The Redhunter

GEN. NASH: ...Since we spoke last month, the Iraqi security forces have had tremendous success in establishing security throughout the nine provinces of southern Iraq. I'd like to highlight a good-news story in the Dhi Qar and Maysan provinces, and a productive mission that resulted in a significant capture of weapons and ammunition.

During recent operations, the 10th Iraqi Army Division captured dozens of explosively formed penetrator plates, magnetic car sticky bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, hundreds of machine guns, assault rifles, and thousands of small-arms rounds. Additionally, over a hundred rockets, artillery rounds and mortar shells were collected from cache sites between the arid dunes of northern Maysan and the marshes in the south of the province. Among the recently confiscated items were rocket rails, radios and gas masks.

The Iraqi army is cementing its reputation with the citizens of southern Iraq as a catalyst for peace and adding to their security.

Most of these caches were exposed by tips from the concerned citizens, who refuse to let criminals and terrorists erode security and economic opportunity in their country....

A pretty short opening statement overall and nothing remarkable or new in it. On to the Q & A. Here is where things get interesting, and it's obvious that the reporters know what they're looking for in their questions:

Q: ...Good morning, general. This is Joe Tabet with Al Hurra. I don't know if you could give us more details about the captured munitions that the Iraqi divisions have found lately in the south. Do you know, what's the source of these weapons, these rockets?

GEN. NASH: ...As I mentioned, the caches that they were able to find, the munitions that I mentioned, certainly have markings on them. And they come from a variety of places. And I'll be quite frank with you; some of the rockets have "made in Iran" on those rockets, but -- as well as some other countries that -- munitions. And they certainly can be munitions that are left over from the previous war, the Iranian-Iraq war in the '80s. Some of them are rather new. But again, they're marked with certain country markings. And those are the things that we try to exploit, look at, find out how new those weapons are, how new those munitions are, as we continue to exploit the networks that are doing harm here in southern Iraq.
...

Q General, Bill McMichael, Military Times. You said the other munitions, aside from the rockets that were stamped "made in Iran," have come from a variety of places. Could you please be more specific, or tell us why you can't be?

GEN. NASH: Bill, again, you know, if I talked about names that were on there, I'd be pointing fingers. And again, we really don't have information or intelligence that would directly pinpoint it back to a particular supplier. So needless to say, the bulk of what we see would have a stamp on a particular munition that would say "Iran." ...

Q Barbara Starr, from CNN. Well, now I have to follow up and then ask my other -- my real question. On the Iranian weapons, you have seen this for many years now, and you understand the date stamps on the Iranian weapons. So what is the most recent-manufacture Iranian weapons you have seen? And then I would like to just ask a question I need to ask.

GEN. NASH: Follow-up on that, I believe I'll be able to answer it. I believe probably "07" was the latest stamping of a date on a munition that I personally saw and have heard about.

The weapons Nash that we have found have been in Iraq for a few years, but this does not preclude the possibility that there are weapons of more recent manufacture that we simply haven't found. And just because they're stamped "2007 doesn't mean that they weren't brought to Iraq in 2009.

How much of an effect these weapons are having is not stated in this briefing, and as we shall see below Nash says that in his area in recent months "the number of IED attacks has gone down dramatically." However, with American troops due to withdraw from operations more and more, having these weapons around and possibly still being shipped into the country will make the job of the Iraqi security forces all the harder.

The best thing would be to convince Iran to stop supplying the insurgency. A few years ago our ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, held a series of meetings with the Iranians to try and do just that. As I recall they were partially successful but obviously not completely so. President Obama hasn't shown any strength with regard to dealing with the Iranian nuclear question so it's hard to see his administration getting serious about this issue either.

Continuing with the brieving, there was much Q & A about the death of PFC Wilhelm. Wilhelm was either killed by other soldiers or committed suicide, and an investigation by the CID is ongoing. Apparently there was mistreatment of the soldier which of course is a concern to all. Four soldiers have been arrested and an Article 32 hearing will take place shortly to see if there is enough evidence for a courts martial. I won't cover that here as you can watch the video and read the transcript for details.

The final Q & A that we'll look at concerns the overall level of violence, a sign of whether the insurgency is ramping up again or whether we still have things under control. What we have is generally good news and is not challenged by the reporters.

Q Sir, can I come back to that? This is Gordon Lubold at the Christian Science Monitor. But can you give us kind of a -- some sense of the amount of violence across your area of responsibility -- (audio break) -- and also, just kind of characterize what are your troops doing?

GEN. NASH: Okay, let me answer the -- sort of a two-part thing, what my troops are doing and the level of violence. We average a little over 1.3 attacks per day, and that's throughout all nine provinces. And I mentioned earlier in my opening statement, you know, landwise, it's probably the size of Wisconsin geographically. Primarily all Shi'a.

Now, you have to keep that in mind, and the fact that we probably have close to 10 1/2 million people in those nine provinces. So we're averaging a little over 1.3 attacks per day, and this is less than in Baghdad, less than in Multinational Division-North, in the Mosul area, Tikrit area, but slightly more than in Multinational Force-West in the Anbar province.

Since June, the attacks, generally, have dropped slightly in our area. The number of IED attacks has gone down dramatically. The highest month was the month we got here, in May. But that was the highest in eight months, and each month since then, the IED attacks have gone down.

Now, have said -- have -- saying that, in direct-fire attacks on bases in COBs and in our FOBs have increased slightly since June 30th, since out of the cities, since we've complied with the security agreement.

But in general the attacks against the coalition forces -- on the roads, doing their missions, partnering with the Iraqi security forces, going out to the training, to advise and assist, to be part of their operations, as I mentioned -- has gone down slightly.

Now, talking about our soldiers, what are they doing? They're engaged each and every day, like they have been. It's sort of like, now we're commuting to work. Whereas before we were out and about, not so much here in the south, because we were really not part of the -- embedded in the major cities that were part of the security agreement.