Checkpoint

Stryker Brigade soldiers help the Iraqi police and the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps maintain security. One evening last week, SBCT soldiers manned a checkpoint, stopping cars and searching them for weapons, money and wanted men. Each vehicle was stopped and the occupants’ names were checked against a list while soldiers searched each car’s trunk, glove box and backseat.

The soldiers may have looked exposed standing in the middle of the road, but they were being protected by snipers surveying the traffic and the countryside through night-vision goggles from the roof tops above the street. They stay in the shadows, unseen, until they are needed. And when they are needed their response is swift and deadly.

The highlight of the evening was the detention of several men, one of whom was carrying about $1,000 in Iraqi and U.S. money that he said he got for selling his car. The group was released later when the man’s story checked out.

A few days earlier, they were doing reconnaissance in this same area when an attack occurred. A guy empties a magazine from his AK-47 and throws a hand grenade before one of the snipers get him. He had another hand grenade and an assault vest full of AK magazines. He looked like he was prepared to fight to the death - which is exactly what he accomplished.

Stryker Brigade has more snipers and sharpshooters than any other unit in the military. These guys are able to "reach out and touch somebody" well before the bad guys can do the same to our soldiers. Road checkpoints and patrols in the cities are all given protective over watch by snipers - both day and night. These men have prevented many US casualties because of their work.

Day to day operations like these don't get big headlines but they are the stuff that forms the lives of our men and women in uniform serving on the "frontlines" in Iraq.