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U.S. Army 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division

Welcome to the Warhorse Website! The 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division is the U.S. Army’s first, fully digitized, and modernized heavy brigade combat team. If you are not sure what all that means, let me assure you the essence of what we do is all about training lethal crews, sections, platoons, and companies to win on the battlefield of the future. This brigade possesses the most modern, powerful, and lethal land combat systems in the world.

The brigade stays ready to fight our nations wars. The Warhorse Brigade is the first unit in the U.S. Army to be equipped with the M1A2SEP Abrams Tank and M2A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle. These systems bring state-of-the-art weapons technology together with advances in digital command and control systems in order to increase the lethality and force effectiveness of today’s heavy armor brigade. The end result is to provide our soldiers with improved situational awareness on the battlefield.

Our hallmark in this brigade is a training methodology known as the “critical task approach.” This approach to small unit training is deeply rooted in our training doctrine of Battle Focused Training.

U.S. Adopts Aggressive Tactics on Iraqi Fighters
Intensified Offensive Leads To Detentions, Intelligence

BAGHDAD (WaPo) July 28, 2003 — Over the past six weeks a small but intense war has been conducted in the mud-hut villages and lush palm groves along the Tigris River valley, fought with far different methods than those used in the campaign that toppled president Saddam Hussein.

As Iraqi fighters launched guerrilla strikes, the U.S. Army adopted a more nimble approach against unseen adversaries and found new ways to gather intelligence about them, according to dozens of soldiers and officers interviewed over the last week. Thousands of suspected Iraqi fighters were detained over the six-week period, many temporarily, in hundreds of U.S. military raids, most of them conducted in the dead of night …


One of over 30 detainees kept in Camp Lancer in Bayji, where patrols and raids continue daily. Andrea Bruce Woodall

At the beginning of June, before the U.S. offensives began, the reward for killing an American soldier was about $300, an Army officer said. Now, he said, street youths are being offered as much as $5,000 — and are being told that if they refuse, their families will be killed, a development the officer described as a sign of reluctance among once-eager youths to take part in the strikes.

US launches raids to hunt Iraq bandits

BAGHDAD (China Daily) Aug. 27, 2003 — Hundreds of U.S. forces launched a series of raids to hunt down bandits, gangsters and Saddam Hussein loyalists, capturing at least 24.

Meanwhile, the number of American troops killed in postwar Iraq surpassed the toll of those killed in major combat, reaching 140 with the deaths of a soldier in a roadside bombing and another in a traffic accident.

When President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1, the U.S. death toll stood at 138. Since then, 140 more soldiers have died, counting both deaths announced. The total number of U.S. soldiers killed since the Iraq war began on March 20 is 278.


U.S. soldiers stand over two Iraqi men while their family look on during a raid on scores of houses in Khalis, a town about 70 kilometers north of Baghdad. [AP]

The two dozen suspected Iraqi criminals were swept up near Baqouba, 42 miles north of Baghdad, in “Operation Ivy Needle,” a campaign launched by the 4th Infantry Division.

Hundreds of troops, backed by helicopters, tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles chased a convicted murderer and gangster named Lateef Hamed al-Kubaishat, known as Lateef by U.S. forces, said Col. David Hogg, commander of the 4th Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade.

Spy in the Sky – Shadow 200 UAV

BAQUBAH FOB Warhorse Feb. 23, 2004 — From the times when Civil War commanders sent intelligence collectors hundreds of feet up and over enemy troops in hot air balloons until today, tactical commanders have relied on eyes other than their own to track enemy movement.

The Shadow 200 Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle system operated by the soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division provides brigade-level commanders with real-time intelligence of what is happening on the ground – day or night, while being virtually undetectable.


A Shadow Tactical UAV launches from its catapult just prior to an intelligence-gathering mission for 2nd Brigade Combat Team in Baqubah, Iraq.

The secret is its ability to fly at extremely high altitudes while using advanced imaging systems capable of seeing from great distances.

Military Analyst Describes Abuse of 16-Year-Old in Iraq Prison

WASHINGTON  May 20, 2004 — A military intelligence analyst who recently completed duty at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq said Wednesday that the 16-year-old son of a detainee there was abused by U.S. soldiers in order to break his father’s resistance to interrogators.

The analyst said the teenager was stripped naked, thrown in the back of an open truck, driven around in the cold night air, splattered with mud and then presented to his father at Abu Ghraib, the prison at the center of the ongoing scandal over abuse of Iraqi detainees.

Upon seeing his frail and frightened son, the prisoner broke down and cried and told interrogators he would tell them whatever they wanted, the analyst said.

Sgt. Samuel Provance, who maintained the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion’s top secret computer system at Abu Ghraib prison, gave the account of abuse of the teenager in a telephone interview from Germany, where he is now stationed. He said he also has described the incident to army investigators.

Provance’s account of mistreatment of a prisoner’s son is consistent with concerns raised by the International Red Cross. The Red Cross noted it had received reports that interrogators were making threats of reprisals against detainees’ family members.

Provance already has been deemed a credible witness by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who included the army sergeant in a list of witnesses whose statements he relied on to make his findings of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib.

Soldiers Train to Recognize Explosives

FORT HOOD, Texas, Jan. 20, 2005 –Enemy forces watch and learn. When they observe a routine, they strike, often using improvised explosive devices, according to veterans of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instruction focuses on troops learning the technical components of the explosive as well as ways to increase awareness of enemy tactics.

“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”

▼ ▼ ▼ RELATED READING

Documents reveal US Army detained female hostages in Iraq ◊ by Arcturus
Fri Jan 27th, 2006 at 05:40:51 PM PST

    The US Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of “leveraging” their husbands into surrender, US military documents show.

HORRIFIC! See my diary —
Mowhoush Torture Death Negligent Homicide ¶ 3 Yr. – Updated: Reprimanded

Related Accounts WaPo by GIs

Interrogated general’s sleeping-bag death, CIA’s use of secret Iraqi squad are among details

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.

It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents.

Jill Carroll Abducted ¶ Free Lance Journalist – Christian Science Monitor

Abducted Reporter Was Living Dream in Iraq

BOSTON – Jill Carroll had just been laid off from a newspaper job and decided it was time to fulfill her dream of going to the Middle East to cover a war. Her proud sister has been keeping track of her travels in a blog called “Lady of Arabia.”

“All I ever wanted to be was a foreign correspondent,” Carroll wrote last year in the American Journalism Review. “It seemed the right time to try to make it happen.”


KIDNAPPED: Freelance reporter
Jill Carroll has worked in Iraq
since 2003. Delphine Minoui

Further Amplification Dept.

Speaking of violent acts against journalists, the UK Guardian reports, “American troops in Baghdad yesterday blasted their way into the home of an Iraqi journalist working for the Guardian and Channel 4, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children.” There’s more ….