Iraq War News

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

No. 537-03
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jul 23, 2003
(703)697-5131(media)
(703)428-0711(public/industry)

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today that Spc. Brett T. Christian, 27, North
Royalton, Ohio, was killed on July 23 in Mosul, Iraq. Christian was in a convoy
that came under attack by rocket propelled grenades.

Christian was assigned to Company C, 2nd Battalion, 502 Infantry, 101st Airborne
Div., Fort Campbell, Ky.

[Web Version: http://www.dod.mil/releases/2003/nr20030723-0217.html]

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C Company summers in Iraq
By Spc. Sarah Bouret
Right now most National Guard units are at their two-week summer annual training, generally not too far away from home, but not the soldiers in Charlie Company of the 142nd Engineer Combat Battalion.

They are approximately 6,000 miles away from their home duty station, Camp Ripley, Little Falls, MN. Charlie Company is stationed at Logistical Support Area (LSA) Anaconda, an abandoned Iraqi airfield, supporting the missions of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Morrison County Record General News

RELATED
Iraq coverage and resources


FORT CARSON - One hundred soldiers are enjoying their first day back in Colorado Springs. Fort Carson welcomed them home Tuesday night.

The soldiers are members of the 10th Combat Support Hospital, 43rd Area Support Group. They returned to lots of kisses and hugs from relieved family and friends.

9NEWS.com - Newsroom

U.S. captures senior Republican Guard official a day after killing Saddam's sons; two Americans killed

By NIKO PRICE=
.c The Associated Press

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) - U.S. forces captured a senior Republican Guard official Wednesday, a day after killing Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai in a fierce gunbattle. But the bloody insurgency showed no signs of letting up, as attacks claimed the lives of two more American soldiers.

The head of the Special Republican Guard, Barzan Abd al-Ghafur Sulayman Majid al-Tikriti, was seized at an undisclosed location in Iraq, U.S. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told a news conference in Baghdad. The capture lowers the number of the 55 most-wanted still at large to 18 after the deaths of Saddam's sons.

President George W. Bush said Iraqis can gain comfort from knowing that ``the careers of two of the regime's chief henchmen came to an end.''

``Saddam Hussein's sons were responsible for torture, maiming and murder of countless Iraqis,'' he said at the White House. ``Now more than ever, Iraqis can know that the former regime is gone and will never come back.''

Also Wednesday, a new tape aired by an Arab satellite TV broadcaster and purportedly made by Saddam on Sunday called on fighters loyal to him to persist in their uprising against the U.S.-led occupation force.

On the streets of Baghdad, where celebratory gunfire broke out Tuesday, residents said they wished American forces had captured Saddam's sons alive - ready to stand trial, face their victims and suffer punishment for the horrors they inflicted on Iraq.

``We are happy for this, but we hoped that they would have been captured instead of killed so that they could have been tried by the Iraqi people,'' said Jassim Jabar, a 22-year-old tailor. ``I hope Saddam will face the same fate soon.''

Others didn't believe the Americans had finally run the brothers to ground.

Sanchez said that the coalition would provide proof ``in due time'' to the Iraqi people that Odai, 39, and Qusai, 37, second only to their father in power in the ousted regime, were killed in the U.S. raid on a palatial villa in this northern city Tuesday.

Dental records, X-rays and four former senior figures from the Saddam regime - including presidential secretary Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti - helped establish certainty that the two sons were dead.

He said dental records were a 100 percent match for Qusai and a 90 percent match for Odai. Injuries to Odai's teeth made it impossible to achieve a perfect match.

Sanchez, asked about releasing the pictures of the bodies, said, ``We have not ruled out any options at this point.''

Two other Iraqis, including a teenager, were killed. The teen was thought to have been Qusai's son, Mustafa. The other man was believed to have been a bodyguard, U.S. officials said. But Sanchez said experts have yet to identify the bodies.

Sanchez defended the decision to kill the suspects hiding in the house, saying they had repeatedly fired on troops trying to enter the fortified second floor of the palatial villa.

``That was the decision made by the commander on the ground and that was right decision,'' Sanchez said. ``He made the right decision based on the conditions on the ground.''

``Our mission was find, kill or capture,'' he said. ``We had an enemy that was barricaded and we had to take measures to neutralize the target.''

Sanchez told CNN that four Americans wounded in the raid were not seriously hurt. Three have returned to duty, and the fourth will do so soon, he said.

He said he believed the $30 million bounty for Odai and Qusai would be paid, but gave no details about who tipped the Americans to the hideout.

American soldiers on patrol in Tarmiyah, a town 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Baghdad, were elated by the news of the deaths of Saddam's eldest sons. ``This is the best thing that can happen to the coalition,'' said Army Capt. Sean C. Nowlan, 31, of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Infantry Division. ``It deflates their campaign against us.''

But the euphoria was short-lived.

On Wednesday, a U.S. soldier was killed and six wounded in an attack on a convoy near Mosul, the same northern town were Odai and Qusai died, the military reported. In a separate incident Tuesday night, a convoy was attacked in Ramadi, 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of the capital, killing one soldier and wounding two more.

The two deaths brought to 155 the number of American soldiers killed in action since the war began March 20, surpassing by eight the death toll in the 1991 Gulf War.

In an interview with CNN, Sanchez said deaths of the two sons may be a ``turning point'' in the campaign against the remnants of Saddam's regime. But he warned there may be ``a spike'' in attacks on U.S. forces.

In the tape, Saddam purportedly said: ``Yes, this war has not ended. ... The will of the people will not be subdued by the enemy.''

There was no way to immediately and independently verify it was the former dictator, although it sounded like him.

Commenting on the tape, Mohammed al-Douri, Iraq's former ambassador to the United Nations, said it was Saddam but that he no long has any significant influence in the country.

``It is an attempt on behalf of Saddam Hussein to tell the Iraqi people and the world that he is still there,'' he said. ``This is his voice, Saddam is there, but I do not think that he has any effective role over the Iraqi people.''

An American commander said the person who tipped U.S. forces to the presence of the brothers Monday night was in protective custody in Iraq.

When asked why, Col. Joe Anderson, a brigade commander of 101st Airborne Division, said: ``People know who owns the house, so that's a factor.''

Anderson refused to say if the tipster and the owner of the villa were the same person.

The house belonged to Nawaf al-Zaydan Muhhamad, a Saddam cousin and tribal leader in the region.

An American commander said the person who tipped U.S. forces to the presence of the brothers was in protective custody in Iraq.

When asked why, Col. Joe Anderson, commander of the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, said:

``People know who owns the house, so that's a factor,'' Anderson said, refusing to say if the tipster and the owner of the villa were the same person.

Neighbors declared their certainty that the villa-owner and the tipster were one in the same.

``They (Odai and Qusai) are Iraqi people,'' said Waad Hamadi, 43. ``We would not have told the Americans. Many people say he (Muhhamad) is the one, but there is no way he can come back here now, he is a traitor.''

Across the street from the vast villa where Odai and Qusai Hussein were killed in a joint operation by the 101st Airborne Division and U.S. Special Forces, Seed Badr, 50, a gray-bearded taxi driver wearing a blue Arab robe, cursed the Americans.

``This is terrorism. They are killers.''

Asked what he thought of the operation to kill Odai and Qusai, Badr responded: ``I think the house was empty.''

Some Mosul residents said Mosul's reputation as a safe, quiet place likely drew the brothers to hide out in the villa of a Saddam cousin.

``They probably came here because it's safe. People here don't have any connection with Saddam,'' said 36-year-old businessman Muhammad Khalil, as he stood outside the remains of the three-story home.

There was no evidence the brothers were directly guiding the guerrilla war against U.S. forces, with attacks averaging 12 daily. Knowledge that they were still alive, however, was believed to have been a significant factor for the resistance, which hoped to wear down the coalition occupation.

The brothers' deaths Tuesday were expected by many analysts to be a major blow to the resistance movement.

Several dozen U.S. soldiers relaxed in front of the gutted mansion, their weapons mostly pointed toward the ground. There were 12 Humvees and an armored troop carrier, but no Bradley fighting vehicles or tanks.

Sanchez said 10 TOW anti-tank missile fired from Humvees had silenced most of the resistance, apparently killing three of the four suspects. The battle ended at about 2 p.m. on Tuesday, when troops stormed up the stairs to the second floor and shot the remaining suspect.

The bodies of Odai and Qusai - long feared by most Iraqis for their roles in the military and intelligence arms of Saddam's brutal dictatorship - were taken to the Baghdad International Airport base of American forces Wednesday to be flown out of the country, U.S. officials said. They would not say why the bodies were being taken out of Iraq or to where.

The mansion in Mosul sits in a neighborhood of sprawling villas and opposite a mosque. A house across the street also was damaged, along with 10 to 12 others nearby.

The Army strung a helix of razor wire around the perimeter of the villa. Outside a few hundred people gathered, chanting: ``We sacrifice our blood and souls for you, Saddam'' when television cameras arrived.



07/23/03 12:58 EDT
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No. 535-03
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jul 23, 2003
(703)697-5131(media)
(703)428-0711(public/industry)

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today that Spc. Jon P. Fettig, 30, Dickinson,
N.D., was killed on July 22 on the outside of Ar Ramadi, Iraq. Fettig was killed
when the Heavy Expanded-Mobility Tactical Truck he was in was hit by a rocket
propelled grenade.

Fettig was assigned to the 957th Engineer Company (V Corps), Bismarck, N.D.

[Web Version: http://www.dod.mil/releases/2003/nr20030723-0215.html]

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3rd ID unit moving to Kuwait


By RON MARTZ / Cox News Service

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Battle-weary soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team are not heading home to Georgia yet, but they soon will be moving in that direction.

About 4,000 soldiers in the unit that led the Army's attack into Iraq were told Tuesday to begin packing their gear for a move back to base camps in Kuwait later this week.

Military officials called the move "a change of mission" and said it does not mean the unit has orders to deploy home. The unit has been in Kuwait and Iraq for 10 months.

"A change of mission is not the end of mission. We will be used as the [Central Command's] strategic reserve," said Lt. Col. Eric Schwartz, commander of the brigade's Task Force 1-64.

As Central Command's strategic reserve unit, the brigade could be sent to any of the 25 countries in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. It also could be redeployed to Iraq if the situation deteriorates.

And Schwartz said the orders could be canceled if problems in Fallujah, about 40 miles west of Baghdad, worsen.

But Schwartz told his staff and company commanders to be ready to leave Fallujah, a city considered one of the last pro-Saddam strongholds, by Saturday. The 2nd Brigade expects to be replaced by elements of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

Although no definite date has been set for redeployment to Fort Stewart, Ga., Schwartz said the move will be good for his soldiers and their morale.

"It makes me feel better as a commander that I can get my soldiers out of a combat zone," he said. Schwartz, 41, of Alexandria, Va., said he was approaching the order to return to Kuwait "with guarded optimism."

The unit has been told twice in recent months to prepare for redeployment but those orders were canceled at the last minute. The latest, little more than a week ago, angered soldiers and families, some of whom felt they were betrayed by the Army's civilian leadership.

Capt. Jason Conroy, commander of the task force's Charlie Company, said Tuesday's order to return to Kuwait was "a move in the right direction."

Charlie Co. soldiers, who saw some of the toughest fighting of the war, were both hopeful and skeptical when told of the planned move to Kuwait.

"I'm not going to get too excited yet because we've heard this before. I'll believe it this time when I see it," said Sgt. Andrew Coffman, 32, of Shawnee, Okla., a weapons specialist for the company.

But Spec. Tony Lyman, 26, of Eugene, Ore., called it "the best news I've heard yet."

"It will take a lot of stress off," agreed Spec. Matt Larimer, 26, of Easton, Pa., "because we won't be under fire all the time."

Ron Martz
Welcome to GJSentinel!

RAMADI, Iraq — In the wrecked skeleton of a former Iraqi military warehouse, 200 soldiers stand at attention, jaws set, faces buffeted by a hot desert wind, saluting a memorial to Staff Sgt. William Latham.
An American flag whips the air above a pair of boots with an upright M-16 between them, a helmet atop its barrel.
For the soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Carson, Colo., the memorial is all too familiar. Sgt. Latham was the ninth of 10 soldiers from the regiment to die in Iraq since May.
But if war and its aftermath is tough for the soldiers — their choked voices and wet eyes at Sgt. Latham's memorial show their burden — most say it is harder still for their families back home.
"God has tested my faith here more than once. It's getting harder and harder every day," said Spc. Jason Richards, 32, his voice barely audible above the wind. Spc. Richards is a member of the Bradley Armored Vehicle crew that Sgt. Latham commanded.
"You think we're helping them, and then they kill one of our buddies," he said. "I don't understand how they can hate us so much. It just clouds your reasons for being here."
As he speaks, members of his unit kneel before the Latham memorial, crossing themselves.
Spc. Richards, originally from Yardley, Pa., feels torments beyond the death of his crew chief. In June, he chased and shot an armed Iraqi man who ignored calls to stop. Before shooting the man, Spc. Richards says, he fired 17 warning shots. Afterward he and his crew rushed over and administered first aid. The man died.
Spc. Richards recalls talking with an Army counselor to help him deal with his conscience.
"I asked him 'Why is God testing me so much?' " Spc. Richards said. "Now I'm going to suffer in hell for killing this guy."
Spc. Richards says he calls and e-mails his wife, Stephanie, to talk about his troubles. Each time he does, he increases her fears.
After killing the Iraqi, he called Mrs. Richards, who'd just given birth to their first child. He tried to tell his wife about the shooting but couldn't.
"I started choking up. I told her I had to go. I hung up."
At the beginning of the war, Stephanie Richards was upset to see peace demonstrations, considering them an insult to soldiers. Now she's distressed to see Iraqis protesting the American presence.
"He's missing all of this at home to help them, and they're throwing rocks at him and killing his friends," the 23-year-old wife and mother said, sitting at her parents' kitchen table in Colorado and holding 2-week-old Andie.
Lately, she's upset to hear people saying the war is over. To her, it seems like her husband and other soldiers are sitting ducks.
"I'm not going to have my husband killed after the war is over," she said.
"I don't want him there, they don't want him there, and he doesn't want to be there. So let them come home."
Growing up in the shadow of Fort Carson, she saw the unpredictability of military life and swore she never would marry an Army guy. But she changed her mind after meeting Jason Richards, and married him three months later. They moved up their wedding date by a year because of rumors he would be sent overseas.
After he got his orders, the couple met with a chaplain to help each understand what the other would be going through, and to help them remain a strong couple after the war.
She misses cooking pirogies and sausages for him and talking with him as he took a bath after a long day of training. But her daughter is a comfort. Andie reminds her of Jason in little ways — her voracious appetite, her ability to sleep through vacuuming.
Every day Mrs. Richards takes a picture of the baby so her husband can catch up when he gets back. Though she's never met her father, Andie calms down when she listens to a tape of him reading Dr. Seuss' "Oh, the Places You'll Go."
Spc. Richards eventually told her about shooting the Iraqi. He didn't say much, but she could tell the shooting was tearing him up inside and she tried to reassure him.
"If it's between you and the other guy, you're the one who has to come home," she recalls saying.
But she also felt helpless that she couldn't hold him or cheer him up.
"I just said, 'I'll hold you when you're back home,' " she said. "He can cowboy up for work, but when he comes home he needs TLC."
Justin Armstrong, 23, a sergeant in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, and his wife, Dorie, had grown accustomed to gathering at Tom and Kelli Broomhead's house at Fort Carson to play softball, drink beer and eat homemade gumbo.
The Broomheads, a decade older than the Armstrongs, helped show the younger couple the ropes of military life.
Tom Broomhead died May 27 in an ambush. His house on Fort Carson will be a lot different now.
"That's going to be my first stop when I get home," Sgt. Armstrong said, eyes moist, square-jawed face smudged with dirt. "I'm going to go and give Kelli a hug."
Since his friend's death, Sgt. Armstrong has been more careful. "Some say paranoid. I say cautious."
He checks every last thing on his Bradley, going through all the security and safety minutiae. For good reason: He's been shot at 10 or 15 times. Three or four times, he's fired back.
The dogged Iraqi resistance puzzles Sgt. Armstrong and others in the 3rd ACR's 2nd Squadron, known as Saber Squadron.
Sgt. Armstrong thinks some Iraqis believe the Americans have come to steal the country's oil. Others say the Iraqis think U.S. troops are Israelis in disguise. It makes Sgt. Armstrong angry to think his best friend was killed because of such rumors.
"They don't understand that we're here to free them from a dictator. They think we're here to kill them," said Sgt. Armstrong, his uniform encrusted with white salt stains from sweating under heavy body armor.
A few weeks ago, the 3rd Infantry Division took over in restive Fallujah and Saber Squadron got sent to Ramadi — still rough, but not quite as bad. Soon, though, the 3rd ACR will be sent back to Fallujah.
"They keep sending us letters saying, 'We're so glad you're out of there.' They don't realize we're going back in," Sgt. Armstrong said. "I don't have the heart to tell her. There's no sense in worrying her."
Sgt. Armstrong's wife mails him disposable cameras so he can take pictures of absolutely everything — his cot in the dust-caked barracks, his Bradley and the Iraqis' living conditions.
He and his unit live in a former Iraqi paratrooper barracks with ragged holes in the walls where windows used to be. Sgt. Armstrong keeps a sniper rifle wrapped in burlap camouflage hanging on the wall. A copy of "The Count of Monte Cristo" is on his cot, an old-fashioned wood-frame version patched with parachute cord.
There's a pinup girl on one wall, a poster of a Wendy's double cheeseburger on another. The stenciled visage of Saddam Hussein stares down from the ceiling, its eyes scratched out.
Even though the base is near the banks of the Euphrates, there is almost no vegetation. The fine "moon dust" that covers the ground billows through the open windows every time a Bradley vehicle passes. There's a quarter-inch on the floor under Sgt. Armstrong's cot. It falls on him as he sleeps.
"She'd think it was disgusting," he said of his wife and present living conditions.
Mrs. Armstrong, 22, knows her husband doesn't tell her everything that's happening. She knows he doesn't want her to worry as she waits in Colorado for his return.
"Sometimes he'll just say, 'I have a story to tell you, but I'll wait till I get home.' "
She does the same and tries to stay upbeat, sending photographs of her brother's new baby to her husband, a proud first-time uncle.
"I don't want him to have to worry about me," she said.
The Armstrongs met in high school in La Grande, Ore., and married three years ago, just a few days after Justin finished basic training. Their honeymoon was a trip to Fort Carson, where the young couple were quickly adopted by the Broomheads.
These days, Mrs. Armstrong writes funny stories to her husband about the newest addition to their family: a 5-month-old Labrador retriever named Daisy. As their older dog Roscoe apparently stood by, Daisy somehow knocked down Mrs. Armstrong's flower pots and ate all the evidence.
She sent her husband a picture of the two dogs sprawled on the couple's bed.
"He's always saying there won't be a spot in the bed when he comes back," she said.
Mrs. Armstrong has been busy since her husband left — studying to become a registered nurse during the day and working at a nursing home at night — and that helps keep her worries at bay. She and a neighbor whose husband is also in Iraq take turns cooking dinner for each other and take day trips to keep their minds off what's going on.
Every day, she wears half of a Mizpah pendant the couple bought the day before deployment, along with an American-flag pin on top of a yellow ribbon. She tries to follow news reports about what is happening in Iraq without dwelling on them.

Families feel Iraq strain - The Washington Times: World Briefings

Two American soldiers have been killed and nine others wounded in attacks in Iraq, one day after Saddam Hussein's two sons were killed in a coalition military operation.

The U.S. military says one soldier died and seven were injured in the northern city of Mosul, where Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed in a six-hour firefight with U.S. forces Tuesday. Another soldier was killed and two others wounded when a U.S. military convoy came under attack in Ramadi, west of Baghdad.

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