As I should think anyone who follows the war already knows, improvised explosive devices, aka IEDs, are a huge headache for everyone in Iraq. You can't drive anywhere without being aware of the possibility of the road exploding beneath you; I don't know how the Iraqi Army and police have the courage to go out day after day with their often-unarmored vehicles; I might be happy to just stay inside the FOB myself, if I didn't have duties elsewhere.

Needless to say, eliminating the people who build, emplace, and detonate these devices is an important part of what the IA does. They are pretty well-motivated to find these people, for obvious reasons, and one of the things they do to try and locate them is just being out and about as often as possible, so the locals get to know them and feel comfortable speaking with them. From what I have seen, most of the locals don't want their roads strewn with these devices, but they are very aware of the possibility retribution against them by AIF if they tell the Iraqi Security Forces what they know. When the Iraqi Army is seen on frequently, the locals are more likely to believe that they will be protected if they speak up. So a large part of our job is just going out with the Iraqis while they interact with local citizens.

The other day that paid off for us, as one of the citizens approached the patrol leader to let him know about a group of individuals who they had spotted emplacing IEDs not far away. They claimed to know where the bomb makers were hiding, so we developed a hasty plan to search the area and started rolling.

Things didn't go quite as we planned. The description of the enemy hideout apparently matched two separate sites, and we hit the wrong one first, so we lost 15-20 minutes surrounding and beginning to search the wrong place. Once we sorted that out, we rolled to the correct site and began a search of the area. As is so often the case, there were no military aged males there, likely because they saw our dust trails and were able to flee, so we were only able to search the area. Our Iraqis acquitted themselves very well. One of the women was clearly unhappy with our presence, but the Iraqi soldiers refused to react to her presence, speaking with her politely and explaining why there were there and remaining respectful but firm at all times.

The search did not turn up anything incriminating, so in that respect it could be considered a failure. But, while we cannot rule out the tip being based on an attempt at retaliation, we had enough intelligence to believe that it was good, and the Iraqis did the right things. It's not a huge day, but we take progress where we can find it.

READER COMMENTS

good to see another blog. It is very helpful to read what your team is doing. If nothing else, it helps to counteract the negative impact one gets from the media in this country. Keep up the good work.

good to see another blog. It is very helpful to read what your team is doing. If nothing else, it helps to counteract the negative impact one gets from the media in this country. Keep up the good work.

Keep going,there are lot of Individual or Groups that support the U.S. presence in Iraq,Afghanistan ,in the Gulf Arab region. Let it be known that there is no doubt that one or two Middle east Arab country have the Intention of Wiping out the whole of Israel, I would not eleborate who is who but once they can developed that nuclear arm, into a hand held vrsion then that will be the beginining of the of the long struggle to to stop it, as for me and the other the best course of action is STOP IT BEFORE IT HAPPEN AND IF IS ALREADY THERE REACT IMMEDIATELY TO ANY SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION,it is better for the person to act before the sun set on the West for the the next thing to happen is that the sun will rise on the East where you see nothing.