From March to September 2005 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Major John Polidoro, US Marine Corps, served as executive officer of the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, and was based at Camp Korean Village in Iraq's Anbar Province. His unit was responsible principally for the town of Rutbah, the ports of entry of Walid and Trebil, as well as roughly 10,000 square miles of terrain and 387 total miles of roads. With such a huge area of responsibility, Polidoro said, "There were a lot of spaces that we turned into security areas and just couldn't get to. We didn't have enough people to control a town of 35,000 people. At one point, we had traffic control points and shut the town down. At another point, we were living in the town and at another point we walked through the town every day." As he explained, "We just couldn't get the right mix because we didn't have enough people. That was our biggest challenge." In this first of two interviews reference his OIF experiences - the second one covering his August 2006 to March 2007 deployment back to Anbar Province - Polidoro discusses in detail the difficult economy of force mission that 2nd LAR had and why they were ordered to basically just "keep things quiet and not be a distraction." He also talks about the pluses and minuses of the light armored vehicle (LAV), how they were set up for interpreter support, the challenges of living and working in a single-tribe, Sunni-only area in which "everybody hated us," the importance of good cultural awareness before deploying to any theater, and why he doesn't feel that Marines are best suited for economy of force missions. Polidoro closes this interview by singing the praises of the Marine Corps' Mojave Viper training program at 29 Palms and saying why he feels the Marine Corps should emulate the Army's longer but less frequent deployment cycles.

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