Captain Sam Rogers is the former Bravo Troop commander with 1st Squadron, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment and is currently a member of the Unit of Action Maneuver Battle Lab in the Experimental Division at Fort Knox. He participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom from May to November 2003. After two weeks of urban combat training in Kuwait, Bravo Troop moved north to what eventually became known as Camp War Eagle, south of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad. Since 2nd ACR was a light cavalry regiment, Bravo Troop was equipped primarily with non-armored and scout Humvees, driven mainly without the doors. Mk-19s were the principal weapons systems and the majority of the soldiers were 19D scouts. Blue Force Tracker was available to platoon leaders and above. In August, 1st Squadron was attached to 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division for Operation Longstreet to patrol and clear insurgents from the "gray area" between Baghdad and Fallujah. During this operation, 1st Squadron was still responsible for maintaining security in its area of operations in Baghdad. Thus, each troop left one platoon behind to continue running the neighborhood advisory councils and to pay the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) forces. Rogers was involved in training Iraqi soldiers but ran into desertion problems when it was announced that the new Iraqi police would be paid more money than the ICDC. He also felt that his troop was overextended in a number of areas, in particular the numerous ammunition bunkers scattered around his sector that simply could not be guarded 24 hours a day. Rogers was frustrated with the lack of "top-down" intelligence. All the intelligence his soldiers had, they collected on their own. Finally, he believes that the Army never fully understood the magnitude of the many problems in Iraq that needed to be fixed.

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