The Redhunter

GEN. BOLGER: ...And here in Iraq I serve as the commander of the Multi-National Division Baghdad, as Bryan mentioned. In this role, I lead about 31,000 U.S. soldiers, as well as some sailors, airmen and Marines. And our mission is to protect the 7 million people of Baghdad, and that's Baghdad province. There's about 6 million in the city proper, and the rest of them live out in the countryside that surrounds the city.

Now, in our operations we work closely with General Abboud Qanbar and the Iraqi Baghdad Operations Command. He commands a much larger force than I do. He has about 150,000 people in all, six complete Iraqi divisions. And for the Iraqis, about a third of them are in the army and another third in the various kinds of police, and the rest are the Sons of Iraq, which are the local version of Neighborhood Watch, and they're very important in this war. They're the former insurgents who reconciled to our side....

As Gen. Bolger's opening statement was relatively short, we'll get on with the Q & A. First, a brief on the situation now vs during the surge

Q Hi, General. It's Laura Jakes with Associated Press.

Wondering if you can talk a little bit more about the numbers of forces you still have, in the city of Baghdad, if any of them are staying in the COPs or the JCCs or JSSs, or whatever situation you have there, forces who are actually living in the city as opposed to Victory or in the Green Zone, and how long you expect that to go on.

GEN. BOLGER: to put it in perspective, at the height of the surge, in 2007, we had about 76 bases in the city and then a large number of even smaller patrol bases numbering up in the hundreds.

Right now, the number of U.S. facilities you'd find in the city would be in the tens, and I mean low tens. And I don't want to give a specific number, because obviously we don't want to disclose exactly where we're operating out of day-to-day, for a lot of reasons.

Now we'll get on with the main show, which was an email by Gen. Bolger that was highlighted in a July 17 story in The Washington Post. Read the whole thing, but the relevant part of the story is this:

The Americans have been taken aback by the new restrictions on their activities. The Iraqi order runs "contrary to the spirit and practice of our last several months of operations," Maj. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, commander of the Baghdad division, wrote in an e-mail obtained by The Washington Post.

"Maybe something was 'lost in translation,' " Bolger wrote. "We are not going to hide our support role in the city. I'm sorry the Iraqi politicians lied/dissembled/spun, but we are not invisible nor should we be." He said U.S. troops intend to engage in combat operations in urban areas to avert or respond to threats, with or without help from the Iraqis.

"This is a broad right and it demands that we patrol, raid and secure routes as necessary to keep our forces safe," he wrote. "We'll do that, preferably partnered.

Now, then, the briefiing. Leo Shane asks Gen. Bolger about the email:

Q General, Leo Shane from Stars and Stripes. We're hearing a lot of reports of frustration among troops with some of the role changes. I wonder if you could speak to what you're hearing from your guys.

And also, what's the -- you spoke a little bit about the cooperation level. I think we saw an e-mail from you over the weekend that touched on the issues of what U.S. forces can and can't do in the city. What is the cooperation level? Are you getting pushback from the Iraqis?

GEN. BOLGER: Well, I think it's a great question that you ask. And it's really been a challenge for us. You know, you put 180,000 people inside a city of 6 million -- you know, obviously, we reduced our numbers significantly, but we're in and around there -- you're going to obviously get a lot of different interpretations of a 15-page document in English and Arabic, which, aside from some local arrangements we made in terms of orders and mission statements we've given our guys, that's what a lot of Iraqi people heard.

And that document has 30 articles and there's all kinds of things in it. I'm sure some attorneys somewhere could make sense of all of it. But what we've got is just folks out on the ground trying to make sense of it as they're carrying out their task.

In addition, and this was totally to be expected, a lot of the Iraqi public media trumpeted what was in Article 24 about leaving out of the cities. There's -- as I said, there's 30 articles in the agreement. They could have also talked about Article 4, that said that some Americans would be asked to stay to help out. For a lot of reasons, that just got lost. And again, 15-page, single-spaced type in English and Arabic, you could expect some confusion.

Most military operations I've been in I've got a degree of friction. And this one has had some for sure. I think each day that goes by we get a little bit better at working together. The great thing that we really had helping us is we've been under this system essentially since 1 January. So although there were some hiccups right at the beginning, some Iraqi guys saying hey, why are you Americans in the city; you know, we heard an announcement you were all leaving. What are you doing here?

Other cases, where Iraqis came to us and said hey, we need you to do this combat operation, we had to tell them hey, no, you know, we're in a supporting role now. If you lead, we can help you with these things and not those things.

And it took a while. And it's been my experience whenever you're turning a big operation like MND Baghdad or the Baghdad ops command on the Iraqi side, there's always going to be some frictions and hiccups.

One thing I would like to point out, though, is that -- and this has pretty well been seen -- there's not been a lot of confrontation or pushing or shoving or any silly stuff in Baghdad. There's certainly been some scenes where an American or an Iraqi commander, you know, have to come out of their vehicles and walk up and figure out what's going on and all that. But you know, heck, we had that at earlier parts of the war as well, and a lot of that's a function of not speaking the same language and all that.

The one great thing I can state is, from General Abboud Qanbar all the way down to our Iraqi privates and our privates, they definitely know that partnership's the name of the game, especially in the city...

So I think in a lot of ways, it's actually built on what we've done up until now. It's built on years of work. And despite those initial frustrations, I think, it seems to be going pretty well.

The other thing I'd point out, which is equally important, is that the security situation in Baghdad also remains pretty stable. Some people were worried that if we pulled our major combat forces out, we might have a big upspike in violence.....

Of course Gen. Bolger does not directly answer the question. I would imagine that Secretary Gates had a talk with him after the Post story got out.

There is much more of interest in the briefing, particularly some discussion on the Sons of Iraq (SOI) They're former insurgents (mostly Sunni, but some Shia) and some criminals. who were brought into the government as a sort of super-neighborhood-watch/quasi-military-police force. We paid them initially but now the government of Iraq has to pick up the tag. Now that the insurgency is mostly over we're trying to transition them into civilian jobs. As with everything in warfare, everything is simple but the simplest thing is difficult. Some of the SOI are going back to their criminal ways.

So now the big question is whether the Iraqis can do the job without us. The 1st Cav is about to end their current deployment with another job well done. The key now is for the Iraqis do do their jobs well.

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Briefing by Colonel Joseph Martin and Mr. John Bennett. Col Martin commands the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Multinational Division-Baghdad.

Iraq Briefing - 23 February 2009 - Still A Third World Country