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“It’s funny because the big thing on the news as we were getting ready to leave was all the big hoopla about all the combat forces coming out, so all the soldiers and their families are asking, ‘Why are we going?’” Lt. Col. Bryan Mullins said.
“Well, we said it was the difference between the guys whose job it is to fight versus guys whose primary job it is to help people, or secure people, who are doing something else,” he said.
“So we are combat arms soldiers — I’m a tanker, we’ve got other tankers and artillery. But our job in Iraq is primarily going to be to training Iraqi security forces, cops, the [Iraqi] army, the border forces — they’ve got huge border forces,” he said.
“We haven’t been able to pay a whole lot of attention to those over the first six years because we were too busy doing other stuff,” he said. “So now, on the back end of the mission, we’re going to spend a whole lot more time and energy on that.”
The unit also will provide security for U.S. State Department personnel while in the Middle East, he said.
“They’re going to go out and work with the local government, so we’re going to go out and secure them while they work so nothing happens during the meetings, during the trainings that they do,” he said.
“So it’s going to be lots of advising and supporting, with the distinction being that this is not a combat thing. We’re not focused on that. We don’t go out looking for bad guys or IEDs [improvised explosive devices],” he said.
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