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Army leader up for second star

Dec-29-2005 » Filed Under: Homefront

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MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

As deputy director for operations on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, Brig. Gen. Carter Ham sees most of what the U.S. military is doing around the world each day. It’s one of those ringside-at-history jobs.

But it’s nothing like the time he spent leading Fort Lewis-based soldiers across northern Iraq – an assignment he once called “the defining period of my life.”

“It’s going from command in the field, where you’re out and about with soldiers all the time, actively engaged in operations, to a staff job,” Ham said last week. “An important staff job, but nonetheless a staff job.”...

The Hams arrived at Fort Lewis in August 2003 and were just settling in when the Army sent him in December to lead Task Force Olympia in Mosul, Iraq.

For the next year he oversaw combat operations by the two Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigades, tried to forge reliable Iraqi security forces and directed more than $80 million in reconstruction projects.

The job had its moments of great triumph and tragedy. The low point came Dec. 21, 2004, when a suicide bomber killed 22 people in a U.S. military chow hall, including six Fort Lewis soldiers.

Ham attended a memorial last week in West Virginia for two of that state’s national guardsmen who were among those killed in the attack.

The greatest triumph came last Jan. 30 – election day – when thousands of Mosul residents took to the polls despite a sustained insurgent campaign to stop the vote from taking the place....


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