FIRST PERSON PERSPECTIVE: ON WHO IS WHO IN IRAQ

The 1st Brigade is bigger than it has ever been with various attachments. For instance we have 3-124 Infantry from the Florida National Guard. These guys are great. Remember, all these Guard guys have day jobs. And in many cases they are doctors, engineers, civic leaders, cable installers, construction contractors…all of which are incredibly valuable skill sets to have under our circumstances.

And then there is the 802d MP Company attached to the brigade. That’s an additional forty something Hummvees. An incredible supplement. And many of these guys are the boys in blue, policemen from New York. Some are detectives. It is unbelievable how much they have taught us. I mean, a bunch of infantrymen and tankers – what do they know about preserving the crime scene…we’re trained to destroy. So these guys bring and teach skill sets we simply must have.

The spectrum of bad guys runs from thugs, through organized crime all the way to paramilitaries. The thugs and such are not much of a problem….they are just thugs. Our first priority is the paramilitaries.

The paramilitaries are mostly Ba’ath party members who were accustomed to being the privileged class in Iraq for 35 years. And now their privilege has been removed. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain by sabotaging US efforts on the part of the Iraqi people. And they continue to spread rumors that Saddam is alive and it is only a matter of time before the Ba’ath party returns to power.

But we have to be careful not too attribute everything to Ba’ath party members. Sometimes the bad guys doing the shooting are just drunk. Or, sometimes it is a crime of passion, boyfriends jealous of their girlfriends working for the Americans as translators.

There is a huge unemployed element of the population. Many of these are former Iraqi soldiers. But let’s understand this…the Iraqi Army was 20 times larger than it needed to be. These soldiers were part of Saddam’s strength, extra power to intimidate the Iraqi people.