Tuesday, March 22, 2005
The First Cav speaks
This morning I received a forwarded email summarizing an informal talk at the Ft. Hood Officer's Club given by Maj. Gen. Pete Chiarelli, the commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division, just returned from Iraq. A Google search reveals that this email has already been posted on Free Republic (but not otherwise blogged), so I'm not giving anything up by posting it here.
General Chiarelli's main points, summarized from memory by a person (not known to me) who saw the talk, were as follows, edited slightly by me:
I have not seen this information reported in the MSM, although it might be out there somewhere. I hunted through Google for about a minute and could not find this data other than in the Free Republic post that published the same email.
I take this to mean that the voters were particularly contemptuous of the dead "martyrs," notwithstanding Muslim strictures to the contrary.
As I argued in my giant post on the Iraq war in retrospect, a key indicator of success in Iraq would be the pace at which new recruits stepped up to serve in the Iraqi army and police:
It seems as if Iraqis remain committed to serving, notwithstanding the attacks.
This last point is fascinating, and I have not seen anybody else make it. I'm sure that it will eventually show up in op-ed pieces critical of the Administration's management of the war. Nevertheless, supporting Iraq's agriculture seems like an excellent idea.
Interesting stuff.
General Chiarelli's main points, summarized from memory by a person (not known to me) who saw the talk, were as follows, edited slightly by me:
1. While units of the Cav served all over Iraq, he spoke mostly of Baghdad and more specifically Sadr City, the big slum on the eastern side of the Tigeris River. General Chiarelli pointed out that Baghdad is, in geography, about the size of Austin. Austin has 600,000 to 700,000 people. Baghdad has 6 to 7 million people.
2. The Cav lost 28 main battle tanks. He said one of the big lessons learned is that, contrary to doctrine going in, M1-A2s and Bradleys are needed, preferred and devastating in urban combat and he is going to make that point to the JCS next week while they are considering downsizing armor.
3. He showed a graph of attacks in Sadr City by month. Last Aug-Sep they were getting up to 160 attacks per week. During the last three months, the graph had flatlined at below 5 to zero per week.
I have not seen this information reported in the MSM, although it might be out there somewhere. I hunted through Google for about a minute and could not find this data other than in the Free Republic post that published the same email.
4. His big point was not that they were "winning battles" to do this but that cleaning the place up, electricity, sewage, water were the key factors. He said yes they fought but after they started delivering services that the Iraqis in Sadr City had never had, the terrorist recruiting of 15 and 16 year olds came up empty.
5. The electrical "grid" is a bad, deadly joke. Said that driving down the street in a Humvee with an antenna would short out a whole block of apartment buildings. People do their own wiring and it was not uncommon for early morning patrols to find one or two people lying dead in the street, having been electrocuted trying to re-wire their own homes.
6. Said that not tending to a dead body in the Muslim culture never happens. On election day, after suicide bombers blew themselves up trying to take out polling places, voters would step up to the body lying there, spit on it, and move up in the line to vote.
I take this to mean that the voters were particularly contemptuous of the dead "martyrs," notwithstanding Muslim strictures to the contrary.
7. Pointed out that we all heard from the media about the 100 Iraqis killed as they were lined up to enlist in the police and security service. What the media didn't point out was that the next day there 300 lined up in the same place.
As I argued in my giant post on the Iraq war in retrospect, a key indicator of success in Iraq would be the pace at which new recruits stepped up to serve in the Iraqi army and police:
Second, we should hope to see many new volunteers for the police, border patrol and armed forces. As long as applicants exceed spaces by a big ratio, we know the Iraqis remain eager to build their own peaceful country out of the ashes of Saddam's tribal dictatorship.
It seems as if Iraqis remain committed to serving, notwithstanding the attacks.
8. Said bin Laden and Zarqawi made a huge mistake when bin Laden went public with naming Zarqawi the "prince" of al Qaeda in Iraq. Said that what the Iraqis saw and heard was a Saudi telling a Jordanian that his job was to kill Iraqis. [Recent diplomatic tension between Iraq and Jordan supports this point. - ed.] HUGE mistake. It was one of the biggest factors in getting Iraqis who were on the "fence" to jump off on the side of the coalition and the new gov't.
9. Said the MSM (Main Stream Media) was making a big, and wrong, deal out of the religious sects. [It is interesting that an American major general is using a term that has largely emerged in the last year, and largely in the blogosphere. - ed.] Said Iraqis are incredibly nationalistic. They are Iraqis first and then say they are Muslim but the Shi'a - Sunni thing is just not that big a deal to them. [This may support the view that Iran's influence in Iraq may not be as great as feared in some quarters. - ed.]
10. After the election the Mayor of Baghdad told him that the people of the region (Middle East) are joyous and the governments are nervous.
11. Said that he did not lose a single tanker truck carrying oil and gas over the roads of Iraq. Think about that. All the attacks we saw on TV with IEDs hitting trucks but he didn't lose one. Why? Army Aviation. Praised his air units and said they made the decision early on that every convoy would have helicopter air cover. Said aviators in that unit were hitting the 1,000 hour mark. Said a convoy was supposed to head out but stopped at the gates of a compound on the command of an E6. He asked the SSG what the hold up was. E6 said, "Air, sir." He wondered what was wrong with the air, not realizing what the kid was talking about. Then the AH-64s showed up and the E6 said, "That air sir." And then moved out.
12. Said one of the biggest problems was money and regs. There was a $77 million gap between the supplemental budget and what he needed in cash on the ground to get projects started. Said he spent most of his time trying to get money. Said he didn't do much as a "combat commander" because the war he was fighting was a war at the squad and platoon level. Said that his NCOs were winning the war and it was a sight to behold.
13. Said that of all the money appropriated for Iraq, not a cent was earmarked for agriculture. Said that Iraq could feed itself completely and still have food for export but no one thought about it. Said the Cav started working with Texas A&M on "ag" projects and had special hybrid seeds sent to them through Jordan. TAM analyzed soil samples and worked out how and what to plant. Said he had an E7 from Belton, TX (just down the road from Ft. Hood) who was almost single-handedly rebuilding the ag industry in the Baghdad area.
This last point is fascinating, and I have not seen anybody else make it. I'm sure that it will eventually show up in op-ed pieces critical of the Administration's management of the war. Nevertheless, supporting Iraq's agriculture seems like an excellent idea.
14. Said he could hire hundreds of Iraqis daily for $7 to $10 a day to work on sewer, electric, water projects, etc. but that the contracting rules from CONUS applied so he had to have $500,000 insurance policies in place in case the workers got hurt. Not kidding. The CONUS peacetime regs slowed everything down, even if they could eventually get waivers for the regs.
Interesting stuff.
4 Comments:
By 
chaoticsynapticactivity, at
Tue Mar 22, 11:01:00 AM:
This same set of notes is found on Redleg 07's blog from 3/18/05.
By TigerHawk, at
Tue Mar 22, 11:24:00 AM:
I missed it. His post wasn't (obviously) picked up on Google, and he must not have linked the Freeper post because that had no hits on Technorati.
By Charlottesvillain, at
Tue Mar 22, 01:09:00 PM:
Wow, imagine being restricted by CONUS contracting regs in a war zone! Unbelievable! I wonder if Iraqi contractors will have access to the EEOC as well.
I also found the point on the agriculture new and fascinating. Of course if the Iraqi farmers planted genetically modified seeds they won't be able to export food to the French, and they can probably expect a visit from an Uncle Sam stilt man once the shooting stops.
By Unknown, at
Tue Mar 22, 08:44:00 PM:
One of the things that folks don't think about is that, nearly alone among Middle Eastern countries, Iraq has water. There are the Tigris and Euphrates, of course, and the marshes that they're restoring in the south. But I can point you to lots of pictures of major rainfall in the north as well.
That's the reason that Iraq has great agricultural potential. IIRC Iraq used to be a major exporter of rice. Rice.
