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Local Stryker soldiers sent to Baghdad

Jul-30-2006 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

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News Tribune staff and news services

About 1,400 Fort Lewis soldiers have been moved to the Baghdad area as part of U.S. plans to bolster forces in the Iraqi capital.
The soldiers make up about a third of the Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigade, which recently began a yearlong deployment in Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq.

The 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment and the 1st Battalion, 14th Cavalry Regiment “are currently positioned in the vicinity of Baghdad,” brigade commander Col. Steve Townsend wrote Friday night in an e-mail to The News Tribune.

The rest of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division will remain in Mosul, he said.

The battalions will be in Baghdad “as long as they are needed,” said Fort Lewis spokesman Lt. Col. Dan Williams, who on Saturday confirmed the information in Townsend’s e-mail.

Williams said the soldiers’ families had been informed of the movement.

The U.S. command in Baghdad formally announced Saturday that it was sending 3,700 troops to the Iraqi capital to try to end the violence there.

It was unclear if the Fort Lewis soldiers were included in that figure.

The Fort Lewis Stryker brigade is replacing the Alaska-based 172nd Stryker brigade in Mosul. The Alaska Stryker soldiers had been scheduled to return home after a year in Iraq when their deployment was extended by four months as part of President Bush’s plan to increase security in Baghdad.

The Strykers will bring quick-moving, light-armored vehicles to patrol the sprawling city of 6 million people. The U.S. military hopes more armor will intimidate gunmen, whose attacks in recent weeks have become more brazen.

“This will place our most experienced unit with our most mobile and agile systems in support of our main effort,” said Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. “This gives us a potentially decisive capability to affect security in Baghdad.”

The U.S. statement did not say when the Alaska Stryker soldiers would move to the capital from Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.[...]


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