Letter from Iraq

[Dee Gee]

I hope LT Green finds time to give the follow up to this letter in the near future.  I do think from his letters things maybe getting a little better over there.

[Carl Harrod]

Update # 19


Needless to say I was a bit stunned by the news.  I imagine I felt much like Commissioner Gordon must feel when the Joker dropped into his office in a cloud of laughing gas surrounded by hooligans.  "Holy sectarian motivated hatchet jobs Batman!"

LTC Abud, the Iraqi commander of all Iraqi Security Forces in Baghdad is rather large for an Iraqi, and his normally humorous eyes, set deep in a walrus-like face, looked anything but happy.  He, BG Bahaa, the National Police commander and I went into his office to talk alone, chai being the only interruption.  In quiet tones, the specifics became clear.

I wrote previously about one of the very earliest operations we did when taking over our current area of responsibility. We had rounded up a bunch of Sunni detainees and ended up releasing ten for lack of evidence. Those released included "the Egyptian" I described way back in Update #8.  (Sadly I have not seen him in several months.  Hard to say what his fate might be.)  This was also the incident I wrote about several months later in Update #11 that had COL Bahaa interrogated by the intelligence section of the prime ministers office.  When brigadier general informed then COL Bahaa, that the investigation would be "placed in a bottom drawer in case it was needed later," he wasn't kidding.  The ridiculous charges that BG Bahaa had taken bribes to let Sunni detainees free, was surfacing in a politically motivated attack by one of the prime ministers underlings to discredit one of the ISFs fastest rising Sunnis.  Apparently the fact that BG Bahha and his younger brother COL Alla, who recently took command of the 6th NP brigade was getting too much power, was too much for various Shia factions to stomach.

LTG Abud, did what he could to calm Bahaa's fears, while getting all the facts.  While he had Bahaa write down a sworn statement, I gave him my take on the events and all the reasons why I and the coalition forces had not only underwritten but actively encouraged the release of those detainees.  A total lack of evidence being chief among them.  The fact that it almost certainly began the process of building some level of trust between that Sunni neighborhood and the largely Shia National Police, was another goal, but went unstated in this context.  A little after midnight, we took our leave, with the assurance from both commanders that no action would be taken until they had had a chance to speak with the prime minister personally.

Unlike the good Commissioner Gordon, I don't have a button under my desk triggering the Bat Signal to light up a cloudy night sky.  But I do have email, and given that the night was crystal clear, it would probably be more effective anyway.  Needless to say this particular bit of injustice traveled around Baghdad fast.  Maybe not as fast as the 15 month extension news of the spring, but damn close.  The Coalition began making their case, while LTG Abud waited for an audience.  Bahaa and I continued about our business.  Another meeting with Dr Chalabi on Haifa, a command and staff meeting, a late night patrol...the details of all, a bit fuzzy as two nervous days passed with no news.

Patrolling helps Bahaa relieve stress, so we did just that.  We had word that the meeting with Abud and the Prime minister was in progress, and the suspense was palatable. We headed over to the neighborhood that was at the heart of the controversy.  I made an attempt to give out a box of Rice Krispie treats, but the youngsters refused to get into a line and not push each other.  So I put them back in my truck and headed into the alley to catch up with BG Bahaa.  The kids were not pleased.  The young man I had enlisted a few weeks back in the bag of trash for a soccer ball project gave me a particularly malevolent glare.  I caught up with the boss in conversation with several of the older men, who were concerned that the new electrical wires that had just been installed might get knocked over if one particularly dilapidated old structure fell over.  After almost a year without power, they were not willing to take any chances now that hope was almost in sight.  Several minutes later, the foreman of the electrical team that was working this part of the project appeared.  He eagerly explained to us the progress they had made.  They had all of one type of wire installed, and were now just waiting on a supply of the second gage to finish the work.  He was on track for a load test in two weeks, and if all went well, his neighborhood would be one of the first to get reconnected to the power grid.  He proudly explained that his entire team lived in the neighborhood, and that they were in a race with the muhalla to their south to see who could get done first.  Given that these two neighborhoods have historically fought with rifles and hand grenades, I took it as a good sign.

On the way out of the alley, I ran into some old friends unexpectedly.  Somehow, in all my previous updates I have failed to mention that my old battalion, 1-14CAV "Warhorse" had joined the Blackjack Brigade back in May and was working along side my National Police unit in the Haifa Street area.  This was the unit I fought with back in Mosul in 2004, and which I had left reluctantly back a year ago when I was assigned to the transition team mission.  Needless to say, it has been hugely comforting to work along side so many old friends and to watch appreciatively as their professionalism continues to ease my work with the National Police.  We took a second to snap a photo of LTC Jeff Petterson, myself, and BG Bahaa at the spot which I increasingly see as the benchmark for progress in our district.

An hour later the moon was up, and we headed north on the main four lane highway in our district, well past curfew, our convoy came to a complete stop.  We were near one of the gas stations, so I figured Bahaa had spotted something odd.  I dismounted and moved forward to greet my brightly smiling friend.  "LTC Green, I have good news!  LTG Abud just called, he talked to the Prime Minister and they dropped the charges.  Bear Hugs are hard in full body armor, but the attempt was creditable.  He grabbed my hand as we started walking and he rattled off his thoughts in the rapid speech I have grown accustomed to when his mind races.  He normally spares me the hand holding, he knows it makes Americans uncomfortable.  I give him some leeway when he is really happy about something.  The team can't bust my balls about it too much anymore.  I have seen at least a few of them trapped into a bit of hand holding embarrassment with one of their counterparts.  One of these days I am going to jog by the general after a successful mission, slap him on the ass and yell "good game!" just to see what his reaction is.



The next day we celebrated by going to the zoo.  Well, sort of.  What we were really doing was going to provide a bit of extra security and mingle at the job fair being conducted in one of the parks in the zoo complex.  For several months now the brigade's civil affairs folks have been working with the local district government to establish a chamber of commerce and to tackle the unemployment problem.  No easy task, the chamber of commerce was a difficult task to get them to buy into.  We originally had the fair scheduled almost a month ago, but curfews imposed in the aftermath of the second Golden Mosque bombing in Samara had forced us to postpone it the day before.  At any rate, twenty four local companies, and four international companies had all agreed to set up booths and take applications.  An entry survey would help the chamber see what kind of skill sets and demographics were represented amongst the areas unemployed.

We showed up at the main gate of the zoo about half an hour before the event was supposed to start.  The crowd was forming fast, and was all being kept in the parking lot waiting for opening time.  The actual fair site was about five hundred meters away and out of sight.  The relatively calm nature of the crowd, probably lulled us into a false sense of security as the Shurta began to take up positions next to the private security forces belonging to the zoo.  About five hundred males crowded behind jersey barriers to the left, and about fifty young women lined up orderly to the right.  It is customary to form two lines. As the published start time approached, we prepared to search individuals before they entered, suicide vests being the worry of the day.

As the clock ticked forward to 0930, an evil spirit descended upon the male crowd and the relatively orderly group, panicked.  While the females proceeded orderly through the line and had their bags checked, the men all surged forward pinning the mass against the concrete and crushing people as they tried to squeeze through the openings to get searched.  They immediately began to spill over the barriers.  General Bahaa's men moved forward and began shouting.  The mob had no ears.  The General surged forward arms spread, and pushed the tide back over the wall.  His men followed, fortunately all keeping their weapons lowered and under control.  A momentary pause gave us time to think.  I stepped forward next to one of the entry ways.  CPT L at one flank and one of my terps at the other.  MAJ B and Doc took the other entrance.  In the time it took to regain some order, the 50 women were all through.  We finally started getting the men through.  Each convinced that if he was not first, then there would be no job.  There was not way to convince them that the companies were just taking applications today.

In relatively short time, the first group of five hundred was in, and the steady slow flow of additional applicants was easily in the capability of a few guards.  We estimate about 1500 over the course of the day.  We started moving down to the fair site.  As we crested the hill and approached a high arched bridge over the manmade lake, we saw our next challenge.  The leaders of the pack had all arrived at the reception tents of the fair and were filling out applications.  The fastest were already done and in line to the lakeside pavilion that had previously been an upscale restaurant.  It now housed the prospective employers.  It was obvious to the organizers that they already had more folks than they had anticipated and someone had decided that they would block off the bridge and regulate the number of folks actually in the tent area at a time.  The zoo security guards were desperately trying to stem the flow as we arrived.   The only other Americans were all down too far away to help.

As we stepped up onto the bridge from behind the crowd, things got ugly.  The crowd started heckling the guards prompting one to plant the butt of his AK-47 squarely into a young agitators face.  As I strode forward, the crowd surged on him.  In the press, the guards rifle discharged, and the tight mass of bodies flew apart with a handful of men all clutching various body parts.  Unharmed myself, it took seconds to scan the scene and determine that there was no blood.  The bullet had mercifully fired straight down into the concrete and while several had been struck with flying cement fragments, fear was the worst of the damage for all but the young man with a bleeding but unbroken nose.

Bahaa barked a command, and his shurta surged forward seizing the five zoo security guards and confiscating the weapons.  The crowd, momentarily stunned by the noise and violence was temporarily relieved of its unemployment educed panic.  The guards were separated from their weapons, which were cleared to prevent further accident.  Placing the guards in flex cuffs drew a cheer from the crowd.  There are very few forms of life lower in many Iraqis eyes than the national police, and the private security guards are one of them.  A bit of a shouting match between Bahaa and the head of zoo security followed, much to the delight of the crowd.  My team mates walked the leading edge of the crowd silencing the hecklers.  We called our trucks forward to give us some more deterrence, and for the next hour or so were relatively successfull at keeping the crowd calm and metering traffic into the event.

Bahaa and I went down to speak with the organizers leaving MAJ B and crew up at the bridge.  It's good to be king.  Things inside were going well.  The district area council members and chamber of commerce representatives were delighted, and the employers all steadily went about their business.  The citizens, having filled out an application and no longer suffering from panic were all smiles.  Everything was on the up and up.  Until we went back outside.

Back by the tents, the organizer in charge of handing out the applications had reached the final stack of them in his box.  The crowd having realized that there were more of them than visible applications panicked for a third time.  The organizer, who had a well developed fight or flight instinct, chose the later and made a straight line for the first American he saw.  He handed the stack of papers to MAJ K, my teams Military Policeman, and luckily the only one of us with any formal riot control training.  As I stepped out of the pavilion, MAJ K clutched applications in one hand and pistol in the other, shouting at the top of his lungs while he moved back toward the trucks.  Doc and SFC B raced towards him from that side, while MAJ W, CPT L, Bahaa and I moved in from ours.  Forcing people to sit down had proven to be the only useful technique of the day and within a few minutes we had everyone back on the ground long enough to get another case of applications.

When the box finally arrived, they all began to arise at once and lurch forward.  Weapons raised we got them to subside.  At one point I yelled something to the effect of "are you all a herd of animals, or people!"  Before my terp could repeat it, one twenty something young man looked at me, raised an eyebrow and in tentative questioning English voice replied "were people?"  I broke out laughing.  I turned to Bahaa who was now personally handling the applications, grabbed one and handed it to the young man.  "People indeed, good luck with a job.  Somehow we were able to get an application into everyone else's hands without further incident.  The organizers fed us lunch.

As we were wrapping things up, a young man on a bike sped over the bridge, and apparently took the turn too tight and did a header into the asphalt.  He approached us, bleeding from a pretty severe gash in his head.  Doc, went to work gleefully.  He loves stitching people up, and quickly had a great big needle of anesthetic loaded causing a significantly unhappy look on the victims face and jeers from all his buddies who found the show hugely amusing.  Most of them calmed down when DOC brought out the stitching needle, morbidly fascinated as the stitches went in.

Meanwhile, one of my new terps was playing at a different kind of doctor.  Sam, is our newest addition.  In his mid 20s, Sam is an Iraqi Christian.  With a large build, light hair, and light complexion, we tease him that he really must be Canadian.  Almost inevitably, when he is wearing American ACUs, the locals fail to recognize he is a terp until he opens his mouth.  One of the booths inside the fair belonged to the international company that manages all our interpreters.  The booth was run that day by two young, and probably deliberately picked for their attractiveness, Iraqi ladies.  Sam had his eyes on one and quickly found out that neither of them had a ride back into the green zone.  As it happened, we had two spare seats in the HMMWVs and we were headed back that way.  Bahaa, overhearing the conversation, sealed the deal and before I knew it my terp population had temporarily doubled.   Sam got a phone number.  The teamed spared him the embarrassment of a standing ovation.  Probably only because we didn't think of it in time.

Apparently Bahaa is right, the Baghdad Zoo is for lovers!

[Carl Harrod]

UPDATE # 20
July 20, 2007


"Six, this is five, ya see the smoke?"

"Roger, looks like it's in our sector"

"Check it out?"

"Please"

We turned right, back into the heat instead of left and back home.  An afternoon meeting and lunch with a panel of retired four star generals making their rounds at the beck and call of some congressional or presidential commission had gone exceptionally well.  Nothing else was on the schedule and the previous few days had been hectic, so we were going to pack it in early.  But a tall pillar of black smoke was a pretty clear indication that the plan was changing.

            We had not heard the explosion earlier.  Acoustics in the city continue to baffle me, some of the largest booms go completely unmissed, yet a distant boom will roll me out of bed over the sound of both air conditioning and headphones.  Without having heard it, the visual signs brought the event together pretty quickly.  A car bomb had detonated just off the side of a main road, and had ignited four of five cars adjacent to it.  The cluster still burned intensely, while a crowd of Iraqi Police looked on.  National Police Shurta, from one of our subordinate battalions, scurried around trying to restore some order.  Several hundred meters down the road it looked like one of their truck had been shredded.  We pulled up as close as seemed prudent and dismounted.           

            Sam and I wadded into a crowd of locals and IPs asking questions.  As the story started taking shape, an American platoon arrived to help secure the area, followed shortly by Iraqi fire trucks.  The well practiced crew doused the raging fuel fires in white foam, leaving the charred automotive remains in a drenched cluster.  The car bomb had detonated as a national police convoy had passed by, on its way to deliver dinner to one of the checkpoints.  The fire had been raging for somewhere between twenty to ninety minutes depending on who you asked.  Iraqis are hopeless at telling time, so I suspect it was closer to twenty as my team was the first on the scene, and the road is heavily trafficked by military convoys.

            Determining the casualty count was equally frustrating.  The wounded had all already been thrown into the back of national police trucks along with the dead.  The whole lot taken hastily to a nearby hospital.  As the numbers sorted out, it looked like one national policeman killed with nine others wounded.  The residents suffered as well, with another Iraqi national killed and four of them wounded.  As the cars became safe to approach, we were relieved to find that no one had burned to death inside.  A small mercy.  While my dismount team asked questions, the vehicle crews passed the appropriate reports, and got in touch with Bahaa, he would be out shortly.

            Bahaa was not going to be happy.  The side road was blocked to through traffic by a chain and bollard fence.  That allows the neighbor hood to limit entry to a few checkpoints, and by and large provides an increased sense of security to the residents.  But it has the unfortunate side effect of creating a small parking area.  This area, along with a variety of others in the neighborhoods busy market districts have long been a concern as they provide a tempting target for car bombs.  The General has been working diligently with the neighborhood councils, and police to prevent residents from parking in these most dangerous areas, but has met with less than satisfactory results.  The paradox of improved security is an increasing unwillingness on the part of the population to follow the precautions that allowed things to get better.  Today it was clear that the local police forces inability to force the no parking rules had had terrible consequences.

            While I mused on Bahaa's likely response, the National Policeman on the scene continued to try and keep curious onlookers away.  They were pretty hyped up, having just evacuated so many casualties, but the major in charge was doing a creditable job of keeping order.  And then things went to shit.

            Across the divided highway from where I watched, and on the other side of the now smoldering cars was a small row of businesses, all with their security fences lowered, thier windows shattered from both concussion and shrapnel.  A pair of shurta kept onlookers at bay.  One, I would learn later took his rifle and knocked out a piece of broken glass from one of the store fronts.  Hard to say why he did it...frustration, anger, ill intent?  Regardless, the populace always assumes the worst about the police, and was immediately stirred into motion.  Watching from and adjacent courtyard, a Sudanese man emerged, making a bee line to the store.  Confronted by the police, he began a shouting match.  I have no idea what was said, but the previously efficient major began beating him.  Within seconds, others emerged from the courtyard, and the shurta closed into a tight knot.  Rifle butts and batons emerged.

            "Doc, Koast, on me!"  They had been looking the other way, but quickly understood.  They and Sam joined me in the sprint across the burning wreckage and into the crowd.  In those seconds an old black berka clad women and several more men had joined the fray, with the major now steadily smacking the crow down.  We each grabbed a Shurta and flung them from the group, our sudden appearance surprising enough to get all parties to separate and desist.  The major didn't need a terp to understand my command for him to get back to his truck.  All was quiet for the few seconds it took for everyone to catch their breath.  And then the verbal assault on Sam started, as an ever increasing crowd tried to talk at once.  I try to never to show anger when talking to the locals, but they were trying my patience.  Eventually I pried the victims of the fight from all the extraneous witnesses and started hanging facts on the skeleton story I had observed.

            The Sudanese family lived adjacent to a string of money exchanges.  The first man from the courtyard was paid by the owner to be the security guard.  When he saw the young shurta break the glass, he assumed it was an attempt to use the explosion as an opportunity to loot the money exchange.  I have no idea what he said to the major, but given his agitated state, I am certain it was confrontational.  Iraqis are outrageously vocal in their disrespect of all civil servants.  On the other side, I have little doubt that the Shia Major was more than anxious to beat down a foreign and almost certainly Sunni outsider, who was so blatantly challenging his authority, at the scene of an explosion.  The Sudanese man could very well have been the trigger man, given the location of both his house and shop.

            While I gathered up what appeared to be the local leaders and lectured them all on the need to work with the police and not deliberately provoke them, Bahaa arrived and waded into the Iraqi security forces with every bit of the fury I had expected.  Gathering up both the National Police Major, and the Iraqi Police captain responsible for the area, a load and public tongue lashing ensued on their failure to do their duty and prevent cars from parking in the area.  The major, who at this point was not thinking anything through bowed up and argued back.  Bahaa skipped his notorious finger waving rebuke and escalated straight to an arrest order, sending the major in disgrace back to the trucks.  The captain, with more sense, took his medicine.  Having vented his initial frustration, I walked over to him and caught him up on what had happened.  The situation was largely under control, all we really had to wait on was EOD to show up and reduce an orphan explosive which had been blown clear and lay in the median.  A few cracked 60mm mortar rounds that had not gone off in the main blast. 

Within minutes, Mr Jammal, the head of our district's Ammanant (the cities public works organization) arrived.  A small, penguin like man, who is always immaculately dressed, he is a constant feature amongst the people of our district.  Much like Bahaa, he is always out and about, and is a bit of a media whore, often taking credit for projects initiated by coalition forces.  But in spite of that, he is one of the few who legitimately seems to working for the good of the people, and is part of the solution.  His team of workers immediately began sweeping the streets and removing the signs of violence.  Getting the area quickly back to normal is an important part of the process.  While the sweepers cleaned, the Sudaneese family brought out water jugs for Bahaa's policeman.  The difference in the manners between those my team works directly with, and others is often night and day.  With any luck our actions mitigated the previous abuses to some degree. 

The EOD team arrived after almost an hour.  A young sergeant declaring that this was "his" incident scene and barking orders.  That kind of statement is almost deliberately calculated to piss me off, and wasn't well received by Bahaa either.  Our work largely complete, and the threat of half a mortar round, being largely insignificant I decided it was time to go.  "Saydee, lets go to the hospital and check on your shurta...they don't need us here."  He jumped into my HMMWV.  His trucks scrambled to mount up and followed us south.

We pushed our trucks into the crowded entry of the hospital.  Sam, Doc and I trailed in Bahaa's wake as we pushed into the emergency room surrounded by a swarm of Bahaa's personal security detachment.  It was complete bedlam, and the introduction of another fifteen did nothing to help.  National policeman from the unit that was hit crowded the waiting area, while their wounded comrades were being worked on inside.  There was no method to the madness, and as we worked our way in, a gurney was working its way out.  Bahaa pushed passed to start asking questions, I backed out to keep from being part of the problem. 

Inside the emergency room, a tall Iraqi Lieutenant Colonel saw me and frantically pushed through the crowd towards me.  In perfect English, he introduced himself as the ministry of defense liaison to the hospital, and that the man that had just wheeled out on gurney was a shurta that had been injured in the car bomb.  His femur was crushed, and he was past what the local facilities could do for him.  The bleeding was too much.  They were loading him up into the ambulance to take him to the best hospital in Baghdad, but that was at least a forty minute ride, and at this time of day probably twice that.

"Doc, Sam, go find out what you need from the doctor.  LTC Fahil, we will take him to the CASH in the green zone.  Is he in the ambulance now?  Tell the drivers to follow the second HMMWV.  Bahaa!  Mount up, were taking this one!"  I vaguely heard the LTC's thanks, but the relief in his eyes was obvious.  We burst back out into the afternoon heat.  This was turning into a long day.  MAJ B was on the ground outside the truck.  "Were heading to the CASH!  That ambulance is coming with.  DOC has the report, get him on the medivac net.  Bahaa, come with me, have your guys wait at the bridge."  The seven kilometer race began.

The trip didn't take long, but seemed agonizingly slow.  Every speed bump fraying the nerves.  Entry control points, designed to save lives, now frustratingly delaying attempts to save one.  We made contact with the CASH so they were expecting us.  The team helped transfer the patient to a small ATV for movement into the emergency room, an American medic taking over from the Iraqi ambulance crew.  Bahaa, Doc and I shed our gear, and were escorted inside while the team parked the vehicles nearby.  Our walk was largely silent.  A few quick questions as we went inside linked us up with the right set of staff.  We found seats in the corner.  I consumed a bottle of water in seconds.  Bahaa declined and paced, as anxious as I have ever seen him.  At the reception counter the staff chatted quietly and joked and talked happily about whatever kept them going from day to day, while the young shurta lay inside.   I clenched my fist, knowing that they saw this every day, it was part of their world.  I had no right to judge.

Minutes later, a tall doctor emerged; tossed blood stained gloves into a waste can and approached me.  He determined I was who he was looking for.  "The patient arrived with no pulse.  We conducted a scan to determine if there was any brain activity to attempt resuscitation.  He was dead before he got here."  He turned, and walked away.  That was it.  Nothing else.  Just one more dead Iraqi.  I should have punched that ****er.

Doc coordinated getting the shurtas remains back out to the ambulance so we could take him home.  Bahaa and I walked slowly out to the trucks.  Soldiers know when not to talk, and when questions with one word answers are the best defense against public tears. 

"Saydee, do you know his name?"

"Not yet..."

The team waited in the shade of the large trees that make the green zone green.  My crews mingled with the civilian ambulance drivers and the cousin of the young man that had until a few minutes before been struggling for life.  Our premature return announced the unhappy outcome without need for the confirmation we eventually voiced.   Failure is an emotion that mixes poorly with grief.

            Later that night, at various times, and each in their own way, all three of the interpreters that were there that day found me.  The conversations were all eerily familiar.

"Sir, I wanted to thank you for taking that Iraqi to the CASH."

"Of course, why wouldn't I have?

"Well, he is Iraqi, you didn't have to do that."

"He was human, of course we did."

[Mom70x7]

"Sir, I wanted to thank you for taking that Iraqi to the CASH."
"Of course, why wouldn't I have?
"Well, he is Iraqi, you didn't have to do that."
"He was human, of course we did."

            Amen!

[Carl Harrod]

UPDATE # 21

31 July 07


Bullets snapped through the trees overhead.  We quickened our pace.  The staccato of gunfire had steadily increased for several minutes and showed no signs of abating any time soon.  We ducked into the safety of the palace, rather than continue the trek back to our hooch's, PT gear being no great defense against gunfire.  We had timed this one badly, forgetting completely as we emerged from the mess hall that the Asian Cup would end at almost exactly six-thirty, barring any tie.

            I had witnesses the full fury of celebratory gunfire during the Olympics in 2004, the night sky awash with the light of tracers and flares.  No such visual pleasure this year, just the auditory certainty that what goes up must come down.  It is a somewhat disturbing state of affairs that in the six months we have been here, not a single American has been wounded by hostile fire in our area of operations. Yet each of the two final soccer matches produced a casualty due to lead rain.  Last week one of the Lieutenants working in the brigade was hit in the head by a falling round.  Fortunately it just grazed him.   SFC S saw him in the laundry the other afternoon, apparently getting ready to go on leave.  The bullet remains in his scalp, waiting for removal back in the states.  I doubt he will ever shed the obvious nickname, Bullethead, with which he was greeted by the troops.  Minutes after I left the chow hall, a bullet penetrated the ceiling and struck a young female soldier in the shoulder.  A surreal event described by the team members still sitting near by.  She too will be fine, but probably without a cool new moniker.

            Injuries and deaths occurred all across the country in the bizarre expression of national patriotism and joy.  Our terp Frank's brother was wounded in the leg.  In his case, the perpetrators may have actually been using the confusion to deliberately shoot people.  One of the two gunman involved in that incident was shot by an American sniper.  But all of the individual pain and suffering aside, the Iraqis are universally ecstatic over the win, and in the early hours of victory, attribute to it a great healing quality.  We shall see.

            I for one fail to see soccer's allure.  The following day, every channel showed the clip of the only goal scored...over and over and over again.  While I generally shared the pride our Iraqis felt in their team, I couldn't help but give BG Bahaa and his staff officers a hard time.  They really need to find a sport than can generate more than five seconds of highlights and thirty minutes of celebratory gunfire.

            Sports seem to be increasingly on the Iraqis minds.  This weekend saw the first annual Karkh District swim meet.  Planned entirely by the District Advisory Council, Iraqi security forces were asked to provide additional security for the event and to attend the awards ceremony.  I had to witness this! I find it hugely ironic that after six months of making the district safe enough for the council to sponsor community events, they would use their new found freedom to deliberately jump into the Tigress River for a swimming race.  In the words of one skeptical trooper, "the real race is which contestant will die of disease first".

            We were all running late on the day of the event.  Blackjack Six (the U.S. Brigade commander), Warhorse Six, BG Bahaa, and I linked up on the ground right as the event was supposed to start.  Unfortunately the race's planners had given us some bad information about the location and there were no swimmers to be found.  While a battery of cell phones was called in to work the problem, one of the young soldiers commented "Just look for the ESPN 8 film crew, they have to be covering this important event!"

            We eventually found the correct location, a large floating barge jutting out from the bank several kilometers down stream from where we had been told.  We arrived just in time to see the roughly fifty swimmers slipping out of the water and into the festive atmosphere of one of the rivers "casinos".  The tent covering the volleyball court sized barge provided a welcome relief from the blistering sun.  We pushed our way past the cheerful crowd on the bank and into the awards ceremony.  Local government officials and civic leaders sat on the couches in the front row, with a throng of onlookers and competitors crowding in behind.  Bahaa and Black Jack Six are both local celebrities and were warmly welcomed, giving speeches and eventually awarding prizes.

            When the contestants all started moving up towards the awards stand, the barge started listing noticeably.  There was no apparent danger, until one exceptionally large council representative, affectionately referred to as Pac Man due to his perfectly round physic, began moving towards the front.  I took the opportunity to reposition back by the gang plank.  I have seen enough redneck home videos to know how this one played out.  My team still reminds me consistently of the folly of my Tigris river boat cruise several months back, and I wasn't about to give them further ammunition. 

            The ceremony complete, the delegates began withdrawing from the tent.  I had met most previously, but one in particular caught my eye.  A very young religious Imam, immaculately clad in rich traditional garb and flanked by a half dozen very attentive aides and a pair of policeman.  My terp whispered the Imam's in my ear, saying that he was one of the famous religious leaders of the neighborhood.  He couldn't have been more than eighteen years old, but in a culture that passes religious leadership down by the generation, he was held in significant reverence.  I had to shake my head.  At age eighteen, the only religious experience I can recall was sneaking a peek of Miss November at the news stand.  I can't possibly imagine what this young man had to offer anyone in terms of religious insight.  Maybe that's part of the problem.

            Back safely on land, we took the opportunity to walk a stretch of Haifa Street.  It was now early evening and the hundred and twenty degree heat was easing up as the sun's direct rays fell behind the high rise apartments.  We strolled past newly painted kiosks, repaired curbs, and through renovated playgrounds.  We stopped in a local pool hall, and chatted up the locals.  What was an empty lifeless urban canyon back in February is now once again a vibrant community.  It is by no means complete.  It still requires military check points.  Many of the apartments are still empty and in need of renovation.  Power is still intermittent, and water not always reliable.  There are still nefarious characters looking for opportunity to do harm. But the sense of terror is largely gone. In January, this area averaged six dead bodies a day.  It is unusual for us to have six in a month now.  It is hard to tell how long it will take for this fragile equilibrium to develop deep enough roots to be sustainable over the long term.  The consequences of underestimating would certainly be brutal

            I wished our guests were still with us.  Earlier in the day the Brigade had hosted William Krystal of The Weekly Standard fame, and the historians Fred and Kim Kagen.  BG Bahaa hosted them for lunch the previous day, and early in the afternoon, the US and Iraqi command groups had the opportunity to take them for a mounted tour of the Haifa area complete with a walking tour of the now flourishing Al Alawi Market and one of the Haifa Street apartment complexes.  While the atmosphere at the peak of the day's heat was overwhelmingly positive compared to their similar visit back in early May, the evenings are really the best opportunity to take the district's pulse.

            I will be anxious to see what gets reported from the visit.  I hope that it reflects the sacrifices of both the Iraqi and US forces that have toiled for the last six months, and are justifiably proud of the measurable successes we have achieved.  I have historically taken a dim view of the Fourth Estate, but am encouraged to see them arriving in country in increasing numbers to see it all first hand before passing judgment in September.  I was encouraged to see an op-ed article in the New York Times the other day entitled "a war we just might win."  Given the traditional stance of both the Authors and the publication, it was a refreshingly candid confirmation that someone other than the military is actually paying attention to the impact the surge is having across Iraq.

            Hopefully Congress will stop taking political advice from twenty-something interns resulting in the ever effective slumber party and pay attention to what is going on outside the beltway.  They should consider taking a harder look at what the world needs, outside of the context of the self-interest generated by the 2008 campaign.  Here is an idea.  Why don't we bring all those young interns to Baghdad and introduce them to that silly young Imam and his friends.  Maybe we can change some Iraqi hearts and American minds.  And Mom, for the record...the Miss November thing was a joke.





© All rights reserved by the author.  Please do not post to a Blog without the written consent of the author.

[Carl Harrod]

UPDATE # 22

10 AUG 07





The rhythm of the rotor blades picked up speed, and the birds weight shifted slightly.  Then the magical moment when the connection to mother earth is broken and flight begins.  BG Bahaa grinned from ear to ear, a fighter pilot in his youth, he has had only a few opportunities to fly since the Iraqi air force ceased to exist back in 1991.  A few years back, when working as an election official out in Anbar, he had ridden in a Chinook, but this would be his first trip in a Black hawk.  His son Mustafa sat next to him, it would be his first flight ever.  Momentary weightlessness in the surge of takeoff took Mustafa by surprise, two hands clutching his father's leg.  Bahaa put a gentle hand over the boys to calm him.

Mustafa, a slight seventeen year old who is apparently an accomplished violinist, but can no longer attend music school, is Bahaa's youngest, and not surprisingly spoiled child. While not officially a shurta, he nevertheless wears a national police uniform, carries a rifle, and patrols regularly as part of his father's personal security detachment.  It is not an arrangement that I or my team is particularly fond of, especially the lads tendency to wear his fathers rank and to come and go, participating as he pleases.  Bahaa feels he can best protect him by keeping him close, so I largely grin and bear it.

The pair of Blackhawks quickly gained altitude and raced off to the south, and banked hard over the river giving us a birds eye view of Baghdad's primary oil refinery and power plant.  Unlike my previous trips over the city, it was early morning and I was not buried under a mound of my own equipment.  The view revealed the landmarks of the city all around us.  Every detail familiar, garnered from countless hours spent pouring over satellite imagery, maps, and patrolling the streets.  We skimmed over rooftops and headed back north, our query finally in sight.  Tens of thousands of Shia pilgrims swarming out of the slums of Sadr City and the muhallas of east Baghdad, and funneling onto two of our narrow bridges on the their way the Kadhimiya shrine to the north.

The days march, in memory of the death of the 7th Imam Musa Al-Kadhim had been our concern for several weeks, with the Iraqi military chain of command taking security very seriously.  Two years ago, the threat of a suicide vest on one of the bridges had caused a stampede, breaking the guard rails and killing close to a thousand as they tumbled into the Tigris.  With all the recent sectarian violence and the politics of the summer on everyone's mind, today's event had the potential for disaster.  The Iraqi army and police had done a total recall of all forces from leave, boosting available manpower considerably.  A vehicle curfew reduced the significant threat of car bombs.  But in the end, several million Shia were going to march right through the heart of historically Sunni areas, and it was anyone's guess what the day would bring.

Our day started early, and by six in the morning we linked up with the general at his headquarters.  A quick cup of chai and we were on our way.  We had a few hours before we needed to link up with Blackjack Six at the helipad, so we headed along one of two march routes to the southern bridge.  At six there had been only a handful of marchers in small knots, by seven, there were large groups organized into "parades" and chanting under various leaders.  We fought our way to the bridge, and by seven-thirty, the main four lane arteries of our district were pulsing with a constant stream of marchers.  We pulled over at the bridge and dismounted, my team and Bahaas PSD struggling to maintain a protective bubble as we moved against the flow and up onto the bridge.  Bahaa's battalions protected both ends of the bridge, and we moved to inspect them.

The morning had dawned blessedly cool for August. The temperatures had been dropping steadily from a high of about 125 degrees a few weeks previous to just over a hundred that morning.  The marchers were fresh, most having emerged from the neighborhoods closest to the river.  Full of energy, they repeated a single chant over and over, the sight of Americans prompting each passing group to new levels of enthusiasm as if in attempt to convert or provoke us.  Doc, SFC B, CPT R, Tony and I, trailed along in Bahaa's wake largely ignoring the challenge.  Bahaa set a quick pace as we cut through the sea and a quicker one on the way back as we flowed with the tide.  Having tasted what the day had in store for us, we mounted back up and eased out of the crowd on our way to back to the waiting birds.  MAJ B and COL Mohammed would take our patrol back out while Bahaa, Mustafa and I went joyriding.

Well, maybe I should say while Bahaa and I went joyriding.  For Mustafa, there was little joy.  As we banked hard again and raced down Haifa street, with high rise apartments at eye level, Mustafa lost his battle with motion, the contents of a near empty stomach fighting their way up in dry heaves. Blackjack Six fished around in his kit bag, handing our young hero a beef jerky pouch against any further emergency.  Much to the amusement of the Americans present, Mustafa spent the rest of the trip staring unhappily into a plastic bag, the smell of teriyaki almost certainly doing nothing to alleviate either his nausea or his embarrassment. 

The rest of us focused on the view.  By nine in the morning, all three of the major entrances into our sector were flooded.  The mob steadily poured out the two main exits to the shrine several miles to our north.  Security checkpoints, patrols, and sniper positions, provided a blanket of deterrence, but no iron clad guarantee against misfortune.  Pilgrims marched past the zoo or over the bridges, past the train station and the airfield, or up Haifa Street.  Local civic organizations dotted the route, with sanctioned tents providing limited food, shade, and refreshment.  It was inadequate.  There were no latrines anywhere.  Some questions are best left unasked.

By ten in the morning we were back in the trucks.  Mustafa curled up in the back seat of our trail HMMWV, and passed out.  Bahaa mounted back up in his up armored Silvarado and led us into the eye of the storm. Our trucks plowed through the masses, making only marginally better time than the mob around us.  Flags waved, marchers sang, young and old, women and children.  The bright greens and yellows of Islamic banners contrasting sharply with the black of the women's burkas and the all too frequent black of the Mahdi militiamen, who crowded the ranks.  The same chant over and over.  "Allah is great, blah, blah, blah...death to our enemies" with fingers pointing to us, or fists beating on chests.

As we pressed north the crowd grew increasingly hostile. Given the time and distances involved, this group would almost certainly be those that had emptied from Sadr City at first light, those most opposed to us.  The percentage of young men was significantly higher than at other parts of the day.  Emboldened by the mob surrounding them and the heady enthusiasm that ritual chanting evokes in the mindless, they looked for ways to act out defiance.  The chants became more frequent and spitting on our trucks a favorite sport.  The most defiant employing the ultimate insult, taking off a shoe and throwing it at us.  Shoes began collecting on the top of our HMMWVs.  At days end we had at least one matching pair, one on my truck, and one on our trail vehicle.  I can't help but think we got the last laugh.  The shrine was still several miles away, and the asphalt was getting hotter and hotter as the noontime sun found its fury.

Bahaa's shurta were taking their share of abuse as well.  I suspect much of it suffered because we were with them, even if the general would never tell me so.  Up ahead, sudden movement caught our eye, with a surge of bodies racing towards a center point.  A rifle crack!  We push forward, the Shurta surging out of open truck beds to push back the crowd which all surged forward to see what had happened.  The tide momentarily stemmed, I dismounted, Doc and SFC B flanking.  A lowered shoulder or two into an encroaching crowd providing breathing space.  Bahaa and his officers waded into the fray, separating the crowd from a pair of visibly distraught young shurta, who he sent back to the trucks.  Apparently the verbal abuse had become too much for some of the young men in the lead trucks and a scuffle ensued.  Age and wisdom prevailed over youth and passion, as the two sides separated.  We mounted back up and headed south.  Nothing good could come from provoking the mob further.

We paralleled the railroad, and much to our surprise were passed by a four or five car train pulling south.  The Baghdad train station lies unused most days.  Open briefly in 2004, the number of attacks made it impossible to sustain its use.  Today however the old green cars were pushing north and south, packed to overflowing.  The roofs crowded with exuberant young riders, it was a disaster waiting to happen.  Safety, I am certain has no direct translation in Arabic.  Several hours later we would learn that one was killed in seven more wounded due to electrocution aboard one of the trains.  I was not surprised.

Back down south, we made the jump from the western route over to Haifa street.  This was our turf.  We were playing at our home stadium now, and the crowd was much different.  The locals at the side of the road all knew us and the pilgrims coming in over the northern bridge were not as likely to be from the most extreme Shia neighborhoods.  The crowds still chanted, but much of the anger was missing.  We dismounted and walked another kilometer of the route, this time without incident.  We mounted back up and drove back south through one of the adjacent largely Sunni neighborhoods.  They quietly went about their business in small coffee shops and pool halls, staying largely out of sight and keeping the kids off the streets. 

Back in the traffic circle at the northern bridge, we parked and set up camp.  Blackjack Six had joined us on the ground, and we expected Bahaa's Iraqi commanders to join us soon.  It was now close to fourteen hundred, and the tide up people still flowed steadily over the bridge from east to west and making its turn north.  The first tenuous ebb of visitors started making their way backwards against the masses.  It was getting hot.  After almost seven hours I climbed in the truck for a break.  A hastily snapped photo from SFC C, proof that I succumbed to a short nap.

By fifteen hundred the tide had reversed, with the vast majority of marchers were now on the weary return trip.  A handful of national police vehicles, ambulances, and a lone bus made an all but futile attempt at shuttling people south.  We watched incredulously as each successive trip managed to pack more and more people into each vehicle.  The arrival of each, igniting weary marchers into a frenzy of activity as they raced, trampled, pushed, shoved, and beat each other, oblivious to age or gender, to find some hand and foothold.  It was shameless.

An old man dropped to the ground in the intersection, clearly the heat had taken him.  The shrurta drug him to the side of the square and into the shade.  My docs went to work.  I had brought extras with me today.  SGT N was back with us, having grudgingly returned to his unit when our own SSG E had returned from leave.  CPT R, one of the brigade's physician assistants joined the team for the days event against any unforeseen tragedy.  We also had two new terps.  Rafid was back, having left us for a job with the ministry of oil in March, he was not making enough to support his pregnant wife.  We expect he just missed us too much.  Tony had joined us about a week earlier.  He has been terping for almost four years now.  Both would perform flawlessly and with great compassion over the next several hours.  A bag of IV fluids fixed the first grateful old man.  According to the old fellow, CPT R's efforts had earned him a "castle in heaven". 

Within an hour, we had established a  full up casualty collection point, and all three docs were fully engaged.  The tide was now in full flow back south, the days heat had peaked, and whatever meager water the events civilian organizers had given out had long since been consumed.  The crowd's enthusiasm for chanting had largely faded with their thirst.  Exhausted masses trudged south.  The women wrapped from head to toe in black, and often far to large and out of shape to be marching any distance bore the brunt of the suns punishment.  The crows started falling on our curbside as if plucked from the sky.  The docs went to work administering IVs and pain medication while the rest of us secured the area and vetted the crowd for those with the worst symptoms of dehydration.  We had brought enough water to do some good, and pulled the worst to the side and distributed what we could.  One obese old crow glowed red and by the dryness of her face had stopped sweating.  I asked SSG P to get a bottle of water from the cooler and get it to her.  He raced off and caught up with her handing her the bottle.  She took it gladly, until she turned around and focused long enough to see that it had been given by an American.  She gave it back. 

Others, in equal peril were far more willing and grateful for assistance.  We treated fifteen or so with IVs, and dozens more with liquids.  I have very little doubt that at least four of them would not have survived the march home had we not intervened.  As my team labored away, Bahaa's men provided security and managed the increasingly hectic flow of transportation.  The worst of the heat victims pulled over to the side and eventually moved onto women only busloads, with obnoxious males being forcibly removed to allow patients into the vehicles.  The selfishness of the average Iraqi was extraordinary, as was the courage and patience of Bahaa's men.  It is far too easy for us to judge the Iraqi security forces, and they are far from our soldiers standards, but they are hard young men who increasingly stand out for their sacrifices and devotion especially when juxtaposed with the rabble of the slums.

Another organized parade passed, and spotted us treating our growing mass of patients.  The parade leader fired up the chant "Allah, blah, blah, death to our enemies" fists in our direction.  One of the men sitting on our curb resting, joined in the chant.  Our terp Tony became irate and laid into him.  "I have been riding with these American's all day today.  For almost twelve hours, they have listened to Muslims wish death upon them.  They have been spit on, they have been degraded, they have had shoes thrown at them, yet here they are, at our parade, treating our sick and giving you water to drink.  Do you see a single Shia doctor helping anyone, any Muslims giving out water? And all you can do is chant stupid slogans."   Tony vocalized in a few short sentences the heart of the problem, and the truth stunned the man.

Today was a holy day for Islam, one that inspired an expected three to five million people to walk dozens of miles to honor a fallen Imam.  For weeks I have been asking my various Iraqi friends to explain the event to me.  What is its religious significance? Why is it important?  And the answer is wholly unsatisfying.  We are marching because he was the 7th Imam.  Well, what did he do?  None of them can tell me.  He didn't appear to achieve any grate purpose, no societal or religious reforms.  From what I can tell, the only thing that he appears to have done is father the 8th Imam, and die.  Given that it takes no particular skill to have achieved either of those unremarkable tasks, I am left to wonder what the day was about.  I had hoped having watched it I might know.  Maybe the march would be filled with joyous songs that would bring about a sense of community, charity, or some other praise worthy value.  But ultimately, the only consistent attribute I witnessed was selfishness as they fought over limited resources, and anger as the end of every religious utterance called for the death of those that were not them.

Tony may not have specifically recognized it, but what he saw in the Americans is the legacy of our largely Christian heritage; turning the other cheek, the good Samaritan, loving thy enemy as thyself, doing unto others.  The values of our nation's historically dominant Christian faiths, express themselves daily in the actions of our soldiers.  Those in uniform represent a wide range of faiths and a widely divergent degree of commitment to them.  But what is so obvious to me, time and again, is that even those that do not maintain a deep personal faith still demonstrate the best social aspects of it.   This war may look like a lot of things from the outside looking in.  On the ground, in the filth of the street, in the heat of the day, in the throng of the crowd, it is about good and evil.  Allah may be great, but it is often an US Soldier armed with American values and an IV that fends off death.



As always, I hope this finds you and yours doing well.



© All rights reserved by the author.  Please do not post to a Blog without the written consent of the author.

[Janet Harrington]

Carl,

Thank you so much for sharing these updates with us.  I look forward to reading them.  LTC Green does a wonderful job writing words that make this war come alive to me.

[Carl Harrod]

UPDATE # 23

19 AUG 2007


Some days it is hard to tell if things change around me or if it is me that changes.  The night is blessedly cool, the suns brutal rays no longer able to sustain the grueling pace they set in July.  Darkness brings welcome relief, and soldiers start emerging from their climate controlled boxes for reasons other than work or survival.  A cigar smoker stares absently into the palm trees.  A reader struggles to focus in the dim porch light of his hooch.  The soft notes of someone learning to play guitar echo from down the row.  Doors are once again cracked, letting light stream out.  Small groups talk quietly.  The temperature today is exactly the same as it was when it first pushed us all indoors several months ago.  Only our perception of it has changed.

So much of what we do here has become very commonplace after eight months.  Arabic no longer sounds odd to me.  I rarely notice the calls to prayer.  I notice when a street is unusually clean, not when it is filled with trash.  Nothing that a child does in the street strikes me as dangerous any more. Everywhere we go we meet people we have met before.  There seems to be very little new, and the days start blurring together.  Every now and again something particularly absurd stands out.


                                                * * * *

A few weeks ago BG Bahaa and I were called to a late night meeting in the palace.  The exact same sort of unexpected meeting that almost put Bahaa in the hoosegow.  My grandfather always used to say hoosegow.  I have never had the chance to use it in a sentence, this seems as good a time as any...but I digress.  So we went to the meeting, on a topic I can no longer recall, and as we left, we were called to the side and told that a target on the wanted list had been spotted and we were tasked to go nab him.

Several hours later we found ourselves in an old government compound that has been largely abandoned but now houses a small population of squatters.  The night was overcast, with a moon that occasionally beat its way brightly through the clouds.  Otherwise it was painfully dark.  This was not one of the areas blessed with any power, and the squatters we far below the income level that made generators possible.  We had already cleared the first apartment, locating the target's brother and wife, and obtaining lead to a second building.  My tolerance for uncertainty lowers significantly the farther I get from the original information I was given, and Bahaa was quickly leading us to the end of my patience. 

His men flowed into the subsequent building like water into a maze, not what I had hoped for.  I kept my team close.  We moved into the foyer and guarded the escape route and lower hallways while listening for the sounds of progress above.

SSG P, Doc, Rafid, a few shurta and I scanned the room, under gun lights cutting bright swaths in the NVGs.  The place was a shambles, but there was no obvious threat.  We waited while Bahaa and crew worked upstairs.  Doc called out to the trucks to let them know where we were at.  Minutes ticked by.   I glanced in his direction...and froze.  I know I wasn't seeing what I thought I was seeing.  There, on a bookshelf, not a foot from Doc's head was a huge...rooster – sound asleep.   I broke out laughing, the obvious bawdy jokes raced through my mind.  Doc raised a quizzical eyebrow "what?"  A shurta flooded Doc in the beam of his flashlight.  SSG P, seeing what I saw, joined in my mirth.  Doc turned, and looked past it at first, focusing just in time to see a  shurta poke the sleeping bird, sending it into a panic induced dance around the room and down the hall.  That night, we captured two targets suspected of sectarian killings, but we failed to detain the cock.

                                                * * * *

Several weeks later, on a sweltering afternoon, we conducted a similar raid in one of the older neighborhoods and came up empty handed.  As we wound our way out of the warren of small alleys, stepping over streams of sewage and ducking under low hanging wires, BG Bahaa stopped short at a familiar house, and said "I want to introduce you to someone."  His guys spread out in the ally, and he knocked on the door frame and called softly inside.  A quick conversation and he was invited inside, waving me in after.  We ducked past the curtain that served as a door and down a short hall into a courtyard of sorts.

The courtyard was roughly fifteen feet on a side, with an ancient wooden balcony providing a mere semblance of a roof around the edges.  Another ten feet up, what should have been a roof had long since collapsed, doing nothing now to block the sun.  Around the open room was a smattering of furniture.  An old wooden couch, contrasted sharply with a very new looking refrigerator, idle due to a lack of power.  A stove, a table, a few chairs, not much more.  I took it all in quickly as Bahaa explained.  "I come here to visit the old woman that lives here, she is very sick."  Indeed she was.  The small creature occupied a tiny fraction of the couch which occupied the corner with the largest portion of overhead cover.  She wheezed audibly.  Two other women and a handful of kids stood nearby.  Bahaa introduced us.

The youngest of them, in her early forties and relatively attractive.  I suspect that that is how Bahaa met the grandmother, but that was not the time to ask.  She spoke passable English, and insisted that I sit down on the couch next to the matriarch. With a sheepish smile, she apologized for not having anything cold for me to drink.  I can't imagine feeling more out of place.  This kind of poverty is shocking every time.  I was at a loss for words.  Kids are always a good place to start.  Grandmothers all love to talk about grandchildren.  Bahaa and the young woman translated. 

I quickly learn that granny had lived in the same house since 1939.  All of her male relatives were dead.  She was being supported now by her daughter and granddaughter, and enjoying her great grand children.  A framed family portrait on the wall, showing a clan of probably fifty hinted at the potential magnitude of her lifetime's worth of loss.  I shared a picture of my girls with her. She kissed it, saying how much she knew I miss them.  I imagine she does.  I wanted so very badly to do something for this family.  They had almost nothing.  I asked if there was anything they really needed that I might be able to find.  From under her robes the old lady pulled out a small plastic purple box.  She opened it up and revealed a blood sugar testing kit, whose battery was inoperative.  I looked up, past the useless refrigerator, and out the open ceiling, a tear forming.  Dear God, where am I going to find one of those?

                                                * * * *

The great dream of almost every terp is to obtain a visa to the United States.  Much like a Willy Wonka's golden ticket, it dominates their thoughts.  This provides no end of entertainment as my guys administer various American trivia tests upon them to see if they are fit for admittance into the country.  Rafid is the preferred victim in this sport.  Asked to name five American Presidents, he responded "Bush, Clinton, and Lynn Collin."

"Lynn Colon?" we asked.  "Do you mean Lynn Cheney...or Colin Powell?"

"No", he replied, "stop messing with me, Lynn Colon...he freed the slaves!"

Game over.  He is one of us.  I know I have seen that on Jay Leno before.


A few months back I wrote about a meeting with one of the Deputy Prime Ministers of Iraq.  At that meeting one of his assistants handed out business cards to those present.  Most of the Iraqis have dual sided business cards, one in Arabic, and the other in English.  I flipped his over to see what his duty description was.  "Assistant to the Deputy Prime Minister for Entertainment and Trysts."  Hmmm, I bet I could get his terp a slot on David Letterman.  Sounded like a great job to all of us.

                                                 * * * *
     

            A small white piece of paper flutters in the breeze, pulling against the tape that holds it against the wall.  The photocopied face of a young girl smiles.  Graceful Arabic script portraying the heartbreaking message; Have you seen this child?

            We have been at this wall many times over the last few months.  It marks the boundary between the road and the fuel station.  A few weeks ago we could go no where near it...the fire was too intense.  A car bomb had detonated, it's explosion igniting a large fuel truck which in turn engulfed the crowd of men, women and children waiting to buy fuel for their homes.  The walking wounded, almost forty, had already been evacuated when we arrived.  The dead and dying lay beyond reach. The tanker threatened to explode at any minute, potentially igniting the nearby underground tanks.  The Iraqi fire department showed up shortly thereafter, and for the next thirty minutes did nothing short of heroic work in quenching it.  The damage was mind numbing.  We watched helplessly as fifty-two victims were pulled from the debris. The child's body had not been identified.

            MAJ W, One of the officers we work closely with had been with us at the gas station several days prior to the bombing.  He takes lots of pictures.  Scanning through them, he stopped short.  There, on the computer was a picture of the girl and her mother, standing in line, holding a gas can. She was the same age as my Alexandria and has the same dark brown eyes...


It is a damn good thing we get to laugh occasionally.   And that some nights, the heat feels cold.

[Janet Harrington]

Oh, how heartbreaking.  LTC Green just makes me want to cry with pain for that child.

[Carl Harrod]

UPDATE #24

7 SEP 07



I sat in the back corner and finished a silent prayer.  I quietly surveyed the room while those who surrounded me finished their own.  We sat in a small Huseniya, an Islamic place of worship, more like a community center than a true Mosque.  The room was quiet, filled with mourners.  They say that bad things come in threes...maybe because that is when humans say to themselves, enough is enough and we have to package things together to prepare ourselves for the next set of three.

LTG Abud, the impressive Iraqi Corps commander that informed BG Bahaa of his arrest and eventually fought it off, sat near the entrance.  I had never seen him in civilian cloths, his suit was expertly tailored.  But he looked small and fragile.  The death of his mother two days prior had obviously hit him hard.  He looked very tired.  We sat quietly.  My Iraqi friends know I am curious and they could see me focusing in on various aspects of the room.  COL Mohommaded explained a basket of hockey puck size objects in the corner.  They were small clay disks, stamped with a picture of the shrines at Karbala and made from mud taken from that area.  Shia, who commemorate the battle of karbala, will place them on the carpet in front of them as they pray.  Bahaa caught me eyeballing a series of strings running diagonally across the room atop the Persian rugs at one meter intervals – they mark the direction to Mecca and line up worshipers and ensure they are evenly spaced and don't knock each other over as they execute their prayers.  Other aspects I was more than familiar with.  The inevitable Chai and Turkish coffee providing welcome points of familiarity.

This was the third wake in as many days.  One of BG Bahaa's subordinate battalion commanders had lost his father a few days prior, and most tragically for us, BG Bahaa's mother had lost her fight with breast cancer late last week.  In Arab culture the family sets up a tent or a gathering place, and for three days, family and friends come to pay their respects.  It was more than a bit humbling to see the genuine regard and respect that the community felt, as the greater Baghdad civilian, military, and tribal communities came and went.  It left Bahaa exhausted, and without any time to grieve.  I am not quite sure how he managed.

I am glad that I had gotten the opportunity to meet her.  On that one occasion she and Bahaa's wife explained to me the secret of Iraqi chai, which for those that are curious is not at all like the crap you get at starbucks.  The secret is a clove like seed called "Hell" which apparently comes from India.  Mixed with the finely ground tea leaves, both are steeped loosely in boiling water.  The slight spice of the Hell cuts the bitterness of the tea, and a healthy dose of sugar seals the deal.  While certainly not a family recipe, I will probably always think of it that way.

Fortunately all three deaths were of natural causes, an odd sense of normality in a world that is otherwise far from normal.  It has been awhile since I have written, not so much because there has been nothing to write about, indeed in some regards the pace has accelerated, but more because I find it increasingly difficult to put things into context.  The last few weeks have just felt odd.  Like there is something big just ready to happen, and if I wait another day the story will write itself.  And then I wake up and its three days later, and the other shoe still has not dropped.

I imagine much of that feeling comes from the insanely artificial deadline of September 15th and the much anticipated report to Congress.  It is the elephant in the room that no one will acknowledge.  Except that we all do.  Visits by famous media, politicians, and pundits hit a feverish pace over the last few weeks, and for the first time in a long time I actually look forward to reading the news and seeing articles with some meat on the bones and written by someone who at least saw it all first hand.  I will paste in the text of an article written by Ralph Peters, a somewhat controversial commentator, with whom I often, but not always agree.  But since his article describes many of the places and people I have introduced you to, I think it will provide a useful contrast.



New York Post

BACK FROM HELL

By RALPH PETERS



August 31, 2007 -- AO WARHORSE, IRAQ



IF you saw any news clips of intense combat last January, you were probably watching the fighting unfolding on Baghdad's Haifa Street: 10 days of grim sectarian violence.



Until we put a stop to it.



The boulevard of Sunni-inhabited high-rise apartments erupted in shootouts pitting the "Haifa Street Gang" and its al Qaeda allies against heavily Shia Iraqi army units. It was a recipe for massacre, as terrified residents - those who remained - cowered in their apartments.



Then the U.S. Army moved in. Commanders must've felt tempted to just level the former Saddamist stronghold. Instead, they decided to rescue what they could. Our troops cleaned out the terrorists with what Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks - one of the Army's rising stars - termed "very focused kinetic effects."



And the Cavalry charged in: the 2nd Infantry Division's 1-14 Cav, OPCON - Army-speak for "on loan" - to the 1st Cavalry Division's 2nd Brigade.



This is a ride-to-the-rescue outfit in the old Cavalry tradition. Shifted from one hot spot to another in their wheeled Strykers, 1-14 Cav has fought its way through the streets of one gut-shot Iraqi city after another.



BUT Baghdad was the big one. Not only because it's the capital but also because our changing strategy suddenly opened new opportunities to reset the terms of our presence.



Initially, Haifa Street was a brawl-for-all. Even now, the troopers of 1-14 Cav keep their "sabers" ready. But a patrol through the sector on Tuesday evening revealed changes many the media just won't credit. (We're not supposed to win, you understand.)



Six months ago, terror ruled. The streets were empty of civilians. Shops were shuttered, facades were shot up, and hate graffiti covered the intact walls. Power was out, and the district was out of hope. The residents who could leave had already left.



It would've been easy to write off Haifa Street.



Instead, 1-14 Cav and their foster parent, the 2nd brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, switched gears. First, they won the fight. Next, they were determined to win the peace.



AND the numbers in "AO Warhorse," their area of operations, reveal an impressive transition from a hellhole to a livable - if still understandably nervous - neighborhood: From 74 attacks on our troops in January, the violence dropped to 20 attempts in August. And they were minor attacks, compared to those of the past.



Overall, murder rates in Baghdad are down by two-thirds, while attacks on the Iraqi police and civilians have declined for months. In fact, 2nd Brigade is now "out of the checkpoint business," according to its commander, Col. Bryan Roberts. With the Iraqi police doing its job, Roberts can muster as many as 34 combat patrols a day - the presence we always needed and didn't have.



And plans are already in the works to turn the district over to the Iraqis.



During the mounted segment of the patrol, I asked Gen. Brooks - who stood tall in a Stryker's hatch beside me - if he worried about a surge in al Qaeda incidents in the remaining weeks before Gen. David Petraeus reports to Congress.



Brooks realizes how badly the terrorists yearn to embarrass us, handing ammunition to the just-quit camp. But he told me we'd just broken a key al Qaeda network that was planning dramatic eve-of-testimony strikes. Other terrorists might still manage to stage attacks, but the organization's spinal column was broken.



MEANWHILE, our "urban renewal" of Haifa Street became an accelerating success. En route to Combat Outpost Remagen, we saw people of all ages in the streets, a half-dozen soccer games under way, patched and repainted facades - and even new solar street lamps (a big hit in a power-strapped city).



It was all part of an innovative small-is-beautiful approach to gaining trust and helping Iraqis get back on their own feet. The administration's initial policy of funding huge projects to be developed by multitentacled U.S. contractors failed miserably. But our soldiers are making progress where favored contractors only ripped off the taxpayer for billions.



How? As Col. Roberts put it, "Micro-everything is good." Our troopers have backed micro-projects, such as community generators, awarded micro-grants to jump-start street-level commerce, and favored a ground-up version of capitalism, rather than the administration's dysfunctional marriage of profits at home and socialism in Iraq.



The Iraqis get their batteries charged. Once. Then it's up to them to make their neighborhood - and their country - work. Lt. Col. Jeff Peterson, 1-14's commander, adds that the "spontaneous economic development" that followed the establishment of security and face-to-face engagement with the population has been inspiring.



It is. As we dismounted from our Stryker to walk the streets and alleys, Sunni residents - once hostile to Americans - crowded around to thank our local commanders, all of whom were well known down in the 'hood.



OF course, other sectors in Baghdad remain contentious, and progress can be reversed in the wake of a single trigger event.



But even across the river in Rustamiyah, where the troopers of the 1st of the 8th Cav - a butt-kickin' outfit - have been fighting Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army in urban-guerrilla warfare, hopeful signs are emerging. A few days ago, Mookie unilaterally announced a six-month timeout for his gunmen. Partly, it's a political move - but it's also due to the sacrifices and fortitude of 1-8 Cav and other frontline units.



So why don't you hear more about our military's successes? It goes beyond the old media dictum that "if it bleeds, it leads." Plenty of journalists have staked their reps on our predicted failure in Iraq - and they hate the reversal of fortune the surge is achieving.



God knows plenty of problems remain. Iraq's government isn't much help - none, as far as Haifa Street's revival is concerned. And five minutes away, there's a bustling Shia neighborhood. Not long ago, the residents were all Sunnis. Shias with a new-born sense of entitlement (and a vicious militia) drove them out.



Nor have all of those who used to live on Haifa Street returned - they're being coaxed back bit by bit.



But those familiar with the desolation-row atmosphere that prevailed just months ago are encouraged by the prog- ress. Iraqis have begun to help themselves, while their government squabbles.



AFTER winding our way through a lively market, we stopped by a riverside cafe. Its patio was crowded in the softening evening.



The establishment had been reopened with a grant of pennies from the Cav and 2nd Brigade. At the sight of us, the owner rushed to tell everyone that we would always be welcome as his guests. He was excited about the future - almost to the point of weeping.



Outside, in the orange twilight, 1-14 Cav's Maj. Dave Stroupe and I paused on the embankment above the river. A micro-grant had cleared away years of garbage. Kids were swimming, while their elders fished.



Every so often, a corpse still floats by. And the mahalla, or neighborhood, across the river is still seeded with terrorists. But the precious normalcy around us represented a true and wonderfully human victory.



Smiling at the hubbub on the cafe patio and the laughter from the kids splashing in the shallows, Maj. Shoupe shook his head in wonder.



"When we came down here in January," he told me, "the only people we saw in the streets were shooting at us."



Then the U.S. Cavalry rode to the rescue.



Ralph Peters' new book is "Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century." All his reports from this Iraq trip are online on the Opinion page at NYPOST.COM.



Sadly I did not get a chance to meet Mr Peters again or introduce him to BG Bahaa or the many other brave Iraqis who have had no small part in the success in our area.  As much as we can all be proud of what American forces have achieved in our district over the last few months, the only measure of success that matters is if BG Bahaa and men like him can carry on when we leave.

And that really is the fundamental question of September, and one that is almost impossible to know how to answer.    When have you done enough?  When have you made enough money to retire?  When have you taught your children enough values to let them loose in the world?  When have you stored enough grain for the winter?  When have you done enough to ensure victory?

On the long march back from Gettysburg, I don't think any of the Union generals told Harpers Weekly that that was the turning point of the war.  Yet today few will argue that the first few days of July 1863 and the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg spelled defeat for the south.  But two years later men were still giving their lives to finish the work.  In towns like Bastogne and on ships out in Midway, the average twenty year old soldier or seaman almost certainly had no idea that the corner in Europe or the Pacific had been turned.  It all still seemed pretty damn cold and lonely and dangerous to them.  But the simple fact is that the corner had been turned.  Sadly great sacrifices still remained.

None of us are going to read anything spectacular on September 15th.  Chances are a celebrity scandal or a major storm front will provide the more intriguing headlines of the day.  For most of us the day will pass unremarkably, and we will go about life normally;  Attending a funeral, drinking Chai with a friend, fretting about our children.  The war will continue and over time it will become clearer if we have had the defining battle of the war.  My sense is that we are in it, now, and winning.  But there is no way to know.



As always I hope this finds you and yours well