Troops To Return to Camp Lejeune Giving Ops To Team Five
Camp Ripper
They have spent a productive and good year in Iraq, but finally the Sailors and Marines in Combat Team Two are headed home. Regimental Combat Team Five took over operations last January from Combat Team Seven, and has marked a year with a great deal of change in Iraqi.
“Our area of Operations was marked one of the most deadly and dangerous before our arrival last January,” said Commander Colonel H. Stacy Clardy III. Colonel Clardy is the Marine Commander who has led Combat Team Two over the last year in Iraq.
“AO Denver has been clears, we are winning the peace,” said Colonel Clardy. “The situation here in Al Anbar is that we are now, as Americans and Iraqis, winning,” said Clardy. Colonel Clardy commands more than six thousand Soldiers, Sailors and Marines. AO Denver, the area assigned for the last year to Combat Team Five has about thirty thousand square miles.
It is the size of South Carolina, and its population is over three hundred thousand people. The changes did not come easily, or occur overnight. There are now several hundred Iraqi highway patrolmen, forty two hundred Iraqi Army Soldiers, and over five thousand Iraqi police that now are trained and serving in the area. “We have seen over two hundred percent growth in the last twelve months of Iraqi Forces,” said Colonel Clardy. “In the Iraqi Police there has also been close to forty percent growth, and all this shows how committed the Iraqi tribes are for their own security and growth,” stated Clardy.
