Stryker Brigade News

Soldiers on point do not debate evidence on Saddam Hussein's program of unconventional weapons. They do not argue exit strategies or disengagement. And the question of whether enough troops are committed to Iraq is answered by looking to their immediate left and right. They pass the Skittles and PowerBars, load their weapons and just want to get through the patrol, election day, their tour in Iraq, and then go home.

"It's a funny thing: They don't want us here, and we don't want to be here," said First Sgt. Robert Wright of Company A, First Battalion, 24th Infantry. He is one of those small-unit leaders who is so sharp at guiding soldiers into urban combat that he has picked up the nickname Jedi.

"We know it's important to get these people back on their feet," he said.

Company A knows most directly about loss from this unconventional war, where even Iraqis who work among them may be their enemies, or an enemy may be wearing a uniform stolen from one who works among them. The commander, Capt. Bill Jacobsen, was one of the 22 killed when a bomb struck a mess tent in Forward Operating Base Marez last month in Mosul.

Capt. Jeffrey Van Antwerp was thrust into command. "We didn't lose a step," he said. "We got up and moved out." This week he moved his men onto a square beneath a mosque in Mosul where mortars were launched five minutes earlier.

Seven men were rounded up as possible witnesses to the mortar attack. Captain Van Antwerp quizzed each, in a tough way. But after shouting questions at the seventh - he wore a T-shirt with the "Friends" television show logo - Captain Van Antwerp relented. He let them go, but only after telling them to vote.

"We have to get the information about the insurgency," he said. "But we don't want to create more sympathizers for the anti-Iraqi forces."

In the fight against those insurgents, by late Friday, Colonel Milley's efforts for the Baghdad police general had helped bring in 80 percent of the requested AK-47's.