Marines Expect Bloodier Iraq War

[thedrifter]

Marines Expect Bloodier Iraq War
Chicago Tribune
February 4, 2003


ABOARD THE USS NASSAU - The U.S. Marines afloat in the Persian Gulf are convinced that if they are sent into Iraq, what awaits them will be different from the previous war against Saddam Hussein.

Gulf war veterans who hit the beaches of Kuwait in 1991 in a classic Marine assault now are prepared to drop into Iraq by air. They also fear that this fight could be worse.
"It's going to be more bloody now--it's going to be more urban," said Sgt. Felix Nole-Ortiz, 34, of Houston, a squad leader with an 81-mm mortar platoon who was part of the seaborne assault on Kuwait more than a decade ago. Sgt. Dwayne Bailey agreed. He recalled how Iraqi soldiers as young as 12 waved anything white, including their own underwear, in surrendering. Bailey now anticipates more chemical warfare.

"It's not going to be like the last one," said Bailey, 36, a section leader from Hillside, N.J. In 1991 he was an infantryman invading Kuwait from Saudi Arabia.

For their part, the Marines have also evolved with the times.

The seashore assault is something of a throwback as Marine strategies have expanded to focus deep inland as well. Commanders say their corps are now trained to do more than just beachfront landings and are prepared to drop far into a country's interior.

"The old days of landing into the teeth of enemy ground--you're not going to do that," Col. Richard Mills, the unit's commanding officer, said aboard the Nassau. "You can't think of the amphibious landings of John Wayne in Iwo Jima and engaging the Japanese in hand-to-hand combat. . . . The commander who just looks at the water is not doing his job."

During the 2001 campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, for example, the Marines staged their longest jump over the beach yet by inserting forces in the high desert plains southwest of Kandahar. It was the longest amphibious deployment in Marine history, with heavy helicopters transporting the Marines 400 miles from the shores of the north Arabian Sea.

The 2,300 members of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard a group of three amphibious warships in the Persian Gulf--the USS Nassau, USS Austin and USS Tortuga--are ready to do such offensives deep inland.

For now, the unit's official task is supporting Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led effort that began in Afghanistan to hunt down terrorist groups. But since sailing out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., in late August, this Marine group has undertaken several missions that show how the Marine role has expanded.

The Marines and the 2,000 sailors in the so-called amphibious readiness group have conducted exercises on land in Djibouti in eastern Africa in November and in an undisclosed country in January.

The Marines also served as peacekeepers in Kosovo for a month.

"Twenty years ago, you wouldn't have heard about peacekeeping and humanitarian aid," Mills said. "I play `what if' with my staff, sure, all the way from what if a volcano goes up in the Congo and we have to rescue refugees, to full-scale combat."

President Bush's recent State of the Union address provided no firm answer on whether U.S. will attack Iraq, leaving personnel with the suspicion that their expedition may be extended by months.

"The hardest part is waiting -- whether we're going to go or not," said Marine Cpl. Nick Harland, 24, an intelligence analyst from Bartlett, Ill., and a 1996 graduate of Schaumburg High School.

Officers acknowledged that sailors and Marines, especially young enlistees who just completed their teenage years, are feeling rising pressure.

"Yes, there's apprehension. There will be people shooting back at us," said Capt. Terry O'Brien, commander of Amphibious Squadron Two.

"There's an uncertainty. I will tell you that's healthy."

Veterans such as Nole-Ortiz and Bailey know something about unpredictability in military life. By the mid-1990s, they had left the Marines. At the time, they thought they had seen the last of Saddam Hussein and war. The two men, strangers then, became police officers back in the United States.

Bailey saw his life turned upside down. As an undercover cop in a city he declined to name, he was shot at, and in turn, he fatally shot a suspect.

Nole-Ortiz, a former drug and gang task force officer in Houston, said he enlisted twice because, "at certain times, it was hard to cope in the civilian world."

In 2000, Nole-Ortiz and Bailey signed up again independently, and when they met later, they discovered similar experiences extending a decade.

They are now like brothers, Nole-Ortiz the short one, Bailey the tall one, both models of physical fitness and so close in friendship that the officers tease them for never being apart. Their bunks are near each other, and they noted how they have accumulated more ribbons, 15 and 13 respectively, for war and duty than many of their superiors. They call themselves "retreads."

Such exposure to life's vicissitudes contributes to the hunch that a second gulf war would be dramatically unlike the first, they said.

"I feel we should have got it done the first time," Nole-Ortiz said.

"But I'm here and we'll do whatever we got to do -- finish it off -- if we get the call. I'll do it right once and for all."

Sempers,

Roger