"It looked weird and felt wrong…" (heavyhandedness of 4th Infantry)

[kskiska]

Monday, July 24, 2006; A01

From its first days in Iraq in April 2003, the Army's 4th Infantry Division made an impression on soldiers from other units -- the wrong one.

"We slowly drove past 4th Infantry guys looking mean and ugly," recalled Sgt. Kayla Williams, then a military intelligence specialist in the 101st Airborne. "They stood on top of their trucks, their weapons pointed directly at civilians. . . . What could these locals possibly have done? Why was this intimidation necessary? No one explained anything, but it looked weird and felt wrong."

Today, the 4th Infantry and its commander, Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, are best remembered for capturing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, one of the high points of the U.S. occupation. But in the late summer of 2003, as senior U.S. commanders tried to counter the growing insurgency with indiscriminate cordon-and-sweep operations, the 4th Infantry was known for aggressive tactics that may have appeared to pacify the northern Sunni Triangle in the short term but that, according to numerous Army internal reports and interviews with military commanders, alienated large parts of the population.

The unit, a heavy armored division despite its name, was known for "grabbing whole villages, because combat soldiers unable to figure out who was of value and who was not," according to a subsequent investigation of the 4th Infantry Division's detainee operations by the Army inspector general's office. Its indiscriminate detention of Iraqis filled Abu Ghraib prison, swamped the U.S. interrogation system and overwhelmed the U.S. soldiers guarding the prison.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/23/AR2006072300495_pf.html

[steely]

1. Interesting story with compelling arguments

But I don't think these guys deserve any blame, given that it was early in the "war", and we all knew it would happen based on the bad decision * made to initiate this action in the first place.

War fighters do just that - they were ready, trained, and psyched, and * PLAYED them and us.
To go back 3 years and blame the 4th INF is a little unfair.

I am however, appalled a the complete lack of restraint shown by the commanders, and the leadership within the prison and MI chain. To me, the lack of control exercised by the politicians here, and the military intelligence gathering community brass, perpetuated the problem. Someone turned the system on, and let it run amok with no correction.