Attacks on U.S. Soldiers Show Iraq Is Not Yet Safe

by Anna Mulrine

U.S. combat troops officially withdrew from all Iraqi cities this week, and the Iraqi government declared a national holiday to commemorate the event. But with the celebration came a stark reminder that the war in Iraq continues for U.S. troops and that the country is far from safe.

This week, Lt. Col. Tim Karcher was near Baghdad's infamous Sadr City slum when his mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicle was hit by a series of roadside bombs with deadly shaped charges known as explosively-formed projectiles.

EFPs, which the U.S. military says come from Iran, are able to penetrate the armor of what is considered to be the U.S. military's safest vehicle.

Karcher, on his third tour of Iraq, lost both of his legs in the attack.

It was not the first time Karcher experienced an EFP attack.

Senior Editor and Pentagon Correspondent Anna Mulrine first met Karcher in Iraq in December 2006 with the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division. She was embedded with Karcher and his unit outside the restive city of Baqubah, a dangerous battleground during the height of the insurgency.

Mulrine was in a convoy with Karcher when it was hit with an EFP.

The bomb killed the driver, Sgt. R. Jay Gauthreaux, 26, of Thibodaux, La., sitting in the passenger seat beside Karcher.

In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, Karcher impressed his soldiers with his quick command of the chaos and his poignant words to his troops later that day.

Karcher is now at the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, where he is recovering from surgery. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited the hospital, where he met Karcher and awarded recovering soldiers Purple Hearts.

Karcher already had one of them. In 2007, just weeks after the EFP attack, he was shot in the shoulder fighting alongside Iraqi troops.

Karcher is scheduled to be flown to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington this weekend.

Here is part of the article Mulrine wrote days after the December 2006 attack, which includes Karcher's thoughts about what his soldiers were grappling with every day--and the dangers they continue to confront. Read the full article here.

A Soldier's Death on a Stunning Day in Iraq

By Anna Mulrine

Pentagon correspondent Anna Mulrine was traveling with soldiers of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division one recent afternoon north of Baghdad, in the hotly contested city of Baqubah, when a routine humanitarian mission turned deadly as their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb.

The critical moments before and after the explosion mirror the daily experience of soldiers throughout Iraq, who today are being killed in roadside bombs at a higher rate than at any other time during the war.

When you're riding in a convoy with U.S. soldiers as an embedded reporter here, without looking at an incident map you can generally tell when you're hitting particularly dangerous territory. That's because many of the soldiers will simply tell you that you're hitting particularly dangerous territory. Others just grow a little more silent and a lot more vigilant, helping the driver scan for possible signs of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), guiding him around suspicious stretches of curb, advising him to give the parked car ahead a wide berth.

Frequently punctuating the stretches of silence is the solid sense of humor that it takes to break the tension of braving some of the most dangerous roads in the world, often two and three and four times a day. Spend enough time in Iraq, for example, and you're bound to build up your repertoire of Chuck Norris jokes. One of the common denominators in bases all over the country is that these jokes are extremely popular with soldiers, and especially beloved by soldiers who head out on convoys every day. A few examples:

- Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas.

- When the boogeyman goes to sleep, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

- There is no such thing as evolution -- only a tiny list of creatures that Chuck Norris decided to let live.

- The dinosaurs angered Chuck Norris once. Only once.

I could go on for a while, as I have grown to love these jokes, but you get the point. Suffice it to say that they are a nod to crazy strength and invulnerability-the kind (along with a sizable dose of bravery and a solid sense of humor)-that it takes to run these convoys.

The soldiers of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division introduced me to Chuck Norris jokes in Baqubah, one of the more dicey places in the country right now.

I was spending the day with their military transition team (MiTT), heading to a town outside the city that, some 24 hours earlier, had been the site of a raid targeting al Qaeda insurgents. We were about to embark on the carrots portion of the operation.

"We're going to try to develop some goodwill," says Lt. Col. Tim Karcher, the brigade's transition team commander, as the MiTT team is loading up the humvees, or trucks as the soldiers tend to call them, with blankets, kerosene, and water. The soldiers will be setting an example for some of their Iraqi Army counterparts--soldiers who, they note, haven't yet quite embraced the idea of carrots.

We stop by the Iraqi Army post nearby to pick up the Iraqi soldiers and their trucks, then head out toward the town. Our humvee also has a bag of a dozen or so stuffed animals. Sgt. Maj. Eddie Del Valle, riding shotgun, has a large teddy bear in mind for a particular young girl who comes out nearly every day to wave at the convoy as it passes. He points her out to Capt. Christopher Whitten, the gunner. He then makes gentle fun of Whitten's throwing skills as he attempts to hurl the bear in her direction.

We head past a place called Mufrek circle along a notorious stretch in Baqubah where every hundred yards or so, sections of the curb are blown out, one of Iraq's countless IED alleys. Ahead, a couple of packs of dogs trot by. We laugh about a soldier who has nicknamed the dog packs the sharks and the jets--and another who has spotted a couple of cats running with one of the dog gangs. Someone points out that if that ridiculous and unlikely group can get along, maybe anyone can.

We then enter one of the silent stretches, the soldiers quietly scanning.

That's when we hear an explosion ahead, very near the front of our convoy.

In times like these, for a few seconds, soldiers simply hold their breath and listen to their radios.

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