AL HILLAH, Iraq - Soldiers of the 69th Armor Regiment and Iraqi Security Forces in Babil Province have joined forces to ensure the safety of Iraqi citizens during the upcoming March 7 national elections, only the second such elections since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

"Our role during the elections is to help with election site security," said Capt. Matthew McDonald, "Bayonet" Company commander, 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor. "There's 52 of them in my AO [area of operations]."

Bayonet Company platoon leaders are partnered with Iraqi Army company commanders and McDonald works with an Iraqi Army battalion commander on a daily basis.

"We work together to do joint mission planning," McDonald said, "To build individual skill training in their soldiers, to build collective skill training in their leaders and to synchronize their staff efforts for intelligence and operations."

Staff Sgt. Nicholas White, a squad leader in B Company, trains with his Iraqi counterparts to address various security situations that might arise at election sites.

"[Some days] we'll take the squad out, from one of the companies we were working with, and do MEDEVAC classes or how to establish a traffic control point," he said.

McDonald said he is confident in the ISF's abilities and cited their recent successes during the religious holidays of Ashura and Arba'een.

As is customary during Arba'een, many Muslims made the pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala, in southern Iraq.

"We've been extremely proud of our ISF partners," McDonald said, "Before the elections, they went after the violent extremist network cells and during both holidays they were out in force, manning checkpoints 24-7, [which lent] itself to a really successful event down here."

To ensure election-site security is just as successful, the Iraqi and U.S. forces will have to work together, McDonald said.

"We will bring all the ISF partners in and we will all get on the same sheet for the security plan," he said.

Whatever the plan, the Soldiers of Bayonet Company will be in the background during the elections, said White.

"The only thing we are really going to do is assist the ISF in making sure [the Iraqi people] have nice places where they're not worried about the repercussions of expressing their opinions," he said.

McDonald is optimistic about the elections.

"I think the elections will go smoothly," he said. "I think the Iraqis here are very excited about exercising their new right to vote. They want to be heard, they want to voice their opinion, so I think the turnout will be really good down here."

Although the elections are a major step for the country, they are not the culminating event for the Soldiers of Bayonet Company.

McDonald is already considering the next mission for his Soldiers.

"I think the critical time will be the post-election period as the new government takes control," he said, "[We hope] that everything goes peacefully and that the new parties that are elected don't have a lot of fallout with supporters of the old parties."

Babil is one of the nine provinces that make up United States Division - South.

BAGHDAD - A missing Iraqi-American contractor was kidnapped by Shiite militiamen who lured him into central Baghdad by promising to help him find distant relatives, an Iraqi defense official said Saturday.

A Shiite extremist group claimed responsibility for the Jan. 23 kidnapping and posted a video online that shows a man wearing military fatigues reading a list of demands that includes the release of militants, the prosecution of Blackwater guards and an immediate American troop withdrawal.

A high-ranking Iraqi defense official and an American intelligence official identified the man in the video as Issa T. Salomi, the missing contractor. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

The Iraqi defense official said Salomi was abducted in the central Baghdad district of Karradah. He said Salomi is of Iraqi origin and that his abductors led him to believe they would help him find family members.

Salomi, 60, of El Cajon, California, has been missing since Jan. 23, the Pentagon said in a statement late Friday that provided the first news of Salomi's disappearance.

A U.S. intelligence official said initial investigations indicated Salomi was abducted by criminals for revenge or money - and not as part of a terrorism scheme.

Salomi was abducted when he was leaving his home in Baghdad, where he has relatives, the official said.

In the video, Salomi - who did not identify himself - is seated in a chair and wearing what looks like a U.S. military uniform. A black banner with the name of the militant group - the League of the Righteous, also known by its Arabic name, Asaib Ahl al-Haq - written in white Arabic script hangs behind him.

Salomi says his abductors are demanding the release of militants "that resisted the occupation."

"The second demand is to bring the proper justice and the proper punishment to those members of Blackwater company that have committed unjustifiable crimes against innocent Iraqi civilians," he said. "And to bring justice by proper compensation to the families that have been involved in great suffering because of this incident."

Blackwater security contractors were protecting U.S. diplomats when the guards opened fire in Nisoor Square, a crowded Baghdad intersection, on Sept. 16, 2007. Seventeen people were killed, including women and children, in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraq.

Vice President Joe Biden has said the U.S. plans to appeal a court decision dismissing manslaughter charges against the five Blackwater guards involved in the shooting.

Salomi's family issued a statement, released through the FBI in San Diego, saying they were hoping for his safe return. The statement did not say whether Salomi was believed abducted.

"We are confident that everything is being done by the most capable people here and abroad to bring Issa home safely, and we all are anxiously awaiting his safe return," the statement said.

The same group that claimed to have kidnapped Salomi was believed to be behind the kidnapping of British computer consultant Peter Moore in May 2007 along with his four British bodyguards. Moore was handed over to Iraqi authorities in late December. Three of the bodyguards were killed and the fourth is believed dead.

The British government has said no deals were struck for Moore's release, though it coincided with the transfer of the militant group's leader, Qais al-Khazali, from U.S. to Iraqi custody.

Al-Khazali and his brother were accused of organizing an attack on a local government headquarters in the city of Karbala that killed five U.S. soldiers on Jan. 20, 2007. 

The mother of Staff Sgt. Amy Seyboth Tirador, a Colonie native slain in Iraq in November, said Friday she believes military investigators are "leaning toward" ruling her daughter's death a suicide.

Tirador, 29, was killed Nov. 4, the victim of a gunshot to the back of her head while walking to an evening work shift on the U.S. military base Camp Caldwell in Kirkush, Iraq, near Iran.

The Army has attributed the fatality to a "non-combat-related incident." Tirador's mother, Colleen Murphy, said she suspects the investigation will find the bullet was self-inflicted.

"They seem to be leaning toward suicide in the questions that they have asked," Murphy said in a phone interview, referring to military investigators. She would disagree with such a finding.

"Amy -- in no way, shape or form -- took her own life," she said. "She was too strong a soldier and she had too much life to live ... no matter what pressures were on her, she knew how to deal (with them)."

Murphy said she has retained an attorney. She also said she would expand on her remarks at a news conference she plans on Feb. 4, the three-month anniversary of her daughter's death.

Tirador, a 1998 graduate of South Colonie High School, was the first female soldier from the Capital Region to lose her life in the Iraq war.

She joined the Army Reserves in 1999 and enlisted into active duty in 2001 as an Army combat medic.
Tirador met her husband, Michael Tirador, during her first overseas assignment in Germany. She won a Bronze Star during her second deployment for the rescue of a higher-ranked soldier during a combat situation.

In her last tour, Tirador was studying to be an Arabic linguist. At the time of her death, she was interrogating enemy combatants and interpreting interviews for Army intelligence at Camp Caldwell.

A spokesman for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command could not be immediately reached Friday.

RAMADI, Iraq - The U.S. Marine Corps wrapped nearly seven years in Iraq on Saturday, handing over duties to the Army and signaling the beginning of an accelerated withdrawal of American troops as the U.S. turns its focus away from the waning Iraqi war to a growing one in Afghanistan.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden held talks with Iraqi leaders amid growing tensions over plans to ban election candidates because of suspected links to Saddam Hussein's regime.

The White House worries the bans could raise questions over the fairness of the March 7 parliamentary elections, which are seen as an important step in the American pullout timetable.

The Marines formally handed over control of Sunni-dominated Anbar, Iraq's largest province, to the Army during a ceremony at a base in Ramadi - where some of the fiercest fighting of the war took place.

If all goes as planned, the last remaining Marines will be followed out by tens of thousands of soldiers in the coming months. President Barack Obama has ordered all but 50,000 troops out of the country by Aug. 31, 2010, with most to depart after the March 7 parliamentary election.

The remaining troops will leave by the end of 2011 under a U.S.-Iraqi security pact.

But concerns about the success of the election - and perhaps the loss of hard won security gains that the Marines helped cement - are on the rise because of a growing political dispute that could see more than 500 candidates blacklisted because of suspected ties to previous regime.

The changeover at Ramadi, west of Baghdad, leaves the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division with responsibility over both Baghdad and Anbar, the vast desert province that stretches from western Baghdad to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

The province was once the heart of the deadly Sunni insurgency that erupted after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. In the battles for control of the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the Marines saw some of the most brutal and deadliest fighting of the war.

Violence began dropping off in the province in late 2006 when Sunni fighters - known as Awakening Councils - turned against al-Qaida and sided with the Marines to fight the insurgency.

As many as 25,000 Marines were in Iraq at the peak, mostly in Anbar province. The few thousand who remain - except for U.S. Embassy guards and advisers in Baghdad - are expected to ship out in a matter of weeks.

The upcoming parliamentary election is also considered an important step toward speeding the U.S. troop pullout. But plans to ban hundreds of candidates have raised deep concerns in Washington that the voting could widen rifts between the majority Shiites who gained power after Saddam's fall and Sunnis who are struggling to regain influence.

Biden, who arrived late Friday, had a full agenda of meetings with Iraqi leaders including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has strongly supported the blacklist.

Some Sunni leaders have accused the Shiite-led government of using the ban as a political tool. But al-Maliki insists that Iraq must purge all ties to Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime. A vetting panel has put 512 names on the blacklist and more are expected.