Seeker Blog

If you are not already reading Michael Yon’s dispatches, then you are missing the most important writing from Iraq. From Yon you can learn in depth why the good guys are winning. Michael has just posted The Battle For Mosul IV - Soldiers, Spies, and Sheep. The dispatch is deadly serious, but is not without humor:

Retaking Mosul, One Sheep at a Time

Delivering respect to Iraqi Army Colonel Noradeen

We were delivering a sheep to an Iraqi Army commander named Colonel Noradeen. Noradeen’s unit has about 700 men—about the same size as Deuce Four —and those soldiers are mostly Kurdish. Noradeen’s reputation with the Americans is as enviable as Eid’s. Major Mark Beiger was there, and soon there was a sheep sniffing around untethered in Noradeen’s office. Noradeen and everyone chuckled at the “It’s only for eating” joke that had become Kurilla’s trademark with the ISF leadership.

Colonel Noradeen wanted to put his office in the middle of Yarmook Traffic Circle, which might ring familiar to folks who have read my previous dispatches: it might well be the most dangerous traffic circle in the universe. On my first mission in Mosul, we lost two American soldiers and an interpreter just nearby after a man rammed his explosives-filled car into a B Company Stryker.

Colonel Noradeen invites us to lunch and, like normal, his cooks were better than we had on base: LTC Kurilla, COL Noradeen, CPT Scott Cheney, and CPT Jeff VanAntwerp.

Sandbags cover the window of Noradeen’s office. During one meeting, we took sniper fire, but it didn’t make much difference—we were inside. Another day when I was not there, some mortars landed just outside Noradeen’s office and heavily damaged some American Humvees. Those types of attacks are not show-stoppers, but giant truck bombs can flatten a building and kill the entire unit. Noradeen’s current office was safe from giant bombs, but he wanted to move his office to Yarmook traffic circle—where shootouts and car bombs are guaranteed. Designing the outpost to withstand multiple simultaneous car bombs or giant truck bombs would require some thinking. When one of the American officers had asked Colonel Noradeen, “Why do you want an office at Yarmook Traffic Circle?” he answered simply, “If I build it there, they will come to me.”

Full stop.

That hung in the air.

One second.

Two seconds.

Kurilla said under his breath to one of his own officers, “That’s why I love this guy.”

There is a lot of good information in the dispatch on the readiness of Iraqi security forces.