THE BIG THREAT IS TERROR

The "Bandits" are among our own...home based here in Friedberg.

“The Bandits” — The 1st Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment — live on Baghdad Island, a small spit of land in northern Baghdad that extends into the Tigris River.

As military encampments go, it’s one of the roughest in Baghdad — “maybe a three or four on a scale of one to 10,” Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the Wiesbaden, Germany-based 1st Armored Division, told the Bandits during an Aug. 9 visit to the camp in 135-degree heat.

Every night, the Bandits go to sleep in their hot, stuffy tents to the sound of small-arms fire. Tracers make their way in the skies above.

And when the Bandits leave their compound on patrols, raids or supply runs, sometimes they don’t come back.

So it was no surprise to Dempsey that one of the first questions asked during his visit was “Sir, who is attacking us?”

Dempsey was characteristically blunt.

Right now, it’s former Saddam loyalists and criminals who are angry at U.S. troops’ attempts to interfere with their lawlessness. But all that’s about to change, he said.

The new enemy is terrorists, he warned. They all know the Americans are in Iraq, and the “they all want to try and get a piece of you.”

“Regional extremists are even now flocking to Baghdad because [in their eyes], it’s the superbowl,” Dempsey said. “They’re coming here now and starting to get organized.”

Dempsey is warning his troops to get ready for an enemy “that wants to make a big, big splash, like dropping the Palestine,” a major hotel where many Westerners live.