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SEALs Give Glimpse Of Missions In Iraq
By James W. Crawley, Staff Writer San Diego Union-Tribune
June 27, 2003

Dodging a web of high-voltage power lines, Air Force special-operations

helicopters hovered over the hydroelectric dam, 57 miles northeast of

Baghdad, as crewmen kicked thick ropes out the doors.

Under a moonless April night, dark figures quickly rappelled to the ground.

Several dozen Navy SEALs and Polish Grom commandos split into small groups

and sprinted to predetermined locations on Mukarayin Dam, an adjacent power

station and several buildings.

Within minutes, they located and held the dam's watchmen and power-plant

operators, but it would take hours to search the massive structure for

explosives and potential saboteurs.

"They were sort of startled" by the commandos' sudden appearance, recalled

Cmdr. Tom Schibler, a San Diego-based SEAL who was operations officer for

the Navy commandos in Iraq. However, the Iraqis didn't resist and no enemy

troops or bombs were found, so the commandos let the dam operators continue

their work.

For five days, the commandos guarded the isolated dam site to prevent

Fedayeen Saddam irregulars or Baathist loyalists from damaging or destroying

the dam and possibly flooding Baghdad downstream.

For the first time, Schibler and others this week described several missions

that local SEALs and special-warfare boat crews conducted during Operation

Iraqi Freedom.

They cracked open the door on their world of covert operations, disclosing

in general terms the dam occupation in April, the capture of offshore oil

terminals and the clearing of Iraq's only deep-water estuary in March.

They also touched on other wartime missions - sniper-vs.-sniper duels with

Fedayeen Saddam loyalists in Baghdad, saving Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch,

behind-the-lines reconnaissance and searching for weapons of mass

destruction - but declined to give details, saying those missions are still

classified.

The Iraq war, coming on the heels of the special-operations-dominated

Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, showed how the Navy's

special-warfare units could become key players in a full-scale war, said

Cmdr. Kerry Metz, who planned many of the SEALs' Iraq missions.

In Operation Desert Storm, the first war with Iraq, the SEALs were

peripheral to the main action, said Schibler, who served in that conflict.

This time, "we were very central" to the war effort, he said.

Nearly 250 SEALs were deployed in and around Iraq - the largest single

deployment since Vietnam.

In all, about 500 naval special-warfare personnel, including special crewmen

who operated high-speed boats that transport commandos, intelligence and

communications specialists and even a public-affairs officer, were sent to

Kuwait and Iraq.

"The missions were such that they required more forces than we customarily

were used to operating with, and having more forces gave us ... the ability

to sustain operations and conduct multiple operations simultaneously,"

Schibler said.

In the past, special-operations forces have supported conventional troops,

undertaking unusual or dangerous missions with little or no assistance from

regular troops.

However, in Iraq, conventional forces assisted the SEALs, Schibler said.

"We had incredible support from the regular, big Navy, from ships,

helicopters, planes, other support aircraft, even a (British) Royal Marine

commando group, surveillance platforms," he said.

The capture of a northern Iraq dam brought together a mixed group of forces,

including U.S. Air Force aircraft and Polish commandos, under the SEALs'

command.

Military commanders worried that Mukarayin Dam could be sabotaged.

"There was no burning activity at the dam, but you have this big, fat

target," Schibler said. "It was just sitting there until someone decides to

blow it up or opens up the floodgates, flooding Baghdad."

After planning and rehearsing the takeover for several days, the commandos

crammed inside several Pave Low special-operations helicopters for a nearly

five-hour flight from their Kuwait base to the dam. On the way, each

helicopter had to be refueled in midair by a KC-130 tanker.

It was during the rappel that the commandos' only casualty of the war

occurred. A Polish soldier fell, breaking his leg.

While the dam seizure was one of the final acts during the major combat

phase of the war, the SEALs and their Polish allies also participated in one

of the first actions of the war.

In simultaneous attacks on the war's first night, using helicopters and

high-speed boats crewed by sailors from Coronado's Naval Amphibious Base,

SEALs and Groms captured Iraq's two offshore oil terminals in the northern

Persian Gulf, two valve stations, and a pipeline and pumping facility

onshore.

The operation prevented the Iraqis from blowing up the critical oil

structures, which would have polluted the Persian Gulf and slowed

reconstruction.

After the oil terminals were taken, the SEALs and boat crews switched jobs,

clearing a path for warships and cargo vessels into Iraq.

Lt. Jake Heller said that for eight days, he led a small flotilla of

high-speed Mark 5 craft and 35-foot-long, rigid-hulled inflatable boats in

the narrow Khawr Az Zubayr waterway that connects Umm Qasr, Iraq's only

deep-water port, to the Persian Gulf.

"Our mission was the clearance of the waterway," Heller said.

It wasn't an easy task.

The SEALs captured several vessels loaded with mines, including

hard-to-detect Italian Mantra mines that could have sunk U.S. or British

warships.

The estuary was a graveyard of derelict hulls - about 100 vessels, many

rusted and partially submerged. Each vessel, whether a manned fishing dhow

or a rusted hulk, had to be searched, Heller said.

Tides rose and fell a dozen feet, exposing dangerous shoals. Tall reeds

concealed the shoreline.

Then, while a giant dust storm blanketed Iraq, forcing the ground war to a

standstill, gale-force winds of 55 knots buffeted the SEALs' small, open

craft.

"Those guys were getting battered," Heller said. "We were in enemy territory

with death squads taking shots at us and with limited or no visibility. A

little bad luck either way and things could have been ugly."

The special-boat crewmen, who were recognized only 18 months ago as a

separate Navy specialty, showed their worth in Iraq, Heller said.

"The special-boat-team community is young, and we're still growing and

developing and becoming more professional," he said. "I think we took some

leaps and bounds."

The larger SEAL community also got a boost from the war, the officers said,

because more special operators are now combat veterans.

"It provided our guys with experience in this sort of very, very fuzzy

situation," Schibler said.

The conflict "showed a lot of our younger operators that (warfare) is not

all black-and-white. The bad guys aren't all black-and-white. The missions

aren't all black-and-white."