TIKRIT, Iraq, Dec. 26 -- Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, made a surprise visit to a small group of soldiers here at Forward Operating Base Danger and said in an interview that the war in Iraq was "going pretty well."
"Everybody I talk to has a balanced view and understands a challenge is ahead of us," Schoomaker said. "It's an important time. It's tough, it's a battle of wills, and we're going to stick with it."
Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, awards a Purple Heart to Sgt. Douglas McManama of Sandston, Va.
(Dean Hoffmeyer -- Richmond Times-dispatch Via AP)
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In an unannounced visit, Schoomaker came to this city in northern Iraq late on Sunday and shared dinner with about two dozen soldiers who recently decided to reenlist. Schoomaker arrived at the base's mess hall after 7 p.m. to a band softly playing Christmas songs and soldiers eagerly awaiting to talk to him.
"I don't know of a time when an army could do its job as well as this one is doing," Schoomaker said after a quick meal with a group that included Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste, the commander of the 1st Infantry Division. "I'm very proud of you."
Schoomaker was the third top Pentagon official to visit troops here in recent days. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld stopped in Tikrit during his whirlwind Christmas Eve tour on Friday, and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ushered a USO troupe through Iraq earlier this month.
Schoomaker, wearing the Army's newly designed all-purpose camouflage uniform, presented each of the soldiers he met with a commemorative command coin in the shape of a dog tag.
He said the dog tag symbolized "what armies are for. Armies are there to fight."
"You've made an important commitment," Schoomaker told the soldiers as they stood around a mess hall dining table. "The thing that gives me the most optimism for our country is you. I know some of you are going to be members of Congress, leaders of industry, leaders of the Army. You're just extraordinary."
Schoomaker also visited troops in Afghanistan over the holiday weekend, personally reenlisting soldiers in both countries and awarding some soldiers the Purple Heart for combat injuries. Earlier Sunday, he visited soldiers with the 1st Cavalry Division in the Baghdad area.
Meanwhile, a video posted by an Iraqi insurgent group Sunday purported to show last week's suicide attack at a U.S. base in Mosul, with a fireball rising from a white tent. The group claimed that the bomber slipped into the base through a hole in the fence during a guard change, the Associated Press reported.
The footage showed a black-garbed gunman wearing an explosives belt around his body -- apparently the suicide bomber, identified on the tape as Abu Omar al-Mosuli -- bidding farewell to his comrades. The video gave no further details about the bomber beyond his name. Its authenticity was not independently verifiable.
The Ansar al Sunna Army had earlier said it would release a video of Tuesday's attack, which killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. service members and four American civilian contractors.
The bombing, the deadliest attack on a U.S. base in Iraq, has prompted a U.S. military investigation into how the bomber got onto the heavily guarded site and how security at bases can be improved. Three Iraqi National Guardsmen and a fourth "non-U.S. person" were also killed, according to the U.S. military. The military has not said whether that fourth person was the bomber.
The U.S. military has said the attacker probably was wearing an Iraqi military uniform, and one general said that the Iraqi security forces may have been infiltrated. The Iraqi chief of staff, Gen. Babaker B. Shawkat Zebari, said in an interview with the Associated Press that the bomber might have bought a uniform from the market but was not a member of the Iraqi security forces.
In the first section of the video -- with a date signature of Dec. 20, a day before the attack -- three gunmen wearing black masks and clothes and holding automatic rifles are shown sitting in front of a black banner with the group's name on it. One of them, apparently al-Mosuli, is on the left, wearing an explosives belt.
The gunman in the center reads a statement describing how the attack will be carried out. No mention is made of wearing a uniform.
