Michael Yon has just posted another important report. Yon has been allowed to join the patrol of Command Sergeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger, who is "responsible for the Multi-National Force in Iraq, including all Coalition officers, enlisted persons and civilians. Every canal and precipice in the battle space, from posh offices to combat-mired swamps, falls under his watch. Across deserts and over mountains, he checks the battle readiness and welfare of the troops. He does not rely on reports, but instead ventures for answers deep into the field with his small nondescript patrol."
Today’s report starts in Mosul, then transits through Baghdad to Kuwait
Sometime later we emerge in Kuwait, a peaceful country that had been swallowed in one gulp by its "civilized" neighbor. An Army medic who was part of the Coalition force that liberated a Kuwaiti hospital told me that when they first entered the nursery, there were dead and dying infants strewn about the floor. Tossed from their "cradles," their heads had been crushed under the boots of Iraqi soldiers, a parting shot as the Iraqi Army fled from real combatants. Meanwhile, retreating soldiers acting on the orders of Saddam Hussein set a forest of oil wells ablaze, raising environmental alarms when the vast Kuwaiti oil fields pumped enough acrid smoke into the atmosphere to create eclipse-like conditions throughout the region. If he couldn’t have Kuwait, he was hell-bent on making it so toxic no one else would want it, while stamping his boots in a tantrum of epic proportions.
then concentrates on one of Iraq’s critical nodes, the two oil terminals that account for 85% of Iraq’s income. The terminals are of course prime targets of the jihadist and Baathist terrorists. Yon outlines the serious challenges that the American, Australian, British and Iraqi defenders face as they work to defend these assets:
…The naval officer says that because KAAOT sits slightly more than one mile outside of Iranian waters, the boats can legally fish the waters up to that point. Scanning the surface, the dozens of boats are difficult even to count as they move around from place to place. Our defenses do not have an entire horizon as a free-fire zone; the attackers can come up nearly atop the tankers and KAAOT. I know practically nothing about naval warfare, yet this looks like a security nightmare drawn straight from the "worst case security scenario" handbook. And tracking the movement of all these fishing vessels does nothing about the threat of divers, submersibles, or myriad other devious means.
Read the whole thing…
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