Quote Originally Posted by Greyhawk View Post
"Quantifying the level of discipline in a unit as large as a brigade is not easy, but, according to Army data, the number of Rakkasan escalation-of-force incidents in 2006 was below the median for brigades in Iraq."
In regard only to that point, that is easily impacted by what EOF incidents are reportable. For example, my company in 2005 was in an AO that was more violent than adjacent AOs to our north, east, and west, and significantly more violent than the BN AOs surrounding our BN AO. Other battalions were required to report every warning shot. We only reported sustained engagements. The BDE experimented with having us report every gunshot. After three days, they reversed that policy because we flooded them with so many incidents (I think our company and the company to our south reported over 100 incidents in 3 days). I'd be curious to know what the 187 policy was for what type of incidents were reportable.

It is also worth noting that Salah ad Din province is not really comparable to most other BDE AOs. I don't think they inherited Baquba, so that would only leave Samarra and Beiji as the big hotspots and 187 barely even covered down on Samarra - only putting 1/3 the number of Soldiers of the previous unit there. Areas in and around Tikrit were pretty quiet. Even if Baquba was covered down on, in 2006 that was still not much of a comparison to, say, a BDE responsible for a sector of Baghdad, Mosul, or - at that time - a sector in Anbar.