and borrowed from www.military.com:
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Joe Galloway: Katrina Steals Headlines
September 08, 2005
WASHINGTON - While all eyes were focused on the hurricane disaster on the home front, the war in Iraq ground on, almost unnoticed for a change, with a mixture of good and bad news.
While everyone looked elsewhere, American forces turned over control of the Shiite holy city of Najaf to Iraqi government security forces, who celebrated their new responsibility gleefully.
It was not that long ago that U.S. troops had to fight their way into Najaf and free the city and its mosques from radical Shiite militia forces who had been driven out of Baghdad's Sadr City.
And speaking of good news, there actually IS some good news in Sadr City, a slum neighborhood where the Shiites in Iraq's capital have long clustered in squalor and misery.
American troops of the 1st Cavalry Division, now back home, and the succeeding soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division (Mech), who now have responsibility, have quietly run their own civil action projects in Sadr City for the last 18 months.
They are seeing signs of hope where once there was none. Slowly, small project by small project, the soldiers have improved the water supply system in one part of the slum neighborhood, the sewer system in another, and garbage and trash cleanup everywhere.
When they first began patrolling Sadr City the 1st Cav soldiers fought pitched battles nearly every day with the Shiite militia commanded by rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Those days seem almost a distant memory.
The Army troops steered clear of big budget aid projects with foreign contractors, where security costs normally eat up to 30 percent of the total money spent. Instead they let small contracts to Iraqis, who hired locally in the neighborhood and thus had little or no security problems.
In fact, some of the rebel militiamen who once fought the Americans now have steady jobs working on projects to help their hometown.
In the good news/bad news department, the Pentagon cut urgent orders bringing home from Iraq the 3,000 troops of the 256th Infantry Brigade of the Louisiana National Guard. Their early return was triggered by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Some of the 256th soldiers have already begun arriving at Fort Polk, La., to an uncertain future.
The Guard brigade draws heavily from New Orleans and the Cajun areas of southern Louisiana hardest hit by Katrina.
Fort Polk was preparing to shelter the 256th troops and their families who were forced to evacuate their homes due to storm and flood damage.
Even as the active duty military was sending some 15,000 soldiers and Marines to work with the 43,000 National Guard troops doing relief, rescue and security work on the Gulf Coast, more than 2,000 Army troops were on their way to Iraq to help bolster security ahead of upcoming national elections. Pentagon officials said that reinforcement would continue despite the demands on the force of the Katrina operations at home.
The good news in Iraq was, as always, tempered by the bad news. Roadside bombs and mines daily claimed more American lives.
On the Iraq-Syrian border the foreign terrorists recruited by al-Qaida and led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi took control of a large part of the border town of Qaim. The United States was mounting bombing attacks in the area and putting increasing pressure on the terrorists who infiltrate from Syria.
The fact that the enemy still has the ability to take over such towns, even briefly, is testimony to the fact that American forces do not have the manpower to take and keep that vital territory. The best they can do is send in a task force to force the enemy out, knowing that when they leave the enemy comes right back in.
So there was hope and sorrow during the week in the war zone abroad, just as there was in the war zone that is coastal Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama at home.
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"when they leave the enemy comes right back in. "
NOT if it is left a pile of smoking rubble.
Lumpy