Soldiers Shift to Baghdad Outposts

"I guess it is a little scary," said Pvt. Peter Lahoda, 22, as he gripped an M240 belt-fed machine gun in a turret that has been shot at three times from the street below. Positioned next to him was a life-size mannequin dressed in U.S. military fatigues, its middle fingers extended, that is used as a decoy for gunmen on the street. He said the attacks are often drive-by shootings, fired from a car's back seat or from holes punched in the trunk. "Up here, you're definitely organic to what's going on. You see VBIEDs, you see explosions like 200 meters away," he said, using a military abbreviation for car bombs.

The concern over security at the station imposes limits on one of its central missions: cooperating with Iraqi security forces. Iraqi soldiers at the station are prohibited from entering an operations room where U.S. soldiers discuss classified information. They are not allowed on the roof where Americans watch over the neighborhood. They live on the first floor while Americans inhabit the second. While certain information is shared with the Iraqi army leadership, the lower-ranking soldiers are kept out of briefing sessions, largely because the Americans are suspicious that information will be passed on to insurgents.

"There's a potential for a leak," said Capt. Ramiro Roldan, 25. "We tell them we're going to set up our vehicles at this location to cordon and search an area, there's a potential that we might get a VBEID attack there."

"We just came here, and we can't trust them so much," said Sgt. Freddie Torres.

It has been only a month since the battalion moved into the building, which had been occupied by Iraqi security forces. The Americans cleaned up a horrid tableau of human feces, trash and dead cats littering the premises.

Some American soldiers say the days patrolling the streets and nights drinking tea and playing dominoes with the Iraqis have fashioned a fledgling camaraderie. The Americans also have grown closer to one another while enduring the spartan lodgings -- sleeping on cots, living without showers or toilets, burning their waste -- that feel far removed from the buffet dinners and air-conditioned gyms on the Camp Liberty base, near the Baghdad airport, they left behind.

"Liberty's like being in Kuwait," Torres said. "If we stayed at Liberty the whole time, then we're not bringing the fight to them. This at least gives us an intimidation factor, knowing we're out here on the grind ready to take it to them."

Kuehl said he believes that over time, operating out of smaller bases will be safer for his soldiers as the neighbors grow to appreciate their backyard policemen and act as an alarm system about impending trouble.

"We're going to get more information, and when we get that information, we can target better, and if we target better, we can get more bad guys off the street and we don't hurt the locals while we do it," he said. "And the other part of getting out here, and I think it's something we've missed in the mission for a while . . . is our purpose to protect the people."

U.S. commanders say they choose the location of the security stations and combat outposts based on where soldiers can most disrupt the insurgency. Kuehl said he moved a platoon into the second floor of the al-Khadraa outpost to stop insurgent weapons traffic through the area.

In the first 10 days since soldiers moved in, drive-by shooters have taken potshots and at least four bombs have exploded on the road outside the entrance, said Lt. Brian Larsen, 23, the platoon leader.

"As far as force protection measures go, this place needs improvement," said Sgt. 1st Class Kenneth Chaney.

The soldiers have stacked sandbags in their bedroom windows and draped green netting over their gun positions, and they are making plans to install light fixtures outside and raise the exterior walls by several feet to limit the risk from gunfire.

Sitting on his bunk inside the police station, Sgt. James Simpson, 30, of Atlanta, said grunts like him are prepared for the threats surrounding them.

"It's definitely more exposed, but that's the risk we take," he said. "The safest thing for everybody is to hurry up and beat these guys."