Army’s 3rd Division returns to Iraq

The Army’s 3rd Infantry Division is back in Iraq, 22 months after it stormed the country from Kuwait and was the first U.S. unit to penetrate downtown Baghdad to oust Saddam Hussein.

The Fort Stewart, Ga.-based division has a new commander and a whole new combat configuration. Of its roughly 20,000 soldiers, about 50 percent participated in the invasion and subsequent occupation that saw a rise in lawlessness and a burgeoning insurgency.

“Our soldiers, for the most part, feel like this is the right thing to do,” said Maj. Gen. William Webster, the 3rd Infantry commander, who was deputy commander of all U.S. ground forces during the drive to Baghdad.

“They understand that the mission is not complete,” he said at a Baghdad press conference. “It wasn’t complete when we left the first time. They were very happy to have 15 to 18 months back home with their families, and they’re proud to be back here serving in the U.S. Army again, to help the Iraqi people get control of their country.”

Gen. Webster’s troops are returning to a changed landscape, politically and militarily.

The Iraqis now run the government in a transition that ends with the convening of a national assembly that will elect new leaders. The Iraqi armed forces and police, disbanded after Baghdad fell April 9, have been reconstituted and now number more than 135,000.

And an insurgency that seemed sporadic when the 3rd Division left in 2003 is a powerful killing force that attacks at any time, 40 to 70 times a day.

The 3rd Infantry arrived in Iraq as an experiment. It was the first division to break its three combat brigades into smaller “units of action,” all part of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s military transformation.

Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness, charges that in the process of redesigning the division the Army is violating the Pentagon ban on women in combat by embedding mixed-sex support units with warfighting battalions. The Army denies this. The House Armed Services Committee staff is conducting an investigation.

“We come back with newly organized brigades,” Gen. Webster said. “We have spent the entire 12- to 15-month period training and preparing for the conditions that we face today.”

The division will control the Baghdad sector, one of a number of dangerous patrolling areas in the Sunni Triangle. The 3rd Infantry Division is relieving the 1st Cavalry Division, which will return to Fort Hood, Texas, and go through the same kind of transformation.

Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the division commander, appeared at the same press conference. He talked with pride of newly minted Iraqi army battalions patrolling Baghdad streets.

“These forces are conducting counterinsurgency operations,” Gen. Chiarelli said. “They’re down patrolling the streets in continuous operations, not going out for a three-day to three-week fight and then coming in. They are down on the streets every single day conducting counterinsurgency operations.”

He added, “With our support, the Iraqi people will prevail.”