E-mail a friendCol. Stephen Twitty
airdate November 14, 2007
As head of the U.S. Army's 4th Brigade Combat Team, also known as the Longknife Brigade, Col. Stephen Twitty is in command of 1,000 soldiers in Iraq and led the initial attack into the city of Baghdad. He's earned numerous awards and decorations during his military career and is the only African American serviceman to receive a Silver Star—the nation's third highest military award for valor—for his service in Iraq. Twitty also served in Germany and Belgium and fought in Operation Desert Storm.
Col. Stephen Twitty
Tavis: Colonel Stephen Twitty is the commander of the Army's Fourth Brigade combat team, which is part of Task Force Lightning in the northern region of Iraq. He is a native of South Carolina, and a graduate of South Carolina State University. He is also the recipient of a number of medals including the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit. He joins us tonight from Mosul in Iraq. Colonel Twitty, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Col. Stephen Twitty: Thank you for having me, Tavis.
Tavis: Let me start by asking what it is, in fact, that you do with command over these 4,000 men and women, and then we'll take our conversation from there. What are you doing every day in Mosul? We hear so much about this city in the news, we almost know what - we can spell it now, M-O-S-U-L. We see it all the time. That's where you are. What are you doing there?
Twitty: Well, first of all, I command - I'm the coalition force commander here in Nineveh Province. In Nineveh Province, there's about 2.6 million people, and what we're trying to do is bring about stability throughout the province. Mosul is the primary city; it's 1.6 million people, and the bottom line is we're going after al Qaeda and Iraq hard here and other insurgent groups, and it's paying huge dividends.
We have about 40,000 Iraqi security forces, both from the Iraqi army and Iraqi police, they're fighting alongside us. And we're also putting projects in throughout the province, and working with the people to bring a better life for the people.
Tavis: When you say, and I'm paraphrasing, that you're making great progress - and let me just back up for a moment and say these conversations are always particularly difficult for me to have as a host because I know going into it that the military can only say so much. I'm not going to be able to get you to answer certain questions, and I get that going into it.
So it's always a strange conversation to have, and yet on the other hand I think it's important for the American people to hear from the men and women in service to them, so hence the conversation. That said - and again, I don't want to make you political, but as you well know, one of the ongoing debates here in this country - and Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate are pressuring the president, putting heat on him, continuing to raise questions about how we're doing with regard to progressing on Iraqi security forces being trained to take over this country themselves one day so that at some point, we can get out of there.
That's exactly what you're doing, is training these Iraqi security forces. So you tell me how you're doing in that regard.
Twitty: Absolutely. That's exactly what we're doing here. That's our primary mission here. And as I spoke earlier, we have 40,000 Iraqi security forces here. When I first got on the ground here, the Iraqi security forces were under my command. I had 40,000 under my command. They are no longer under my command; they're under the Iraqi government's command, and they have to pas certain tests before they can graduate from being on a coalition force command to an Iraqi government command.
We put them through a rigorous training cycle in order to fight counterinsurgency operations, and now they're conducting operations independently, without my forces. In many cases, they conduct operations, be it the Iraqi police or the Iraqi army, without any coalition force involvement, and they've come a long way. We have some equipment issues that we're working with them on, but for the most part they're out there every day fighting al Qaeda and other insurgent groups, and I am very impressed with the progress we've gotten thus far.
In terms of reducing coalition forces for my particular area, there is some equipment needs that they will have to receive, and I can speak of things like attack helicopters. They need to get more logistics backbone in order to sustain themselves in a fight. Some engineer support, they need to get. Some intelligence support that they need to receive, as well. And all that stuff is coming in from the Iraqi government, and I think here, over the short term, we'll continue to see them progress with the equipment and it'll make a better force for the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army, and they'll be able to fight completely without coalition forces.
Now, what I will tell you as well is al Qaeda still remains the primary target here, and we want to continue to assist them in fighting al Qaeda here in Iraq. So I'm not an advocate of pulling U.S. forces out of this province too quickly.
Tavis: To your latter point, and I'm glad you went there because I wanted to go there, what's your sense, then, of how much more work needs to be done for the U.S. forces to leave just the area that you're in? I'm not even talking about the whole country, but just the area of Mosul, where you're in? How much more needs to be done, honestly, for you to believe that if the American forces were pulled out, they could handle it on their own?
Twitty: I do believe here in my province that they can handle it. We've enjoyed a reduction in violence here in Nineveh province. I'll give you an instance. When we first got on the ground here, we were averaging 18 attacks a day throughout the province. We have reduced those attacks. Today, we get somewhere between nine and 10 attacks a day throughout the province.
Most of the operations, once again, are led by Iraqi security forces, but once again we have to be careful about that reduction, because we want to make sure we maintain momentum and we keep those gains as we continue to develop the Iraqi security forces.
Tavis: Tell me then, Colonel Twitty, why it is you think that this debate back here at home then continues to rage about how well we are or are not doing in training forces throughout the country of Iraq, never mind your province?
Twitty: The debate is definitely healthy, and we must understand that we have been over here for quite some time, over four years, and I know the American people want to see progress. And we are having progress here. It may not be at the rate that one would expect, but we also have to understand that we stood this Iraq army up from scratch; we stood the Iraqi police up from scratch, and also this Iraqi government.
And in many cases, it takes time to develop a mature government, as well as to develop mature Iraqi security forces. We just have to stay on it, we have to be persistent. We must ensure that our resolve is firm, particularly when we know that there's al Qaeda in Iraq here that want to strike at U.S. forces as well as U.S. targets in the United States.
Tavis: Let me ask you, then, since you spoke to the American people a moment ago, let me ask you to address them again, and to tell them how they should square - how they should juxtapose the fact that on the one hand, Colonel Twitty is telling them we're making progress, albeit slow, making progress, how do they square that, how do they juxtapose the progress you say we're making with this year, 2007, being the deadliest year for American troops since we went into Iraq in 2003?
Twitty: Yeah, I think there's been other media outlets that have spoken on this particular target, and I will address - you have to understand when we came in here with the surge, we put more combat forces in here, U.S. combat forces in here, and we went into places that had not seen coalition forces in a while. And that resulted in some of the deaths that you see with coalition forces here.
We have cleared a large part of those areas here in Iraq, including in my area as well. There were some areas that had not seen coalition forces. We conducted operations over this past year, and we have those areas stable now. So it's going to take time, and we have put a lot of effort in this year to ensure that we can keep the momentum going, and I see all across Iraq great progress. We just have to stay on it.
Tavis: Let me ask you two other questions before I let you go there in Mosul. Number one, how's the morale of the men and women that you command? And I ask that again, for obvious reasons. We're all concerned about how long they've been over there, these extended tours of duty. How's the morale of your troops?
Twitty: The morale is absolutely great. We're at the tail end of our rotation here, and the morale, I have not seen a degradation in the morale of the forces here. We stay extremely busy, and one of the great things that my soldiers will tell you, because we see progress it keeps the morale high. And once again, we've enjoyed low attacks in this province, and we're taking care of the Iraqi people now. We've been able to get into some of these villages and put projects into these villages, build schools, build clinics, to help people and on and on and on. So we're seeing that progress and it's a morale booster to see the gains that we make.
Tavis: Let me offer this, then, as an exit question, since you mentioned a moment ago that you are near the end of your tour of duty, how long have you been there, and when will you get a chance to come back home either to South Carolina or El Paso, where you're stationed.
Twitty: It's the brigade combat team, should be arriving back in El Paso around December timeframe, and I should be in South Carolina, I'm going home to visit my parents there in Chesnee, South Carolina, just right outside of Spartanburg, immediately after Christmas.
Tavis: All right. Well, Colonel Twitty, I thank you for your service and that of the men and women who serve under you. We pray for your safe return home, and I know your mama and daddy are happy to see you, or to know that you'll be coming home for Christmas, and delighted to have you on the program. All the best to you, sir.
Twitty: Thank you, Tavis, I've enjoyed it.
Tavis: Thank you.
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