Soldiers hunt their brothers’ killers

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The shadows of soldiers from F Troop, 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment are cast on a compound’s walls in Iraq’s Al-Nidah Tribal Area. The late-night raid netted two detainees.


Soldiers hunt their brothers’ killers
By Michael Gisick, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, March 29, 2008

NIDAH TRIBAL AREA, Iraq — It was just after 9 p.m. on Wednesday as Capt. Trey Smith came on the radio to announce the beginning of “Operation Payback” — his troop’s hunt, as he later put it, for their brothers’ killers.

The troop’s collection of Humvees, Bradley fighting vehicles and M1 Abrams tanks passed through the wire of this base in rural eastern Diyala province a few minutes later. But it would be more than three hours before they reached their destination.

In one of the largest company-level areas of operation in Iraq, the hunt for the men believed responsible for a March 10 blast that killed three soldiers and an interpreter — including the troop’s commander — confronts nothing so much as vast distances.

Still, after detaining four men in two days of raids, soldiers from the Fort Hood-based unit, part of the 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, believed they were closing in.

“We’re tightening the noose, and the closer we get the more motivated we get,” said Sgt. 1st Class William Morgan, 33, of Corsicana, Texas.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=53673