U.S-Iraqi partnership helps breed security

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U.S-Iraqi partnership helps breed security
By James Warden, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, February 14, 2008

A year or two ago, Iraqi security forces or their partners in the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment might have entered a dangerous east Baghdad home without knowing the danger that awaited.

But when U.S. soldiers went to a home at about 10:50 a.m. Monday morning, the growing partnership with the Iraqis helped them avoid no less than 11 bombs that insurgents had rigged to catch the soldiers unawares.

The Iraqi forces received a tip that the house in Baghdad’s Rusafa Security District had been rigged, said Capt. Warren Withrow, an intelligence officer with 2nd Battalion, 69th Armored Regiment, the Fort Benning, Ga., unit to which the 504th PIR soldiers are attached.

Such information might have made it to American forces in the past — but it would probably have taken a couple days, said Withrow, of Candia, N.H.

The Americans had been working to cultivate their relationship with the Iraqis, though. Withrow himself has Iraqi contacts in his mobile phone whom he can call at a moment’s notice.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52460