality, intuition, sense of purpose,
and then [was] delivered to every Marine and
sailor in the division. **
Lethin could have been speaking for I MEF as
a whole. General James Conway and his subordi­
nates made distinct efforts to communicate their
intent, in person, to the extent possible, to every
member of their commands. This was one reason
for their series of "go-to-war" speeches. They did
much the same after the force crossed the line of
departure. Although General Conway could have
commanded I MEF from Camp Commando in
Kuwait, he believed it was necessary to stay for­
ward, to see for himself what was going on, and
to meet with his commanders face-to-face. He left
the staff work, and the increasingly time-consum­
ing Coalition Forces Land Component Command
(CFLCC) battle update assessments, to others and,
as his forces advanced deeper into Iraq, moved
*Quoted in LtCol Mark M. TuB intvw, 18May03 (CAT, Studies
and Analysis Division, MCCDC).
**LtCol Clarke R. Lethin, "1st Marine Division and Operation
Iraqi Freedom," Marine COlps Gazette, Feb04, pp. 20, 22.

--- Page 3 ---
96 Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
Photo courtesy of 1st Marine Division
The typical forward combat operations center was fully staffed with immediate access to both classified
and unclassified digital and analog communications.
the I MEF Forward command post first to Jalibah
on 24 March and then to An Numaniyah in early
April. Just before the assault on Baghdad, Conway
very nearly succeeded in his attempts to visit every
unit in 1st and 7th Marines, which were about to
engage in the difficult task of subduing the capi­
tal city. Almost like a commander in the u.s. Civil
War, he wanted to see, and be seen by, his
Marines before the battle.' In similar fashion, Gen­
eral James Mattis kept his finger on the pulse of
his division during the battle. He separated himself
from the "noise" of staff work and, in search of a
purer form of warfighting, set off on the battlefield
with a tiny retinue and a cell phone. He prose­
cuted the war as much through personal contact
with his commanders, either face-to-face or on the
telephone, as through staff channels.
Those who did not meet personally with Gen­
eral Mattis could read his intents messages that
were posted, sometimes daily, on the division Web
site on the SIPRnet for all with access to this clas­
sified network to see. These messages were short,
one or two pages long, and written in plain Eng­
lish, outlining the situation as Mattis and his staff
saw it and telling readers what the division in­
tended to accomplish. The same was true of some
of the slides presented at the battle update as­
sessments and posted on the CFLCC website; the
best slides were carefully drafted and approved by
the commander himself, containing "balloons"
clearly highlighting his intent. Many staff officers
'LtCol Williard A. Buhl intvw, 4Nov03 (MCHC, Quantico, VA).
began the day by reviewing what was posted on
the CFLCC website and those of higher, adjacent
and subordinate commands. One staff officer,
Colonel Ronald J. Johnson, Brigadier General
Richard F. atonski's operations officer, com­
mented that posting information about Task Force
Tarawa on the web enabled I MEF to keep track
of the task force and simplified relations between
tl1e two commands.'
Transmitting products like the intents messages
and the battle update assessment slides, the SIPR­
net web made this one of the most democratic
wars in the nation's history in the sense that if you
had access to a classified computer, as most staff
officers and commanders did, you could be em­
powered by information tl1at in the past was held
only by a few officers. The availability of infor­
mation could make operations that much more ef­
ficient. Staffs with access to the same data could
plan and operate at the same time without going
through time-consuming coordination rituals.
Gone were the days when planners had to work
in isolation and then pushed products up their
stovepipes for their commanders to approve be­
fore the commanders passed it to their counter­
parts. This usually far outweighed the downside,
which was that now "an overeager command
could monitor every potential contingency and
plan for commitments that would never be leVied,
creating unnecessary confusion and fatigue.""
'Reynolds, Journal, entry for IJuly04.
"Fontenot, et aI., On POint, p. 11.

--- Page 4 ---
Baghdad97
periority."It was to enable the commanders to make
decisions in the course of their duties after the as-
sessment. He wanted to hear how the major subor-
dinate commands assessed their current and future
situations, on the operational level of war, thinking
ahead at least 96 hours.312*
Both General McKiernan and General Blackman
thought the battle update assessment often fell far
short of the mark. Some briefers simply recited stag-
gering laundry lists of events as opposed to concise,
conceptual summaries of how they saw the battle,
and were cut short by McKiernan or Blackman, once
with "No, no, no, no—just tell me what I need to
know." The various Service cultures were on display
during the assessment, with Army commands tending
to report in great detail, while the Marines reported
more concisely though not necessarily more concep-
tually, and the British Army seemed to want to report
as little as possible. As time went on, the presenta-
tions became longer, less conceptual, and more fac-
tual, perhaps because of the press of battle. Usually
run at 1000 or 1100 local every morning, the assess-
ment could occupy a large chunk of a staff officer's
or even a commander's day, since it generated its
own set of pre-meetings and post-meetings, and
there were complicated slides to prepare on Power-
Point. Some commanders decided to delegate the
battle update assessment function to others and sel-
dom appeared on the CFLCC screen.
One thing that distracted staff officers and com-
manders from assessment was the factual reporting
they believed they had to focus on, in part on ac-
count of pressure from higher headquarters. Many
military reporting procedures had not changed much
since World War II, Korea, or Vietnam—the battalion
reporting to the regiment to the division, and so forth,
a system that worked well enough when the front
was relatively static but did not work well when there
were multiple, simultaneous lines of operation. It was
difficult for units on the move to communicate, es-
pecially in built-up areas, because they were busy
with other tasks and because the technology often
let them down. The I MEF current operations officer,
Colonel Dennis Judge, commented that he always
knew where his forces were, no thanks to combat re-
porting, which, he said, "just was not there." Instead
he was able to rely on automated systems like the
"Blue Force Tracker," which did not require anyone
to stop what he or she was doing during combat op-
*Thegeneral procedure at FLC and other major commands was
for operational planning teams, or other groups of specialists
drawn from various disciplines, to study problems, propose solu-
tions, and for senior officers to make decisions in small groups.
erations to write and send a report.3*
There were others whose job was to report in real
time and who had the technology to do so without
havingtowork throughamilitarychain-of-
command: the embedded journalists, whose work
appeared on the ever-present television screens. The
media had been "embedded" (this war's jargon for
"assigned") down to the battalion level for the dura-
tion of hostilities and had the ability to report directly
to their home offices, which in turn were able to re-
broadcast their stories in very short order.3l4** What
often happened was that higher headquarters would
pick up a breaking story on the media and then go
back down the chain-of-command to get the official
reporting about it, which would painstakingly work
its way back up the chain and seemed often to be
wrong, at least initially. Some staff officers concluded
either that "first reports are always wrong" or that
they needed to browbeat their subordinates into
doing a better job of reporting. But the problem per-
sisted throughout the campaign. As one CFLCC staff
officer quipped, "If you want information bad, you
will get bad information."
In early April, as events unfolded around Bagh-
dad at dizzying speed, every commander desperately
wanted up-to-the minute information however he
could get it, whether from the television newsmen,
whose reporting was amazingly vivid and reasonably
accurate (on television you could literally hear and
see the tanks fire their main guns at Iraqis along the
main streets of Baghdad), from the battle update as-
sessments, or even from the official spot and situation
reports, which were less timely and far less vivid but
a little more accurate.
In the absence of other guidance, the Marines op-
erated in accordance with the next senior comman-
der's intent, which remained simple and consistent:
encircle the capital and conduct raids. The I MEF staff
officers reported that their plans were to "continue
to establish the eastern outer cordon of Baghdad
and...[beprepared to] support further CFLCC mis-
sions... [in support of] regime removal."315 Since there
was little by way of amplifying instructions, they had
the leeway to exploit opportunities as they saw them.
During a conversation on 6 April, Colonel Steven
*The blue force tracker included a transponder that transmitted its
location and received the location of all other transponders on the
same system, displaying them on a small screen. Since it was not
line-of-sight but relied on satellites, it had clear advantages over
some "legacy" systems to identify friend and foe.
**By and large, the results of embedding were favorable all
around; the reporting had more depth than it otherwise might
have, and many journalists seemed more sympathetic to their sub-
jects than they had been in previous conflicts.

--- Page 5 ---
Hummer of 7th Marines commented that CFLCC had
not issued orders telling the field how to conduct
raids, and he planned to do it his own way.316
On that day, the Army was still planning in-and-
out raids. On 7 April, the day of the second "Thun-
der Run," the 3d Infantry Division reported that it
controlled a zone from the international airport to
one of Saddam's palaces, with armor at all the main
intersections in between, but planned to pull back to
the airport. Soon the plan changed; the troopers be-
lieved they could hold their ground in downtown
Baghdad. This was fine with General McKiernan,
who endorsed the idea when General William Wal-
lace told him about the situation. General McKiernan
made it plain that it was the corps commander's call;
this was a tactical decision, best left to the com-
mander who was in contact with the enemy.317
While the Army was raiding into Baghdad, the
Marines were working to cross the last major obsta-
cle on their way to Baghdad. That was the Diyala
River, located east of the city and flowing roughly
north to southeast into the Tigris. It had been briefed
as a minor obstacle with numerous fording sites.318
But this was definitely not the case for the Marines,
who found it a challenge iust to get close enough to
the river to take a look at it. Even with engineering
support, crossing did not look easy; the problem was
that the riverbanks were either steep, muddy, or
both, and the local roads were bad. On the afternoon
of 6 April, division reported with some frustration
that it had completed a reconnaissance of some 60
kilometers of the Diyala and had "found no viable
crossing."39 It had also encountered stiff resistance
in some places.
On 7 April, the frustration continued, preventing
forward movements, which may have been a bless-
ing in disguise. General Mattis' comments for that
day, and the next, in the daily I MEF sitrep reflected
his concern that the logistical situation was "tenuous"
and that his command could be nearing a "logistical
culminating point," fairly grim words for a very "can-
do" commander. He concluded that he was deter-
mined to continue "all previous measures to lighten
the logistical burden in hopes of building up sub-
stantial stocks...forfuture operations," which in-
cluded conserving artillery ammunition.32° On 8 April
he wrote that the division had only one "day of sup-
ply" of food and that it was so low on artillery am-
98Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
©The Boston Herald/Kuni Takahashi
Noncommissioned officers of the 3d Battalion, 4th Marines, urge their fellow Marines to cross the damaged
Diyala Bridge underfire on the southeast outskirts of Baghdad. The award-winning photograph was taken by
The Boston Herald staffphotographer, Kuni Takahashi.


--- Page 6 ---
munition it had decided to rely more heavily on the
air wing than on artillery for counterbattery and
preparatory fires.32' But on 8 April he was able to re-
port that his regiments were all across the Diyala.
They had crossed using a variety of means—from seiz-
ing bridges, to building bridges, to swimming vehi-
cles across. At two locations, the 8th Engineer
Support Battalion played a critical role, putting in as-
sault bridging while under fire, something the Ma-
rine Corps had not done for decades. At one RCT 1
crossing site, Iraqi resistance had ebbed as the am-
phibious tractors entered the water. One of the Iraqi
prisoners of war explained why: "When we saw the
tanks floating across the river, we knew we could not
win against the Americans."322
After crossing the Diyala, 7th Marines had gone
on to conduct a raid on the Rashid military complex
on the outskirts of Baghdad, the ideal intermediate
objective, not quite in the city but a good platform for
attacks into it when the time was right. At the same
time, 5th Marines was attacking first to the north and
then to the west to extend the cordon around the
city.323*The cordon would not be fully complete
until 0215Z on 9 April, when the division reported
that RCT 5 had cut Highway 2, which ran to the
northwest out of Baghdad, and that it had elements
of the U.S. Army's V Corps in sight.
By now, most units in the division had shed their
chemical suits, the protective overalls in the "wood-
land" green pattern that contrasted with the desert
camouflage uniforms and constricted movement, not
to mention how hot they could make the Marine or
sailor inside. The general assumption had been that
Saddam would use chemical or biological agents out-
side but not within the Baghdad city limits. The
Marines had been on tenterhooks, waiting for the
According to West and Smith, Go! Hummer "forgot" to issue a
withdrawal plan for this raid. This is consistent with Hummer in-
terview. The cordon would not be fully complete until 0215Z on
9 April, when the division reported that RCT 5 had cut Highway
2, which ran to the northwest out of Baghdad, and that it had el-
ements of the U.S. Army's V Corps in sight. (West and Smith,
March Up,pp.233-234:IMEF sitrepO8l800ZAprO3to
O91759ZAprO3 [Copy in Reynolds Working Papers, MCHC, Quan-
tico, VAI).
Baghdad99
DVIC DM-SD-04-01787
Engaging the enemy using a P7 amphibious assault vehicle, Marines assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th
Marines, attack an Iraqi sniper position near Baghdad.


--- Page 7 ---
seemingly inevitable report and enduring the almost
eerie absence of bad news. But it never came, and
the word was passed that since the Marines were
now at the city limits, commanders could make the
call on the right protective posture. For most Marines,
shedding the unwanted second skin was an incredi-
bly liberating and energizing experience, energy that
General Mattis wanted them to use on the enemy in
Baghdad.324
For their part, the wing and the service support
group had continued to do incredible work, pushing
supplies to the front, especially through the airhead
at Qalat Sikar, which was south of Al Kut, and getting
ready to set up shop at another airfield, Salman Pak,
on the outskirts of Baghdad. The Marines soon had
the food and ammunition they needed, and the cor-
don around the city was nearly complete, CFLCC's
precondition for the next phase. In the words of the
command chronology: "By establishing a cordon, the
division had closed the door for the enemy's escape,
and opened the door to operations inside the city."325
Now all they needed was permission to proceed be-
yond their limit of advance.
By 1800Z on 8 April, I MEF was planning to con-
duct "armed reconnaissance in force into Baghdad"
on the next day, and division reported that it was
contemplating specific "offensive operations within
Baghdad iot [in order to] complete the removal of the
Regime." This was quite a change from the day be-
fore, when the focus had been on crossing the
Diyala.326 Finally, early on 9 April, the division re-
ceived the go-ahead from General Conway to attack
its targets.327 A few hours later, the field historian at
force headquarters, Major Theodore R. McKeldin III,
noted that I MEF had been "cleared hot" by CFLCC
for the eastern part of the city.328 By the time McK-
eldin penned this note late in the morning, the regi-
mental combat teams had started to move toward the
objectives that the division staff had so carefully se-
lected. As one of the embedded reporters, Peter
Baker of The Washington Post, wrote, they were ex-
ecuting the plan for the day, which "was to keep
chipping away at...SaddamHussein's power struc-
ture. The Marines would stab into Baghdad and seize
a paramilitary base, a secret police headquarters and
a presidential palace."329
No one was entirely sure what the day would
bring. At the morning staff meeting, General Conway
commented to his staff that he thought there would
be a "big fight" for Saddam's palaces.33° Division had
concluded that the threat from conventional forces
had been "nearly eliminated," that there would he lit-
100Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
Photo courtesy of the 1st Marine Division
Marines from 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, on theirfirst patrol through a crowded community in Baghdad's Sad-
dam City, were greeted by thousands of apprehensive Iraqis who lined the streets.


--- Page 8 ---
Baghdad101
tie by way of centraiiy controlled, organized resist-
ance. But there were reports of irreguiar forma-
tions.33'The regiments were ready to fight if they
had to. Soon many of the reports from the front
showed quite a different picture. Cable News Net-
work was with 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, as it went
into the city, and Fox News was with 3d Light Ar-
mored Reconnaissance Battalion to the northeast. In-
stead of fighters, both battalions encountered crowds
of jubilant Iraqis who welcomed their liberation. One
of the armored reconnaissance company command-
ers, Captain Brian B. Smalley, said later that it was
"like driving through Paris in 1944. "332
In his trailer at force headquarters, now at An Nu-
maniyah, General Conway watched the dramatic tel-
evision footage, some of it showing the poor Shia
neighborhood known as Saddam City (and later as
Sadr City), which the Marines had originally by-
passed. The images impressed him so much that he
decided to approve Mattis' request, which had ap-
parently percolated up from the regiments, simply to
advance in zone until they encountered opposition.
But his optimism was guarded: "Our intent was to
constrict the city using various key objectives as lily
pads to reduce the regime on the east side. What we
are seeing on TV is happening in some Shia neigh-
borhoods. We cannot make the mistake to say that is
happening all over Baghdad. We still have a military
imperative to conduct operations to reduce
regime-related facilities."333
Conway discussed the issue with his Army coun-
terparts at a midday video teleconference, and ulti-
mately there was broad agreement on "a plan for a
decisive assault on the city" by the Marines and the
Army.334* This was the end of the various plans fora
methodical advance to seize particular objectives, let
alone the plan for in-and-out raids. The division fi-
nally had a free hand in Baghdad.335'
The result was that RCT 7 happily assaulted
Gen Matcis commented later that the division had "full coopera-
tion" from Gen Conway in his attack on Baghdad. Gen McKiernan
also permitted his subordinate commanders a wide range of lati-
tude in tactical decisions.
"The 1st Marine Division command chronology mentions another
plan that was supposedly under consideration on 9 April at "higher
headquarters." This was for a second operational pause, to give the
centralized authority in Baghdad a chance to turn over the city
peacefully. The division and I MEF are said to have opposed the
plan on the grounds that there was no longer any such authority.
It is not clear how division learned of this plan. "Army planners
had anticipated thatit could take weeks to reduce Baghdad
through ...raids..., allowingmore rime to bring forward mili-
tary police, civil affairs, and other units required to keep order."
(lstMarDiv ComdC, Jun03 [GRC, Quantico, VA]; Atkinson, In the
Company of Soldiers, pp. 287-288)
Photo courtesy of the 1st Marine Division
Cpl Edward Chin of Company B, 1st Tank Battalion,
drapes an American flag over the head of a large
statue of Saddam Hussein in the Firdos Square traf-
fic circle. It was quickly replaced with an Iraqifiag on
orders from above.
through its assigned area of operations, moving from
the southeast to the northwest on the north bank of
the Tigris. The list of sites they secured on that day
was impressive—the Ministry of Intelligence; the Min-
istry of Oil; Uday Hussein's offices, which were al-
ready burning when the Marines arrived; the Iraqi air
force headquarters, which had been destroyed; and
the Fedayeen headquarters, which was listed as "rub-
bled." At the end of the day, the division's plans were
just as ambitious as its accomplishments: "to have
made [the Marine] presence known in all of [our] city
zones by morning tomorrow [and] over the next few
days...allowingthe local populace... toreturn to
some sense of normal life."336
Among the sites in the 7th Marines area of opera-
tions was Firdos Square in downtown Baghdad. It
was dominated by a six-meter-high statue of Saddam
Hussein with his right arm raised in a heroic gesture.
The 3d Battalion, 4th Marines, rolled into the square
late in the day on 9 April. A crowd quickly gathered.
Given the proximity of the local haven for journalists,
the Palestine Hotel, there seemed to be as many for-
eign reporters as Iraqi citizens in the crowd. An Army
psychological operations team attachedtothe
Marines arrived and announced over a loudspeaker
in Arabic that the Marines had decided the statue
should come down. Millions around the world were
able to watch the events in real time on Cable News
Network and other television networks. A Marine
named Corporal Edward Chin, of Company B, 1st
Tank Battalion, climbed onto a derrick that extended
from his M88 tank retriever. He reached up and
placed an American flag over Saddam's face. Some of


--- Page 9 ---
102Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
the Iraqis said, "No, we want an Iraqi flag," and,
within one or two minutes, Chin took the flag down
and replaced it with an Iraqi flag. Next a stout rope
was fitted around the statue, and then to a cable on
the tank retriever. When the tank retriever pulled, the
statue came down, slowly, as the metal bent and Sad-
dam slipped off the pedestal. The crowd rushed for-
ward, swarming over the fallen statue. One group of
Iraqis dragged its head to an unknown but no doubt
unpleasant fate.337
There are a few arresting images in every war, and
the toppling of the Saddam statue was one of them
for the Iraq War. It was not exactly what the high
command wanted. Generals Tommy Franks and
McKiernan, each at his own headquarters, had been
watching the scene unfold on television, and when
the American flag went over Saddam's face, Franks
picked up the telephone to call McKiernan, who did
not need to be told why his boss was calling. Even
before General Franks could say anything, General
McKiernan said, "We are already on it."338 As com-
manders from General Franks to General Mattis had
told their troops over and over again, this was not a
war of American conquest, but of Iraqi liberation.
The flag that mattered was not the American flag; it
was the Iraqi flag, flown alone, in sites no longer
dominated by statues and murals of Saddam Hussein.
Nevertheless, the Saddam statue's fall marked a turn-
ing point; the end of Phase III seemed to be in sight,
even though there would still be some hard fighting.
While the statue had been coming down, Marines
a few blocks away had been exchanging fire with
regime loyalists, and the next day, 10 April, was no
better. On the contrary, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines,
spent the better part of the day securing two objec-
tives, Saddam's Almilyah Palace, one of many
A Marine provides cover with his 5.56mm M16A2 assault rifle, with attached M203 40mm grenade launcher,
as his squad from Company C, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines moves through the grounds of one of Saddam Hus-
sein's palaces in Baghdad.
OVICDM-SD-04-12213


--- Page 10 ---
Baghdad 103
Phase IV in Baghdad
L
ieutenant Colonel Christopher C. Conlin, com­
manding officer of 1st Battalion, 7th Marines,
wrote a vivid account of the quick and dramatic
hift from Phase III to Phase IV on the streets of
Baghdad:
Within minutes of our seizure of the capital,
one of my lieutenants was presented with
the rapidly expiring body of an Iraqi who
had been pried from a vehicle accident sec­
onds before. He was not a war casualty, but
a simple victim of a "routine" incident. The
fact that the locals brought him to us as he
was in his final death spasms was their un­
eqUivocal realization that the normal proce­
dure, going to the hospital or calling the
police, was gone. This episode was dupli­
cated throughout our zone with geometri­
cally increasing frequency. Frantic locals ran
up to tell us phones were out, doctors re­
ported hospitals being looted, and that the
water was off. They were desperate to know
where they should dump the trash, could
they use cell phones, or was it OK to drive to
their father's house in Mosul? They ap­
proached us to arrest a strange man with a
gun lurking in their neighborhood. We were
throughout the capital and the country, and Imam
Abu Hanifah Mosque. First they had to drive through
a hail of rocket-propelled grenades and "a torrent of
heavy machine gun and small arms fire," and then,
perhaps the ultimate nightmare, they got lost and had
to make a V-turn while under fire. If you think it is
bad enough to drive in an unfamiliar city in the Mid­
dle East, imagine what it is like to do so with people
shooting at you. The Marines were encountering for­
eign "jihadis," Islamic fundamentalist paramilitary
fighters. The mosque was a target because it had
been the location of what someone called an "Elvis
sighting," Saddam Hussein was said to have entered
the mosque, and the Marines were told to secure the
perimeter to keep anyone from entering or leaving.
The report turned out to be false, but the jihadis still
fought with determination. By the end of the day,
RCT 5 reported it had lost one Marine killed in action
and 42 wounded, along with two tank mobility kills,
another unusually bad day for tanks in this war. The
commander of RCT 5, Colonel Dunford, remembered
approached by alleged sheiks who de­
manded to [see] "his Excellency the General"
about their tribe's loyalty to Mr. Bush .... On
and on the requests came. All being dili­
gently received and somehow answered by
our young squad leaders and platoon lead­
ers. We too were in transition. Having over­
whelmed organized resistance, we were hot
on the trail of Saddam's ... Fedayeen ....
Our aggressive small unit leaders were able
to hit them in their homes and offices in ever
quickening succession. We created hunter­
killer teams on the fly, sending our very tal­
ented Humint Exploitation Teams ... PsyOps
and Civil Affairs ... Teams down to the pla­
toon level . . . Companies worked huge
urban sectors usually rotating platoons to
achieve a 24/7 battle rhythm. The effect was
dramatic .... Within a week of liberation,
the markets were open again, ... many were
going back to work, there was a new police
force reorganizing neighborhoods were or­
ganizing ... Lessons Learned: ... Press flesh,
kiss the babies, and kill the enemy.'
'Col Christopher C. Conlin, "What do you do for an encore?"
Marine Corps Gazette. Sep04, pp. 74-80.
10 April as both the worst and the best day of the
war. It seemed like the worst day while his regiment
was heavily engaged in downtown Baghdad. His fear
was that there would be many more days of heavy
fighting. But it turned into the best day when his 1st
Battalion reported that the situation was well in hand
and that after the fight it was encountering crowds
of cheering people, some eight or nine deep, shout­
ing in broken English, "Good, good, Mister!~339
The fighting tapered off rapidly, the regime's "last
stand~ in Baghdad turned out to be so short that it
was anticlimactic. There was no sign of Saddam.
Some thought (erroneously, as it turned out) he
could be lying under the rubble of a restaurant in the
Mansour district that had been struck by smart bombs
on 8 April. His government had simply evaporated.
The civil servants, including "Baghdad Bob,~ the in­
famous spokesman who kept predicting on televi­
sion that Coalition forces were on the brink of
annihilation, had simply stopped coming to work.
Very soon looters took over the city. If the focus on

--- Page 11 ---
9 and 10 April had been on crowds who were liter-
ally applauding the collapse of the Saddam regime,
it quickly shifted to those who were taking advan-
tage of the situation. The television news broadcast
one scene after another of Iraqis, young and old, car-
rying away anything that was not bolted down from
government offices, from official residences, from
army bases, even from schools and hospitals. Partic-
ularly upsetting for some westerners was the appar-
ent looting of the antiquities museum, a repository
of ancient and irreplaceable treasures.
The extent of the looting, and what to do about it,
certainly seemed to catch the Coalition by surprise.
The basic outlines of OPlan 1003V did not extend far
beyond the goals of securing the oil fields, removing
the regime, and finding weapons of mass destruction;
there had been a great deal of detailed planning, and
rehearsals, for Phase III, but the post combat Phase
IV had, by comparison, been virtually neglected. If
Phase III had been the favorite son, Phase IV was the
redheaded stepchild and now he was acting out.34°
When asked about the looting, American officials
were low-key, On 9 April, Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld downplayed the problem, as did Generals
Conway and Mattis and other senior Coalition com-
manders. They implied that the Iraqi people had
earned the right to profit at the expense of their dic-
tatorial government, and that there was, in any case,
only so much the U.S. forces could do, given their
limited numbers. General Conway said, "Does it
bother me...thatI see people taking an office chair
or the guts of a refrigerator or an air conditioner? Not
really,...atleast [noti at this point....[litis got to
be the pent-up frustration they've experienced for the
better part of their lives."341 General Mattis offered the
uncharacteristically mild observation that the Coali-
tion was "in that kind of never-never land right now
we're not in full control [yet], so you're in that
transition period."342
By the next day, the Coalition forces were shifting
their approach and trying to address the problem as
best they could with the limited resources at their dis-
posal. Early on the morning of 10 April, a pedestrian
suicide bomber blew himself up and injured five
men from 5th Marines. The incident caught General
Conway's attention. He called it "a sobering reminder
104Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
ovic DMSD-O4-O89O4
Armed with M16A2 assault rifles and 81mm shoulder-launched anti-armor rocket launchers, Ma rifles from
Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, clear the streets of Iraqi resistance block-by-block on their way to se-
curing the Presidential Palace.


--- Page 12 ---
Baghdad105
•..thatmuch work remains to be done." The
Marines "must.., quickly transition to Phase IV Stage
B civil-military/humanitarian assistance operations to
stabilize the situation and demonstrate our resolve to
the newly liberated...people"of Iraq. The
theme at the I MEF's morning staff meeting was that
the Marines needed to switch from a combat role to
a stabilizing role. For that reason, Marines were or-
dered to take steps to control the looting, which in-
cluded the protection of International Red Cross
facilities by 7th Marines.343 On the same day, 7th
Marines took the initiative to establish a civil military
operations center in the centrally located Palestine
Hotel. The other regiments followed suit in short
order, reaching out to local leaders and generally es-
tablishing useful contacts in the interests of restoring
some semblance of order and basic municipal serv-
ices. The division's artillery regiment, 11th Marines,
played its part. Realizing he was unlikely to need
much more artillery support, General Mattis took the
unusual step of turning the division civil military op-
erations center over to 11th Marines and assigning
the artillerymen their own sector of Baghdad along
with the infantry regiments.344 Late in the day, he was
feeling upbeat about the situation: "The city in our
zone is...[almost]entirely in USMC hands. While it
will remain a dangerous place for days to come, the
local populace is wholly supportive of our efforts and
active patrolling will impose our will.... Wewill
calm the situation and...buildon the goodwill we
have experienced to date."345
That Baghdad was still a dangerous place was an
understatement. The Marines faced a number of
daunting tasks from turning the lights back on to ex-
plosive ordnance disposal. One problem was, in the
words of the division's command chronology,it
seemed that "virtually every block" in Baghdad had
its own weapons cache. Some of these caches were
enormous, "containing every conceivable type of
weapon and ammunition, to include tanks, mortars,
artillery pieces, and even...surface-to-surfacerock-
Onthe march up to Baghdad, Army and Ma-
LCdr Bryan Schumacher, left, and HM Zachary Rowe, of the Regimental Aid Station, 5th Marines, render med-
ical assistance to a wounded Iraqi civilian in the northern Baghdad suburbs.
DVIC DM-SD-04-03523


--- Page 13 ---
106Basrah,Baghdad and Beyond
rifleunits had, like Task Force Tarawa in An
Nasiriyah, found weapons caches throughout the
country, often in schools, hospitals, and mosques, to
say nothing of the enormous ammunition supply
points that covered acres and acres of ground. In the
convoluted logic of the Saddam regime, it was only
fitting that the capital itself be lavishly supplied and
ready for a drawn-out fight. Although Iraqi intentions
remained unclear, the discoveries suggested that the
regime had been getting ready to back up its threat
that the Coalition would face a people in arms, or
some kind of guerrilla war, if it invaded Iraq.347
Well to the south of Baghdad, Task Force Tarawa
had already been conducting Phase IV operations
over a vast stretch of country with its approximately
13,000 Marines and sailors. When it expanded its
battle space to the north, it became responsible for
providing security along the major supply routes,
Routes 1 and 7, which meant it had to occupy or
neutralize threats in the area. This was in addition
to remaining responsible for An Nasiriyah, where
Tarawa Marines continued to make notable strides
in eliminating enemy resistance and establishing city
government. The city of Ad Diwaniyah astride Route
1 posed a typical challenge, which the Marines met
in ways that were becoming typical. ]n early April,
various kinds of enemy formations continued to
pose a threat to convoys passing through. While cor-
doning off the city, Tarawa made good use of its op-
erational Detachment-Alpha, a U.S. Army Special
Forces unit that cultivated the population and gath-
ered actionable intelligence. This in turn led to at-
tacks on specific targets with precision munitions.
Similarly, in the nearby city of Al I-lamsha, informa-
tion gathered by special operations forces led to a
strike against the Ba'ath Party that caused the death
of the local Ba'athist leader and was followed by a
successful revolt by the local citizenry.
In much the same way, Task Force Tarawa pros-
ecuted attacks against enemy forces in several other
cities along Route 7,theother major supply route.
These cities were Al Hayy, Qalat Sikar, and Ash Sha-
trah. Another city that more or less liberated itself
was Al Amarah, where elements of the task force
had gone to eliminate the 10th Armored Division
from 8 to 12 April in the "Battle of the Icons." In mid-
April, after the British expanded their zone to the
north and took charge in Amarah, Task Force
Tarawa shifted its focus to the cities of An Nu-
miniyah and Al Kut. The task force placed a battal-
ion of infantry in An Numaniyah, where I MEF main
had set up an interim command post, and set up its
own headquarters on the airfield at Al Kut in hard-
ened aircraft shelters that were mercifully cool, a
brief respite from the heat but not from the high
tempo of operations.348

--- Page 14 ---
Chapter 8
No Smell of Saltwater: North to Tikrit, South to Ad Diwaniyah
The expeditionary force's focus had always been
on Baghdad. The events of 9 and 10 April signaled
the end of the combat operation that most Marines
had expected to conduct. Those with longer memo-
ries remembered that before the war began, Coalition
Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC) had
gamed a scenario for securing the oil fields around
the city of Kirkuk from the south, instead of the north
or the east, and that the I MEF had written a branch
plan for Kirkuk.
Some 150 miles north of Baghdad, Kirkuk was the
oil capital of the north. The surrounding oil fields were
comparable in significance to the southern oil fields
and represented an objective far too important to ig-
nore. There had been various plans for the Army to se-
cure the area, especially by introducing the 4th
Infantry Division through Turkey. But if that proved
impossible, other CFLCC troops might have to ad-
vance from the south. After the war, General James
Conway remembered being asked by CFLCC if the
Marines could take on the mission if necessary, and he
answered that it could be done, if necessary. The force
was not looking for yet another mission at the end of
its supply tether but would take it on if tasked. When
asked on 9 April by a journalist about ordering the
Marines to advance to the north, General Conway
commented: "That would be tough for us. We are a
long way from our sea base. As Marines, [if] we do not
smell saltwater ...thatmakes us a little uneasy. That
said, our logisticians,...augmentedby our lain wing,
have done a magnificent job.... Totake [it].. an-
other couple [of] hundred miles would be extremely
difficult. It's difficult right now—that would be ex-
tremely difficult. But it might be something that we
have to ask our people to do."349 A few days later, dur-
ing a staff meeting, Conway made the sensible com-
ment: "We are not putting our hand in the air for that
[wel have enough [to do] already."35°
Coalition Forces Land Component Command's pre-
war questions meant it was not a complete surprise
when the issue came up again and occupied General
Conway and his staff on 10 April. The expeditionary
force issued a verbal order to division to "be prepared
to" proceed to Kirkuk, and to force service support
group and wing to be prepared to support the attack.
The guidance was to focus on the objective and to
avoid being sidetracked by enemy formations along
the way.35'
General James Mattis had already been thinking
about the north. Amazingly, he had recently gone on
record as being "prepared to continue the attack to
Kirkuk...andsecure the. ..oilfield." This was on
8 April, the day when it was worried about running
Out of ammunition while it was finishing the struggle
to get across the Diyala River, just before what would
be, for many of its Marines, the fight of a lifetime in
Baghdad.35' Even though division had apparently long
had a contingency plan on the shelf for an attack to
the north, this was just about as far forward as anyone
could, or did, lean in his fighting hole during Opera-
tion Iraqi Freedom.353
The 1st Marine Division then announced that it
could "collapse" its cordon around Baghdad and form
a task force, to be known as "Tripoli," after another
Marine march across desert sands, that of Lieutenant
Presley O'Bannon to Derna in 1805, to conduct the
operation.Theassistantdivisioncommander,
Brigadier General John F. Kelly, would command,
using the nucleus of the division's forward command
post.354
Preparations intensified on 11 April. The I Marine
Expeditionary Force issued a formal warning order for
the continuation of the attack to Kirkuk. Mattis de-
cided on the composition of the force. it would be
the division's three light armored reconnaissance bat-
talions: 1st, 2d, and 3d; 5th Battalion, 11th Marines;
and Company G, 2d Battalion, 23d Marines. This
would amount to the equivalent of a reinforced ar-
mored reconnaissance regiment. Logistics would roll
with the task force, which would have a dedicated
combat service support element; but some resupply
would have to come from the wing, which pitched in
with plans to establish forward arming and refueling
points as the task force moved north and secured suit-
able pieces of terrain. Cargo helicopters and C-130
Hercules cargo haulers, the workhorse of choice for
many missions in Iraq, would deliver supplies to the
arming and refueling points. By this point in the cam-
paign most acknowledged that the Marine KC-130s,
many of them piloted by reservists, were ideal for the
distances and the loads in Iraq; General James Amos
was to call them "the queen of the prom" in a postwar

--- Page 15 ---
108Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
MapbyW Stephen Hill
interview.355For its part, the division staff went so farthat had been set in motion before 10 April. Kurdish
as to analyze the makeup of the oil fields, build ob-forces, advised by U.S. Army Special Forces teams,
jective folders, and recommend schemes of maneu-seized the oil fields. As of 1800Z on 10 April, Coalition
ver to General Kelly.Forces Air Component Command stopped bombing
The I MEF plan for Kirkuk was overtaken by eventsthe city of Kirkuk, because organized enemy resist-


--- Page 16 ---
No Smell of Saltwater 109
The Other Prisoner ofWar Rescue Operation
S
ome of the most high-profile storie of the war
were about American prisoners of war, espe­
cially the rescue of Army Private First Clas Je ica
Lynch, who had been captured early in the fight­
ing around An asiriyah and later became ome­
thing of a media figure in the United State . On the
night of 1-2 April, Ta k Force Tarawa had facili­
tated her rescue. But the re cue at Samarra was as
memorable if not as celebrated. It was a victory
for the Marine traits of getting out meeting the
Iraqis, and taking calculated risks. On 13 April,
human intelligence exploitation team 3, led by Fi.rst
Lieutenant athan M. Boaz, entered the city, and
an Iraqi policeman approached with information
about U.S. prisoners. To pinpoint the location with­
out compromising the source, the exploitation
team's chief, Staff Sergeant Randy Meyer, gave the
policeman a global positioning system receiver and
told him how to use it to record the location of the
Americans, which the policeman did. Even though
he was under pressure to continue on to Tikrit, 3d
Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion com­
mander, Lieutenant Colonel Herman S. Clardy III,
decided on his own that the information was reli­
able enough to act on, and that trying to re cue
the prisoners was worth the time. Armored recon­
naissance scouts and exploitation team member
proceeded to storm the house pinpointed by the
informer and, without firing a shot, freed the seven
grateful soldiers-two pilots and five members of
Jessica Lynch's unit, who had also been captured
ance was crumbling. On 11 April, the city was in Kur­
dish hands. By late afternoon on the same day, CFLCC
changed the Marines' target to Tikrit, Saddam Hus­
sein's hometown, which was only about 100 miles
north of Baghdad. General Conway commented to his
staff by way of explanation that the Marines "were the
best force available now to do thi.s."356
Tikrit was assessed by various intelligence elements
as a logical place for the regime to make a last stand;
the division framed the operation as an attack to deny
the enemy safe haven and to prevent the escape of
high-value targets. The enemy forces that the division
expected to encounter were one or two brigades of
the Special Republican Guard and a few hundred
paramilitary fighters. The general assumption was that
the para militaries would fight but that the uniformed
soldiers would not.
DVIC DM-SD-04-07386
LCpl Curney Russell and Cpl Christopher Castro
from 3d Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion
prOVidea steady arm for rescued prisoner of war,
u.s. Army Spec Shoshana johnson of tbe 507th
Maintenance Battalion, as she and other repatri­
ated prisoners are led from a Marine KC-130 air­
craft at Kuwait City.
in An asiriyah on 22 March. One of the pilots
later described the re cue on television in vivid
terms, cheerfully recounting that he had never be­
fore been so glad to see a group of men who
looked like hollow-eyed killers coming to get him.
The news of their release was immediately briefed
throughout the theater, and the prisoners were
whisked to the rear.*
*In addition to the division command chronology, see LtCol
Herman S. Clardy III, email to author, 28Apr04 (Reynolds Work­
ing Papers, MCHC, Quantico, VA).
The change may have been frustrating to some
forces and division planners, but overall it was a pos­
itive development, since it was relatively easy to sub­
stitute Tikrit for Kirkuk, and Tikrit was closer to
Baghdad; the supply tether would not have to stretch
as far. In General Mattis' words: "The division is
stretched, but not to the breaking point, with stabi­
lization ops in Baghdad [and] TF Tripoli focused on
Tikrit. We are green on logistics, but will require
a new estimate of supportability if ordered to the
Kirkuk or Mosul area."357
What General Conway called "the final attack" of­
ficially began on the afternoon of 12 April, at 1255Z,
to be precise and proceeded rapidly up-country. It
was, in a sense, a quintessential Operation Iraqi Free­
dom operation. It was short-fused and had a com­
mander who stressed the need for speed. He

--- Page 17 ---
110Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
task-organized in a matter of hours, making good use
of two weapons systems that also seemed to have
been made for a place like Iraq, eight-wheeled light
armored vehicles and Cobra helicopter gunships. "It
was," the command chronology recalled, "comforting
[to have] the Cobra escort. They were masters at root-
ing around the enemy's potential hiding spots and
building our situational awareness around every cor-
ner.... Wegained a deep respect for the Cobra pi-
lots during the war."358 The wing's airborne forward
air controller complemented the work of the Cobras
and kept in touch with a section of Harrier jets that
were dedicated to the task force. When this piece of
division-wing coordination was reported to I MEF, the
word was that if anyone opened fire on the Marines,
he would not live to regret it.359
After leaving its assembly area, Task Force Tripoli
passed first through friendly territory, with Iraqis lin-
ing the roads to wave and shouting greetings like
"Good, good!" In Samarra, a city between Baghdad
and Tikrit, there was a happy event when the 3d Light
Armored Reconnaissance Battalion found and freed
seven American prisoners of war on 13 April. Then,
closer to Tikrit, the locals became less friendly and in
some cases downright hostile. There were even more
murals, portraits, and statues of Saddam here than in
other parts of the country, where they were certainly
plentiful enough, but the Marines noticed only a few
had been defaced. Both on 13 and 14 April, there was
"minimal contact" with enemy formations, occasional
firefights, some of them intense, on the way to the ob-
jective.
"Minimal contact" is the kind of phrase that senior
commands put in situation reports. To the Marine on
the ground who is risking his life during one of the
few firefights of the day, it certainly does not seem
"minimal," and the division's command chronology
contains vivid descriptions of fights with Fedayeen in


--- Page 18 ---
No Smell of Saltwater111
and around Tikrit. Even by the Iraqi standard, which
seemed to call for every school and mosque to be
filled with munitions, there was a great deal of military
hardware in the area. The Marines of 1st Light Ar-
mored Reconnaissance Battalion, for example, passed
through a "large area [south of Tikritl...withmulti-
ple revetments that contained enemy vehicles" and
then called in air strikes on the vehicles before pro-
ceeding on to a crossroads where they took a number
of rocket propelled grenade rounds, one of which
struck the tailpipe of a light armored vehicle. The
Marines returned fire, destroying two trucks and
killing five of the enemy. Once inside the city, the
Marines found massive amounts of ordnance, includ-
ing a compound with 30 warehouses of weapons and
a cache at a hospital containing literally thousands of
AK-47 rifles. The division concluded that "the amount
of ordnance found in our sector is overwhelming and
will require months of dedicated lift to remove it
all. "360
By15 April, fighting had tapered off, and Task
Force Tripoli found itself the de facto source of power
in Tikrit. The question was how to use that power to
address the bewildering array of problems that the city
faced. The existing power structure, the tribal sheikhs,
approached the task force, outlined the situation as
they saw it, and wanted to establish a leadership
council. Brigadier General John Kelly was reluctant to
deal with the sheikhs, who were hardly a democratic
body and had done business with Saddam Hussein. In
the end, he decided that the sheikhs represented as
good an interim local government as any and met
with them on 15 April to lay out his view of the situ-
ation. He repeated a number of basic themes: the
Marines would take responsibility for the security of
the area; the locals would help the Marines hunt down
any remaining foreign fighters or Saddam loyalists;
MSgt David Livingston from Marine Wing Support
Squadron 271 supervises a KC-130 Hercules offload
offuel at aforward arming and refueling point.
DVIC DM-SD-05-05193
and, finally, the sheikhs would bear much of the re-
sponsibility for restoring power, water, food, and med-
ical services. All of this was easier said than done; the
15 April meeting was simply the beginning of a
process that entailed numerous meetings between the
sheikhs on the one hand and General Kelly on the
other, as men conditioned by long-simmering feuds
and unaccustomed to democracy took their first ten-
tative steps away from a dictatorship that had domi-
nated their lives for 30 years. A by-product of the
good relations between General Kelly and the sheikhs
was their assistance in the peaceful "liberation" of the
city of Bayji about 25 miles north of Tikrit.
Meanwhile, out on the streets of Tikrit, the Marines
dealt with such challenges as a panicky crowd of cit-
izens who wanted to cross over a bridge that had
been weakened during the war; a group of vigilantes
who established their own checkpoints outside the
city, apparently to harass people they did not like; and
marauding Kurds, the ethnic minority who had suf-
fered at the hands of Saddam's regime and were not
inclined to treat the citizens of Tikrit gently. The
Marines' aggressive patrolling, typically by dismounted
infantry without flak vests and in soft covers, along
with their commonsense solutions to problems, re-
stored more than a small semblance of order to the
city within a few days.
Between 19 and 21 April, Task Force Tripoli con-
ducted a relief in place with the Army's 4th Infantry
Division and prepared to rejoin the main body of 1st
Marine Division. The 4th Infantry Division had spent
the war en route first to Turkey, where it had been
unable to land, and then to Iraq through Kuwait. Al-
though major combat operations had ended, this di-
vision characterized its move north to the zone it
would occupy as an "attack," which led to some un-
fortunate incidents. On 19 April, the Marine division
complained about U.S. Army Apache helicopters en-
tering Marine battle space "without permission or
clearance to engage," and then firing at abandoned
enemy armor located between the 2d and 3d Light Ar-
mored Reconnaissance Battalions. The 4th Infantry Di-
vision also seemed intent on treating the Tikritis as
hostile, which distressed the Marines, who had gone
to some lengths to establish good relations with the lo-
cals. General Mattis himself noticed that like the 3d
Infantry Division, the 4th had a lot of armored vehi-
cles and only a limited number of dismounts and went
on record with a prediction that "the lack of Army dis-
mounts is creating a void in personal contact and pub-
lic perception....Ourforces need to project
confidence in the security environment we have cre-
ated. That is best exemplified in light, mobile forces in


--- Page 19 ---
112Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
contact with the local citizenry sans helmets and flak
jackets and without armored vehicles. If we cannot
engender friendship and confidence in the local se-
curity environment, we cannot set the conditions for
good order integral to a return to civil control."6'
General Mattis' comment applied not only to Tikrit
but also to Baghdad. While Task Force Tripoli was se-
curing Tikrit and preparing for a relief in place with
4th Infantry Division, three regiments of the division
had been consolidating their gains in Baghdad and
getting ready to turn their zones over to 3d Infantry
Division in accordance with the plan for the occupa-
tion of Iraq. The civil-military operations center run
by the artillerymen of the 11th Marines, continued to
find stopgap solutions for the many problems they
faced; with remarkably little assistance or guidance
from anyone, it had established cells for police, fire,
electricity, water, and medical care, and the instant ex-
perts worked their issues as best they could. The op-
erations center appointed an interim police chief and
opened an Iraqi police academy. It facilitated and co-
ordinated the work of nongovernmental organizations
like CARE, the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, and the
World Food Program. Meanwhile, Out Ofl the streets,
the regimental combat teams maintained checkpoints
to control movement in their sectors, which they
moved often to frustrate any attempts to target them.
The division took some additional steps such as de-
livering public safety messages, in the hope of con-
trolling the rampant looting and widespread crime that
had broken Out when the regime collapsed and left a
power vacuum in Baghdad. Since this was something
no one had really planned for except in the most gen-
eral terms, there had been an ad hoc quality about
the guidance from CFLCC and I MEF about looting
and crime that seemed to boil down to "stop it if you
can" and left it up to the units in contact to come up
with workable solutions.362
Even though there was only so much the Marines
could do in the few days between the collapse of the
regime and their scheduled departure from Baghdad,
they appear to have made some progress. One Ma-
rine, Major Jason L. Morris, of 3d Battalion, 5th
Marines, observed that the eastern half of Baghdad
seemed to have returned to something like normalcy
within 10 days of the fall of the Saddam statue on Fir-
dos Square. Morris attributed this to the division's ap-
proach, which he characterized as relatively low
impact. Even in the days immediately after 9 April,
Marines allowed the local citizens to go about their
business so long as they did not interfere with Marine
business. There was certainly an active Marine pres-
ence in the streets, especially by dismounted in-
ovic DM-SD-04-16619
Marines assigned to the 1st Light Armored Recon-
naissance Battalion encamp below one of Saddam
Hussein 'spalaces in Tikrit the Iraqi president's home-
town.
fantrymen, but he did not think they gave the city the
feel of being under martial law. He supported General
Mattis' argument that infantrymen are better suited for
patrolling a city than armored vehicles.363
As impressive as its beginnings were, no one will
ever know how effective the division's occupation of
Baghdad would have been in the long run. By 15
April, if not before, the division staff had begun to
prepare for a turnover to the 3d Infantry 1)ivision, with
the assistance of the Army's 358th Civil Affairs
Brigade's Deliberate Assessment Team. I)etailed staff
work and command interaction followed at various
levels, more or less spontaneously, "without written
orders, instructions, or doctrine of any kind," to quote
the division's command chronology.364 The actual re-
lief in place in Baghdad occurred between 18 and 20
April, another eventful day. While elements of the di-
vision moved south to Ad Diwaniyah, where it re-
lievedtheArmy's 82d AirborneDivision and
established a new headquarters, I MEF convened a
combined Phase IV and retrograde-reconstitution-
regeneration conference at its dusty field headquar-
ters in An Numaniyah.
Phase III, the war from the line of departure in
Kuwait to the enemy center of gravity in Baghdad,
had gone by in the blink of an eye, a remarkable per-
formance by any standard. But there had been a cost.
For the Marines, the casualties were on the order of 75
killed in action and 300 wounded. Even if statistics did
not lessen the heartbreak of loss for each man who
died, the numbers were far smaller than had been
feared, which was something to be thankful for.365 The
Marines honored their dead and wounded and pre-
pared for the next phase of the operation.


--- Page 20 ---
Chapter 9
The Other War in the North: Marines in Kurdistan and Mosul
Task Force Tripoli was not the only Marine com-
mand that operated north of Baghdad, which in-
cluded great stretches of territory that fell under Joint
Special Operations Task Force North, commanded by
Colonel Charles T. Cleveland, USA. Cleveland, who
had apparently been in Iraqi Kurdistan for months,
reported not to Coalition Forces Land Component
Command (CFLCC) but to Coalition Forces Special
Operations Command, another CentCom depend-
ency. Using various kinds of paramilitary forces, he
ran the war in the northeast corner of Iraq, responsi-
ble for its defense from the Iraqi Army and for prepa-
rations to secure the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk and
their surroundings. He had, in a sense, taken on the
mission that had been assigned to the 4th Infantry
Division, to put pressure on Baghdad from the north,
or at least to manage the situation in the north in
order to prevent any surprises that might undermine
the offensive in the south. To do this he had at his
disposal a U.S. Special Forces Group, made up of
three Special Forces battalions, and Kurdish forma-
tions as well as Coalition airpower in general sup-
port. There was a U.S. Air Force contingent with
some air and ground assets complementing the Spe-
cial Forces, and Colonel Cleveland could also request
sorties from Coalition Forces Air Component Com-
mand. As for the Kurdish fighters, there were some
70,000 of them, grouped into two militias identified
with the two main Kurdish political parties, the Patri-
otic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdish Democratic
Party, which were now cooperating against the com-
mon enemy but had in the past sometimes turned on
each other, exhibiting some of the less attractive as-
pects of a warlike culture. The Special Forces had
been working with these fighters for at least a few
months 366
Therewas another group working in the north
that did not come under Cleveland but cooperated
with his command. It was the handful of Marines
known as the Military Coordination and Liaison Com-
mand, led by Major General Henry P. Osman, the
commanding general of II Marine Expeditionary
Force from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, another
one of the low-key but very effective generals who
left their mark on Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Military Coordination and Liaison Command
Photo courtesy of Field History Branch
MajGen Henry P. Osman, a graduate of Old Domin-
ion University, was commissioned in 1969. Over the
ensuing years, he commanded a rifleplatoonand
company in Vietnam, a 1st Marine Division infantry
battalion, and served in numerous staff assignments
before assuming command of H Marine Expedi-
tionary Force in August 2002.
had a complicated history. In the fall of 2002, Gen-
eral Osman had watched Brigadier General Richard
Natonski and 2d Marine Expeditionary Brigade's
preparations to join I MEF in Kuwait for the attack
from the south. This was neither unexpected nor a
particular hardship to II MEF; since the end of the
Cold War, and the shift in focus away from the North
Atlantic, II MEF had served largely as a force provider
for other theaters. The 2d Marine Expeditionary
Brigade was by design a detachable module of II
MEF. General Natonski himself was the deputy ex-
peditionary force commander, as well as the com-
mander of the brigade. Similarly, many of his officers
were dual-hatted, with both force and brigade func-
tions. The deployment of the brigade meant the force
staff had only a small residual capability, but it was
still a capability that could be put to good use in the


--- Page 21 ---
114Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
CentCom theater. General Osman believed that II
MEF could field a small joint task force and told
Headquarters Marine Corps as much.367 What hap-
pened next was a dialogue between II MEF and
Headquarters Marine Corps over the potential uses
of II MEF's staff, animated at least in part by the Com-
mandant of the Marine Corps, General James L.
Jones' continuing interest in northern Iraq, especially
the northeast corner of the country with its large Kur-
dish minority.
In 1991, in the wake of Operation Desert Storm,
there had been a humanitarian crisis in northern Iraq
following Saddam Hussein's brutal suppression of a
Kurdish revolt. After a delay, President George H.W.
Bush had directed the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Eu-
ropean Command to conduct an operation to pro-
vide humanitarian assistance to the tens of thousands
of Kurds who, in the aftermath of the revolt, had be-
come refugees in their own homeland. The result
had been Operation Provide Comfort, a multinational
effort that had lasted for about four months and cre-
ated the basis for de facto Kurdish autonomy for the
next decade. Iraqi troops stayed out of Kurdish terri-
tory, part of the northern no-fly zone enforced by
Operation Northern Watch. That said, in 2002 there
were up to 12 Iraqi divisions north of Baghdad, at
various stages of readiness, grouped in I coips and V
Corps. A number of them were assessed as capable
of advancing into Kurdistan. Both the Iraqis and the
Kurds actively manned and patrolled the "Green
Line" that divided their spheres of control.368
The Commandant had been the 24th MEU (SOC)
commander during Provide Comfort, and he had not
forgotten the experience. Now, in late 2002, as he
prepared to step down as Commandant and take up
the responsibilities of Supreme Allied Commander,
Europe, he wanted to do what he could to support
CentCom in the coming war against Iraq. One of his
agenda items was to explore the need for another
such mission with Marine participation.369 Would the
CFLCC attack from the south lead to another hu-
manitarian crisis in the north? If so, it would involve
Turkey, a NATO ally. Southern Turkey was the obvi-
ous location to stage the mission. This was therefore
a matter that the Supreme Allied Commander, like his
predecessor 13 years earlier, needed to consider. The
border between Iraq and Turkey was also the border
between CentCom and European Command; any-
thing that happened in northern Iraq would affect
both commands. General Osman and the II MEF staff
were natural candidates for a military-political mis-
sion to the region, and after he had more or less vol-
unteeredhisservices,Osmandiscussedthe
contingency with General Jones in November and
December 2002. He also met twice with General An-
thony Zinni, another veteran of Operation Provide
Comfort, who, while at Central Command, had spent
much of his time traveling around the region prac-
ticing military-political diplomacy.370 By late January
2003, after 2d Marine Expeditionary Brigade had left
Camp Lejeune, General Osman was in touch with the
senior Marine in U.S. European Command, Marine
Forces Europe commander, Lieutenant General Mar-
tin R. Berndt, about standing up a joint task force to
coordinate Phase IV, that is, post combat, operations
in northern Iraq. To consider, first, how to staff the
joint task force and, second, how it should operate,
II MEF had created an operational planning team.37'
On 17 February 2003, General Osman and a few
of his principal staff officers flew to the European
Command headquarters at Stuttgart, Germany, to clis-
cuss the potential operation with military planners at
Marine Forces Europe, which is part of European
Command. Next they visited Ankara, Turkey, for
meetings with subject matter experts at the American
embassy and the Turkish General Staff. To put it
mildly, the Turks had no enthusiasm for a mission to
help the Kurds, especially one operating out of
southern Turkey, and did not offer much by way of
help or encouragement. Since they wanted to keep
their own Kurdish minority in check, the last thing
the Turks wanted was for the Iraqi Kurds to assert
themselves. The Turks and the Kurds had a long tra-
dition of enmity, and the United States had to strike
a delicate balance between using the Kurds against
the Iraqis and not upsetting Turkish sensibilities. This
was one of the reasons why the United States could
not use the Kurdish militias as proxies in the quite
the same way it had used Afghan militias in late 2001
and early 2002. Throughout the operation, as General
Osman and his officers encountered strong, even vis-
ceral, anti-Kurdish sentiments among the Turkish of-
ficers they met, they made it part of their mission to
do what they could to keep such sentiments in
check. It did not help that General Osman had a typ-
ically Turkish surname but was not of Turkish de-
scent, leading his Turkish contacts first to imagine
that they were speaking to a compatriot, and then to
disappointment when they were disabused of that
notion.
General Osman's small group went on to Camp
Doha, Kuwait, to meet with General David McKier-
nan and his staff, whom they found to be, under-
standably, preoccupied with other matters and not
able to devote much attention to northern Iraq. The
group's last stop was CentCom headquarters at Doha,

--- Page 22 ---
The Other War in the North115
Qattar, where there were more discouraging meet-
ings. A down-to-earth son of Georgia who called it
like he saw it, Colonel Robert L. Hayes III, the I MEF
operations officer, remembered thinking that no one
really seemed to want the mission to happen. He
himself was beginning to question its utility, espe-
cially since his mission analysis showed that the con-
ditions that had called forth Operation Provide
Comfort in 1991 simply did not exist in 2003. There
did not appear to be an impending humanitarian cri-
sis; on the contrary, this time the Kurds appeared to
be well prepared for any such eventuality. The joke
among members of the staff was that this task force
without a mission should be known as "JTF JDK," for
"just do not know." Someone even went to the length
of ordering coffee cups with an official-looking 'JTF
JDK" logo.
Virtually at the last minute, during a meeting with
General John P. Abizaid, USA, the deputy com-
mander of CentCom forward and another veteran of
Operation Provide Comfort, the mission was saved.
General Abizaid analyzed the current situation from
another angle and came to the conclusion that the
presence of the right American flag officer would def-
initely be value added. That officer's mission would
be to preserve the status quo during combat opera-
tions, in effect, to help secure the northern flank, and
not just to prepare for humanitarian assistance after
the war. The officer would work to keep the Kurds
(and the other minorities) in check, which in turn
would keep the Turks from intervening "to protect
their equities," a distinct possibility if the Kurds
seized Kirkuk, the medium-sized city that was the
key to the northern oil fields, and Mosul, its larger
neighbor to the north, with a population of more
than 1.5 million that many senior Ba'athists called
home. Even without the Turkish factor, there were
so many different groups with ancient conflicts
against one another that the region was a powder
keg. The Turkish threat to intervene if the Kurds "got
Out of hand" was the match that could have set it
aflame. With this vision, General Abizaid played the
leading role in converting the European Command
initiative into a CentCom mission and became the
mission manager to whom Osman reported, on an
almost daily basis. General Abizaid told General
Osman that the best place for the Military Coordina-
tion and Liaison Command was in northern Iraq, not
southern Turkey.372
Even though Kurdish Iraq was more or less au-
tonomous and enjoyed the protection of its own
forces, this was still enemy territory. Getting ready to
operate in Saddam's backyard during the war made
matters more interesting and it called for a lot of cre-
ative preparations. Leaving roughly 30 members of
his staff in Stuttgart, General Osman decided to enter
Iraq with only a handful of Marines, a total of six.
Through a portable communications suite, they
would "reach back" for support to Stuttgart from
members of the II MEF staff who had deployed to
European Command, and rely largely on the Kurds
and U.S. Special Forces for situational awareness, se-
curity, and other forms of support. They acquired a
mix of civilian sports utility vehicles and one pickup
truck, a Ford F-350, through a mix of open purchase
and barter with the U.S. Air Force. They planned to
travel in uniform, with a mix of light weapons. Every-
one on the tiny staff had more than one job. Colonel
Keith A. Lawless, for example, was not only the in-
telligence officer (his normal job), but also the polit-
ical adviser and a bodyguard armed with an M4
assault rifle. Colonel Lawless' colorful operations
chief, Master Gunnery Sergeant Richard C. McPher-
son, doubled as an interpreter in addition to his nor-
mal duties, and as driver and bodyguard. Born in
Jamaica to Scots-Lebanese parents, McPherson had
served a number of tours in the Middle East and was
an accomplished Arabist.373
Just getting the approvals to travel through Turkey,
and then to cross the Turkish border into Iraq, was
no simple matter—requiring at one point the per-
sonal intervention of General Jones, the Supreme Al-
lied Commander, Europe, with the Turkish high
command. Finally, on 23 March the small task force
made it out of Turkey and found itself very much
alone on the Iraqi side of the deserted border cross-
ing, until two heavily armed U.S. Army Special Forces
noncommissioned officers appeared, seemingly out
of nowhere, to serve as escorts and advisers. They
made no secret of their initial lack of enthusiasm for
the newcomers who were taking them away from
their primary duties of training the Kurds and help-
ing them to kill Iraqis. But, like others in Joint Spe-
cialOperations Task Force North,they soon
discovered that General Osman's group was low-
maintenance and that its work could complement
that of the Special Forces.374
Within two hours of crossing the border, Osman's
work started in earnest. At a town called Dahok near
the Green Line, he stopped to meet General Babekir
al-Zibari, the senior KDP military leader in the region,
whom General Osman came to appreciate as "a great
warrior and a great ...patriot."375Babekir's troops,
and those of other Kurdish organizations, were
known generically as the "Peshmerga," literally,
"those who face death." The average Peshmerga

--- Page 23 ---
116Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
fighter looked like a cross between a mountain man
and a horseman, but there was little doubt about his
motivation or his fighting ability. Peshmerga groups
ranged from loosely organized militia to semiprofes-
sional paramilitaries, with about 45,000 loyal to the
Kurdish Democratic Party and some 20,000 answer-
ing to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
Over the course of a meeting that lasted many
hours and included an elaborate lunch, General
Babekir talked about his appreciation for what the
United States was doing in the region, and especially
for the work of the U.S. Special Forces, with whom
he had a strong ongoing relationship. He said he was
eager to do more, which was his way of saying he
wanted to cross the Green Line and fight the Iraqis.
In what was to become a familiar refrain, General
Osman counseled patience, explaining the instabil-
ity that Kurdish action could unleash, given Turkish
sensibilities. General Babekir took this on board and
asked if General Osman could do anything about the
Iraqi artillery on the other side of the Green Line that
could range Dahok. Osman made no specific prom-
ises but said he would see what he could do. By
chance, a few hours later a heavy Coalition air raid
was made on the Iraqi lines, and General Osman's
penny stock with the Kurds increased in value a hun-
dred fold. The result was, in the words of the mis-
sion's communications officer, Lieutenant Colonel
James E. Bacchus, "effervescence" from the Kurds,
who felt they had been abandoned by the Americans
in the past. Perhaps this time it would be different.376
General Osman and his party went on to the town
of Salaheddin, where they stayed in a guesthouse be-
longing to the Kurdish Democratic Party, the some-
what more westernized, and larger, of the two
Kurdish political parties. The next day, 24 March,
General Osman held a press conference, there being
a large contingent of media in Salaheddin, during
which he explained the Military Coordination and Li-
aison Command's mission in general terms, outlining
such functions as "the deconfliction of military activ-
ities," synchronizing humanitarian assistance, and
"the maintenance of stability."377 Reports of the con-
ference described the liaison command as a "special
military command to protect northern Iraq and satisfy
Turkish security concerns along the Turkey-Iraq bor-
der," and especially to "dissuade Turkey from send-
ing troops to northern Iraq."378 The presence of a
two-star Marine general had clearly caught the atten-
tion of the players on the field and demonstrated that
the United States wanted to make sure the game was
played by its rules. It also contributed to the "infor-
mation operations" against the Iraqis, who had to be
asking themselves what a senior American officer
was doing in Kurdistan, was he paving the way for a
larger force? General Osman did nothing to discour-
age this speculation, especially when he reached out
to the Iraqi generals on the Green Line, passing a
very direct written message from General Tommy R.
Franks: "Decide now. I, General Franks, will help
you destroy Saddam's regime, or Iwill destroy
you."379
The next few days saw a round of seemingly end-
less meetings with a bewildering array of local
groups, from the routine, such as coordination with
Joint Special Operations Task Force North, to the
conventional, such as meetings with the Kurdish
Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdis-
tan, to the exotic, such as with the Iraqi Turkomen
Front, representing the Turkish minority in the re-
gion, and the Supreme Council of Iraqi Revolution-
aries, an anti-Saddam group supported by Iran. Most
of the time General Osman drove long distances to
meet the local politicians and functionaries, choos-
ing to meet them on their own turf rather than sum-
moning them to his headquarters; he wanted to avoid
the appearance of seeming like an imperial envoy.
This entailed some risk of attack on the road from
Iraqi operatives, who were said to have targeted the
general for assassination. Although sometimes ac-
companied by a small Kurdish security detail, along
with one or two U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers,
force protection for the small group was mostly a
matter of not making its destination known until the
last minute and then traveling at breakneck speed on
bad roads. In the end, the general told his drivers to
slow down; he said he would rather die from a suck-
ing chest wound than from the seemingly inevitable
car crash. Once they arrived at a home or office,
there were elaborate rituals of courtesy to follow,
which typically meant drinking a lot of tea and eat-
ing large quantities of unusual food. Some of the
food was easily identifiable, like roast lamb and rice,
two local staples. But there were also unusual foods,
like one that a member of the mission could only de-
scribe in his notes as a "strange veggie." This routine,
and General Osman's personal style, which was char-
acterized by patience, politeness, and persistence, en-
abled him to build relationships with virtually all of
these groups. Although Osman did not supplant
Colonel Cleveland, he became something like the
senior adviser to call in order to discuss a plan, or
the honest broker who could keep the peace be-
tween warring factions.
The value of these relationships emerged as the
Iraqi regime collapsed at the end of the first week in

--- Page 24 ---
The Other War in the North117
April, and the Iraqi soldiers in the north either sur-
rendered or simply changed into civilian clothes and
went home, like thousands of their comrades
throughout the country. One result of the collapse
was a power vacuum in Kirkuk and Mosul that some
Kurds wanted to fill. There had been substantial Kur-
dish minorities in both of these Iraqi cities, and many
Kurds had lost property when Saddam Hussein had
"Arabized" the region. Understandably, the Kurds
wanted to protect and assert their interests in both
cities, while the Turks wanted to make sure the
Kurds did not turn them into centers of Kurdish
power. Apart from its interest in removing vestiges
of the former regime, especially in the "loyalist" city
of Mosul, and stabilizing the region, the United States
was as dedicated to protecting the oil fields around
Kirkuk as it was to protecting the southern oil fields
around Basrah. With its blue-collar outlook, Kirkuk
reminded General Osman of a frontier oil town,
while Mosul seemed to be more developed and so-
phisticated, even attractive in parts.
The Kurds became increasingly anxious as rioting
and looting spread through Mosul, where there were
few Coalition troops in evidence. In Kirkuk, the Kur-
dish Democratic Party and its Peshmerga took the ini-
tiative to fill the vacuum. Its leader, Jalal Talibani,
literally moved into city hall. His Patriotic Union rival,
Massoud Barzani, immediately complained to Gen-
eral Osman that Talibani had broken the rules and
expanded his sphere of influence at Barzani's ex-
pense. Barzani claimed to be losing ground because
he had listened to General Osman's pleas for re-
straint. Osman's response was to drive to Kirkuk on
12 April, through a kind of no-man's land, and find
Talibani, whose reaction on seeing the general was to
try to embrace him in order to celebrate the day the
Kurds had returned to Kirkuk. Within seconds Tal-
ibani saw that the general did not share his mood.
The two stepped into the former mayor's office,
where General Osman told Talibani in no uncertain
terms why he and his forces had to leave Kirkuk. If
they stayed, the result could be Turkish intervention,
and a war within a war. This was no idle threat; there
were Turkish liaison officers and a few Turkish spe-
cial forces soldiers on the ground pursuing their own,
crosscutting interests. Talibani, who spoke good Eng-
lish and wore western-style clothes, reluctantly came
around to the general's point of view and agreed to
withdraw himself and his troops from Kirkuk. Even
General Osman's staff was impressed with this result,
remarking, "Gee, Sir, you threw Talibani out of
town."38°
The townspeople of Kirkuk had seemed to be fa-
Photo courtesy of Field History Branch
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, center,
talks with Massoud Barzani, left, president of the Kur-
dish Democratic Party, in Salahuddin, Iraq, during
meetings with Kurdish party leaders.
vorably disposed to the Coalition and eager to return
to a peacetime routine. At first they had not known
what to make of the unusual group of Marines driv-
ing into town in black sport utility vehicles. But when
they had realized they were looking at Americans,
they had started to applaud. Mosul, by contrast, felt
hostile, not unlike Tikrit. The locals appeared glum,
and there were Iraqi flags flying everywhere, even
from mosques. It did not help that Peshmerga ele-
ments were active in the city, which inflamed ten-
sions between Iraqis and Kurds. While the city was
quieter on 13 April than it had been the day before,
General Osman agreed with task force officers that
pockets of unrest were still apparent and that the
United States needed to increase its military footprint
as quickly as possible.381
As if on cue, the 26th MEU (SOC) appeared over
the horizon. It was the only readily available, un-
committed force in the area and was still in the
Mediterranean, under the cognizance of Sixth Fleet,
which meant it was ultimately under the command of
General Jones. It had been natural for him, a Marine
with an interest in northern Iraq, to discuss and plan
its employment with CentCom. General Jones had al-
ways been a keen proponent of putting a Marine air-
ground task force into northern Iraq, and a Marine
expeditionary unit fit the bill.382 Commanded by
Colonel Andrew P. Frick, the 26th MEU was another
unit that had had an incredible existence, so different
from most peacetime expeditionary units that simply
went from one landing exercise to another until their
time was up. The 26th MEU had flown from expedi-
tionary shipping into Afghanistan the year before in
what was viewed at the time as validation of the Ma-
rine doctrine and was now about to launch a new


--- Page 25 ---
118Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
long-distance operation over semihostile territory.383
Part of the Marine expeditionary unit soon flew by
Lockheed KC-130 Hercules aircraft from Naval Air
Station, Souda Bay, on the island of Crete, to north-
ern Iraq, a distance of some 975 nautical miles, while
its air combat element, Marine Medium Helicopter
Squadron 264 (HMM-264), self-deployed from the
USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7) in the eastern Mediterranean
to fly nearly 500 nautical miles into Iraq, possibly a
new record. The unit historian, Captain Arnaldo L.
Colon, noted that the "HMM-264 self deployment into
Iraq was the farthest a MEU (SOC) ACE [aviation
combat element] had ever flown. Prior to that flight,
HMM-365 had flown the farthest with 380 nautical
miles into Afghanistan in support of Operation En-
during Freedom."384 The route flown on 12 and 13
April skirted the Turkish/Syrian border and led to a
U.S.-run expeditionary airfield at Irbil, in northern
Iraq, .where the Marine expeditionary unit came
under the tactical control of Joint Special Operations
Task Force North. Although they welcomed the ar-
rival of the expeditionary unit, General Osman and
the Military Coordination and Liaison Command had
no command relationship with the unit.385
The 26th MEU had been briefed for a mission to
establish security checkpoints to prevent high-value
targets, mostly senior Ba'athists, from trying to escape
to Syria. One officer, First Lieutenant Sunny-James M.
Risler, later recalled he had not known what to ex-
pect on arrival in Iraq; he was under the impression
that he and his men needed to be ready to fight their
way off the aircraft. But once they landed in Irbil, the
Marines found that joint task force had the situation
very well in hand; not only was the airfield secure,
but there was a base camp complete with a good
chow hall!386
The only problem was that they were not going to
stay long in Irhil. Soon after landing, Colonel Cleve-
land asked the Marines if they could take on a new
mission—provide a stabilizing presence in Mosul.
Both the battalion commander at the airhead, Lieu-
tenant Colonel David K. Hough, and Colonel Frick
were ready to adapt and respond, which pleased
Colonel Cleveland, who was said to have been frus-
trated at times by other Services' lack of responsive-
ness. So, within a short period of time, the leading
elements of 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, went on to
Mosul without even having had a chance to find a
good map of the place, let alone to plan. Over the
next few days, the expeditionary unit flowed the rest
of its assets to Mosul and established a presence
around the local airport.
On the morning of 15 April, the 1st Battalion, 8th
Marines, was involved in an incident that could have
A 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit explosive ordnance team, along with a security detailfrom 1st Battalion, 8th
Marines, move in to search the remains of a demolished building near the ailport in Mosul, Iraq.
Photo courtesy of Field FTistory Branch


--- Page 26 ---
The Other War in the North119
occurred almost anywhere in Iraq during this period.
Tasked to conduct security operations for a regional
coordination center in downtown Mosul, Company
B drove to the government building, the former
Ba'ath Party headquarters, along with civil affairs and
Special Forces personnel. An angry crowd near the
building became progressively angrier after a loud-
speaker mounted on an ambulance began to broad-
castamessageinArabicandasupposed
"peacemaker" spoke to the crowd. It turned out that
the crowd was angry because they believed that cer-
tain Iraqis who had benefited from Saddam's rule
were to remain in power under the American occu-
pation. Since none of the Americans at the governate
that day spoke Arabic, they did not know what the
problem was until much later. Some members of the
crowd tried to punch at the Marines and to spit on
them. Others tried to get close and, in the words of
Sergeant Bryan L. Gilstrap, reach "into their pock-
ets."387
The tension was palpable for the Marines, who
were still getting adjusted to being in Iraq, to say
nothing of a mission that was neither full-blown com-
bat nor peacekeeping. True to their training, Marines
checked the compound, manned the perimeter, and,
according to Captain Colon, reacted to the first
rounds that were fired at them by firing over the
heads of the crowd. Sergeant Gilstrap, who was the
scout-sniper team leader, remembered seeing an
Iraqi raise an AK-47 rifle to a firing position, which
made him a legitimate target under the rules of en-
gagement. Gilstrap fired at, and hit, his target. This
was followed by an intense firefight as the Marines
and the crowd fired at each other. Sergeant Gilstrap
said it was like the scene in the movie Rules of En-
gagement that showed Marines defending a U.S. Em-
bassyintheMiddleEastagainstamixof
demonstrators and shooters (the movie raised ques-
tions about how much force the defenders were au-
Two Iraqi teenage boys are unfazed by the presence of
a Marine from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit,
who is providing security at the Ibn Sina Teaching
Hospital in Mosul.
jccc 030420-F-5789F-005
thorized, or entitled, to use). At some point a num-
ber of armed men tried to breach the perimeter and
were killed or wounded by the Marines. As the unit's
command chronology noted, the "crowd dispersed
only after fixed-wing aircraft, coordinated through
JSOTF-N, made low-flying passes over the area."
There were no Marine casualties.3
Lieutenant Colonel Hough, the battalion com-
mander, decided to keep his Marines at the site
overnight, and the company spent the night improv-
ing its positions. The next day, the hostile sniping
started back up. The Marines used a CH-46E heli-
copter as a counter sniper platform, with some suc-
cess. But later in the day, Iraqi fighters began
preparing to fire rocket-propelled grenades and
crew-served weapons against the Marines from urban
high ground. After consulting with his Army Special
Forces counterpart, Colonel Frick decided to with-
draw Company B. Given the force ratios and the gen-
eral hostility in Mosul, it made sense to leave the
exposed position at the government building. After
dark, Company A and Special Forces soldiers ran a
convoy of trucks into the site to return Company B to
friendly lines. Although the evolution occurred with-
out further incident, officers in the expeditionary unit
operations section commented that they would have
felt more comfortable running light armored vehicles
or amphibious assault vehicles into the heart of town,
which they had not brought with them into Iraq.389
Capt Arnaldo Colon reported seven confirmed kills. The NewYork
Times reported that on 15 and 16 April there were 17 Iraqis killed
and 39 wounded but does not specifically state that all of these ca-
sualties were from firefights at the government building. The com-
mand chronology does not state a precise number, only that
"several Iraqis were killed or wounded." After the firefight there
were allegations that the Marines had overreacted, that is, that their
response had not been proportional to the threat. At Col Frick's be-
hest, 26th MEU's staff judge advocate, Maj Ian D. Brasure, con-
ducted an informal investigation to determine if there needed to
be a more formal investigation of the allegations. After talking to
participants in the firefight, he came to the conclusion that that
would not be necessary. (Capt Arnaldo L. Colon, ed., "U.S. Marines
in Northern Iraq: A Certain Force," n.d. [Filed with 26th MEU(SOC)
ComdC, Jan-Jun03, GRC, Quantico, VA]; 26th MEU(SoC) ComdC,
Jan-JunO3; Maj Ian D. Brasure telephone conversation with author,
17May04)
According to Gen Osman, who was apparently recording infor-
mation that had been passed to him: "Col Frick decided to aban-
don the RCC [Ba'ath Party headquarters] that had been occupied
based on suggestions by several local leaders. Late yesterday, the
Marines guarding the RCC spotted several men establishing a ma-
chine gun position and carrying an R1'G in a building situated
about 200 meters from the RCC. In light of the firefight from the
previous day and what appeared to be an upcoming fight, it was
decided a more secure location was in order." (Gen H. P. Osman
sitrep to Gen J. P. Abizaid, 7AprO3,tCopy in Reynolds Working Pa-
pers, MCHC, Quantico, VAJ)


--- Page 27 ---
120Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
JCCC 030423 -A-71 70X-001
Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division arrive at
Mosul Airport on 23 April, relieving Marines of the
26th Marine Expeditionary Unit of security and sta-
bility operations in northern Iraq.
For the remainder of its time in Mosul, which
lasted until it was relieved by the 101st Airborne Di-
vision (Air Assault) in late April, the 26th MEU con-
ducted a variety of security missions in and around
Mosul, none quite so dramatic as the first, but still
important and useful. The expeditionary unit also put
its aviation assets to use for the mutual benefit of the
Marines and the Army Special Forces. This was es-
pecially true of the Marine KC-130 at the unit's dis-
posal, which again proved their flexibility and their
worth. On 23 April elements of the 101st began re-
lieving the Marines at the airfield, and the 26th MEU
began the process of disengaging and redeploying.
By 2 May, its redeployment to Souda Bay was com-
plete. Colonel Frick's view, in retrospect, was that the
unit (like the coordination and liaison command) had
successfully bought time for the Coalition—a stop-
gap force that had helped to restore some semblance
of law and order in a difficult operating environ-
390*
As the 101st took over from the Joint Special op-
erations Task Force, the Military Coordination and Li-
aison Command contributeditsinsights on the
situation. General Osman spent a good part of 22
April with the incoming commander, Major General
David H. Petraeus, explaining his work and passing
"Col John P. Holden, deputy chief of plans for Sixth Fleet, stated
that the reason for redeploying the 26th MEU after such a short pe-
riod of time was that Coalition Forces Land Component Command
decided that with the 101st Airborne Division on site, there was no
longer any need for the Marines. (Col John P. Holden intvw,
9Jun03 IMCHC, Quantico, VAI)
on his views on recent developments in northern
Iraq. In particular, Osman described Mosul as "dif-
ferent than any other city in Iraq" with its "feeling of
having been defeated vs. liberated." He believed a
strong United States presence was needed to enable
key leadership to "feel comfortable enough to come
forward." He concluded that as soon as the new lead-
ership was able to establish itself, "we wilt want to re-
move the United States presence quickly."391 General
Osman conducted similar briefs with, among others,
the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, Major
General Raymond Odierno, and representatives of
the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian As-
sistance. Some members of General Osman's staff
thought the office was better prepared for a reprise
of Operation Provide Comfort than for the situation
that northern Iraq actually faced. Since its chief, re-
tired Lieutenant General Jay M. Garner USA (Retired),
was yet another veteran of that operation, this was
understandable. Once he had conducted out-briefs
with all of these officers, General Osman determined
his mission was at an end and had arrangements
made for his group to fly home.
What was the significance of General Osman's
mission? What did the Military Coordination and Li-
aison Command contribute with some measure of
success to a situation that was already being handled
by the U.S. Army Special Forces? Arguably, the pres-
ence of a general officer freed the Special Forces
from having to focus so heavily on day-to-day polit-
ical relationships, thereby enabling them to focus
more on the military side of things. At the same time,
the command accomplished its own mission. Gen-
eral Osman did not win a war. The coordination and
liaison command did not receive or return fire, al-
though it came close on some days. But it did help
to prevent a small war, and it did contribute to the
success of Operation Iraqi Freedom as surely as if it
had maneuvered a Marine air-ground task force over
northern Iraq.392*
The Military Coordination and Liaison Command evokes the util-
ity of the kind of engagement that was practiced so well by offi-
cers like Gen Zinni when he traveled around the CentCom area of
operations to establish relationships with local leaders. The mili-
tary historians Murray and Scales have argued that this is the next
level the U.S. military needs to reach. Just as the Marine Corps and
its sister Services learned how to operate lighter and faster be-
tween 1991 and 2003, there is now a need to learn how to be at-
tuned to the cultural contexts in which they operate, refining the
ability to find and manipulate "non-kinetic," social or political,
pressure points, which can often eliminate the need for "kinetic,"
or traditional military, interventions.


--- Page 28 ---
Chapter 10
A Marriage of Convenience:
Cooperation Between I MEF and the British Division
Like the war in the north, the war in southeast Iraq
had some of the character of a private war. It was
conducted by some 16,000 colorful fighters who had
been fighting small wars for centuries, did things
their own way, got along famously with Marines, and
even spoke English.
The habitual relationships were there. British and
American forces had been cooperating in the Persian
Gulf since Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Their air
forces jointly enforced the no-fly zones. After Sep-
tember 2001 there had been British liaison officers at
CentCom and joint operations in Afghanistan. Some
senior American and British decision makers already
knew one another, which made planning that much
easier, and there were a number of established joint
procedures. The shared knowledge of the area, and
of each other's procedures and personalities, made it
easier for the British to succeed even though it was
very late in the day when they started appearing in
Kuwait in significant numbers to join I MEF.
Some of the unknowns about British participation
were resolved only during the combat phase. The
threshold issue was whether the British would fight
alongside the Americans at all. Although the British
prime minister, Tony Blair, proved to be a staunch
ally before, during, and after the war, he faced a
good deal of political opposition to his Iraq policy at
home. This introduced an element of doubt, almost
up to the last minute before G-Day, as to whether
the British government would be able to order its
troops into battle.
Even assuming that London would give the word
to fight, there were still other significant unknowns.
One was where the bulk of the British forces would
attack from. Until December 2002, there were the
plans to introduce most of the British from the north,
that is, from Turkey, alongside the U.S. Army's 4th
Infantry Division. According to testimony given to the
British House of Commons: "In the very early plan-
ning, the Americans had decided to attack only from
the south....Militarilyit made more sense to ...at-
tack on two axes, because there was going to be con-
gestion. That was suggested to the Americans, who
seized it with both hands, and that is why there was
thought...ofputting an axis through Turkey."393
The truth is a little more nuanced. General David
McKiernan, for one, commented in December 2002
that he had "always wanted a supporting attack out
of the north that makes Saddam Hussein. ..lookin
two directions at large conventional forces."394
If a British division had attacked from the north,
the British contribution to I MEF would probably
have been nothing more than the Royal Marine unit
earmarked for an amphibious operation against the
peninsula in the southeastern corner of Iraq.* Always
considered a piece of key terrain, Al Faw was an ob-
vious choice for an amphibious assault of some sort.
It faced Kuwait across a bay, making it a perfect
launching pad for short-range missiles against Kuwait
City or Coalition forces packed into the desert camps
north of the Kuwaiti capital. It also straddled two im-
portant waterways, the channel to Iraq's only deep-
water port, Umm Qasr, and the Shatt al Arab, which
ran between the Persian Gulf and the "capital" of
southern Iraq, Basrah.
By late December 2002, in the face of continued
Turkish intransigence, the British had begun to ex-
plore "the southern option."395 That was the month
when there were preliminary talks between General
James Conway and the senior British Army liaison of-
ficer at Coalition Forces Land Component Command
(CFLCC), Brigadier General Albert E. Whitley, which
helped to lay the groundwork for British cooperation
with I MEF. Around the same time, British military of-
ficers were attending various CentCom conferences
and exercises like Internal Look, but they were there
only as observers, not as participants.96'"
By early January 2003, I MEF and British planners
were working hard to make up for lost time. Switch-
was always planned that the Royal Marine commandos would
operate in the south." As the British Marine commander, Brigadier
Jim Dutton, explained: "It was going to be ...justone commando
unit, in conjunction with the SEs." (House of comnions, Lessons
of Iraq, Vol. 1, p. 44)
'At senior levels, British and American officials held increasingly
detailed discussions about Iraq from the summer of 2002 onward.
It appears there was a continuum, a series of lesser decision
points, rather than one or two decisive conferences or agreements.
(House of commons, Lessons of Iraq, v. 1, pp. 32, 34)

--- Page 29 ---
ing from the northern to the southern option meant
the British would have to change their force mix. In-
stead of a predominantly armor, mechanized pack-
age, suitable for traveling and fighting over long
distances, it now made sense to put together a lighter
package, especially since there might be more fight-
ing in the built-up areas of Umm Qasr and Basrah. So
the British division, whose formal title was 1 (United
Kingdom) Armored Division, evolved into a hybrid of
forces, the more or less independent units from var-
ious commands and regions being roughly compa-
rable to Marine regimental combat teams: 16 Air
Assault Brigade, 3 Commando Brigade, and 7Ar-
mored Brigade (the only one that was an organic part
of the division). The Commando Brigade was the
parent unit of the battalion-sized Royal Marine com-
mando that had been aimed at Al Faw; it was now re-
inforced by another Royal Marine commando, but
since it was still short of its full complement, the re-
sulting gap was ultimately filled by the 15th Marine
Expedition Unit.
The headquarters elements arrived in theater first,
and, aware that CentCom was planning to be ready
to fight sometime in March, did a remarkable job of
orchestrating the surge of forces into Kuwait, running
them through the CFLCC reception, staging, and in-
tegration process and establishing not only internal
but also external command and control mechanisms.
The man who made this happen was Major General
Robin V. Brims, the division's commanding general,
who was tall, thin, articulate, approachable, and full
of energy. A career officer who had been commis-
sioned into the light infantry and subsequently served
in Germany, Northern Ireland, and the Balkans, he
was the kind of soldier Americans did not meet every
day. There was a trace of old-school eccentricity in
his official biography, which described him as "sin-
gle, a cricket fanatic, Newcastle United supporter,
and outdoor enthusiast whose specialty area is bon-
fires."397 It was a trait that made him all the more at-
tractive to Marines, whose values sometimes seem to
be from another era. In this he was not unlike Gen-
eral James Mattis, with whom he was to forge a good
working relationship.398
Quick to visualize the desired outcome, General
Brims put his stamp on the division, issuing his "GOC
[General Officer Commandingi Directive 1" on 3 Feb-
ruary 2003:
We are TaCom CG I MEF. We create tactical ef-
fects to enable decisive delivery of his plans.
We are integrating with HQ I MEF and its sub-
ordinate formations. Whilst we have been plan-
ning within I MEF for barely a month, much of
I MEF has been planning, even conducting sce-
nario related training, for many months. ... We
have identified five critical elements of 1 (UK)
Armd Div's AO upon which we need to have
an effect:
122Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
Photo courtesy of ccc
Coalition senior commanders, including LtGen David A. McKiernan and MajGen Robin V. Brims, commander
of the 1 (UK) Armored Division, conduct final planning for the seizure of the southern Iraqi city of Basrah.
a. Iraq's Armed Forces
b. Irregular forces work-
ing against the Coalition
c. Oilfield infrastructure
d. UMMQASR
e. BASRAH...


--- Page 30 ---
A Marriage of Convenience123
We must also establish all our personal and
electronic connectivities and processes with
HQ I MEF. Our force is designed to be sup-
ported by I MEF deep assets. We must estab-
lish the techniques for delivering this in a
timely, effective, and safe manner.
We are maneuvrists. We must grasp opportuni-
ties to deliver our missions with minimum ki-
netic force. Iraq must still exist after the conflict
as a sovereign state, stable and able to defend
itself.... Weshall probably be the first Coali-
tion forces to implement Phase IV. We can set
the pace.399
Despite their late arrival, the British received a
warm welcome from I MEF. To review the bidding,
I MEF could now assign some of its missions to the
British and would not be stretched as thinly as it
would otherwise have been. It could even ratchet the
tempo of operations up still higher. With respect to
the "Opening Gambit," I MEF decided not to change
the carefully rehearsed plans to seize the oil fields in
the first few days of the war. The planners consid-
ered the late date, and the extensive rehearsals that
1st Marine Division had already conducted, and de-
cided it made more sense to leave well enough
alone. The Marine division would still seize the ob-
jectives, but the British units, following close behind,
would take over the security mission soon after the
initial assault. Similarly, 15th MEU, operating under
British control, would seize Umm Qasr but then turn
the city over to the British and revert to U.S. Marine
control.40°
The Marines were so pleased with the presence
and the potential of the British that by early March,
they had decided to expand their area of operations
by a further 250 kilometers to the north. According to
the British division's war diary, written in somewhat
formal English, "it was envisaged that after the exe-
cution of the initial Base Plan, which sees the division
seizing the Al Faw Peninsula, subsequent operations
would involve a push north by a brigade to the vicin-
ity of Al Kut and Al Amarah. This would be con-
ducted in parallel with 1st MarDiv and TF Tarawa to
secure and screen the eastern Flank. The origins of
this increased role apparently came from a mutually
registered desire at all levels to maximize the full po-
tential of the division's combat power."40'
General Conway remembered later that one of the
deciding factors in the distribution and timing of tasks
was the amount of equipment available to the British
as G-Day approached. The deployment phase was
completed by 18 March, but the division was not
ready to cross the line of departure. Quite simply, the
U.S. Marines had more at their disposal, while the
British would not be fully equipped until after the
war had begun.402 It was, as the British parliamentary
report concluded, a "close run thing."403
By G-Day the division itself was combat ready;
that is, ready for what in American terms was a run-
ning start, even though some of its units were not
ready. It could carry out the missions that were to
occur on the first days of the war, and would have to
continue to prepare for the missions that were to
occur after the initial battles. General Brims ex-
plained: "Sometimes you have to be positive ...you
are dealt a hand of cards. .. youwould like to have
52 cards in the deck. ... But,in this case, we had ac-
tually declared readiness with 46 cards."404 His sub-
ordinate, Brigadier Graham J. Binns, the commander
of 7ArmoredBrigade, was not quite so sanguine,
saying he "felt that we were carrying a lot of risk. The
mood was one that we were not ready...thatthe
soldiers...werenot properly equipped."405 But
throughout the process there was a great deal of cre-
ativity and adaptation that made the British ready to
cross into Iraq on 20 March.
The synergy that developed between the British
division and I MEF between January and March 2003
certainly eased the joint preparations for combat.
Over the years, the U.S. Marines had nourished a re-
lationship with the Royal Marines, while the British
Army had tended to forge its relations with other
armies on the continent, and the Royal Air Force had
cooperated with the U.S. Air Force in the Persian
Gulf, all good preparation for fighting as part of a
Coalition. It was something new for U.S. Marines and
the British Army to work closely together, but it did
not take either side long to discover the common
ground. The two forces had similar cultures, tradi-
tionally oriented to "small wars," independent oper-
ations, and mission orders. The leaders' personalities
meshed, not only between those of the same rank, as
in the good relationship between Generals Mattis and
Brims, but also between superior and subordinate.
General Conway's command style sat very well with
General Brims, who said that throughout his associ-
ation with the Marines, he consistently felt empow-
ered and never constrained.406
The process was strengthened by the exchange of
liaison officers who actively interpreted their char-
ters. The head of the U.S. liaison team to the British
headquarters was Colonel Thomas C. Latsko, who
embedded most of his Marines in the U.K. division's
operations section, where they became active par-

--- Page 31 ---
124Basrah, Baghdad and Beyond
JCCC 030604-M-8658H-015
Before heading the liaison team with the British
headquarters, Texas-native and Miami University of
Ohio graduate, Col Thomas C. Latsko, had served as
operations officer, 3d ANGLICO, battalion mainte-
nance officer, 4th Tank Battalion, and as an advisor
to the 1st Naval Construction Regiment.
ticipants in planning and operations. The Marines
found that the British division was far more map-cen-
tric than any American command. Battle updates
took place around the "bird table," a large table cov-
ered with maps and overlays for what looked to
American eyes like World War II briefings. No one
used PowerPoint software. The demeanor of the
British officers around the table seemed informal,
even casual; for example, there was little apparent
consciousness of rank, and first names were used
freely. But there could be little doubt about their pro-
fessionalism. Units, and individuals, typically re-
ported only what the next higher echelon needed to
know. Briefers were held to time limits. Most British
officers had a strong ability to visualize the situation,
enter into creative and occasionally pointed debate
about possible courses of action, and issue clear mis-
sion orders, which were far less detailed than Amer-
ican operations orders but, like most Coalition orders
in this war, focused first on the desired effect, as op-
posed to simply directing a particular action.407
Marines working with subordinate British commands
made similar observations, saying they found British
briefs to be straightforward, person-to-person, and
not cluttered with detail—overall, a "nice change of
pace."408
Colonel Latsko and his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel
Edward J. Quinonez, made it their business to bring
the British command-and-control system closer to the
American one, and holding school at the British com-
mand center, introduced their new comrades in arms
to various computerized American systems. By the
end of the fighting in Iraq, the two systems were lit-
erally operating side by side, and British and Ameri-
can staff officers could work both at the same time to
mutual benefit, although the gap between them, at
least in terms of hardware, remained significant and
was the subject of a British lessons-learned article.409
One significant technological issue was SIPRnet con-
nectivity. This internet channel was arguably the pri-
mary means of communication for U.S. forces in this
war. Without access to SIPRnet, the British often felt
at a loss, and liaison officers had to develop work-
arounds.41°
Alongside Colonel Latsko's officers in operations
was a U.S. Marine air support element, which was
able to provide the rapid response and coordination
of close air support that is the function of the Marine
direct air support control center. The air support el-
ement operated mostly Out of the British combat op-
erations and information center, built around the
"bird table," but also sent its Marines down to the
two British brigades that wanted their services. There
they joined forces with Reserve Marines from the 1st
and 3d Air-Naval Gunfire Liaison Companies (1st and
3d ANGLICOs), small numbers of whom had been
deployed to the British division and immediately in-
tegrated into its training cycle. Recognizing their use-
fulness in joint and combined operations, General
Jones had wisely brought the air and naval gunfire li-
aison companies back on line during his tenure as
Commandant. This was proof of concept.411 The 7 Ar-
mored Brigade had made a point of getting its air and
naval gunfire liaison Marines to participate in training
on British simulators in Germany, where they also
made a point of exploring local drinking establish-
ments together. As British officer Lieutenant Colonel
Nicholas D. Ashmore commented, if shedding blood
is the best way to build comradeship, drinking to-
gether is the second best.412 The officers of 7 Ar-
mored viewed Marine air as the great "get out of jail"
card, but thought that air and naval gunfire liaison
companies alone would be enough and passed up
an opportunity to have its own air support element,
a decision it came to regret once its sister brigades