A short journey with an American Army unit, at war

Part I of II

From the Vatican to Paris to Baghdad, we cross the heart and seek refuge in hope. I came across these photos in a Christian college in Baghdad. Faces of Iraq we never see.

Reality in Iraq

Gunshots ring out at three in the morning as I write these first sentences. Gunshots, providing muse and meter for this dispatch home to America. Gunshots, three of them. The war is close.

Baghdad as seen from the roof of the Pontifical Babel College for Philosophy and Theology, where the 1-4 Cavalry from Fort Riley, Kansas, have set up a Combat Outpost, or “COP.” The soldiers from 1-4 Cav have named it COP Amanche (Apache + Comanche.)

All of the more than one-hundred photos in this dispatch were taken in proximity to the three main structures visible in this photo. In the left background, smokestacks bellow columns of soot into the air. In the middle is the Church, amazingly unscathed in the middle of a war zone, and slightly to the right of that, in the background, is a minaret the enemy has used as a fighting position.

The minaret, riddled with bullet holes.

This shooting perch appears in numerous photos in the series, and in the photos where it cannot be seen, it’s always close. The 1-4 Cavalry from Fort Riley, Kansas, likely will spend the next year—and probably more—in proximity to the cross, the minaret and the smokestacks.

The streets near the base of the minaret are mostly deserted.

Most of the families in the vicinity have fled. People are murdered nearby every day, and during just one of the days I was with 1-4 Cavalry, they reported finding three murder victims. The Iraqi police and our soldiers told me that murders are down since the security plan began, yet our people still found fourteen human bodies over the period of one week. The enemy kills entire families including small children.

When I first reported more than two years ago, back in February of 2005, that Iraq was in a civil war, the condition was painfully obvious. Nobody seemed to believe that lone and lonely voice then, and there was a price for speaking out.  More than two-years later, into April of 2007, these streets are empty. The people who could leave have mostly gone. Many of the wealthy and the educated have abandoned Iraq. The lights rarely come on here.

Street empty save for palm shadows.

Street after empty street.

While markets thrive in some neighborhoods, others have been abandoned.

Some of the soldiers are reading a series of books called, “Left Behind,” which they say depicts what it would be like to be left behind here. The leap is natural; many Iraqis have truly been left behind, much as occurred during other brain drains in places such as East Germany after the end of World War II. If those left behind lack the capacity or will to run their lands, entropy will become the new social denominator, as secular denominations become factional demarcations.

Twitches of a national life: a lone Iraqi flag in the wind.  A small sign that hope has not been entirely abandoned.

On these empty streets it becomes clear that the war that began in March 2003 has been lost to rampant crime, civil war and the sundry insurgencies that have shorn the Iraqi fabric. But while our fire brigades pour up from Kuwait into Iraq, and while our allies pull out one by one, we are reinvading Iraq with not a second wave but a “surge” of brigade after brigade barreling up IED-laced highways. Ten-thousand more troops, then ten-thousand more, then maybe ten-thousand more again. And those troops who are already here will stay longer than planned. Then longer than planned, again. (One way to get more troops into Iraq is to stop letting them go home. The announcement to extend current deployments was made after I wrote this dispatch.)

People talk of an Army breaking under the strain, but while there remains a sliver of hope that Iraq might avoid conflagration into full-scale genocide, out here, where bones splinter and flesh really does burn, there is a kind of clarity. And on these empty streets, a practiced eye regards the slivers of hope that are strewn among all the chards of broken glass.

The latest group of professional soldiers I had the honor of accompanying was the 1-4 Cavalry from Fort Riley, Kansas. They opened their doors in Baghdad and wanted me to tell the people at home the good, the bad and the ugly. They didn’t hold back; they provided plenty of all three. In one neighborhood where residents have been subject to a methodical slaughter, our people found an abandoned Christian college that had already proved itself the proverbial island in the storm.

The Pontifical Babel College, its name so suggestive of all things Iraq–Babel, the Tower of Babel, Babylon, Babylonia–a place where the meaning of words evaporates almost as soon as they are spoken into the dry desert air. The I-4 Cavalry would spend the next few days transforming it into COP Amanche, a place where the actions of soldiers conveyed the meaning of their presence and where a practiced eye reads the reactions of civilians as glints and flashes of what could be.

The college was abandoned, as if the people were beamed up and out somewhere without warning. In fact, they were warned to leave with death threats, issued by people who make good on death threats every day in this city.

A painting hanging on a wall inside the college was one of several renditions of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, seen by some as a symbol of man’s hubris before God.

The destruction of the Tower of Babel is described in Genesis 11: 1-9 as the event which gave birth to all the human languages, and the vexing problems of translation and miscommunication.

Post-it notes were left sticking on desks. The clocks all stopped at different times, but all had stopped as dust settled.

Pages in calendars all showed June, 2006.

The hand of Civil War stopped Christian calendars in this college. I called one of the church officials in California who told me the people moved to Irbil, in the Kurdish north.

The phones were still off their hooks, as they’d been left just before the last person walked out of the office.

It might sound so distant, my writing these words from Baghdad, (and now Basra) but when I contacted church officials in California, they were happy for any news of the college. These people are very real and reachable.  They have a website explaining their mission and facilities.

The Cardinal’s portrait hung undisturbed in a prominent place.

This poster of the Pope was printed before news of a quotation he referenced in a speech, about a purported violent core to Islam.  His words sparked death threats, church burnings and violent protests the world ’round.  There were apologies and overtures for interfaith dialogue. Meanwhile, the 1-4 Cavalry from Fort Riley, Kansas, began to moving into the Babel College just after midnight of 25 March, the morning of 26 March 2007.

The college needed little more than a dusting and a new country around it, and classes could have began the same day.

Classrooms were ready for lectures, meetings and trainings.

Only the echoes were left behind.

After checking Babel College for booby traps, the officers and sergeants of 1-4 got to work with their men. The first job was securing against attack.

Everybody was working. From private to sergeant to captain and major, our soldiers sweated, hauling in sandbags (sometimes dust bags) by the thousands.

Stacking sandbags in the windows, soldiers from the 1-4 plan to live in this neighborhood for at least a year.

They seldom stopped working in the days I spent with them.

Putting stretchers to use carrying more sandbags.

The soldiers cleared the kitchen, dining hall, classrooms offices and library, checking for ambushes of any sort, including hidden explosives, but nothing was found other than a small college that had been.  The sanctuary and altar were intact.

There were no guards and the college was filled with expensive equipment.

Modern office facilities, with big copiers, fax machines, brand-new computers, a beautiful library.  Nothing had been disturbed.

Headphones resting on a monitor in the language lab.

In a land where looters steal screws and rip copper wire from walls, and where warfare was literally raging around this place with gunfire and bombs everyday, bodies in the streets, the place was untouched.

There was even paper in the copy machine.

The Babel College kitchen was equipped with modern conveniences.

And a library like I haven’t seen in a long while…

…periodicals, journals, magazines in a dozen languages…

…paperbacks…hard covers.theology, philosophy, history.

…and for some, a title that seemed especially relevant.

It could have been a university in the states. General Petraeus got a PhD back at Princeton, but will his ideas work here?

After immediate security, our soldiers’ second job was to secure the valuables into the library and begin an inventory.

Books in Arabic, English, French, German and other languages. Thousands of books.  On that first night, as our soldiers secured the college, they let me photograph everything they did.

It wasn’t enough to just secure the place. LTC James Crider, commander of the 1-4 Cav was serious about showing to the owners that their College would be cared for during this war and about aligning the actions of his soldiers with the statements they make. By 27 March, valuables were being locked down.

Our people had developed some intelligence about a couple of murderers nearby, and during the first night the commander asked if I wanted to go on the raid. I was exhausted, but it’s hard to turn our soldiers down when they are just as exhausted but still moving forward.

Captain Cook led the raid, and he answered every question, though I tried to stay out of his way. He had a mission to run. Our people and Iraqi forces would soon have a base in the neighborhood, from which they could launch totally rested without notice to the enemy. This would be a new problem for the enemy who wouldn’t see the humvees coming from a mile away. The local people could now answer the murderers among them by telling the Americans and the Iraqi forces.

We launched on the raid, which provided plenty of exercise but thankfully no killing. We returned to the college after sunrise.

Captain Cook and other commanders checked their men. Except for soldiers who were pulling security, the men were sprawled everywhere.

Combat soldiers can sleep anywhere: leaning curled in hallway steps , with bricks as pillows.  With practically nobody here to tell the stories of their hard work, sacrifice and heartening professionalism, we have left our soldiers behind in this war.

When we came back into the library, a soldier was awake and up on a ladder. A company commander, maybe it was Captain Cook, asked something like, “What are you doing?”
“Looking for something to read, Sir.”
“Nope. This doesn’t belong to us. Get down from there and leave the books alone.”
“Yes Sir,” and the young soldier crawled down.

I went back to the library for more photos.

Many interesting books, such as “India in Early Greek Literature.” I’d spent much time in libraries in India, searching out clues to mysteries. 

And there was one, more contemporary: “Iraq: Military Victory, Moral Defeat.” Published in Kansas in 1991. I opened the book and began reading about our first war with Iraq:

Standing in the dark library, I wondered if the people of who studied and taught at this place had said a prayer before they left, beseeching God to protect their school, their books, their sanctuary.

On the roof one night, American artillery boomed through darkness and distance, and then after long pause, far in a different direction, an orange flash appeared, and finally a small rumble, and then more.

Car bombs that folks at home can see on the news, and read about in the papers —‘More than 50 killed in Baghdad attack today,’ ‘32 killed in Baghdad Car Bombing,’ ‘At least 40 Victims in Latest Iraq Bombing’—can be heard from the college.

Some soldiers wonder how many booms of death they hear over the course of a year—it’s next to impossible to keep an accurate count; explosions come from so many places here. Drifting into the smell of fine books in that library, there might have been a shudder from those shelves. Over the course of the war, the rumbles and crackles of thousands of human deaths must have coursed through these books. On the first night, after the raid, a chill from sweaty clothes caused me to shiver as I fell asleep hungry on the library floor.

End of part one.

After the Battle: “Squaddie” from 5 Platoon, 2nd Battalion, “The Rifles” Battle Group.

Basra, Iraq

The explosions from enemy rockets and mortar fire have been constant companions for the small contingent of Coalition forces based at the former Basra Palace, on the banks of Shatt al Arab River. In the past five months, more than a thousand bombs have been fired at this small base, all while these British combat troops, Romanian soldiers and a small contingent of Americans continue their attempts to stabilize Iraq. The nearby US Regional Embassy office also is frequently targeted.

A dramatic surge in IDF attacks (indirect fire: rockets and mortars) began here in September 2006, subsequent an increase in British troops. Locals cite Iranian influence behind the attacks, while British officers say this is the most IDF’d base in Iraq. The dozens of bombs that exploded on the base in the first five days of my embed with a British infantry platoon punctuated those claims.

The building where many British forces live is frequently hit. Recently a rocket slammed into the living quarters, creating a massive gape and much wreckage, while severely wounding one soldier from 5 Platoon. Just this week, a mortar bomb severely damaged a British armored vehicle parked outside, and another bomb explosively pruned a treetop, fragging the building where soldiers live, and leaving ears ringing. A 5 Platoon soldier videotaped the impact as it happened. Amazingly, despite the frequency of the IDF attacks, a combination of force protection measures and sheer luck have prevented the death of any British soldier, though combat forces have been seriously wounded from them. The risk of spending an hour outside the building might be equivalent to smoking a thousand cartons of unfiltered cigarettes. And Crossfit exercise might not help: the old gym was blasted a few days ago.

Earlier this week, when Moqtada al Sadr issued a call to violence against Coalition forces, multiple IDF strikes were launched against this base. Militias based in the al Quibla district of Basra, a notorious haven for Shia “JAM” militias who are loyal to or influenced by al Sadr, were believed responsible. Many of their shots miss the base, landing in civilian populations. According to the British commanders, JAM members will attack local journalists who report these mistakes.

Before al Sadr issued his provocation, the British Army was planning aggressive offensive actions against terrorists and militia members, and allowed this writer to join 5 Platoon, 2nd Battalion, “The Rifles” Battle Group for six days of missions. Those missions included Operation Arezzo, named for the Tuscan city that was the site of famous battles in the 14th century, and of an important victory for British troops in July 1944 as they drove the Axis forces north and out of Italy for good.

Surrounded by JAM: British Forces just before the shootout

Operation Arezzo

Lieutenant Colonel Justin Maciejewski MBE, the Battle Group Operations Commander (equivalent to an American Battalion Commander), allowed this writer unprecedented access to the planning details of Operation Arezzo, part of three simultaneous strike and arrest operations in the al Quibla district of Basra, designed in part to bait the enemy into attacking British forces.

In all, 13 platoons would partake, and I’d accompany 5 Platoon. LTC Maciejewski further permitted me to record both video and still camera images during the operation, and to get as close to the combat as I dare. 5 Platoon has seen a lot of fighting in recent months, and had already taken me on several minor missions. For Operation Arezzo, they adopted me as one of their own.

The plan for Operation Arezzo was cleverly contrived. While Americans count on helicopter support for deliberate high-intensity combat here, the Brits were going into extremely hostile terrain, outnumbered, without helicopter support, relying instead upon timing, terrain, maneuverability, firepower, and sheer audacity.

In combat, luck can be a decisive factor, but Murphy’s Law remains in effect. For Operation Arezzo, the risks of something going catastrophically wrong were apparent at the outset. The soldiers in 5 Platoon had never conducted such an audacious operation—in broad daylight—but LTC Maciejewski intended to show the enemy that even in their strongest bastion, outnumbered British forces could strike into their heart and inflict heavy losses.

Shortly before the mission, as soldiers from 5 Platoon disassembled their weapons for cleaning (again), performed functions checks, the tone of the music coming out of their speakers changed. As with American combat forces, before embarking on a deliberate fight, the music became more rousing and to the bone. For Operation Arezzo, the pre-battle tune was Gimme Shelter, by the Rolling Stones:

War, Children, it’s just a shot away

It’s just a shot away

War, Children, it’s just a shot away

It’s just a shot away

With all the emphasis on timing, 5 Platoon and others (including me) conducted rehearsals just hours before the strike yesterday. Getting to the al Quibla district in one piece was far from certain as we loaded into vehicles and rumbled out into JAM country. Some IEDs (bombs) buried in roads here are so large they would completely destroy the Bulldog tracked vehicle in which we were riding. Just last week a formidable Challenger tank was destroyed by an explosion that also seriously injured the driver. Days before, four British soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter had been killed at the same place when a similar bomb detonated.

As we rumbled through the dry, desert heat, the smells of Iraq—nearly all of them bad—wafted down from the top hatch. Suddenly, the Bulldog was filled with a stench so awful that soldiers nearly gagged, as if everything that could rot in Iraq had gone rotten all at once. Where just moments before there was only dusty air in the compartment, in a flash it was filled with that horrendous, fetid stench and a swarm of flies. When, a few minutes later, the stench was suddenly replaced by smoke from outside, dozens of flies remained in the compartment.

British Forces at War: “Squaddies” from 5 Platoon burst into first target house, part of a force of about 400 soldiers on an audacious daylight raid into an enemy stronghold.

The unilateral British operation began in mid-afternoon on 10 April, kicked off with rapid ground assaults on half a dozen target houses in the district, in an attempt to kill or capture key local militia leaders, including known terrorists such as “The Turban,” who local British forces call “The Turbinator.” The soldiers of 5 Platoon were combat proven after five months of fighting. Last week, they were engaged in a sharp firefight. One soldier captured the action with videocam on his helmet as six enemy were killed in the street fighting, including one enemy who suffered a direct hit from a 5 Platoon grenade launcher. There were no friendly casualties.

Now 5 Platoon was leading a key part of Operation Arezzo, their only effective close air support were the British snipers on rooftops. We approached the first target, and the Squaddies rushed out the back of the Bulldog with me in tow, crashing through gates and tossing flashbang grenades into doorways before bursting into houses while I made video of the strike.

Surrounded by enemy forces, men appear on a roof. A British sniper can be seen on the roof in the background. Unfortunately, the primary (“alpha”) targets were not home and escaped death or capture. Nearby, at about the same time, an Iraqi policeman was murdered.

5 Platoon on second entry.

During the third entry, the terrorists were not home, but a woman and two small children were obviously present. 5 Platoon did not throw flashbangs, and their touch was so light that the small children did not cry.

But that light touch was reserved for women and children only, as “The Rifles” would soon demonstrate. With the raids on house targets completed, a new phase of the plan unfolded and the drama really began.

Almost as if on cue, small-arms fire begins.

During planning, British commanders, including Major Quentin Naylor, had briefed that JAM likely would try to lure us into ambush in a certain area. Now, eerily according to plan, sporadic small arms began from the very direction British commanders had anticipated. If 5 Platoon had moved aggressively in that direction, casualties from our side might be severe, but instead, British forces in armored vehicles moved to other pre-planned areas, hoping to draw the enemy out of hiding and into tactical blunders. The enemy answered the challenge with great enthusiasm, and blundered.

They opened on us with massive small-arms fire from many directions, and RPGs. One RPG slammed into a British vehicle and exploded in the slot armor, but the vehicle took the hit, and the men inside continued to fight. The enemy pounded at one of the platoons with at least one large machine gun, possibly a 12.7 mm, which can blow a man in half and easily defeat British or American armor. But soldiers in that platoon responded with blistering fire, and silenced the gun.

The ensuing firefights were vigorous. As more enemy joined and the battle progressed, British elements maneuvered and fired, making adjustments to the plan to mold the fight. With no helicopters above to help develop ground awareness or to help shape the combat by engaging targets, British commanders directed their elements by map and ground-feel. Having no helicopters also left rooftops open to the enemy, adding another dimension to the combat. In addition to small arms, British soldiers used 7.62mm machineguns, grenades, and 30mm guns with deadly focus. As soldiers ran out of ammunition, they dropped back to reload, while other soldiers kept up the aimed shots.

Reloading during one of the firefights.

The enemy was at times on both sides of us firing from many positions, on the ground and on rooftops. 5 Platoon and others continued answering heavy fire with accurate return fire. I saw a soldier fire his 40mm grenade launcher several times, arching explosive rounds into enemy positions. A British sniper fired four bullets. One 7.62 mm bullet struck an armed man on a rooftop in the chest. Another bullet stopped a gunman who was firing from a car.

Bullets popped into the walls of the vehicles. British planners had anticipated that JAM would by now have placed large IEDs on our egress routes, and the commanders’ plan to defeat this threat so far was working. At least one IED was in fact placed to get us, but exploded at the wrong time and missed a Bulldog.

As the firing began to wane, the day’s heat began to fade along with it. Dust wafted thick on the cooling air. The soldiers were still sweating when a light rain began to fall. Iraqi dust polluted the pure rain as it fell, forming mud drops that splattered onto man and machine.
In an operation that lasted over four hours, British forces killed 26-27 enemy and sustained no casualties. 5 Platoon fired more than 4,000 bullets before their guns began to cool, and about 15 of the enemy kills were accredited to 5 Platoon. Another platoon captured two enemy fighters, including one Iraqi policeman who might have been heeding al Sadr’s call for Iraqi Police and Army forces to turn on their Coalition partners.

Members of 5 Platoon after the battle.

“Smoking Kills”

Later that evening, back on base, “squaddies” were outside the converted palace where we sleep, grabbing quick smokes. “Smoking kills” is the common joke. (British soldiers, like their American kin, are quick with dry combat humor.) But with all the IDF attacks, soldiers here truly are taking extreme risks to smoke outside. The palace had just been hit yesterday, and today more rain fell on its fractured façade. Sadr had just called for his militias to attack the Coalition, and “The Rifles” had just killed a couple dozen enemy fighters in JAM country, which was within easy rocket range of the base.

Rifleman Lee Hulbert, wearing his helmet and body armor, was smoking with his friends when Murphy’s Law kicked in. There was no rocket attack, no lightning strike. About 15 meters (about 50 feet) above Lee’s head, three heavy pieces of marble, each weighing perhaps 10 kg (more than 20 lbs), dislodged from the palace, and hurtled toward Lee Hulbert. One piece struck the back of his helmet, crashed off his body armor, and he fell quiet to the ground. Hulbert had fought well throughout his tour in Iraq, only to be felled by a piece of marble. He’s been med-evac’d and is said to be in good condition.

The British are planning future operations. These soldiers are so good that I have requested from British commanders to be allowed to stay longer.

04/04/2007
By Joseph L. Galloway
McClatchy Newspapers

An ever more combative President George W. Bush this week denounced the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate for attempting to substitute their tactical and strategic judgment for that of our military commanders on the ground in Iraq.

Heaven forbid.

How dare Washington politicians attempt to dictate benchmarks for measuring the effectiveness of the ineffective Iraqi government or lay down timelines for beginning the withdrawal of American troops from a war gone bad.

The President’s indignation might resonate more loudly with the American people if it were not so heavily laden with hypocrisy.

Shall we call to mind that for six years Bush and his senior cohorts—Vice President Dick Cheney and the unlamented former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld—rode roughshod over the best advice of their military commanders.

Remember Afghanistan? Remember how we blew the best chance ever at destroying Osama bin Laden and the top leadership of al Qaeda because we didn’t have enough American forces on the ground to seal off all the escape routes from Tora Bora?

Or how American troops were killed and wounded in Operation Anaconda because they didn’t have artillery support when they so desperately needed it?

And why was this?

It was because Secretary Rumsfeld, that paragon of military expertise who like his bosses had never heard a shot fired in anger, had dictated that no more than 7,000 American troops would be permitted to set foot in Afghanistan and had ordered the Army to leave its artillery pieces behind.

How did Rumsfeld arrive at that arbitrary manpower ceiling of 7,000 pairs of boots on the ground and not one pair more? God only knows. He was determined to prove that high-tech weaponry had rendered obsolete old-fashioned ideas about how you seize and control an enemy’s territory.

The Army would have no need of its artillery fire support. The Air Force, with its satellite-guided smart bombs and its AC-130 gunships, would provide all the fire support the old-fashioned groundpounders would ever need.

So, when we finally tracked Osama and his merry band of murderous thugs to the cave stronghold of Tora Bora, our military commanders had no choice but to depend on three Afghan warlords to seal the escape routes into Pakistan. Instead, the warlords set up what amounted to toll booths and happily sold get out of jail free cards to Osama and company. When reconnaisance photos showed the escaping terrorists’ campfires in the mountains, the warlords said they belonged to shepherds, who presumably were feeding snow to their sheep.

And while Army artillery is on call 24/7 to provide a shield of hot steel to their infantry brothers in snow, sleet or heavy mountain clouds, the Air Force still is loath to fly expensive jet fighters through zero-zero weather full of 12,000-foot granite peaks. It already had decreed that the highly effective AC-130 gunships with their Gatling guns and 105mm artillery pieces were too vulnerable to fly during daylight hours

That’s just Afghanistan. Then came Iraq.

Here Mr. Rumsfeld, with the obvious approval of Cheney and Bush, tampered and tinkered with literally everything. He threw out a war plan, which had been drawn up based on everything the generals had learned about war in that part of the world, that called for an invasion force of 450,000 American and allied troops. Mr. Rumsfeld determined that a figure of something like 100,000 would be more than enough and threw out five years of planning and war games.

When Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki reluctantly offered an opinion to a senator that it would require “several hundred thousand troops” to secure and occupy Iraq, Rumsfeld’s Deputy Paul Wolfowitz hurried to Capitol Hill to dismiss that estimate as “outlandish.” After all, Wolfowitz said, we all know that Iraq has none of the ethnic divisions of a place like Afghanistan and, thus, would be easier to subdue.

So we invaded Iraq with half the troops we needed to occupy and pacify the country. When Baghdad fell, there was no plan and no troops to keep the mobs from looting government offices and destroying everything from power and sewage plants to hospitals and army camps and schools. No troops available to occupy and pacify the heart of Saddam Hussein’s power base among the Sunnis of Anbar Province. No troops to secure the vast ammunition dumps or secure the borders.

Mr. Rumsfeld and his bosses forbade the generals from planning for a long occupation or nation building. Why plan for those things when we’d be leaving Iraq within six months, by the summer of 2003? Nation building and the creation of a new government were not our job they said. Instead, we’d just turn Iraq over to the Pentagon’s good friend Ahmad Chalabi and his fellow Iraqi exiles.

We now know how well Bush has commanded the military; how accurate his and Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s predictions were and what masters they were of the art of war. Mission Accomplished. Last throes. A few dead-enders. A little untidiness.

Now President Bush would have us believe that he always listens to his military commanders; that he’s outraged that a mere majority of both houses of Congress would presume to substitute their judgment for his . . . er, his commanders.

After all, he’s not merely the commander-in-chief; he’s The Decider.

RUBS

(Raw Unedited, Barely Spellchecked)

I had occasion to read through the comments on the last few RUBS dispatches and I noticed, with appreciation, all the notes from families of soldiers in the 1-4 Cav, who were glad to see something, finally, about their sons, husbands and dads and the critical mission they are undertaking in Baghdad. Many lamented on how rare this kind of news is, and wanted me to know how valuable it is for them. There were also a lot of comments from people new to the site, making the point that they were hungry for news from the ground here; many were angry at “mainstream media” for failing to provide it more regularly.

Someone from Fox News called me a few nights ago, saying Fox had to turn down a two-week embed due to security reasons.  Not security reasons meaning that they might get shot or blown up, but security reasons that their gear might get stolen on base.  I have written before about how, even now into the 5^th year of the war in Iraq, there are still are no dedicated resources —particularly,  secure places for press to live and work so that they can launch off into combat embeds—on the major bases in Baghdad.  Fox News, faced with staying in tents with itinerant workers who today might be in Baghdad, and tomorrow in Calcutta or Los Angeles (with someone else’s gear), turned down a two-week embed with our forces.  ABC no longer embeds with combat forces due to the sheer danger of the combat, and now Fox has no plans to embed until at least May, simply due to security and workspace on the bases themselves. 

Senior Public Affairs officers have shamelessly claimed the lack of living quarters and workspace is due to the “surge.” This fails to explain why there were no such provisions made in 2003.  Or 2004.  Or 2005.  Or 2006.  Of course, now in 2007, they have a convenient excuse, and a false either/or: “Would you throw a soldier out of a trailer just so you could have one?”  Never a combat soldier, but maybe it would be acceptable to take the place of one of the music bands they unfailingly find room for.  Or the sexy cheerleaders and the burly, rich football players and so on and so forth, which of course Public Affairs will say is for morale purposes.  To answer the question which soldiers might be thrown-out to make room for a few journalists, how about tossing out a few portly generals who after four solid-years at war haven’t found some accounting dust in the hundreds of billions of dollars spent here to get a few extra trailers and dedicate them for media?  If half this battle is being fought in the media, why isn’t one-tenth of one-tenth of one tenth of one-tenth of the budget spent on that half of the war? Maybe if they build it, the media will come; at least, the news team from Fox will be there.

Who suffers?  Firstly, we are losing the war in part because we are losing public support for it. We are losing public support for it in part because there are so few reports that demonstrate enough progress being made and enough reasons to continue to fight until Iraqis are able to go it alone.   Secondly, the soldiers suffer because their stories are not being told.  Fox News, which reaches millions, just turned down an embed simply because they don’t want their cameras and computers stolen, and they need to actually work when they aren’t guarding their gear. Unlike yours truly, Fox News has deadlines to meet.

People at home who lament not knowing how their loved-ones are doing should write to their Representatives and Senators; it doesn’t seem likely that this problem is going to be fixed from within the system. It’s going to take outside influence because the military system has invested so heavily in being professional-media-victims. Even some obvious and easy fixes, mentioned here recently, and others offered in much greater detail at the Military Reporters and Editors website,  are not being implemented. The military is doing nothing systematically to fix the problem.  If our combat forces fought the way we fight the media war, we would all be dead.

Speaking of comments on the website, check out this one, from a writer who teases ever so coyly about his “real” identity:

1. Zig Says:

Michael,Let me give you some advice.First, quit pissing off GO’s [General Officers], you should know as well as anybody that they all have some degree of God-like syndrome.Don’t try on remove the tree from the top down; bottom up is the way to go. Seek out and make relationships with junior enlisted and junior NCO’s, they can help you get it done. With your military experience you should know this.Loose the unnecessary gear, a laptop, one digital camera and a good wide zoom lens, (Sigma 24-70 f/2.4) for example. A good holster type camera bag and a soft-sided bag for the laptop, It’s all you need bro. Oh yea, and a thumb drive!Yes, you cannot plug a personal PC into NIPR, but you can plug a thumb drive into a PC that is already plugged into NIPR. This is where the junior enlisted or junior NCO can help you out. Without a CAC I doubt you have access to the internet cafés, you might be able to charm your way in with a civi ID and your press credentials but the E4 or 5 mentioned above may be able to let you sit down at his work station and send up your files.Spell out acronyms on first reference only! Use the inverted pyramid even in your RUBS. You’re a good writer but you need to write like a journalist every time you publish something, no short cuts. Get an AP Style Book and use it consistently.When someone in a position to help reaches out and tries to open up a line of communication, perhaps you should reply directly rather than using the fact that they reached out to you as a point of irony in one of your articles, ;-)We might be able to help smooth out some bumps in your road, of course if we can smooth out those bumps, you won’t be able to write about them anymore.The above is a clue to who I am; with a bit of digging you should be able to figure it out. We want to help.Good luck and keep up the good work!Out.

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March 30th, 2007 at 5:07 pm

for CENTCOM in something called Operation Keyboard Warrior (OKW). It’s not clear whether this is a DoD project or a cyber group,  but OKW “warriors” watch over web sites and blogs and descend upon those focusing on the military’s media relations. They plant comments when posts critical of the military “side” gain any traction.
After readers emails made me aware of Zig’s identity, two things occurred to me.

First, Zig indirectly confirms what I complained about in previous RUBS dispatches, by supplying several examples of ways that PAO staff could have easily helped with getting my stories out. 

Furthermore, Zig seems to suggest that the failure for anyone to have done this was a deliberate “we’ll show him ” shakedown.  To this I can only reply: who got punished, Zig? In the effort to teach this reporter a lesson and put him in his “place,” all involved parties seemed to forget who they are supposed to be working for and what their jobs are supposed to be.

This clumsy, disingenuous, planted comment is coming from CENTCOM, in response to material I published that documented problems in how media representatives are treated. Someone with ways to fix at least some of these problems, and enough time on his hands to be surfing the web, posting snarky comments.  I suppose I should be more grateful to CENTCOM, whose best answer to the lack of secure storage for media gear is to suggest we probably don’t need all the gear anyway (we’re probably either vain or just ignorant about our professions.) After all, in an informal, off the cuff comment, probably intended to undermine the credibility of my complaints, CENTCOM’s OKW Zig rattles off a list of “helpful suggestions” that ultimately prove the point that the military’s media arm is shriveled to such a degree that it can only reliably deliver self-inflicted wounds.

If readers and consumers want more and better coverage of the war in Iraq, they might consider encouraging both sides of the equation—the mainstream media providers who’ve largely stopped providing, and the military public affairs people who’ve facilitated this failure— to do their jobs.

RUBS #2 (Raw, Unedited and Barely Spell-checked)

This is the second installment of RUBS, a new way of posting information on the fly and overcoming obstacles to reporting that arc into the Iraq work space with uncanny timing and targeting. With no photos, and barely time for spell checks, RUBS streams at the speed of consciousness.

Paradoxically, while reporting from Iraq becomes more difficult as the swamp gets deeper, more amenities are piling up on bases while more garbage piles up downtown. Swimming pools pocket larger bases such as Camp Victory, no doubt named on a morning when the sound of birds singing crowded out the crackle of bullets flying. Today when the bullets seem to outnumber the birds,  Generals with billions of dollars at their disposal gild their own MOCs (Media Operations Centers) with space-tech broadcasting gear, allowing them to bounce down live to America and the world, while journalists are not permitted to hook their computers into the unsecure “NIPR” internet lines.  Public Affairs officers stagger like sway-backed mules with shifting excuses for why media have no secure places to live and work at the major bases, and why every solution for communications is ad hoc.

Journalists are welcome to come here and report. Sort of. On Camp Victory, celebrity media passing through might get star treatment at the Joint Visitors Bureau on the lake by the palace, but others get a cot in the KBR tents where itinerant men – not soldiers usually – often stay for a day or two before shipping off to parts unknown around Iraq, or the world.   The tent-mates are Americans, Iraqis, Indians and others.  In a tent where I recently stayed, MPs handcuffed one giant of a man, an American, before he could make good his threat to “stomp the liver out” of one of the tent-mates. In this jailhouse atmosphere, some men’s eyes dart crow-like to shiny objects, and a journalist with expensive gear is reluctant to even take a shower or to eat without a way to secure the crow bait. If a five minute shower or twenty minute trip to a mess hall is unwise, the idea of going on a five or ten day combat mission, leaving non-essential gear behind, is out of the question. As is lugging it along.

Senior officers know this. I made sure.  But when I told one senior ranking man about my concern for the expensive gear, his response was “I don’t care.” I care. I care because readers at home bought this gear so that they can get first hand reports from the war. They bought this gear so I could come here and report on all the progress he is making in this war where so much depends on public perception. Here it is: on his base, they have swimming pools.  Pizza Hut.  Burger King.  Subway.  Popeyes.  Coffee shops where guys bring guitars and sing like on Market Street. 

Having found what amounts to hiding places for my gear, I boarded a Blackhawk helicopter on 25 March enroute to Forward Operating Base Falcon, in Baghdad. Within ten hours of strapping in, I was again back “downtown” with real soldiers and neck deep in the real war.

The Blackhawks landed at FOB Falcon, where the 1-4 Cav from Fort Riley has just begun a long tour in Iraq.The battalion commander, LTC Crider, along with his staff, kindly gave a detailed briefing of their Area of Operations (AO). In summary: 1-4 started with one officer and a flag to rally around, and now finds itself in one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq. They’d just gotten here, and in the last week or so there have been hit by 4 IEDs in the small AO. The 1-4 has been lucky; no KIAs so far. All of LTC Crider’s subordinate commanders are combat veterans, although many of the younger soldiers are just out of initial training.

Here at the 1-4, LTC Crider and his majors and captains have been refreshingly blunt and open, something I’ve come to expect from sergeants and officers who are in the battle.  Within three days, Command Sergeant Major Jones already treats me like one of his soldiers.  (One young fighter told me not an hour ago that he reenlisted specifically to be with CSM Jones.)  Their tone is optimistic but realistic. This is going to be tough, but they think they can do it.

One key aspect of General Petraeus’ new operations in Iraq is to put out a large number of “Combat Outposts,” or COPs. The idea of the COPs is not new, but it is proven, and is similar to local law enforcement in the United States opening precinct stations in high crime districts. Though the idea of precinct stations is steady-state (the cops plan to keep precincts open), here in Iraq, part of the idea is to first bring stability – by dampening the vibrant civil war for instance – but ultimately turning Iraq back over to the Iraqis.

If I might insert a personal opinion, I think Petraeus’ plan has a serious chance of working despite heavy odds. In fact, within my first three days with 1-4, talking with Iraqi families and police, there were strong indicators that for this little neighborhood, local people and Iraqi police are definitely encouraged. This doesn’t extend to the terrorists, however, and 1-4 Cav has been under fire.  Our soldiers showed amazing fire discipline, not even knowing I was just feet behind them with a video camera. (I’ve seen it many times, but finally have got video proof that our guys will go far not to shoot the wrong people.) I saw the 1-4 in a situation where I was certain that they were cleared to fire under the ROE (Rules of Engagement: in this case they were taking fire), yet soldiers with fingers on the triggers held off pending PID (positive identification) of the targets, something I hope to describe later in a non-RUBS format, time permitting.

While soldiers’ ROE is tightening, I’m going to step-down my own “rules of engagement” on fact checking with RUBS reports. Writing out here, a man can misstate facts, and there are various reasons, all bordering on excuse. In order to convey more truth faster, in the “RUBS” series, the writing rules of engagement will include the ideas of “true enough,” and “I believe there was enough truth to tell the story.” (In non-RUBS dispatches, I’ll continue to adhere to a much more rigorous fidelity) But I bear full responsibility for any misstatements and will clarify them as they arise. In the spirit of RUBS, I want to tell as much truth about 1-4 and their area as possible in the small time available, so here goes:

The 1-4 area of operations butts up against the west side of the Tigris in Baghdad. The neighborhoods are mostly Sunni and Shia, predominantly Shia, with a couple of Catholic enclaves. The market in one of the larger Shia neighborhoods is open and vibrant, while that in the Sunni areas are choked. For instance, many of the Sunni were unable to get propane gas for cooking (Shia were said to be taking it), so the 1-4 began propane distribution.

The Shia areas, according to LTC Crider, are mostly quiet, and there is a large “JAM” presence. (JAM is a catch-all term describing various Shia militias claiming some allegiance to Moqtada al Sadr–a nutcase– who apparently has run away and is hiding again in Iran.)

Iraqi on Iraqi crime is high. 1-4 has found 14 bodies in the last week. Some were executed with hands bound. One was a man apparently in his 70s. In addition to the bodies our soldiers find, the Iraqi authorities also find bodies. For instance, a family last week that included the father and mother had been shot in a car. The baby was left alive only to be ripped apart by dogs. That’s an example of a horrible story that’s “true enough.” The verifiable facts may vary from the renditions I heard, but there is little doubt the essence of the horror was true enough. In another case, 1-4 soldiers got a tip about a human head in a school, but when they searched the school they found only some blood and dogs.

While traveling to different AOs (Areas of Operations) around Iraq, a pattern of violent polarization is evident. In some places, Shia are displacing Sunni, but the opposite occurs in other areas, such as parts of Diyala province. Up in Kirkuk, for instance, Kurds are replacing many Arabs. Depsite that these differing strains of civil war seem to vary the grain of the substrate of overall violence, Iraq does not seem prone to total anarchy. Rather, it has the feel of a place that is settling along “natural” “magnetic lines” of culture and various influence, and its strong desire to naturally self-organize seems contra to the idea of Iraq as one, just as we have seen in Yugoslavia, the USSR, India as envisioned in the 40s, and other places. The forces splitting Iraq generally do not seem anarchistic per se (except for the criminal elements), but are merely re-organizing differently than many people would hope. And so…which will be stronger? The forces trying to reduce Iraq to the less than sum of its divided parts, or the forces trying to meld its parts into a greater whole?

Reducing this mess to the street level of the 1-4 Cav battalion from Fort Riley, Kansas, their job is something like playing “zone” basketball. Their job is not to look at the whole court but to — as in playing zone – win their little space. The job of 1-4 is to work with Iraqis to bring their sector under control, and if the battalions around them do the same, and the people way up top play the zones right, maybe we can make something less than genocide follow.

After the briefing with LTC Crider, we had dinner in the dining facility that was recently hit by a rocket. The soldiers ascribed the hit to pure luck, but I was thinking some good shooting might have been involved.  The enemy might be savage, but it’s not dumb.  Even as we finished dinner, CNN was playing on the flatscreen and there was Mick Ware, the main CNN voice for Iraq, split-screen with a video of Maliki and the new UN President, when a rocket rocked the building.The scene was a coup for the enemy, except that Maliki snatched victory from the enemy by not cowering.  He stood resolute while others ducked fearfully. Again, some people said luck, and it might have been, but the target and timing could hardly have been better for the enemy, except that Maliki stood his ground. The forces that oppose a unified Iraq are strong, smart and determined, but so are the forces that want to bring Iraq into brighter days.

Approaching midnight of the 25th, the 1-4 Cav was going to push out that night and open COP “Amanche.” (Apache + Comanche.)

And so, one very long day had begun with the flight to FOB Falcon, and now it was after midnight and into the 26^th of March, and we were outside COP Amanche while EOD (bomb experts) and a bomb dog checked the vacant building for ambush or explosives. The enemy has been rigging entire buildings at times. The soldiers I was with secured a wide perimeter, and occasionally lights from some of our other soldiers flickered through the windows of the large, square two storied building.

The building is as something surreal. In fact “surreal” was the word I kept hearing officers and sergeants use when they described it. The building is a Catholic seminary, and could be something straight from Atchison, Kansas. The owners had completely vacated the place, and the last page turned on one calendar was from July 2006. There were pristine offices with brand new computers, printers, fax machines, and a giant copier. There was a well-kept library with books in various languages including Arabic, English, German and French. There were classrooms, and an auditorium with a stage. This place was truly “anywhere America” or Europe. Yet the clocks were stopped and the dust was thick as paper. Why, surrounded by near complete chaos, explosions and gunfire, had the seminary been spared even from looting? There were no guards. Most of the homes and buildings in the surrounding area were abandoned, but just outside that was the sound of gunfire, and a radio call that came from Iraqi police that they needed reinforcements. There was the giant explosion in the distance that might explain the report I saw later in the day about U.S. soldiers being killed elsewhere in Baghdad. There were the jets overhead, and the helicopters that traverse the airspace, yet this place was pristine save for the dust. It was like something from a “Left Behind” novel.  Maybe that was the message. 

The commander, LTC Crider, took special care to make sure that all the fine books are well cared for, that the computers and other valuables are inventoried and sealed into the library, and I would later see him asking Iraqis to help him find a priest or other church official to inspect the building and property.  Interestingly, some of the closest neighbors are Sunni and Shia Muslims.

Intelligence had come in, and the 1-4 headed off for a raid to get a couple guys who were said to be murdering people. I was scheduled to do a radio interview with WRKO in Boston on my cell phone at 4:30 a.m., and I greatly wanted to tell the people at home about the 1-4 Cav and the seminary, but my ride was going to a raid. And soon we were running through the early morning streets of a densely packed neighborhood, when a voice started crying over a loudspeaker — ALLLLAAAAHHHHHH…..—- that was spooky, and I was actually making video while running.  After 15 minutes or so of running and fast movement, we made it to the target house.  I was sweating in full under the bodyarmor and helmet.  Birds can be heard on the video before the morning twilight.  Our soldiers moved to the entrance.  The gate was pried open, and our guys were in, led by a soldier wearing PVS-15s and black shoes. My deepest apologies to listeners of WRKO, but I could not turn the phone on during combat operations. Time to go.

RUBS does not allow for edits or tidy endings.

Good night, and Good Luck.

Michael

FOB Falcon,
Baghdad