Kuwait City, Kuwait __ This city is just 55 miles from the Iraq border. But it is a completely different universe. Oil rich Kuwaitis drive Lamborghinis at 100 miles an hour past super fancy shopping malls.
There are no wandering donkeys, roadside bombs or rivers of sewage flowing in the streets like in Iraq.
Tony and I are flying home to SeaTac tomorrow. So this will be my last post to the blog.
We miss home and are anxious to see our wives. But this has been a rewarding assignment.
I’d like to thank readers who sent me emails or posted to this blog. Your encouraging words helped Tony and I get through some of the more frustrating moments.
I hope our stories and photos from Iraq have given readers a little better sense of the war and what life is like for the Fort Lewis soldiers fighting it.
-- Sean Cockerham

FOB Marez, Mosul --- We’re packing up to leave Iraq.
Tony and I were thinking back today to the first mission we covered in Baghdad about a month and a half ago. We ran out of the Stryker, crouching and ducking behind walls, half expecting bullets and rockets to be flying everywhere. That’s not the way it is here, although a sniper did shoot at us that first day.
Much of the time it seems calm on the streets of Iraq. It becomes almost routine and you have to make a conscious effort not to let your guard down. Soldiers say the same thing. You have to remind yourself that most Americans don’t die here in big gun battles. The danger is a hidden bomb or single shot from a figure concealed on a rooftop.
I’m glad we had a chance to go on missions in both Baghdad and Mosul. I don’t think people at home realize this, but they are really two completely different wars. Baghdad is a vicious, no-holds barred war zone where even America’s supposed allies, the Iraqi police and army, often can’t be trusted.
Everything there is about the Shiite-Sunni death match.
In Mosul, there are many more cars on the streets and shops that are open. The Iraqi army seems far more motivated here. I think a lot of that is due to the fact much of the army in this city is made up of Kurds whose families were gassed and buried alive under Saddam.
They have a different outlook on the American presence in Iraq than the Arabs who make up the majority of this country’s population. There are tensions between Arabs and Kurds in Mosul, and I’ve heard of Kurdish families fleeing the city because of threats. But it hasn’t risen to the level of open warfare as in Baghdad.
The police in Mosul do have corruption problems, but they seem a lot more effective than the ones down in Baghdad. The Mosul police have certainly improved since 2004, when they fled their posts en masse and this city of over 2 million was a violent mess.
A correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, Robert Kaplan, wrote an article on Mosul this spring entitled, “The Coming Normalcy?” Kaplan gave the credit for cleaning up this northern city to the 1-25 Lancers from Fort Lewis, who deployed here from 2004 to 2005.
“Mosul is a success story, although the success is relative, partial and tenuous,” Kaplan wrote.
I can definitely see what Kaplan was saying. Baghdad, though, remains a completely different problem.
-- Sean Cockerham

FOB Marez, Mosul __ Insurgent propaganda is something to behold. It’s full of flowery phrases like “Lions of the Blessed Battalion” and the facts apparently are not allowed to get in the way of a good story.
This is what the insurgents had to say about their suicide bombing of a Mosul police station last week.
“Your brother caused (the station’s) complete destruction and brought terror home to the apostates, all gratitude be to Allah. Not one of them escaped; all inside were killed.”
I was at the station after the attack and met plenty of police officers who escaped. In fact, the attack only killed a single policeman. Ten civilians waiting in line to buy gasoline also died in the suicide bombing.
Another insurgent suicide bomber attacked a Fort Lewis Stryker vehicle the same day. No U.S. soldiers died, and the Stryker was able to continue on its mission after withstanding the attack.
Here’s the report on it from the insurgents:
The attack “resulted in it igniting on fire with the crusaders burning inside in full view. Not one of them could retreat safely and all of them died, all praise and gratitude be to Allah.”
-- Sean Cockerham

FOB Marez, Mosul __ Sgt. Emmet Cullen was looking through his photos the other night and did a double take.
“I knew I recognized that guy,” Cullen yelled.
It was a picture of Fort Lewis soldiers posing with a group of smiling Iraqi policemen. Cullen took it over a year ago when he was in Iraq with the 1-25 Lancers from Fort Lewis.
Cullen’s current unit, the Lightning scout platoon from Fort Lewis’ 3rd Brigade, had just busted that same cop for working with the insurgency here in Mosul.
Other soldiers tell the story of recently capturing two insurgents who used to work for the Americans.
A sergeant recognized one of the insurgents as a guy who had been a barber at a U.S. base in Mosul during 3rd brigade’s last Iraq deployment two years ago. Soldiers say another one of the captured insurgents used to deliver pizza at that same base, FOB Patriot, during the 2004 deployment.
I’m told it was more common to have Iraqis working at U.S. bases back then. Now most of the workers on the base seem to be either Turkish or Filipino.
-- Sean Cockerham

Spc. Nathaniel Cunningham pours his morning cup of coffee at FOB Marez in Mosul, Iraq. (Tony Overman/The Olympian)

FOB Marez, Mosul __ Spc. Nathaniel Cunningham is a coffee nut who came to Iraq from the Northwest. He doesn’t care for Starbucks, though.
This Fort Lewis soldier is very picky about his beans and how they are prepared. So he sure didn’t want to go a year in Iraq drinking the Nescafe’ that passes for coffee at this base.
“That was the first thing I said when I got over here, ‘I’ve got to have coffee,” said Cunningham, who works in military intelligence.
Cunningham got some Velvet Hammer beans from his hometown in Minnesota. A
former soldier who sells coffee beans in California also shipped him beans for no charge.
Now it’s almost like Cunningham has a little Espresso shop in his room. He has a coffee grinder, a frother for his lattes, and a blender so he can make chilled Frappucinos that are welcome when the temperature here is over 100 degrees.
He has various sweeteners and cocoas and creamers. But Cunningham has to make concessions to the fact his operation is in a tiny trailer in a war zone. He uses the Turkish milk they have in the chow hall that does not have to be refrigerated, for example.
“These aren’t the best ingredients but I know how to fix it,” said Cunningham, who used to work in a coffee shop.
Cunningham dreams of opening his own coffee shop in his hometown of Faribault, Minnesota. He has $20,000 worth of investors so far.
Cunningham wants it to be a first class operation, the only place in town with its own roaster.
-- Sean Cockerham

FOB Marez, Mosul --- Tony and I have come to the final week of our time embedded in Iraq. We’ll end with a focus on a small group of soldiers and their lives here.
We’ve been assigned to report on a group within the scout/sniper platoon of the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Infantry Regiment.
We’ll spend the next several days with these soldiers, introduce them to readers through stories in The News Tribune and The Olympian, and show what it’s like for them on missions in Mosul.
We’ll also keep an eye on the broader happenings for Fort Lewis soldiers here in Mosul.
This blog probably won’t change much. The intent of it was always more to be personal observations that hopefully complement our stories on the Stryker brigade that appear in the newspapers. There is a link to my stories and Tony’s photos on the right side of this blog.
The idea of focusing the final stories on a small group is to give readers a more personal look at the war and the soldiers asked to fight it.
-- Sean Cockerham

FOB Marez, Mosul __ There have been a lot of insurgent attacks during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Ramadan is supposed to end over the next few days, but Fort Lewis officers tell me the exact date depends on which cleric you are talking to.
I’ve written in the paper about the two recent Ramadan attacks in Mosul. The first was on Oct. 12th and began with a mortar attack on Forward Operating Base Diamondback, which is across the road from this base, FOB Marez.
Fort Lewis soldiers broke up the mortar attack but Iraqi army and police did most of the fighting that night. Then, on Thursday, there were a half dozen suicide bomb attacks in Mosul. The largest of them targeted a major police station and ended up killing 10 Iraqi civilians and an Iraqi policeman.
Police at the scene told me they had no idea why they are being targeted, other than the fact insurgents don’t like them. Fort Lewis commanders told me the night of the attack that Mosul insurgents were trying to make a big splash with the multiple bombings in order to get money from their financiers.
Col. Steve Townsend, 3rd Brigade commander from Fort Lewis, tells me he now thinks the police station was chosen as one of the targets out of revenge.
The insurgents apparently thought they had reached a deal with the police and army to step aside while they attacked Americans, according to an unclassified intelligence briefing I received last night. The insurgents felt the arrest of many of their fighters after the Oct. 12th attack was a breach of that supposed agreement, according to the briefing.
-- Sean Cockerham

FOB Marez, Mosul __ Yesterday was a brutal day here.
Tony and I went to the scene of a massive suicide car bombing that killed at least 10 Iraqi civilians. We were both amazed at the scale of the damage. I couldn’t believe the entire engine block from the suicide truck was actually thrown into a second story bedroom.
The scene was apocalyptic. There must have just been thousands of pieces of glass and metal flying through the air when that bomb went off.
I would have been content to have gone through life without seeing some of the graphic human toll I saw in the street yesterday.
But that is just the reality of what happens in Iraq.
Tony and I have both noticed Iraqis seem more stoic about death than we are. I’ve spoken to people who just had a colleague kidnapped or murdered and they talked about it almost matter of factly.
I asked an Iraqi interpreter for the Americans about this once.
He said that is just how life is here, and people really have no choice but to accept it and move on.
-- Sean Cockerham
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An Iraqi boy leaps over garbage and sewage in the street as he sprints to see if he can get a handout from Fort Lewis, Wash., Stryker soldiers on patrol in Mosul, Iraq, on Wednesday.
Photo: Tony Overman/The Olympian

FOB Marez, Mosul – Little Iraqi kids always get excited when they see U.S. military vehicles going by.

Down in the desert south of Mosul, I saw kids literally sprinting out of their mud brick homes when a convoy of Humvees passed. The kids were waving like mad at the vehicles.

Soldiers weren’t sure whether the children were genuinely happy to see them or were hoping for a handout.

Iraqi boys leap for a bottle of water thrown from the back of a Stryker vehicle while on patrol in Mosul, Iraq, on Wednesday. Photo: Tony Overman/The Olympian

The bottom line, they said, is it’s a lot better to have them waving than not.

Things are a little different here in urban Mosul. Children often wave and sometimes seem really happy just to get a wave back.

But probably half the time you can definitely tell they expect something. They will hold up their hands in the shape of a soccer ball or point to their mouths because they want a candy bar. Soldiers sometimes toss the kids bottles of water or whatever they have handy on the Stryker vehicle. It's hard not to feel bad for kids growing up here.

But some crowds of kids can be maddeningly relentless in demanding that you hand over your watch or sunglasses. Boys often tend to insist on being given a “football” when it should be pretty obvious you are not carrying one.

There are a minority of times, in certain neighborhoods, where the children will be hostile.

One Fort Lewis soldier had a kid hit him in the helmet with a rock this morning. Tony saw another boy, maybe five or six years old, chuck a rock at a Stryker vehicle today.

The Stryker stopped at a local school to ask why the children were so hostile in that neighborhood. It turned out to be a girls’ school. The teachers said the girls were afraid of the soldiers, but they weren’t hostile.

-- Sean Cockerham

FOB Marez, Mosul __ We’ve returned to Mosul. I can tell we’re back by all the explosions.
Q-West was quiet. That base is surrounded by desert, so there’s really no place for people to hide and shoot mortars at the Americans.
That’s not the case here in urban Mosul. There are explosions pretty much every day. Often they are car bombs or controlled detonations of explosives found by U.S. forces on patrol.
There have also been multiple mortar attacks on the base lately.
I wrote in the paper about an attack last week that caused some injuries. The Strykers found and killed the people who did it.
Most soldiers don’t worry too much about mortars. The insurgents tend not to have very good aim, and mostly hit nothing.
I’ve kind of become used to the explosions. But sometimes the sound of a big car bomb going off in the city makes me jump.
-- Sean Cockerham

FOB Q-West __ There’s a lot of stuff at this base out in the middle of nowhere in the Iraqi desert.
There’s a Subway, a Green Beans (basically a Starbucks for soldiers), and a Morale, Welfare and Recreation Center that’s full of activities. Last night featured the semifinals of Q-West Idol.
The center also has nearly human sized chess pieces, Internet, television, Playstations, movies, bingo, pool, Ping Pong, and Foosball.
There are also Turkish-run establishments with spelling issues on this base. Soldiers can get a haircut but not a shot of whiskey at the beauty saloon. Jackets are on sale at the lather shop.
Soldiers can also buy gold jewelry, tailored suits and Turkish kebabs here. One place is called Dejavu, “where all your dreams come true.” The sign says it sells t-shirts, puzzle boxes, watches, alterations, and any kind of special order.
There’s even a place where you can get a “massege.”
-- Sean Cockerham

FOB Q-West __ This base is only about an hour south of Mosul. But it’s an entirely different world.
Long roads seem to lead forever through featureless desert. There are no real cities, just villages where people in mud brick huts tend sheep.
Fort Lewis soldiers from the 1-37 Field Artillery are stationed here. There are IED’s but not nearly as many attacks as Mosul.
It looks like there are some interesting things going on around here, and we'll spend time with soldiers from 1-37.

-- Sean Cockerham