From August 2004 through March 2005, Major Michael Monti served as operations officer for 1st Battalion, 23rd Marines (part of the 1st Marine Division) which was responsible for an Al Anbar Province area along the Euphrates River spanning from the Iraqi city of Hit in the south to Hadithah in the north. During his unit's deployment, missions included main supply route and infrastructure security, training Iraqi National Guard (ING) soldiers and taking measures to rid the area of insurgent activity - and all with forces that were too few "to be engaged like we could have or should have been." In fact, Monti said, the January 2005 elections were a telling indicator of just who was really in control when only two individuals voted in his battalion's area of operations. "My instincts tell me," he explained, "that the people probably wanted to vote, maybe they believed in the vote, but they weren't going to vote because the insurgents and imams had ownership of the populated areas 23 hours a day. You either own a place 24/7,” Monti observed, “or you don’t own it. The enemy owned it and he was smart enough to keep a low signature and to not cause trouble while we were executing in the cities.” In this interview, he also discusses the up-armored vehicle issue, the current “warrior culture” that’s being built in the Marine Corps and the outstanding performance of Marine reservists in Iraq.

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