jatx
02-20-2006, 09:56
(NYT also some has some good video on their site to accompany the story)
By THOM SHANKER
Published: February 20, 2006
AREA IV, Iraq — The three helicopters took off after midnight from this Special Operations base outside Baghdad, bound for a rural community where a man suspected of being a ringleader of the insurgency was hiding in a compound marked on military maps as Objective Hades.
Training Elite Troops Landing beyond earshot of the village, three dozen troops began a quick march along silent roads, cutting across fields, plunging through a gully filled with frigid, waist-deep water, racing to complete the operation before sunrise. Wearing black masks and night-vision goggles, the troops circled the house, to trap anyone who tried to escape — "squirters," as the soldiers put it.
It was the kind of smash-and-grab mission that not many months ago was conducted solely by American forces in Iraq. But this time, only one-third of the troops were American, there to observe and advise. Kicking down the door and seizing the suspect were members of the new Iraqi Counterterrorism Force.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/international/middleeast/20training.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1140450321-TH16EyioDlpDg0jrkolkng
By THOM SHANKER
Published: February 20, 2006
AREA IV, Iraq — The three helicopters took off after midnight from this Special Operations base outside Baghdad, bound for a rural community where a man suspected of being a ringleader of the insurgency was hiding in a compound marked on military maps as Objective Hades.
Training Elite Troops Landing beyond earshot of the village, three dozen troops began a quick march along silent roads, cutting across fields, plunging through a gully filled with frigid, waist-deep water, racing to complete the operation before sunrise. Wearing black masks and night-vision goggles, the troops circled the house, to trap anyone who tried to escape — "squirters," as the soldiers put it.
It was the kind of smash-and-grab mission that not many months ago was conducted solely by American forces in Iraq. But this time, only one-third of the troops were American, there to observe and advise. Kicking down the door and seizing the suspect were members of the new Iraqi Counterterrorism Force.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/international/middleeast/20training.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1140450321-TH16EyioDlpDg0jrkolkng