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A close call for 2 generals in Iraq

Two U.S. generals and an Iraqi general survived an Aug. 24 suicide car bomb attack that destroyed the armored vehicle in which they were riding.

The attack occurred as a convoy rolled out of Forward Operating Base Marez on the edge of Mosul, said Multi-National Division-North spokesman Maj. Dan Meyers. “They had just left the base,” he said.

The bomber aimed his car, packed with 800 pounds of explosives, at a mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle carrying Lt. Gen. Frank Helmick, commander of Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, and Brig. Gen. Raymond “Tony” Thomas, assistant division commander for support of Multi-National Division-North. Also riding in the vehicle were an Iraqi general, a linguist and the MRAP crew, said MNSTC-I spokesman Col. Steven Wujciak, who added that he did not know the Iraqi general’s name.

The generals were on what Wujciak called “a normal battlefield circulation,” a phrase the military uses when senior leaders tour their areas of operations, visiting troops. Although the blast destroyed the vehicle and left a crater five feet deep and 10 feet wide, none of the vehicle’s occupants was seriously hurt, he said.

Thanks to the MRAP’s protection, the only casualty of the attack was the suicide bomber.

Neither Wujciak nor Meyers knew how many vehicles were in the convoy that was attacked, but Meyers noted that every convoy must have a minimum of three vehicles.

Wujciak said there was no indication that the bomber knew he was attacking such a lucrative target.

Nevertheless, had the attack been successful, it would have handed the insurgents a propaganda victory, said Steven Boylan, who was serving in Iraq at the time as the spokesman for Gen. David Petraeus, then the commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq.

“Every soldier’s important, but [killing] a three-star general would be a great psychological hit,” he said.

The attack came to light in a Nov. 10 report by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey after a trip he took to Kuwait and Iraq between Oct. 31 and Nov. 6. McCaffrey makes regular trips to the combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he speaks with many of the key U.S. and allied military leaders and then issues a report that circulates quickly around the military community via e-mail.

Those familiar with the incident said it demonstrated the value of the MRAP vehicles that the military has been fielding to forces in Iraq. The MRAP is a wheeled vehicle that comes in various designs and offers more armored protection than an up-armored Humvee.

“The survivability of the MRAP vehicles has drastically reduced casualties among our forces,” McCaffrey wrote.

The MRAP in which the generals were riding was a Navistar MaxxPro Plus model, Wujciak said. The explosion left the vehicle “scorched and [with] relatively good-sized ... penetrations into the additional armor that these particular vehicles have on them,” he said. “The vehicle did not roll, but it was moved” by the force of the explosion, he added.

“It was a remarkably well-built piece of equipment and it’s the best available piece of equipment for the type of operations we’re conducting,” Wujciak said.

“The people are getting their money’s worth from the MRAP,” Meyers said. “It’s a fantastic vehicle.”

The incident also exemplifies the degree to which senior officers are putting themselves in harm’s way in Iraq, McCaffrey said in a Nov. 12 telephone interview.

“I don’t want to bad-mouth my Vietnam leadership,” said McCaffrey, a highly decorated veteran of the conflict in southeast Asia, “but … a remarkable change in the nature of warfare is that in this Army, in this battle, those battalion, brigade [commanders] and general officers are out there in the fight, and they get personally lit up like firecrackers and sniped at.”

Multi-National Corps-Iraq commander Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin “nearly got nailed by direct machine gun fire while directing forward operations during the recent battle to control Sadr City in Baghdad,” McCaffrey notes in Nov. 10 trip report. “Lloyd Austin has got a set of cojones on him like you can’t believe,” he said in the interview.

Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Dorko, who took command of the Gulf Region Division of the Army Corps of Engineers in October 2007, was injured in an improvised explosive device strike while riding in a so-called “hard car,” said Boylan. “He went back to Iraq after recuperating from his injuries.”

Meyers said he did not know which insurgent group carried out the attack. “I don’t think anybody claimed responsibility,” he said.

But Wujciak was in no doubt. The attack was “clearly” the work of al-Qaida in Iraq, Wujciak said. “It speaks to the fact that Iraq remains a very dangerous place to this day.”