I don’t know if you’ve been reading the news lately, but we’ve basically won the war in Iraq. Yep, the surge has worked, Iraqi refugees are returning home in droves and all is well. So, I thought I should bring you up to date on some of the awesome news.

First, let’s start with the refugees returning. According to the Iraqi and US governments, 1,600 refugees are returning to Baghdad each day. Fucking sweet! We are winning!

Boo. Liberal press, Democrats hate the troops, etc. You get what I’m trying to say.

Okay, so the number is apparently less than the reported 1,600 per day. And the government is not really keeping track of who the people are, so some of the returnees are actually terrorists, blah, blah, blah. The numbers a little off, right? I’m sure not by much.

Well, shit at least people are coming back, right? No matter how small the number, at least it’s positive!

Yeah, but, but..people are still living in Iraq. They are still there, you liberal fucks!

I’m just going to move on because naysayers and America haters have attacked this topic. The surge is working, which means Iraqi politicians can to come together and start hammering out solutions.

Well, who cares about the Sunnis? They are only like 2% of the population or something. At least now that the surge has worked, people can return to their normal lives.

Honestly, why can’t we just focus on the surge and how great it is going? After four years of war, the sewer system is a bit fucked up, yes. Only 30 to 40 percent of Baghdad sewage pumps are working, which is better than zero. Come on, the glass is half full. Or 40% full.

Yes, but now we can actually fix the fucking problem, right?

Yes, yes, fine. But the surge is working and now we can fix everything. We just need the money to get the repairs done.

Granted that sounds bad, but less people are dying from bullets and bombs. How about somebody throw a smiley face around? Or put a fucking gold star on top of a report? Instead of all this dark cloud bullshit.

Hello? Surge? Working?

So, now you are mad at some guy because he learned to be an entrepreneur? Really? That is pretty anti-American. Let’s just focus on one word: Surge. Okay? Good?

Oh, fuck off. Liberal asshole reporters.

Fine, you hate America. I get it. Anything else you want to throw in before you lose the war?

Blow me.

FearTheReaper is excited that Bush finally got around to doing what he should have done the first week. But four years is too late.

RAMADI, IRAQ – After spending some time in and around Baghdad with the United States military I visited the city of Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s notoriously convulsive and violent Anbar Province, and breathed an unlikely sigh of relief. Only a few months ago Ramadi was one of the most dangerous cities in the world. It was another “Fallujah,” and certainly the most dangerous place in Iraq. Today, to the astonishment of everyone – especially the United States Army and Marines – it is perhaps the safest city in all of Iraq outside of Kurdistan.

In August 2006 the Marine Corps, arguably the least defeatist institution in all of America, wrote off Ramadi as irretrievably lost. They weren’t crazy for thinking it. Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq had moved in to fight the Americans, and they were welcomed as liberators by a substantial portion of the local population.

I wrote recently that Baghdad, while dangerous and mind-bogglingly dysfunctional, isn’t as bad as it looks on TV. Almost everywhere I have been in the Middle East is more “normal” than it appears in the media. Nowhere is this more true than in Beirut, but it is true to a lesser extent in Baghdad as well. Baghdad isn’t a normal city, but it appears normal in most places most of the time. Ramadi, in my experience, is the great exception. Ramadi was worse than it appeared in the media.

Baghdad suffers from political paralysis, a low-grade counterinsurgency, and a very slow-motion civil war. It doesn’t look or feel like a war most of the time, although it does sometimes. What happened in Ramadi wasn’t like that. It wasn’t the surreal sort-of war that still simmers in Baghdad. Two American colonels in charge of the area compared the battle of Ramadi to Stalingrad.

“We were engaged in hours-long full-contact kinetic warfare with enemies in fixed positions,” said Army Major Lee Peters.

“There were areas where our odds of being attacked were 100 percent,” Army Captain Jay McGee told me. “Literally hundreds of IEDs created virtual minefields.”

“The whole area was enemy controlled,” said Marine Lieutenant Jonathan Welch. “If we went out for even a half-hour we were shot at, and we were shot at accurately. Sometimes we took casualties and were not able to inflict casualties. We didn’t know where they were shooting from.”



Anbar Province is the heart of Iraq’s Sunni Triangle, and Ramadi is its capital. Iraq has 18 provinces, but until recently almost a third of all U.S. casualties were in Anbar alone.1.3 million people live there, mostly along the Euphrates River, and roughly a third live in Ramadi. Most of the rest live in the also notorious and now largely secured cities of Haditha, Hit, and Fallujah.

I haven’t visited the other cities yet because I wanted to begin in the province’s largest and most important city. Ramadi isn’t the most important solely because it’s the capital or because it’s the largest. It is also the most important because Al Qaeda declared it “The Capital of the Islamic State of Iraq.”

“You have to understand what every side’s end state is in Iraq to really understand what’s going on,” said Captain McGee in his Military Intelligence headquarters at the Blue Diamond base just north of the city. An enormous satellite photo of Ramadi and the surrounding area that functioned as a map took up a whole wall. Local streets were relabeled by the military and given very American names: White Sox Road, Eisenhower Road, and Pool Hall Street for example.

“The ideology of AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] is to establish the Islamic Caliphate in Iraq,” he said. “In order for them to be successful they must control the Iraqi population through either support or coercion.”


Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq

Some in the United States are unconvinced that Al Qaeda was really at the center of the conflict in Anbar. So I asked Colonel John Charlton how the Army knows Al Qaeda is really who they have been dealing with. He was supremely annoyed by the question.

“We know it’s Al Qaeda,” he said. There is no controversy whatsoever about this in Iraq. My question seemed to him as if it had come from another planet. “They self-identify as Al Qaeda. We didn’t give them that name. That’s what they call themselves. We have their propaganda CDs which have Al Qaeda written all over them.”

It’s not a dumb question, though, if a substantial number of Americans aren’t sure what’s going on in a bottomlessly complicated country eight or more times zones away. And not everyone who underestimated Al Qaeda’s presence is a fool.

I briefly met Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Eric Holmes from Dallas, Texas, while he was on his way home after volunteering to serve in Ramadi for six months. “I didn’t realize until I got here that the problem in Anbar Province was 100 percent Al Qaeda,” he said. “The old Baath Party insurgency here is completely finished. That war was won and Americans, including me, had no idea it even happened.”

Al Qaeda was initially welcomed by many Iraqis in Ramadi because they said they were there to fight the Americans. The spirit of resistance against foreign occupiers was strong. But the Iraqis got a lot more in the bargain than simply resistance.

“Al Qaeda came in and just seized people’s houses,” said Army Captain Phil Messer from Nashville, Tennessee. “They said we’re taking your house to use it against the Americans. Get out.”

“Every mosque in the city was anti-American,” Captain McGee said. “They were against us, but Al Qaeda made it even worse by ordering them to broadcast anti-American propaganda at gunpoint.”


A U.S. Army armored personnel carrier on Market Street

“Market Street [the main street downtown] was completely controlled by Al Qaeda,” Lieutenant Welch said. “They rolled down the streets, pointed guns at people, and said we are in charge. They had crazy requirements for the locals. They weren’t allowed to cut their hair. Girls were banned from going to school. They couldn’t shave or smoke. One guy defiantly lit a cigarette and they shot him four times.”

*

Sergeant Kenneth Hicks from Portland, Oregon, took me on my first foot patrol in the city. We dismounted our Humvees near Market Street in the center of one of Al Qaeda’s old strongholds.

“This is an infamous sniper corner,” he said before we had even walked twenty feet.


An infamous sniper corner

“A few months ago we would be dead standing here,” he said. “But there were so many IEDs on this street, and so much piled up garbage, that we could only go out on foot.”

After Al Qaeda took over Ramadi, the local government was replaced with terrorists who only cared about fighting Americans and violently suppressing Iraqis. Al Qaeda was in charge, but it wouldn’t be accurate to say they were the new government. None of the basic city government services functioned. There was no electricity, no running water, no telephone service, and no garbage collection. Every single local business closed down. The city could not have been any more broken.



“Ramadi didn’t even have a city government until April,” said Colonel Charlton. “They couldn’t come to work because of security. And the city was down to zero electricity just three months ago.”

“I’m sure it looks to you like there’s lots of trash all over the place,” Sergeant Hicks said. “But there is massive cleanup going on. There really is a lot less of it now than there was a few months ago.”

We walked a block or so and came to a series of concrete barriers blocking vehicle traffic.



“We put up those walls to keep the rat line [enemy logistics route] out in the open desert from coming into the city,” he said.

Kids saw us and scattered. Nobody needed to tell me that was bad.

“Look out,” Sergeant Hicks said in case I didn’t know. “It’s not a good sign when kids run.”

Children who run at the sight of American soldiers often know something the soldiers do not. They may know an explosion or an insurgent attack of some other kind is imminent.

The same is true in Afghanistan. Soldiers know they can gauge the friendliness of an area by the response to their presence of its children. When kids run up and greet them, the area is friendly. When children just stand there and watch, the area is neutral or possibly hostile. When they flee it usually means the area is violently hostile and the kids need to get out of the way of the fighting that may be coming.

Sergeant Hicks raised his weapon and pointed it across the street.



I suspect he was more worried than I was. Ramadi is a friendly city that has been cleared and pacified. The children were most likely running out of sheer habit. They lived right in the heart of what was recently Al Qaeda’s main stronghold.

Nothing exploded and nobody shot at us. The first kids I ever saw in Ramadi ran from us, but it never once happened again. Only two or three minutes later, children excitedly greeted us as they did every other time I stepped out into the streets of the city and the surrounding countryside.





“Three months ago people turned their backs to us,” Sergeant Hicks said. “They refused to even smile. They were like beaten dogs.”

We walked down Market Street.

Small shops had re-opened since the war ended, but there was still a substantial amount of visible damage.



“That pile of rubble at the end of the streets was an observation post,” he said.


Anbar’s Most Wanted

“Those posters work,” Sergeant Hicks said when he saw me taking a photo of one of Anbar’s Most Wanted posters. “People are giving us information. And, you know, these people really open up to you, automatically, when you’re in their houses. They’ll just start telling you what it was like living under Saddam – the most unbelievable things.” And this is a part of Iraq that was favored by Saddam Hussein. It was much worse in the Shia and Kurdish parts of the country.

*

I also went on patrol with Captain Phil Messer. He was the most hospitable officer I met in Iraq. He and his men lived in a large rented house about the size of a university co-op in the Hay al Adel neighborhood. He gave me his private room next to the Tactical Operations Center and slept in a crowded room with some of the other soldiers so I would be as comfortable as possible. “I’ve been immersed in this culture a long time,” he said. “The Arab code of hospitality is starting to wear off on me.” I don’t think he was sucking up for good press. He is just a nice guy.


Captain Phil Messer

“What do you want to see in Ramadi?” he said.

“Destruction,” I said. “I need to photograph what the war did to this place.”

So he took me out to see the destruction. He did not ask me why or what I would do with the pictures.

We headed out to “Route Michigan” in Humvees.



“When we first started using this road,” he said, “we thought it was a dirt road. Then we cleaned it up and, sure enough, there was asphalt under it. Route Michigan was hit by IEDs and gunfire every single time a convoy went down it. There was a foot and a half of water on it because the IEDs shattered so many water mains. Our vehicles were not allowed to travel on it unless they were specifically on a combat mission.”

Most of the city’s buildings and houses are more or less intact, but some areas have been completely destroyed. I toured the destruction in South Lebanon at the end of last year, but I didn’t see anything there on the scale of what happened in Ramadi. Nor did I see anything even remotely like this in Baghdad.



“We took the gloves off,” said Captain Dennison from where he described as Middle of Nowhere, Kentucky. “We had to.”



I saw dozens of buildings that look like those pictured above, and this was after the majority of the wreckage had been cleared.

At least it did not all go to waste. The twisted rebar was saved, and a young man amazingly was able to straighten it out with a tool made just for that purpose.



It looks bad, and it is bad. It’s worse than it looks, actually, because the destruction goes on and on and on in large swaths. Areas where rubble has been cleared look like parking lots, and there are literally miles of such areas in Ramadi along the main streets.


Cleared rubble, Ramadi


The large blank area in this picture was once dense with buildings

But just around the corner from the picture above is a bustling market that looks totally normal, as if nothing eventful ever happened there.


A bustling market right next to a scene of vast devastation

*

I spent the next day at a Joint Security Station (JSS), a tiny outpost in a rented house where American soldiers and Marines live with Iraqi soldiers in the heart of the city.

Army Lieutenant Markham from Shreveport, Louisiana, met me first thing in the morning at Camp Corregidor and drove me over there.

“What’s the plan today?” I said.

“There’s this thing – I don’t know if you’ve heard of it – called the GWOT,” he said jokingly. “The Global War on Terrorism. We have to win it.”

“And what about me?” I said.

“I’ll be taking you over to the JSS and leaving you with Lieutenant Hightower,” he said. “Think of it as me dropping you off at school.”

“Ok, Dad,” I said. “Which truck am I riding in?”


Lieutenant Markham says hello to Ramadi’s children

When we arrived at the JSS I was horrified. The building had sustained battle damage from the war. Everything was hot and filthy. The stairs were broken. The bathroom was covered in spider webs and dried mud left over from the last time it had rained. Aside from a few select rooms, there was no air conditioning. It’s hard to describe how awful that is in Iraq in August. Somebody told me it was 138 degrees that day. It’s hotter in Ramadi than even in Baghdad, and it’s made worse by the fact that the JSS didn’t have showers. “I once went three months without a shower,” a soldier told me outside. Amazingly, the place didn’t smell bad.

The toilets didn’t work and there were no porta-johns, so everyone had to use plastic bags and wash up with bottled water. “If you let the water from the sink get on your skin,” a soldier told me, “there’s a ten percent chance you’ll get a horrible rash.”

American and Iraqi soldiers live in this place. “Most Americans have no idea how bad we have it here,” someone told me, and I’m certain he’s right. But most of them didn’t complain. Life is a lot better in Ramadi now that the war is over, regardless of the heat and living conditions.

“Can I take pictures of this place?” I said to Sergeant Hicks. Only in the rarest of circumstances does the military object to journalists taking pictures, and even then only when the photographs might help the other side plan attacks.

“Hmm,” Sergeant Hicks said.

“Uh,” Lieutenant Markham said.

“It’s not that important,” I said.

“Just make sure there aren’t any full-page spreads showing the layout of this place so suicide bombers would know how to hit us,” Sergeant Hicks said.

“Yeah, Mike,” Lieutenant Markham said. “What are you trying to pull here?” He didn’t sound like he was joking, but he probably was. He’s just a dead-pan kind of guy who could have rubbed me the wrong way, but didn’t.

He introduced me to Marine Lieutenant Andrew Hightower from Houston, Texas. Hightower had recently returned from three months on medical leave.

“What happened?” I said.

“I got blown up,” he said.

“You don’t look blown up,” I said.

“I got hit with a 120 mortar round IED,” he said. “Near Market Street. I got shrapnel all in my leg.”

“How did that feel?” I said. Sometimes people don’t feel pain even when they are shot, so I didn’t know.

“It felt like someone was pushing a hot iron onto my skin,” he said. “Then I felt the blood running down my leg.” The doctors gave him the pieces of shrapnel which he now keeps in a jar.

“Lieutenant Hightower is a terrific Marine officer,” Lieutenant Markham said. “He gives me hope for the future of the Marine Corps.”

He said that so seriously I thought he might not be joking this time.

“Did you actually worry about the future of the Marine Corps before you met him?” I said.

“Well, yes kind of,” he said. “The Marines are just…really different from the Army.” He said it with such gravity and disappointment and concern and shook his head.

I couldn’t possibly care less about the rivalry between the Army and the Marines, although I was occasionally asked by members of each which branch I preferred.

One Marine tried to get an Iraqi Army soldier to take sides.

“Which do you think is better?” he said to the Iraqi soldier. “Army or Marines?”

“The Navy is best,” said the Iraqi.

The Marine was taken aback. “The Navy?” he said.

“Yes, Navy,” said the Iraqi.

The Marine looked slightly annoyed when I laughed.

Lieutenant Markham handed me over to Lieutenant Hightower who was supposed to take me out on a patrol. But a dust storm blew in from the desert and we were grounded. Soldiers and Marines aren’t allowed to go on patrols when the air is “condition red” because medi-vac helicopters have a hard time evacuating anyone who gets wounded. So I was stranded and spent as much of the day as I could talking to those who fought and survived the battle of Ramadi.

*

“We have genuinely good relations with the Iraqi Army here,” Lieutenant Hightower said. “We live in the same rooms. They are almost like my own soldiers. We go to their funerals.”

Every soldier and Marine I met in Anbar Province spoke highly of and with great admiration for their Iraqi counterparts. It was a completely different world from the Baghdad area where so many Americans hold the Iraqis in contempt as corrupt incompetents who let themselves be infiltrated by terrorists and insurgents.

“Some of the Iraqi Police here were insurgents, though,” he said. “We sent them to Jordan for training and when they got there they had serious background checks. Some of them were yanked out of the IP and sent to prison.”

So there has been a weeding out process, unlike in many parts of Iraq. And some of the police were insurgents who switched sides when they realized Al Qaeda, and not the Americans, were the real enemy.

“The Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police here are amazing,” Lieutenant Hightower said. “For a long time they weren’t being paid, but they risked their lives every day and did their jobs anyway.”

They are being paid now, but not very much. Iraqi Police officers only earn 300 or so dollars per month.

“What are you doing here anyway?” he said. “Not much happens in Ramadi anymore. Nothing blows up anymore. There’s no blood and guts here.”

There certainly was blood and guts, though. Just a few blocks from the station is a soccer stadium that was used during the war as a mass grave site.

“We found bodies buried in the middle of the soccer field by insurgents,” Lieutenant Hightower said. “After the war ended the Iraqis had to unearth the bodies. They called it Operation Graveyard.”


The Ramadi soccer field, formerly a mass grave site, now a sports venue again

“That was its official name?” I said.

“That was its official name,” he said. “Now there’s a soccer game there every night at 5:00.” I had plans to attend the game that night myself, but it was cancelled.


Lieutenant Hightower

“There was another soccer field north of the city in the ‘Sofia’ area,” he said, “a kids’ soccer field. It was also used as a dump site. AQI killed civilians by castrating them, stuffing their genitals in their mouths, and cutting off their heads. Al Qaeda killed a lot more civilians than they ever killed soldiers.”

Captain Jay McGee concurred. “Suicide car bombers rarely attacked the coalition,” he said, meaning Americans. “They almost always attacked Iraqi security forces and civilians. They know the U.S. will leave eventually, but AQI ultimately must fight Iraqis and destroy Iraqi institutions in order to prevail.”



They did kill Americans, though, certainly. And they recruited and paid willing local Iraqis to help them.

“To get paid by AQI for killing Americans,” Lieutenant Hightower said, “the attack must be videotaped. They often used tracer rounds so they could prove it was real. We found whole piles of these tapes when we cleaned the city out. We found and killed a sniper just northeast of the city. He had all kinds of video tapes of himself shooting and killing American soldiers.”

Snipers were everywhere in Ramadi. Some were committed Al Qaeda fighters, and others were just paid to help out.

“One of my soldiers was shot in the head through his helmet by a sniper,” he said. High powered bullets will pierce helmets if they hit at a head-on angle. “The sniper was shooting from behind a curtain in a van. He was a teacher at a women’s vocational school by day and a sniper for extra money at night. AQI just recruits people who need money and hires them as insurgents as if it were a regular job.”



Conveniently for Al Qaeda, the economy in Ramadi utterly disintegrated during the war. Almost everybody needed money, and even those who did have money had a hard time buying anything since all the stores had closed down.

Mortars were a big problem, too, and they came from random directions.

“AQI would launch three mortars from a truck,” Lieutenant Hightower said, “then drive off. We usually couldn’t shoot back fast enough before they had scurried off somewhere else.”

The worst, though, were the IEDs. It’s the same everywhere in Iraq.

“They used acid to liquefy the asphalt and bury the IEDs under the road,” he said. “Then they would push the liquid asphalt back into the hole. Their work looked almost perfect. You could tell where they had buried the IEDs if you looked closely enough, but the roads are filthy and the evidence was barely detectable when we were driving. We found a lot of them with slow-moving road clearance vehicles that use metal detector arms.”

He had to take a phone call, so I walked around the station and noticed that the filthy place was suddenly cleaner than it was when I arrived just a few hours before. The Iraqis were hard at work fixing the place up since they couldn’t go on patrols while the dusty air was still at condition red. Cases of MREs and bottled water were more organized. The floors had been swept clear of dust. Soon the station might actually be suitable for people to live in.

“Al Qaeda hit a six month old baby with a mortar when they were trying to hit us,” Lieutenant Hightower said when he got off the phone. “They also hit a six year old girl. We went in and medi-vacced the victims, and we made lots of friends that day. It was a clarifying experience for the Iraqis.”

It was a clarifying experience for the Iraqis because they had been raised on virulent anti-American conspiracy theories and propaganda from Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party. They truly believed the Army and Marines were there to steal their oil and women. Americans saving the lives of children wounded by fellow Sunni Arabs who passed themselves off as liberators was not what many Iraqis ever expected to see.

“The six month baby had shrapnel in his head,” Lieutenant Hightower said. “The six year old girl had shrapnel in her leg. It was the most disturbing thing I’ve seen since I got here.” This from a man who saw one of his own men shot in the head by a sniper.

Ramadi is in terrible shape even now. If it were an American city it would be declared in a state of emergency. Months of accumulated garbage is still piled up everywhere. The electricity still isn’t on for even twelve hours a day – although the eight of hours the city does get – because, as Colonel Charlton says, Al Qaeda no longer blows up the electrical towers – certainly beats the one hour of electricity they get each day in Baghdad. Sewage flows in the street. The economy has a pulse, but four months ago it was at zero.



“The city completely bottomed out,” Colonel Holmes told me. “It hit absolute rock bottom.”

Ramadi was in worse shape even than Gaza. And Ramadi was once one of the loveliest cities in all of Iraq.

*

Nineteen Arab tribes led by sheikhs live in Anbar Province. In June of 2006, nine of those tribal sheikhs cooperated with the Americans, three were neutral, and seven were hostile.

In October of last year the tribal leaders in the province, including some who previously were against the Americans, formed a movement to reject the savagery Al Qaeda had brought to their region. Some of them were supremely unhappy with the American presence since fighting exploded in the province’s second largest city of Fallujah, but Al Qaeda proved to be even more sinister from their point of view. Al Qaeda did not come as advertised. They were militarily incapable of expelling the American Army and Marines. And they were worse oppressors than even Saddam Hussein. The leaders of Anbar Province saw little choice but to openly declare them enemies and do whatever it took to expunge them. They called their new movement Sahawa al Anbar, or the Anbar Awakening.

Sheikh Sattar is its leader. Al Qaeda murdered his father and three of his brothers and he was not going to put up with them any longer. None of the sheikhs were willing to put up with them any longer. By April of 2007, every single tribal leader in all of Anbar was cooperating with the Americans.

“AQI announced the Islamic State of Iraq in a parade downtown on October 15, 2006,” said Captain McGee. “This was their response to Sahawa al Anbar. They were threatened by the tribal movement so they accelerated their attacks against tribal leaders. They ramped up the murder and intimidation. It was basically a hostile fascist takeover of the city."

Sheikh Jassim’s experience was typical.

“Jassim was pissed off because American artillery fire was landing in his area,” Colonel Holmes said. “But he wasn’t pissed off at us. He was pissed off at Al Qaeda because he knew they always shot first and we were just shooting back.”

“He said he would prevent Al Qaeda from firing mortars from his area if we would help him,” Lieutenant Hightower said. “Al Qaeda said they would mess him up if he got in their way. He called their bluff and they seriously fucked him up. They launched a massive attack on his area. All hell broke loose. They set houses on fire. They dragged people through the streets behind pickup trucks. A kid from his area went into town and Al Qaeda kidnapped him, tortured him, and delivered his head to the outpost in a box. The dead kid was only sixteen years old. The Iraqis then sent out even nine year old kids to act as neighborhood watchmen. They painted their faces and everything.”

“Sheikh Jassim came to us after that,” Colonel Holmes told me, “and said I need your help.”

“One night,” Lieutenant Markham said, “after several young people were beheaded by Al Qaeda, the mosques in the city went crazy. The imams screamed jihad from the loudspeakers. We went to the roof of the outpost and braced for a major assault. Our interpreter joined us. Hold on, he said. They aren’t screaming jihad against us. They are screaming jihad against the insurgents."

*

“A massive anti-Al Qaeda convulsion ripped through the city,” said Captain McGee. “The locals rose up and began killing the terrorists on their own. They reached the tipping point where they just could not take any more. They told us where the weapon caches were. They pointed out IEDs under the road.”

“In mid-March,” Lieutenant Hightower said, “a sniper operating out of a house was shooting Americans and Iraqis. Civilians broke into his house, beat the hell out of him, and turned him over to us.”

“There were IEDs all over this area,” Lieutenant Welch said. “On every single street corner, buried under the road. They were so big they could take out tanks. When we came through we cleared the whole area on foot. The civilians told us where the IEDs were. I was with one group where a guy opened his gate just a crack and pointed out where one was. It was right in front of his house. Later we went back and had tea. He was so happy to see us.”

“One day,” Lieutenant Hightower said, “some Al Qaeda guys on a bike showed up and asked where they could plant an IED against Americans. They asked a random civilian because they just assumed the city was still friendly to them. They had no idea what was happening. The random civilian held him at gunpoint and called us to come get him.”

“People here tacitly supported Al Qaeda,” Captain McGee said, “because Al Qaeda was attacking us. But they took control of the city. They forced girls to stay home from school. They dragged people outside the city and shot them in the head. They broke people’s fingers if they were seen smoking a cigarette. They forced men to grow beards. Once they started acting like that they could only establish a safe haven by using terrorism against the local civilians.”

“Al Qaeda struck out three times,” said Major Peters. “Strike One: They killed a Sheikh and held his body for four days. Strike Two: They executed young people in public. Strike Three: They attacked the compound of another sheikh. The people here said enough. They aligned with us because they realized Al Qaeda was the real enemy. They didn’t like Al Qaeda’s version of Islam at all.”

Credit for purging Ramadi of Al Qaeda must go to Iraqis themselves at least as much as to the American military. The Americans wouldn’t have been able to do it without the cooperation of the people who live there, and the Iraqis wouldn’t have been able to do it, at least not so easily, without help from the American military.


This drawing by an Iraqi child depicts the American-Iraqi alliance against Al Qaeda. Notice the sword is Iraqi and the muscle is American.

Not only did Iraqi soldiers, police, and civilians join the fight, but also the lesser known local security force fielded by the Anbar tribal authorities.

“The previous battalion saw men on corners wearing cammies,” said Captain McGee. “They were legacy forces still around from the old days, the Provincial Security Forces (PSF). They had been operating as a critical reserve and a mobile strike force. They helped clear the area of AQI on their own. They are as well disciplined, if not more so, than the Iraqi Army. They’ve been working with us, too.”

I said it sounded to me like they were just another Iraqi militia, and he understood what I meant. That’s what they look like, and he had heard that criticism before.

“The PSF looks like a militia,” he said, “but it isn’t. It’s legal and more of a ‘national guard’ like the [Kurdish] Peshmerga. They are authorized and paid by the Ministry of the Interior in Baghdad. Even the Iraqi Army here doesn’t have as good equipment as they have.”

Another difference between the Provincial Security Forces and the militias, which he didn’t mention, is that all the militias to one extent or another are sectarian creatures. There are Sunni militias and Shia militias, and they often fight each other. The PSF is Sunni, but that’s because Anbar Province is Sunni. The PSF isn’t Sunni per se. Its Sunni character is incidental. There are hardly any Shias in Anbar Province who could join the PSF, and the PSF doesn’t fight Shias anywhere in Iraq. They fight Al Qaeda, which also is Sunni. And they cooperate with the Iraqi Army, which even in Anbar is mostly Shia. There is nothing remotely sectarian about them.

“Al Qaeda had dug in the northeastern and southern parts of the city,” Captain McGee told me. “The coalition walled off areas and fought block to block, house to house. Then the Provincial Security Forces went in and recleared it. There was an immediate decrease in attacks.”


Inside a burned house

He was referring Operation Murphy’s Burrow, which brought about a dramatic change in offensive tactics.

“For a long time,” Colonel Holmes said, “they were driving away from the base in Humvees down a street that was infested with Al Qaeda forces. The gunners spun their turrets in circles and just shot at everything, thinking they could provide cover for themselves so they could drive without being shot at.”

“Didn’t that violate the rules of engagement?” I said.

He froze for a second and answered that question very carefully.

“That was the wrong way to do it,” he said. “And they knew it. So they slowly cleared one block at a time, house by house, and kept the supply lines open to the base in the area that was already cleared. Everything behind them got cleared and stayed cleared, so their safe area got gradually larger. We don’t want to hurt civilians. Our job here is to protect Iraqi civilians.”



He’s right. It is the job of the United States military to protect the people of Iraq even before protecting themselves. It is always the job of (American) soldiers to protect civilians before protecting themselves. In doing so they protect themselves better than if they did not. It may be counter-intuitive, but it’s straight-forward, by-the-book counterinsurgency.

Here is the relevant passage from the book. (Thanks to Michael Yon for publishing this for us.)

“As soon as we were on Easy Street running through the Malaab area every day, 24/7, it got quiet,” said Private First Class Baringhouse from Indiana. “We sealed off the entire area with barricades and blocked all vehicle traffic. Then they couldn’t get weapons and IEDs in. It calmed the place down fast.”

Vehicle traffic is still banned in most of Ramadi. The streets are dead quiet. No one drives but the American military, the Iraqi Army and Police, and a few select taxis.

How well is that going over, I asked Lieutenant Welch.


Lieutenant Welch

“Civilians complain about lots of things,” he said. “But they never complain about this. They are so terrified of car bombs they don’t want any car traffic in this city at all. If we could shut down all vehicle traffic everywhere in Iraq, the war would be practically over.”


Car traffic is banned, but mopeds are okay


A motorcycle taxi

There were more than just IEDs and car bombs. There also were house bombs.

“The house across the street was rigged to blow,” he said. “Four Syrians were living in it. Now it’s a pile of rubble. This building,” meaning the Joint Security Station, “was rigged to blow, too, but they hadn’t quite finished the rigging. They hadn’t put the detonator equipment in yet.”

Some of the blown up buildings in Ramadi can be partially blamed on American screw ups.

“Did you see that flattened parking lot looking area out front?” Lieutenant Welch said.

I did.



“It was a bunch of shops in the last area we cleared,” he said. “We busted the locks and opened the doors. Everyone had to stay in their houses then. We found tons of weapons and IEDs. Just as we were finishing up some of the military dogs refused to sit on the flour bags. We opened up the bags and it felt like soap. We tested it. We didn’t think it was an explosive, but an accelerant. We took everything, put it into piles, and blew it up without warning anybody. It was a much bigger explosion than we expected. Urea-nitrate was in the bags. It’s an explosive made from fertilizer. That blast was so big that people at Camp Ramadi, all the way on the other side of the city and outside the city, thought it was a nearby car bomb. People at Camp Corregidor thought they were being mortared. Windows blew out for blocks and blocks in every direction. It destroyed the whole block. Civil affairs officers paid compensation to locals for injuries and property damage. Thank God no one was killed. The media reported it as a car bomb at the soccer stadium. Reporters in the Green Zone have no idea what goes on out here.”

Here is a graph that I asked Military Intelligence to reproduce for me that shows the dramatic decrease in violence in the Topeka Area of Operations in Northern Ramadi from January 1, 2007, to July 28, 2007.


Source: U.S. Army Military Intelligence

The graph is for internal use by the Army. It is not intended for public consumption or as propaganda. If it were, what it reveals would be even more dramatic. Most of the tiny number of “attacks” that appear after the middle of May weren’t really even attacks.

“Most of those litle blips represent old IEDs we found that were ineffective,” Captain McGee said. “One was a car bomb by perps who came into Ramadi from outside the city. There was only one other attack against us in our area of operations in July, and it was ineffective. As soon as we came in here to stay the civilians felt free enough to inform on them. Al Qaeda can’t come back now because the locals will report them instantly. Ramadi is a conservative Muslim city, but it’s a completely hostile environment for Islamists.”

The area just north of Ramadi was cleared even before the city itself was.

“On April 7 the entire area of operations [just north of the city] was cleared except for sporadic attacks from twelve people,” Major Lee Peters said. “There was no head to cut off. It was like a hydra. We didn’t win by killing their leaders. We won by eroding their support base. These people hate Al Qaeda much more than they ever hated us.”

The tribes of Anbar are turning their Sahawa al Anbar movement into a formal political party that will run in elections. They also hope to spread it to the rest of Iraq under the name Sahawa al Iraq. It is already taking root in the provinces of Diyala and Salah a Din.

Some have misunderstood this movement and dismissed it as “the insurgency.” Captain McGee provided me with the eleven points of their political platform, for the record.

Ramadi isn’t completely safe yet. Al Qaeda wants to take back their “Capital of the Islamic State of Iraq," and they have tried unsuccessfully to attack it from outside on a couple of occasions since they lost it. (They also tried to move their “Capital of the Islamic State of Iraq” to Baqubah in Diyala Province, but they lost that too in Operation Arrowhead Ripper this summer.) Also, Colonel Charlton said, “there may still be one small cell remnant here.” But the war in Ramadi is effectively over. “It’s boring here now,” Private First Class Baringhouse said. “It’s like we’re babysitting the Iraqis. But it’s weird and amazing to be bored here.”

This now “boring” city, which is just barely beginning to recover from utter catastrophe, is a different cultural and political environment than it once was.

“The mosques in Ramadi all have pro-coalition messages now,” Captain McGee said.

“How do you know this?” I said. “Do you actually attend Friday services?”

“We have relationships with the imams,” he said. “We have very good relations with all of them.”

“The Abdullah Mosque next to our outpost was hit by insurgent fire,” Captain Messer said. “The Marines are giving them money to fix it.”

Another mosque, just north of the city in the area known as Jazeera, wasn’t hit by Al Qaeda. It was used as a terrorist base by Al Qaeda.

“It’s blackened,” Captain Dennison told me, “and abandoned. Insurgents used it, so the locals consider it desecrated. No one is willing to set foot in it now.”

BAGHDAD – American soldiers arrived in Iraq in 2003 with not much of a plan and little idea what to expect. The Iraqi government, military, and police were overthrown and disbanded under de-Baathification. Most Iraqis who knew how to run the country were either sent home or imprisoned. Americans were in charge of just about everything even though they had no experience running even their own country let alone a traumatized and suspicious Arab society. They were confounded by its exotic and dysfunctional ways. When Sunni and Shia militias launched wars against each other and against the Americans, confusion turned to bewilderment.

General David Petraeus fared better than other American commanders in cracking the code of Iraqi society and reducing the insurgency in Mosul from an explosion to a simmer. I saw some of the results of his strategy’s expansion to Baghdad with troops in the 82nd Airborne Division. Instead of staying on base and training Iraqis while security disintegrated outside the wire, they moved into a neighborhood in Baghdad where they now live and work among the civilian population 24 hours a day.

Clear, hold, and build is the strategy now. The Graya’at neighborhood has been cleared of active insurgents, although there still are dormant cells in the area. The Army is working on several modest community and urban renewal projects and is planning larger ones in the near future. Constant patrols and intelligence gathering are the two crucial pieces of the hold part of the strategy.

I went out one night with Lieutenant Larry Pitts and his men one of their intel gathering missions.

“We’ll collect info on Shias in Sunni areas and Sunnis in Shia areas,” he told me. “We make the best of it by going out and meeting the local people. It works because we have a decent reputation around here that we’ve been cultivating for a long time. Reporters would get it more if they were with us from the beginning.”

We saddled up in Humvees, drove down quiet residential streets, and dismounted on a street near a palm grove.

Children came out of their houses to meet us.



We walked, and kept walking, so the parked Humvees would give no indication whose house we were going to visit. When we eventually reached our destination, some of the soldiers dispersed and set up checkpoints several blocks away in each direction.

“We’re trying to make it slightly less obvious that we’re having a meeting here,” Lieutenant Pitts said.

Two families of men, women, and children met us on the lawn inside the gate. Hugs and formal greetings in Arabic were exchanged. Everyone seemed happy to see everyone else. The soldiers had been to this house before. No one but me was a stranger. I was instantly made to feel welcome, however. No people in the world are more hospitable than Arabs, and that includes Iraqis in war time.

A handful of soldiers went inside and made their way to the roof. There they could watch the entire street with their night vision goggles and take out anyone stupid enough to mount an attack on the house. Soldiers are killed in Iraq every day, but it’s still hard to feel nervous even in Baghdad when you’re surrounded by these guys.

The night was reasonably cool for Baghdad in the summer. The temperature rarely drops below 100 degrees Fahrenheit before midnight, but this night it felt like a cool 90 by ten p.m.

Plastic lawn chairs were arranged in a circle on the grass. I expected a relaxing evening of important conversation in comfort. The lawn chairs, though, were not for us. The owner of the house said we should have our meeting inside.

“He owns a store,” Lieutenant Pitts said to me on the way in. “He sells us phone cards and stuff at the right price, not at a jacked up rate. We call his store Wal-Mart.”

Inside the house was brutally hot. The lights were on, but the air conditioner was off. The fierce heat of the day couldn’t escape into the atmosphere like it could in the yard. If we were in the U.S. I would have suggested we sit outside, but I was the stranger and a mere observer in a foreign land and was not about to complain.

The home owner turned on the air conditioner, but it would take a long time for the room to cool down.

“Can I take pictures?” I asked him.

“Of course, of course,” he said. “Just please don’t publish pictures of our faces in Iraq.”

Publishing pictures on the Internet is the same as publishing pictures in Iraq. So I have to be careful about what I let you see. I can't show you the faces of any Iraqis.

The living room, or salon, was bigger than the entire downstairs of my house in the United States. Most Iraqis live in large houses, but this one was also lavishly decorated with plush couches, nice oak cabinets, and tasteful decorations. The occupants had a much better sense of aesthetics than Saddam Hussein’s family, who decorated their tacky palaces as though they were the Beverly Hillbillies of the Arabs.

We all took our seats on the large billowing sofas. An eleven year old boy placed a small wooden table in front of each of us and served soft drinks and tea.



The soldiers and the Iraqis discussed the rather mundane minutiae of joint community projects. I wrote down much of the dialogue, but it is not terribly interesting and, besides, I wouldn’t want to reveal too much about who these Iraqis are and what they do. Everyone in the community knows they work with Americans. What they don’t know is that they also pass on reliable and actionable intelligence to the military about the identities and whereabouts of terrorists and insurgents.

Lieutenant Pitts passed around a bag of salted American peanuts. Each Iraqi took a handful and wasn’t sure what to do with them.

“They’re peanuts,” he said. “Just like the peanuts you eat, only they’re still in the shell.”

The owner of the house broke open a peanut with his hands.

“No,” Lieutenant Pitts said. “You need to put it in your mouth and suck the salt off it first.”

The children in the room smiled at me and asked me over and over again to please take their picture. I can’t show you their faces, though, because I do not want to put them in danger.

“We brought toys for the kids,” Lieutenant Pitts said. Sergeant Roma and another soldier whose name I didn’t catch handed out Beanie Babies, toy trucks, and coloring books as though they were Christmas presents. One of the boys sprawled on the floor and “drove” his toy truck across the carpet while making loud “vroom” noises.

“Everyone working on the [omitted] project should be paid by the end of the week,” Lieutenant Pitts said.

“Thank you, Captain,” said the man who owned the house. It was the second time he referred to Pitts as a captain.

“I’m a lieutenant, not a captain,” Lieutenant Pitts said. “So please don’t call me captain. If one of my superior officers were sitting here and heard you call me a captain he might get mad at me and think I’m misrepresenting myself.”


Lieutenant Larry Pitts

I leaned over and whispered to the lieutenant. “You didn’t come here to talk about community projects, did you?”

“Of course not,” he said. “We’re fishing for something else. It’s a process. Some new lieutenants don’t get the culture, and the locals won’t give them the time of day. How many times have you let total strangers in your house and given them everything they wanted right away?”

The air conditioning was on, I had taken off my body armor and helmet, but I was still roasting. The couch seat and cushions radiated an extraordinary amount of heat that had built up all day. Almost every damn thing in Iraq is hot to the touch, even cushions. I felt as though I was standing too close to a campfire, but I could not step away.

Lieutenant Pitts’ radio squawked. He answered and grinned as the soldier on the other end of the conversation gave him the humorous news.

“They just caught a DUI at the checkpoint outside,” he said.

The soldiers all laughed. Our interpreter Nathan translated, and the Iraqis laughed too.

“What do you do with a DUI?” I said.

Lieutenant Pitts shrugged and shook his head. American soldiers in areas cleared of insurgents act like police officers in many ways – Baghdad P.D. as one soldier put it – but they can’t be bothered with trivial matters like these. That’s for the Iraqi Police who probably don’t care much about drunk drivers either. There are so many more critical problems in Baghdad.

For hours we lounged on the sofas and discussed minor community matters and touched on subjects that were utterly trivial.

Nathan asked our host for a cigarette. He was given a long brown “More” brand menthol.

“Nathan is smoking!” said Sergeant Roma.

“Since when do you smoke?” said the soldier at the far end of the room whose name and rank I didn’t catch.

“It’s my first cigarette ever,” Nathan said.

It was hard to believe Nathan had never once smoked a cigarette. He grew up in Sadr City. Almost everyone in Iraq seems to smoke.

I took a picture of the occasion. Nathan didn’t mind.


Interpreter Nathan smokes his first cigarette

Lieutenant Pitts wiped the sweat off his forehead.

“You Iraqis have the right idea wearing dishdashas,” he said. The dishdasha is the loose-fitting white “robe” worn by many Arab men in hot regions. “They’re a lot more comfortable in this heat than our uniforms. I asked the colonel if I started wearing a dishdasha around the base in my off time if he would think I was crazy. He said he would send me away.”

Everyone laughed. If the Iraqis were offended – and Pitts did not mean his comment that way – they didn’t show it.

“The soccer field you’re building,” said our host to the lieutenant, “is great for the kids, but it also helps with security. Insurgents were using that area as a base. Thank you, thank you.” He put his hand on his heart.

“Listen,” said another Iraqi, who wore a long black beard as well as a dishdasha. “I have something to tell you, but it has to be away from the children.”

He said this in English so the children would not understand. A young man led them outside and suggested they play with their new toys on the lawn.

“When you came and liberated this country,” he continued, “Iraq had 25 million Saddams. America is turning us back into human beings. That soccer field is not for a specific person. It is for everybody. We appreciate that. We believe that if Americans have something that is ours, they will return it to us. If the Iraqi government has something that is ours, we forget it.”

Our host for the evening nodded in agreement.

“We support you,” the man continued. “You support our back, we support your back. But you must understand: If you pull back, we will pull back. I will have no choice but to pull back if I can’t depend on you. It will be much harder for us to stand together. But as long as you stand firmly behind us we will support you against Moqtada al Sadr and the other bastards in the area.”

“Are they Sunnis?” I said to Lieutenant Pitts. Moqtada al Sadr leads the radical Shia Mahdi Army militia.

“No,” he said. “They are Shias. But they don’t like any of the idiot groups, regardless of sect. They want peace.”

It was late at night, but the Iraqis said we needed to eat. I had no idea, but in hindsight I should have known. It seems no Arab is happy if I’m in his house and he isn’t feeding me.

“Come to the table,” said our host. “Let’s have some chicken.”

The soldiers and I walked to the table in the next room and found an enormous spread of barbecued chicken, lamb kebabs, vegetables, and tearable flat bread. The Iraqis deferred to the soldiers, and the soldiers deferred to me. I was the lone foreign civilian, so I was expected to go first. There were no chairs at the table.

“Just stand and eat at the table,” Lieutenant Pitts whispered to me.

There was also no silverware. Iraqis eat with their hands.

I tore off a hunk of barbecued chicken and rolled it into some bread. The spices tasted vaguely of lime.

“This is delicious,” I said. And it was. This was the soldiers’ cue that they could now eat.

“This is some really good chicken,” said Sergeant Roma. He wasn’t just being polite. “It’s much better than the chicken we have at the D-FAC [military dining facility].”

This is how soldiers spend most of their time when they gather intelligence on terrorists and insurgents in Iraq. Not until the very end of the meeting, which is almost strictly social and takes many hours, does anyone get down to business. Jumping right in with a list of intelligence questions is considered the height or rudeness except in extreme or unusual circumstances.

“Would you like a glass of arak?” our host graciously asked me.

Arak is the Arabic version of ouzo, the milky white liquor that tastes of licorice.

“I would love some,” I said. “But I am not allowed to drink alcohol while embedded with the military.”

“Go ahead, it’s okay,” Lieutenant Pitts said.

“I should probably follow the rules,” I said. I hadn’t been embedded long enough to feel like flouting rules yet, but in hindsight I hope I didn’t offend him by turning him down.

After eating we returned, stuffed, to the couches. Nathan, our interpreter, was needed outside. To my surprise, Lieutenant Pitts continued his conversation with our Iraqi hosts, unaided, in Arabic.

“How long did you study Arabic?” I said to him during a lull in the conversation.

“I haven’t studied it,” he told me.

He hadn’t? Most non-native speakers can’t hold down a conversation until they have studied Arabic formally for several years.

“I just listen very carefully before our interpreters translate,” he continued, “and I’ve been picking it up. I still need Nathan to help with the nuances and specifics, but I understand basically what they are saying. And they understand me even though I am not speaking correctly.”

The Army has come a long way since they first arrived in Iraq, and Lieutenant Pitts was shaping up to be a real American Arabist.

We still hadn’t done anything, though, except hang out and socialize with Iraqis. I knew the drill, however. I often work the same way in the Middle East as a reporter when I’m not embedded.

Much of what I do in the Middle East is have dinner and tea, and sometimes alcohol, with Middle Easterners and learn how their culture works and what they think. Most Arabs will tell you far more and answer more honestly over food and drinks than they will if you rattle off a list of pre-packaged questions like you’re pumping them for information. Government officials usually skip the formalities and the socializing, but few others do.

Sergeant Roma, who sat to my left, also speaks Arabic.


Sergeant Roma

“They think that makes me a spy,” he said, “and that I must be from Jerusalem. They don’t mind, though.”

This was typical of the Arab world, but also a bit odd. They think he’s a spy? What did they think we were doing there in their house? This was an intelligence gathering operation. It was, more or less, spying. The only difference is that the soldiers were up front about it, even though (and this is not contradictory) no one said anything about intelligence gathering yet. Nobody had to. Everyone knew what was up. The United States military has better things to do in Iraq than socialize just for the sake of socializing.

That doesn’t mean the food and gifts and chit chat were a sham. The friendship and affection between these Americans and Iraqis is real. Several soldiers and officers told me that what surprises them most about their time in Iraq is how emotionally attached they’ve become to Iraqis in general and to specific individuals in particular. They didn’t expect it, but that’s what happened. And it’s considered a waste of that friendship to talk strictly business. The business wouldn’t be possible anyway if the friendship and trust weren’t there first.

“Some people around here think anyone who talks to Americans is a spy,” said the Iraqi man with the beard.

I have been suspected and accused of being a spy in every Arab country I’ve been to. The accusation is usually not serious, rarely feels threatening, and is usually humorous or annoying, depending on the context and who said it. But the truth is that huge numbers of Iraqis who talk to Americans really do supply actionable intelligence on terrorists and insurgents. They risk retaliation, but if they don’t take that risk they risk getting ethnically cleansed or car bombed at the market instead. Iraq is an extreme country in a state of emergency. Spies – and I’m using the term loosely here, not referring to James Bond type characters – are literally everywhere.

The only areas of Iraq where the locals won’t provide much intelligence is where the American presence is thin on the ground. It’s not worth risking reprisals if no one is around to provide security. This is one of the major reasons Iraq spiraled out of control for several years. American troops did not provide security for civilians. Today, though, they are.

“We’ve been getting to know these people for months,” Lieutenant Pitts told me before we arrived at the house. “We thought if we got to know them as people and promised to protect them from violence that they would help us win the war against the insurgents. And it works.”

“Some people complain about Iraqis working with Americans,” said the man with the beard. “But then many of them work for Americans as soon as they are offered a job. When they complain they are just jealous. Give people jobs. That is the key.”

“In the four years you have been here,” our host said, “only lately have you finally come around and talked to us about what we want and need.”

“Hopefully in the last six months we’ve been able to improve your area,” Lieutenant Pitts said.

“Yes,” said the host. “Yes! And what about big projects like hospitals?”

“Soon, in the future,” said the lieutenant. “We do have some big projects coming up.”

One of those big projects is the installation of 1,500 solar-powered street lights in the neighborhood. Most sectors of Baghdad only get one hour of electricity every day. And the Iraqi sun is so fierce, solar powered lights are almost a no-brainer. Insurgents sabotage the electrical grid and make it all but irreparable, but there’s no grid for decentralized solar lights to attack.

“Right now you’re light,” our host said. “If you do big projects people will really love you. People see we’re working with you. Support all of us more and it will be okay. They will love you. They will even give you their shoes.”

“What about the big fight at the mayor’s house?” Lieutenant Pitts said. He was referring to the mayor of the neighborhood of Graya’at, not the mayor of the entire city of Baghdad.

“The mayor works for himself,” said the host. “His son, though, was listening to music in his parked car. Mahdi Army men came up and threw sandals at him and beat him up. They fired warning shots in the air. The shots were a way of saying We have weapons.”

“A big problem is that lots of displaced people are coming back into this area,” said the man with the beard.

“And what about the illegal checkpoint that we busted up?” said the lieutenant. “I need to know the fallout.”

We weren’t quite getting down to brass tacks yet, but were close.

“What you need to do,” said the host, “is bust up two or three of the other checkpoints so people don’t think you’re taking sides. They are checking ID cards to find out if people are Sunni or Shia.”

The lieutenant and our interpreter Nathan whispered conspiratorially. Pitts nodded. They clearly worked well together.

“Tell them they are only allowed two checkpoints,” the host said, “one at each end of the market. None in the middle. They are taking 5,000 dinars from each vehicle. They use that money to buy weapons for the Mahdi Army.”

“Have you heard about anyone storing weapons?” said Lieutenant Pitts. “Not in these houses but in [omitted]?”

“No,” said the man with the beard.

“We got a report that there are caches there,” said the lieutenant.

“We’ll keep our eyes open,” said our host. “We will [omitted] and get back to you.”

I’m leaving out certain details by choice to protect these Iraqis, but I still want to give you an idea about what was said.

They have clever ways of keeping their eyes on the neighborhood. Their methods have always been used in the alleyways of Arab societies. Insurgents can possibly guess what those methods are, but they will not learn it from me.

Lieutenant Pitts pulled a color print picture out of his pocket. “Do you recognize this man?” he said.

He passed the picture around.

“This guy is bad guy,” he said. “He’s done some bad things to Shias. I was hoping to catch him these evening.”

It was news to me that I might be along for the ride during a night raid. But no one seemed to recognize him, so it looked like that wasn’t happening.

“We have some Sunni friends in [omitted],” Lieutenant Pitts said. “But they’re afraid to tell us about bad Sunnis. We know [omitted] lives in this area. There are no Sunnis here. I just want to sit down and talk to [omitted]. I think he’s the final piece to this puzzle. Then we’ll be able to roll these guys up. We’ve tried to get this guy before, but some other Sunnis in the area warned him in advance that we were after him.”

“I am sorry, my friend,” said the man with the beard and shook his head.

“If you can provide even a small piece of information,” said the lieutenant. “The fuel station we’re building will be open soon. The swing gates and security checkpoints at the market are already in place. The solar lights will be installed shortly.”

The Iraqis shook their heads. I doubt Pitts needed to remind them of what the Army had done for them lately. They seemed plenty motivated already, as Shias, to get Shia-murdering Sunni thugs off the streets.

It was time to move on to the next house. We said our goodbyes and I sincerely thanked the generous Iraqis for their hospitality. When the soldiers rose from the couch the kids ran up and gave them high-fives.

“One last thing,” Lieutenant Pitts said. “If you come back from your vacation in [omitted] and you don’t bring us pictures, we are taking over your store.”

Everyone laughed at the obvious joke.

“We will bring you a gift from outside,” said the man with the beard.

“A real live woman?” said the lieutenant. “Will you bring me a second wife?”

More big laughs all around.

I strapped on my body armor.

“Do you want to stay a while longer and take a nap?” said our host.

“Thank you,” Lieutenant Pitts said. “But we have work to do tonight.”

They’ll have work to do for years.

*

Those men were Shias who lived among Sunnis. Next we would meet with a Sunni who lived among Shias.

We drove for five minutes, parked the Humvees, and quietly, casually, walked to a different part of the neighborhood.



I had no idea where we were going, and we seemed to take random turns to disguise our intent and direction in case anyone watched.

Then, out of the blue, Lieutenant Pitts tried not to look obvious as he rang somebody’s doorbell.

The city was dark, quiet, and still, and not in an ominous way. It may not have been tranquil, but it felt like it was. As was often the case, I was surprised how relaxed I felt in Baghdad. Suddenly two feral cats screeched and fought tooth and claw in the street.

A man came out the front door and opened the gate leading into the courtyard. He saw me and several soldiers and quietly beckoned us in. We did not go in the house, though. We crouched next to the wall just inside the courtyard where no one could see us. Someone could have heard our conversation if they were standing just on the other side of the wall, but several soldiers spread out on the streets and made sure nobody did.

“Hello,” the man said in English. “I was wondering when you would show up.”

The man had briefly approached Lieutenant Pitts in public a few weeks before and said he had some information to give him. Not wanting to appear obvious, Pitts asked the man where he lived and said he would pay him a visit at some unknown time in the future.

This was that time.

“Do you mind if I take your picture?” I said. I was almost certain he would say no, but thought I would ask.

He laughed. “No, no please don’t,” he said.

“It’s amazing that you asked,” said Sergeant Roma, who crouched next to me. “Most reporters just take the picture.”

“Of course I asked,” I said. “I am not going to risk getting him killed for a picture.”

Sergeant Roma nodded and rolled his eyes at the behavior of some reporters who had embedded with him in the past.

The Iraqi man works for the Baghdad government at a ministry I will not identify in the Green Zone. He showed us his card. “I would never show this card outside the gate in this neighborhood,” he told me.

The cats continued fighting in the street, loud enough to wake people up. Still, we did not go inside. Everyone just lowered their voices.

“Jaysh al Mahdi [Moqtada al Sadr’s radical Shia Mahdi Army militia] may want to attack this area,” the man said. “Mostly Sunnis live here. We don’t cause problems for anyone. This area is totally quiet.”

I can vouch for that. No violence erupted anywhere near me at any time during my stay. I wasn’t just lucky. The U.S. Army soldiers based in the area haven’t suffered a single casualty since they arrived in early 2007.

I had thought, though, that we were going to meet with a Sunni who lived among Shias. I asked the lieutenant what happened to the plan. He said he changed it at the last minute when he remembered he needed to meet with this man.

“The American military needs to make sure no one has weapons but you,” the man said. “We are suffering from bandits and thieves. I am Sunni, but I don’t pray any more.”

“Why not?” I said, expecting him to say he was disgruntled with his religion for some reason.

“So Jaysh al Mahdi doesn’t know I am Sunni,” he said. “So many Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police belong to the Mahdi Army.”

It was the middle of the night and we had awoken the man from his bed. The usual Arab formalities and socialization ritual therefore was skipped. Sometimes it’s okay to get right down to business in Baghdad.

“Jaysh al Mahdi kidnapped eleven people from this area, killed them, and left their bodies in the dump,” the man said. “I can provide you with the names of the people who did this.”

Considering where the man worked, I believed his information was credible. So did Lieutenant Pitts.

“Colonel [omitted] in the Iraqi Army works with intel files,” the man said. “He pulls files on individual Sunnis and has them assassinated one by one. I know someone who killed 25 people. I reported him to the Iraqi Army and they reported him to the U.S. Army. He was detained for two days and let go. What the hell is going on?”

Lieutenant Pitts shook his head. “I will take care of it,” he said.

“I told this to a different Iraqi Army Colonel,” the informant said, “a man who I thought could be trusted. He said he would help, but he didn’t do anything. You know, Iran is providing weapons to these people. The same guy who killed all these people wants to operate in the [omitted] area. I would give you chai [tea], but it’s the middle of the night.”

“Of course,” Lieutenant Pitts said. “It’s not a problem, and I am sorry for waking you. Listen, would you rather we meet in person or speak on the phone? I don’t want to put you in danger.”

“It is better if we speak on the phone,” the man said.

“Okay,” Lieutenant Pitts said. “We’ll get out of here and let you get back to sleep.”

The man gave the lieutenant his phone number.

“I will not share this number with anyone,” Lieutenant Pitts said. “You gave this number to me, and it will stay only with me. You do not need to worry about who else might get it.”

“Thank you, lieutenant,” the man said.

“And from now on we will only speak on the phone. For your protection. If I see you on the street I will just casually say Salam Aleikum and walk right on past.

In the Wake of the Surge
By Michael J. Totten



BAGHDAD – 82nd Airborne’s Lieutenant William H. Lord from Foxborough, Massachusetts, prepared his company for a dismounted foot patrol in the Graya’at neighborhood of Northern Baghdad’s predominantly Sunni Arab district of Adhamiyah.

“While we’re out here saying hi to the locals and everyone seems to be getting along great,” he said, “remember to keep up your military bearing. Someone could try to kill you at any moment.”



I donned my helmet and vest, hopped into the backseat of a Humvee, and headed into the streets of the city with two dozen of the first infantry soldiers deployed to Iraq for the surge. The 82nd Airborne Division is famous for being ready to roll within 24 hours of call up, so they were sent first.

The surge started with these guys. Its progress here is therefore more measurable than it is anywhere else.

Darkness fell almost immediately after sunset. Microscopic dust particles hung in the air like a fog and trapped the day’s savage heat in the atmosphere.

Our convoy of Humvees passed through a dense jungular grove of palm and deciduous trees between Forward Operating Base War Eagle and the market district of Graya’at. The drivers switched off their headlights so insurgents and terrorists could not see us coming. They drove using night vision goggles as eyes.



Just to the right of my knees were the feet of the gunner. He stood in the middle of the Humvee and manned a machine gun in a turret sticking out of the top. I could hear him swiveling his cannon from side to side and pointing it into the trees as we approached the urban sector in their area of operations.

This was all purely defensive. The battalion I’m embedded with here in Baghdad hasn’t suffered a single casualty – not even one soldier wounded – since they arrived in the Red Zone in January. The surge in this part of the city could not possibly be going better than it already is. Most of Graya’at’s insurgents and terrorists who haven’t yet fled are either captured, dormant, or dead.

A car approached our Humvee with its lights on.

“I can’t see, I can’t see,” said the driver. Bright lights are blinding with night vision goggles. “Flash him with the laser,” he said to the gunner. “Flash him with the laser!”

A green laser beam shot out from the gunner’s turret toward the windshield of the oncoming car. The headlights went out.

“What was that about?” I said.

“It’s part of our rules of engagement,” the driver said. “They all know that. The green laser is a warning, and it’s a little bit scary because it looks like a weapon is being pointed at them.”

We slowly rolled into the market area. Smiling children ran up to and alongside the convoy and excitedly waved hello. It felt like I was riding with a liberating army.

Graya’at’s streets are quiet and safe. It doesn’t look or feel like war zone at all. American soldiers just a few miles away are still engaged in almost daily firefights with insurgents and terrorists, but this part of the city has been cleared by the surge.

Before the surge started the neighborhood was much more dangerous than it is now.

“We were on base at Camp Taji [north of the city] and commuting to work,” Major Jazdyk told me earlier. “The problem with that was that the only space we dominated was inside our Humvees. So we moved into the neighborhoods and live there now with the locals. We know them and they know us.”

Lieutenant Lawrence Pitts from Fayetteville, North Carolina, elaborated. “We patrol the streets of this neighborhood 24/7,” he said. “We knock on doors, ask people what they need help with. We really do what we can to help them out. We let them know that we’re here to work with them to make their city safe in the hopes that they’ll give us the intel we need on the bad guys. And it worked.”

The area of Baghdad just to the south of us, which the locals think of as downtown Adhamiyah, is surrounded by a wall recently built by the Army. It is not like the wall that divides Israel from the West Bank. Pedestrians can cross it at will. Only the roads are blocked off. Vehicles are routed through two very strict checkpoints. Weapons transporters and car bombers can’t get in or out.

The area inside the wall is mostly Sunni. The areas outside the wall are mostly Shia. Violence has been drastically reduced on both sides because Sunni militias – including Al Qaeda – are kept in, and Shia militias – including Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army, are kept out.

Graya’at is a mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhood immediately to the north of the wall.

We dismounted our Humvees and set up a vehicle checkpoint on the far side of the market area. Curfew was going into effect. Anyone trying to drive into the area would be searched.

Dozens of Iraqi civilians milled about on the streets.

“Salam Aleikum,” said the soldiers and I as we walked past.

“Aleikum as Salam,” said each in return.

They really did seem happy to see us.





Children ran up to me.

“Mister, mister, mister!” they said and pantomimed the snapping of photos. I lifted my camera to my face and they nodded excitedly.



A large group of men gathered around a juice vendor and greeted us warmly as we approached. A large man in a flowing dishdasha spoke English and, judging by the deference showed to him by the others, seemed to be a community leader of some sort.



Kids pulled on my shirt as Lieutenant Lord spoke to the group about a gas station the Army is helping set up in the neighborhood. Gasoline is more important to Iraqis than it is to even Americans. Baghdad is as much an automobile-based city as Los Angeles. They also need fuel for electric generators. Baghdad’s electrical grid only supplies one hour of electricity every day. It is ancient, overloaded, in severe disrepair, and is sabotaged by the insurgents. The outside temperature rarely drops below 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, even at night. Air conditioners aren’t luxuries here. They are requirements. No gasoline? No air conditioner.

“The gas station on the corner should be opening soon,” the lieutenant said to the group of men. “Do you think the prices are fair?”

The fat man understood the question. Our young interpreter from Beirut, Lebanon, who calls herself “Shine,” translated for everyone else.



Most gasoline in Iraq has to be purchased on the black market for four times the commercial and government rate partly because there is an acute lack of proper places to sell it. A new gas station in this country is actually a big deal.

The men thought the price of gasoline at the station was reasonable. The conversation continued mundanely and I quickly grew bored.

Everyone was friendly. No one shot at us or even looked at us funny. Infrastructure problems, not security, were the biggest concerns at the moment. I felt like I was in Iraqi Kurdistan – where the war is already over – not in Baghdad.

It was an edgy “Kurdistan,” though. Every now and then someone drove down the street in a vehicle. If any military-aged males (MAMs as the Army guys call them) were in the car, the soldiers stopped it and made everybody get out. The vehicle and the men were then searched.



Everyone who was searched took it in stride. Some of the Iraqi men smirked slightly, as if the whole thing were a minor joke and a non-threatening routine annoyance that they had been through before. The procedure looked and felt more like airport security in the United States than, say, the more severe Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza.



“What are you guys doing out after curfew?” said Sergeant Lizanne.

“I’m sorry, sorry,” said a young Iraqi man in a striped blue and tan t-shirt.

“There is no sorry,” said Sergeant Lizanne. “I don’t give a shit. The curfew is at the same time every night. I don’t want to have to start arresting you.”

“Why are you stopping these guys,” I said to Lieutenant Lord, “when there are so many other people milling around on the streets?”

“Because they’re MAMs who are driving,” he said. “We’re going easy on everyone else. We’ve already oppressed these people enough. They have a night culture in the summer, so if they aren’t military aged males driving cars we leave them alone. We were very heavy-handed in 2003. Now we’re trying to move forward together. At least 90 percent of them are normal fun-loving people.”

“Do they ever get pissed off when you search them?” I said.

“Not very often,” he said. “They understand we’re trying to protect them.”



“This is not what I expected in Baghdad,” I said.

“Most of what we’re doing doesn’t get reported in the media,” he said. “We’re not fighting a war here anymore, not in this area. We’ve moved way beyond that stage. We built a soccer field for the kids, bought all kinds of equipment, bought them school books and even chalk. Soon we’re installing 1,500 solar street lamps so they have light at night and can take some of the load off the power grid. The media only covers the gruesome stuff. We go to the sheiks and say hey man, what kind of projects do you want in this area? They give us a list and we submit the paperwork. When the projects get approved, we give them the money and help them buy stuff.”

Not everything they do is humanitarian work, unless you consider counter-terrorism humanitarian work. In my view, you should. Few Westerners think of personal security as a human right, but if you show up in Baghdad I’ll bet you will. Personal security may, in fact, be the most important human right. Without it the others mean little. People aren’t free if they have to hide in their homes from death squads and car bombs.

In another part of Graya’at is an area called the Fish Market. Gates were installed at each entrance so terrorists can’t drive car bombs inside. The people here are extraordinarily grateful for this. Businesses, not cars, are booming now at the market. Residents feel free and safe enough to go out.



“The kids here do seem to like you,” I said to Lieutenant Lord.

“They do,” he said. “In Sadr City, though, they throw rocks and flip us off.”

The American military is staying out of Sadr City for now. The surge hasn’t even begun there, and I don’t know if it will.

I wandered over to the man selling juice at a stand. An American soldier bought a glass from him.



“Have you tried this juice?” the soldier said to me. “It’s really good stuff. Here have a sip.”

He handed me the glass. It was an excellent mixture of freshly squeezed orange juice and something else. Pineapple, I think.

The kids kept pulling my shirt.

“Mister, mister!” they said, wanting me to take their picture.



The same kids kept pestering the soldiers, as well. They seemed to get a big kick out of it.



A small group of soldiers continued talking to the locals about community projects they’re helping out with.



I tried to listen in but the kids wouldn’t leave me alone. Finally one of the adults took mercy on me and shooed the children away so I could listen and talk to the grownups. The conversation, though, was mundane. The soldiers were talking and acting like aid workers, not warriors from the elite 82nd Airborne Division.

“Man, this is boring,” one of them said to me later. “I’m an adrenaline junky. There’s no fight here. It won’t surprise me if we start handing out speeding tickets.” So it goes in at least this part of Baghdad that has been cleared by the surge.

“When we first got here,” said another and laughed, “shit hit the fan.”

It was all a bit boring, but blessedly so. I knew already that not everyone in Baghdad was hostile. But it was slightly surprising to see that entire areas in the Red Zone are not hostile.

Anything can happen in Baghdad, even so. The convulsive, violent, and overtly hostile Sadr City is only a few minutes drive to the southeast.

“Want to walk past your favorite house?” Lieutenant Lord said to Sergeant Lizanne.

“Let’s do it,” said Sergeant Lizanne.

“What’s your favorite house?” I said.

“It’s a house we walked past one night,” said Sergeant Lizanne. “Some guys on the roof locked and loaded on us.”

Gun shots rang out in the far distance. None of the Iraqis paid much attention but the soldiers perked up and stiffened their posture like hunting dogs.

“Gun shots,” Lieutenant Lord said.

“I heard,” I said. “You going to do anything about it?”

“Nah,” he said and shrugged. “They were far away and could be anything, even shots fired in the air at a wedding. A lot of these guys are stereotypical Arabs.”

The gun shots were a part of the general ambience.

*
We walked along a narrow path along the banks of the Tigris River in darkness. “The house,” as they called it, where someone locked and loaded a rifle, was a quarter mile or so up ahead.

“What will you do when you get to the house?” I asked Lieutenant Lord.

“We’ll do a soft-knock,” he said. “We’re not going to be dicks about it.”

I couldn’t see well, but I could see. Even my camera could see if I held it steady enough.

The soldiers had night vision goggles. They could see perfectly, if “green” counts as perfect. One of them let me borrow his for a few minutes.



Putting on the goggles was like stepping into another world. The soldiers’ rifles come with a laser that shoots a light visible only to those wearing the goggles. It helps soldiers zero in on their target. It also lets them “point” at things in the terrain when they talk to each other. Some used the green rifle laser to point out locations in the area the way a professor points at a chalk board with a stick.



We walked in silence and darkness toward “the house.” I could just barely make out the silhouettes of the soldiers’ helmets and rifles and body armor in front of me.

“Where should I be when this goes down?” I quietly said to the lieutenant.

“Just stay next to me,” he whispered back.

We stopped in front of the house. It was shrouded in total darkness on the bank of the river.



Lieutenant Lord quietly signaled for half his platoon to go around to the other side of the house. I scanned the roof looking for snipers or gunmen, but didn’t see anyone. Still, I still decided to step up to the outer wall of the house so no one could shoot me from the roof.

We waited in silence for ten minutes. The area was absolutely quiet and still. The curfew was in effect and we were away from the main market area where pedestrians were allowed out after dark.

Feeling more relaxed, I stepped away from the house and toward the river. Once again I checked the roof for snipers or gun men. This time I saw the black outlines of two soldiers standing up there and motioning to us below.

It was time to walk around to the other side, to the front door, and go in. I stayed close to the lieutenant.

The other side of the house, the front side of the house, was lit by street lights. Children laughed and kicked around a soccer ball.

Gun shots rang out in the night, closer this time.

“Take a knee,” Lieutenant Lord said to one of his men.

The soldier got down on one knee and pointed his weapon down the street in the direction of the gunfire. The children kept playing soccer as though nothing had happened. I casually leaned against the wall of the house in case something nasty came down the street.

We heard no more shots. It could have been anything.

A soldier pushed open the gate and moved up the stairs toward the front door. I followed cautiously behind the lieutenant to make sure I wouldn’t get hit if something happened.

Up the stairs was an open area in the house that hadn’t yet been finished by the construction workers.



Lieutenant Lord had gotten far ahead of me. I found him speaking to an old man and his family. He, his military age son, his wife, and some children were herded into a single small room where everyone could be watched at the same time.



“We’re not going to be dicks about it,” he had said, and he lived up to his promise. The family was treated with utmost respect. The old woman blew kisses at us. The children smiled. This was not a raid.

I stepped into the room and noticed a picture of the moderate Shia cleric Ayatollah Sistani on the wall. It suddenly seemed unlikely that this family was hostile. Still, someone in the house had locked and loaded on patrolling American soldiers.

“We have tight relationships with some of the people whose sons are detainees,” Lieutenant Colonel Wilson A. Shoffner had told me earlier. “They don’t approve of their children joining Al Qaeda or the Mahdi Army. The support for these groups really isn’t that high.”

Perhaps the man’s son was the one who had locked and loaded.

The old man handed Lieutenant Lord an AK-47. The lieutenant pulled out the clip.

“Do you have any more guns,” he said. Our Lebanese interpreter translated.

“I have only one gun,” he said. “I am an old man.”

“I have a pistol,” said the man’s son.

“If you go down into Adhamiyah do you take your pistol with you?” said the lieutenant. Adhamiyah is a Sunni-majority area, and this family was Shia.

“No,” he said. “Of course not.”



“Someone here locked and loaded on me when we did a foot patrol along the river a while ago,” Lieutenant Lord said. “Who was it?”

The old man laughed. “It was me!” he said and laughed again. He couldn’t stop laughing. He even seemed slightly relieved. “I thought it might have been insurgents! It was dark. I couldn’t see who it was. All Americans are my sons.”

Lieutenant Lord looked at him dubiously.

“What did you see?” he said. “Tell me the story of what you saw.”

“I heard people walking,” said the old man. “I did not see Americans. I looked over the roof and heard who I guess was your interpreter speaking Arabic.”

“Sergeant Miller,” Lieutenant Lord said.

“Sir,” Sergeant Miller said.

“Does that sound right to you?”

“Sounds right to me, LT,” he said.

“If this is a nice neighborhood,” Lieutenant Lord said, “why did you lock and load?”

“I thought maybe there were insurgents down there,” the old man said.

“Are there insurgents here?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think here, no.”

“Then why lock and load?”

The old man mumbled something.

“Sergeant Miller, I want to separate the old man from his family,” Lieutenant Lord said. “Keep an eye on them.”

The lieutenant walked the old man to the roof. I followed.

“I’m very concerned about what you’re telling me,” he said. “Who is making you live in fear?”

“I’m a good guy,” said the old man.

“I’m not saying you aren’t,” said the lieutenant. “I’m just very concerned that you are afraid of somebody here.”

“It was the first time. It was dark. I couldn’t see. I’m very sorry.”

“It’s okay,” said the lieutenant. “You don’t need to be sorry. You have the right to defend yourself and your home. Just be sure if you have to shoot someone that you know who you’re shooting at. Thank you for your help, and I am sorry for waking you up.”

The old man hugged the lieutenant and kissed him on his both cheeks.

The family waved us goodbye.

“Ma Salema,” I said and felt slightly guilty for being there.

We walked back to the Humvees.

“Do you believe him?” I said to the lieutenant. I have no idea how to tell when an Iraqi is lying.

“I do,” he said. “I think he’s a good guy. His story matched what happened.”

“He didn’t want to answer your question, though,” I said, “about who he is afraid of.”

There are terrible stories around here about the masked men of the death squads. Sometimes they break into people’s houses and asking the children who they’re afraid of. If they name the enemies of the death squad, they are spared. If they name the death squad itself, they and their families are killed. It’s a wicked interrogation because it cannot be beaten – the children don’t know which death squad has broken into the house.

“He didn’t want to say who he’s afraid of because he’s afraid,” Lieutenant Lord said. “If the insurgents find out he gave information to us, or that he helped us, he’s dead.”

Welcome to Baghdad

By Michael J. Totten

BAGHDAD -- Never again will I complain about the inconvenience and discomfort of airports and civilian airline travel delays. You won't either if make your way from Kuwait to Baghdad in July during a war.

Military planes leave Kuwait every couple of hours for Baghdad International Airport (or BIAP, pronounced BIE-op). The United States Army's media liaison in Kuwait dropped me off at the airfield so I could take a flight "up."

I waited twelve hours in a metal folding chair in a room full of soldiers who, for obvious reasons, had priority over me for available seats.

At least I had a meal. On the other side of the base a McDonalds and Pizza Hut were tucked inside trailers supplied by Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR). KBR seems to have built almost everything here that the military uses as housing and storage. Out of plywood, plastic, and sheet metal they construct instant aesthetically brutal outposts of America, which somehow look and feel specifically like outposts of Texas.

I ordered a pizza from a Pakistani employee at the Pizza Hut trailer and paid with American dollars. They don't use coins on the base. They don't even have coins on the base. If your food costs, say, $5.75 and you pay with six dollars, you'll get a small round cardboard disk or chit that says "25 cent gift certificate" on it as change.

All night I waited for a flight and was bumped again and again by soldiers on their way to places like War Eagle, Victory, and Fallujah. Finally I got on a manifest and gathered around a gruff barking sergeant with everyone else.

"I want you all back here in 20 minutes," he bellowed. "First, I want you to go to the bathroom. Then I want to see you standing in front of me with a bottle of water."

I went to the bathroom even though I didn't have to. Then, as ordered, I pulled a cold bottle of water out of the fridge. We lined up with our gear and marched single file into the plane. I felt awkwardly out of place and also like I was in the army myself at the same time.

The plane was windowless and loud as 100 lawnmowers. I crammed pink foam plugs into my ears, strapped on my body armor, and seat belted myself into the side of the plane.

"Hang your bags on the hooks!" barked the sarge. "Hang them all the way up!"

"Don't fall asleep," said the soldier next to me. "When you see the rest of us grab our helmets, put yours on, too. We'll be beginning the spiral dive into Baghdad."

"To avoid flying low over hostiles?" I said.

"Something like that," he said.

This was not United Airlines.

The funny thing about the steep corkscrew dive is that I couldn't feel it. Anyone who says it is scary, as some journalists do, is talking b.s. If you can't look out the window or see the instruments in the cockpit, you'll have no idea if the plane is right-side up, flying in a straight line, upside down, sideways, or even spinning into a death spiral. I'm not sure how the others knew when to put on their helmets. Perhaps someone signaled. No one could hear anything over the roar of the plane through their ear plugs.

The landing was smooth and felt no different from an American Airlines touch down in Los Angeles. The back of the plane opened up onto the tarmac. Light like a hundred suns blinded my darkness-adjusted and dilated eyes. I could barely make out the dim shape of military aircraft behind us amidst the pure stunning brilliance. My first view of Baghdad looked exactly as I expected it would – like another world.

We dismounted the plane and I stepped into harsh blazing sunshine.

You know how it feels when you get into a black car in the afternoon with the windows rolled up in July? It's an inferno outside, but inside the car it's even hotter? That's how Iraq feels in the shade. Sunlight burns like a blowtorch. If you don't wear a helmet or soft cap the sun will cook your brain. First you get headaches. Then you end up in the hospital.

Getting from BIAP to the IZ (the International Zone, aka the Green Zone) is an adventure all by itself. First you haul your gear to a bus stop that feels like Crematoria. Then you get on the bus and ride for 45 minutes to an army base. Then you get off that bus and wait an hour to catch another bus. Then you get off that bus and wait for an hour to catch yet another bus to yet another base. Then you wait in the sun yet again – and by this time you're totally fragged from the heat – and take another damn bus to a helipad.

All this takes hours. You will be no closer to Baghdad than you were when you started. There are no short cuts.

Once you make your way to the helipad you will wait for a flight on a Blackhawk or a Chinook. If you're a civilian like me, you will fly last.

I waited for my helicopter flight with two other civilians – Willie from Texas and Larry from Florida.

Willie and Larry work construction for private companies in harsh places like Iraq and Afghanistan. They are both well-rounded individuals with Red State tastes and political views and a worldliness and cosmopolitanism that surpasses that of most people who live in the Blue States. They aren't allowed to tell me how much money they make, but it is many hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

"You get hooked on making money," Willie said. "You think you can do it for one year or two, then quit, but it's like a drug. Or like when you get one tattoo – all of a sudden you want two tattoos. My wife keeps saying, come on, you can do it for just one more year."

"My wife would hate it if I was out here for years," I said.

"You get vacation," Larry said. "You get more vacation than French people. 21 days every four months. And you don't have to pay taxes if you take your vacation outside the U.S. Your wife can meet you in the Bahamas."

A KBR employee who coordinates the Blackhawk flights called our names on the manifest.

"Get your gear, let's go, let's go, let's go!"

Military rules require all Blackhawk passengers to wear long-sleeved shirts. This was the first I'd heard of it, and I hadn't brought any long-sleeved shirts with me to Iraq. Why would I? It's 120 degrees in the shade.

Willie let me borrow an extra sweatshirt. I put that on, then my body armor, then my helmet, then my sunglasses which double as ballistic eye protection. Then hauled my 100 pounds of gear out onto the landing zone and lined up with the soldiers. KBR and the army made all of us stand there in line, waiting and broiling in the sun. We waited. And waited. And waited. My clothes were as drenched as if I had fallen into a pool. This is the army. Comfort is not a factor. None of the soldiers complain about heat. They just take it, and they get much hotter than me. They wear not only Kevlar like I do, but full kit body armor with SAPI plates.

Our Blackhawk helicopter was ready.

"Move out!" bellowed the KBR flight coordinator.

Larry, Willie, and I ran behind a line of soldiers toward the Blackhawk.

"Hold up!" said the coordinator.

The Blackhawk pilot lifted off without picking up one single passenger.

"Man," said the coordinator as he shook his head. The roar of the chopper rotors quickly receded. "No one was mission critical so they didn't want to give anybody a ride. I do not know what to tell you."

"F*ck!" Willie screamed.

We hauled our gear back to the waiting area and sat. I drank a bottle of water in seconds. It disappeared inside me. I couldn't even tell I had drank it.

"Last year in Afghanistan," Larry said, "I waited a week for a flight. Choppers flew in and out all day every day. I showed up on the LZ for every flight, had my gear ready, and kept getting bumped. A whole week, just to fly one from place to another. At least I was on the clock. We might be here a while."

We were there for a while. Not for a week, but for 12 hours. We kept getting bumped by new soldiers who showed up with places to go. A second time the pilot took off without picking anyone up. I couldn't figure out why he even bothered to land. Dozens of people needed a ride. On another occasion Larry, Willie, and I made it all the way to the helicopter itself before we got kicked for some reason.

I tried to embrace the suck. Willie got increasingly agitated.

"Good thing I don't have my glock with me!" he yelled after we got bumped for the sixth time. "I ought to pour a bottle of water on that electrical board over there and short out the whole frigging place."

After the sun went down the air mercifully cooled, down to 100 degrees or so – which is lovely after 120, especially when there is no longer burning sunlight. Tiny bats flew over the base from the direction of a reedy lake a few hundred meters away. There were no bugs.

I watched helicopters fly over the city in the distance and launch burning white countermeasure flares to confuse heat-seeking missiles as the pilots flew over hostile parts of the city. This was the only evidence I saw that I was in a war zone. I heard no shots fired, and I heard no explosions.

After having spent several days Baghdad's Green Zone and Red Zone, I still haven't heard or seen any explosions. It's a peculiar war. It is almost a not-war. Last July's war in Northern Israel and Southern Lebanon was hundreds of times more violent and terrifying than this one. Explosions on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border were constant when I was there.

You'd think explosions and gunfire define Iraq if you look at this country from far away on the news. They do not. The media is a total distortion machine. Certain areas are still extremely violent, but the country as a whole is defined by heat, not war, at least in the summer. It is Iraq's most singular characteristic. I dread going outside because it's hot, not because I'm afraid I will get hurt.

"I read on the Internet that the war costs 60 billion dollars a year," Larry said.

"Well, if it's on the Internet it must be true," I said jokingly.

A soldier heard me and swiveled his head.

"Did you just say that?" he said incredulously. "You're with the media and you just said that? Man, we ought to throw your ass right out of here."

I laughed, but he was only barely just kidding.

Most soldiers and officers I've casually met so far are not hostile. Most ignore me unless I say hi to them first. Others say hello or good morning first and call me "sir." Some are eager to chat. They all seem to want to know where I'm from. Lots of them are from Georgia and Texas.

Larry, Willie, and I finally got on a Blackhawk at 2:00 in the morning (oh two hundred in milspeak.) We strapped ourselves in our seats and piled our hundreds of pounds of luggage on top of us.

Blackhawk helicopters don't have windows. The sides are open to the air. Fierce hot blasts of wind distorted the shape of my face as we flew fast and low over the roof tops and street lights and palm trees and backyards of the city.

Baghdad is gigantic and sprawling. It looks much less ramshackle from the air than I expected. Individual cities-within-a-city are home to millions of people all by themselves. The sheer enormity of the place puts the almost daily car bomb attacks into perspective. The odds that you personally will be anywhere near the next car bomb or IED are microscopic.

A few minutes after takeoff from the helipad we landed on a runway in the IZ, or the Green Zone. The soldiers left in Humvees. Willie, Larry, and I were left at the airbase alone. My two traveling buddies had rides picking them up, but no one was waiting for me, nor would someone show up. I was expected to make my way to CPIC, the press credentialing center, but how could I do that at 2:30 in the morning? There were no taxis or busses to take.

"You can sleep tonight at our compound," Larry said, "and find your way to the press office tomorrow when it's open."

I would have been in trouble if I hadn't met these two guys. I may have been deposited in the reasonably safe Green Zone, but wandering around loose on my own in Baghdad, in the middle of the night, hauling 100 pounds of luggage, sleep-deprived, in extreme heat, and with nowhere to sleep does not put me in my happy place.

Mike Woodley showed up in an SUV to give Larry a ride. He said he could get me a bed at their compound before he realized I did not yet have a badge.

"They won't let you in," he said.

"Can't we just tell them I'm on my way to CPIC to pick up my badge?" I said.

"Doesn't matter," he said. "If you don't have it, the guards will not let you in."

"Is there a hotel I can check into?" I said. "What about the Al Rashid?"

"Al Rashid is in the Red Zone," he said. "And you can't get in there without a badge either."

Actually, the Al Rashid is in the Green Zone, right on the edge of it. But Mike was right about the hotel guards not letting me in without a badge. And I needed to get to the press office during business hours to get it.

"What should I do?" I said. I did not want to sleep on the sidewalk in Baghdad.

Mike pondered my options. And he came up with a great one.

"I can get into the embassy with my badge," he said, "and I can get you a temporary badge and a bed."

That's exactly what he did. He got me a temporary badge into the embassy annex, and he got me a bed with a pillow and fresh linens. For only the second time in a week, I got to sleep in a bed. And I was one lucky bastard. The embassy annex, and the bed I got to sleep in, was at the grandest downtown palace built by Saddam Hussein. The tyrant is dead, and I got to sleep at his house on my very first night in his capital. What better welcome to Baghdad could anyone possibly ask for?

A new Pew study reports that the new Democratic congress only has a 37% approval rating (not much higher than Bush's approval rating.)

The one saving grace Democrats have for now, is that Republicans in congress still have an even lower approval rating. Proof that the Democratic strategy of leading by following someone who is even more incompetent than you, is working like a charm. After all, they accomplished their goals for the first 100 days in congress, right? Well, not really. Some measures have passed the senate, none have been able to be satisfyingly compromised to both houses' liking, and none have been signed into law.

Democrats are dragging their feet on campaign reform, the minimum wage increase is struggling desperately, and the one thing they have been consistent on, their opposition to Bush's troop surge strategy and soon to be vetoed timetable for withdrawal, may be heading in the wrong direction -- I suppose that the new congress's lack of real world ability is something we should be grateful for. You may not have heard but despite recent dramatic insurgent attacks in Baghdad's green zone, the AP is reporting that civilian deaths in Baghdad are down. No doubt thanks in part to Bush's security crackdown. It should be mentioned that deaths, unsurprisingly, are up outside of Baghdad, but not to such a degree that they offset the gains made. This is in no means to suggest things are "good" inside Baghdad, simply that they may be moving in the right direction.

We can only hope that everyone's favorite lesser of two evils soon realizes that the path of least resistance is not necessarily the best way to lead.

I used to be a supporter of John McCain. He actually seemed an impressive candidate back in the day, but has now officially turned into a crazy old man. It has been a slow, sad journey into his current pathetic state and every moment has been documented in the press. This week we saw the final nail in the coffin for McCain, as he sauntered the streets of Baghdad in a moment that reminds one of Michael Dukakis riding in a tank.

The McCain-Baghdad nightmare started last week, when McCain went on several talk shows and claimed parts of Baghdad were safer than Detroit.

That, of course, turned out to be bullshit. Reporters in Baghdad, military officers and Iraqi civilians flat out said that McCain was wrong. So, what do you do if you’re a crazy old man? You prove those fuckers wrong! McCain was off to Baghdad this week, where he strolled the streets while being guarded by 100 American soldiers, 3 Blackhawk helicopters and 2 Apache gunships – just like they do in Detroit. He also threw in a bulletproof vest for good measure.

Only 30 minutes after McCain left, a half dozen morters were fired at the Green Zone, where he had held his press conference. The next day was even worse as 21 workers from the market McCain had visited were “ambushed, bound and shot dead.” Doesn’t take a genius to realize the insurgents were sending a message.

So, McCain is a fucking idiot when it comes to Iraq, but so are a lot of the politicians these days. Unfortunately, that is who seems to be speaking for the Iraqis. We get a quote from Cheney, Rice or Bush about what the Iraqis want but rarely do we hear it from their own mouths, which is a direct result of how dangerous the country has become. Reporters are scared to venture outside the Green Zone. I am tired of hearing assholes like McCain and Rice tell me what is going on in Iraq when they have not spent a day on the ground and therefore don’t know shit.

Well, we finally have a glimpse inside the mind of the every day Iraqi and it is amazing. The website Hometownbaghdad.com has given us some of the most riveting videos I have ever seen on the internet. Created by Iraqis, it is a “documentary web series following the lives of a few Iraqi 20-somethings trying to survive in Baghdad.”

Meet Adel, a middle class, heavy metal guitar player whose band has split up because of the war.



There also seems to be an issue with bullets that McCain failed to mention on this visit.



It’s a side of the war you have never seen.

Life in Baghdad has obviously been a nightmare since the US invasion. Residents have had to suffer through the constant bombings, shootings and kidnappings. Sectarian cleansing has been occurring in neighborhoods by both Sunnis and Shiites. Electricity has never been restored to pre-war levels. Healthy drinking water, doctors and just places to live are becoming more and more scarce as the war goes on. So, why not shit in the street?

The city’s sewage system has collapsed after four days of heavy rain, creating a delightful living environment for residents.

Not everyone is those neighborhoods can afford to buy bottled water. Some people are reported to be drinking water that is mixed with sewage, which means residents are now threatened with gastroenteritis, typhoid fever, cholera, diarrhea and hepatitis.

That should be easy in a city that is being ravaged by a civil war, as well as the relentless corruption that has stunted any rebuilding of the infrastructure. Dr. Ali blamed the Ministry of Municipality and Public Works for not up keeping the sewers. But the municipality claimed it could not do its work because of violent attacks against its employees.

Six hundred employees of the Ministry of Municipality have been killed over the past nine months. So this should work out well.

When discussion of the Iraq invasion comes up, inevitably the response from those who supported the war is "no matter how bad things are now, the people of Iraq are better off than they were with Saddam Hussein in charge." In some respects they're correct; they have something like a functioning representative democracy, and state sponsored killings have so far not materialized. But many of the more mundane aspects of daily life, the things that keep a feeling of normalcy, are much worse now than they were before. Like, for example, electricity. Without it you couldn't be reading this article, and it has become such a basic fact of life in most of the Western world that going without it is almost unthinkable. But not so in Baghdad. Violent insurgents have systematically targeted the main power lines bringing electricity into the city from outside power plants in attacks, and have almost completely isolated it from the rest of the grid.

Sure, that sounds absolutely miserable. But they're better off than they were with Saddam Hussein in power, right? Well, outside of Baghdad, they are, slightly, at least in this regard. But not so in the capital.

Clearly the investment in Iraqi infrastructure has a long way to go. Not to mention security for that infrastructure once it's in place. It doesn't do anyone any good to build high capacity electrical lines only to have them brought down by insurgents.

But the people in charge have a plan, right? Well, there is a plan, it just sounds a little unfeasible right now.

Five or six years, and $27 billion? To put that in perspective, Iraq's entire GDP for 2006 was $47 billion, and that was considered to be a surprisingly good year. Is the country going to make that large of an investment in the electrical system for just its capital city, particularly when there are so many other pressing concerns? It seems unrealistic, at least without significant outside assistance. But something has got to happen, or the lights may go out for good.

If reports of the destruction of the largest ammo dump in Iraq are true, the US government has some explaining to do. What we know for sure is that insurgents hit the ammunition dump at Forward Base Falcon in Baghdad on October 10th. Enormous explosions followed and continued through the night, shaking buildings miles away. The US military confirmed that the base's ammunition depot was hit at 10:40 p.m. But that is where the stories take two very different roads. According to the military, there were no casualties and the attack had no strategic effect.

According to several Arab news sources the damage was much worse. A writer from the Novosti Press Agency gave this account:

Several news sources claim transport planes with red crosses painted on the side arrived to carry out the dead.

Forward Base Falcon was huge, covering nearly a square mile and was surrounded with guard tower-studded high concrete walls. Some reports claim the insurgents were given important targets from “sources familiar with the layout” of the base.

The base is now apparently in ruins. Many of the walls and towers of the camp were damaged or destroyed along with many of the barracks and maintenance depots. There was also a great amount of damage to the huge mess halls that can hold up to 3000 soldiers. The administration buildings and a large recreation center were completely destroyed. US troops were seen hauling away 30 burned out tanks and Armored Vehicles. The cost is said to be over 1 billion dollars.

So, who to believe? The oddly limited US military version of events or the incredibly detailed foreign press version? Both sources are obviously biased. The military claims there were no casualties and only two minor injuries. The foreign news services actually have actually posted the names of the dead. The military claim seems more odd if you look at video of the explosions. Particularly the one at 3:57 on this Arab news video.



I’m not sure how an explosion that huge would cause no fatalities, considering the damage done to troops by roadside IEDs. Like all conspiracies, this one already has its own web page, with many links to some biased news sources and some not so biased.

Iraqis kicked off the summertime festivities with a suicide car bombing in Baghdad on Sunday. A fruit market in the poor Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City was packed with vendors and shoppers when the bomb exploded. Over 100 people are killed but are still “better off” without Saddam. Baghdad’s morgue was already overflowing before the attack and today only added to the grim situation.

The bombing turned out to be very poor timing for Prime Minister Nouri Maliki who was leaving on a trip to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states to gather support for an amnesty plan that hopes to alleviate the anger between Shiites and Sunni Arabs. He decided to jump on the plane anyway. Shiites in Sadr City were upset Maliki did not cancel his trip, that he did not prevent the attack and the idea of giving amnesty to people who seperate children from their arms.

And it’s just not summer in Iraq if the Sunni and Shiite are not killing each other. The Sunni led insurgency has been using bombs since the beginning of the war killing soldiers, police, women and children. At the same time, the Shiite are operating death squads in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

A grave filled with 16 bodies was found in southern Baghdad. Ten other bodies were found in other parts of the city. All of the bodies showed signs of torture.

Meanwhile, some classic summer hijinks were going on in southern Baghdad on Saturday. Sunni lawmaker Tayseer al-Mashhadani was kidnapped at a checkpoint in a Shiite area. Thirty-nine armed men at a checkpoint stopped her convoy and only one bodyguard managed to escape. The largest Sunni Arab bloc in parliament, The Iraqi Accordance Front, announced they would stop attending meetings until she is released. The Front holds 44 seats in the 275-member assembly.

And what is summertime without a little planned rape and murder? A group of American soldiers are under investigation for raping an Iraqi woman, then killing her family in southern Baghdad. According to a US military official, the soldiers spent nearly a week planning the attack.

Apparently the Sunni family had just moved to a new home when the soldiers entered, separated the woman from her other three family members, raped her, then set her on fire. When they were done they killed the other family members, one of which was a child. All are considered to be “better off” than when the were living under Saddam Hussein.

And we can expect the summertime action to heat up even more as the temperatures soar to 122 degrees. Summer has always been a time when Iraqis take their annual leave from jobs, which thankfully many now do not have. The rich will be able to speed off to air conditioned Jordan and Syria but the poor will stay to enjoy the six whole hours of electricity they get everyday. Before the war, when they were worse off, many areas of Baghdad suffered through 24-hours a day of electricity. Certainly the insufferable heat will surely lead to a calmer atmosphere.

And what is summer without an audio kick off from Mr. Heat himself? Osama "I'm still free" bin Laden has released his latest single. In the new hit, he endorsed the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, who replaced Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Bin Laden also warned Shiites against working with the US in its fight against insurgents.

Other Iraqi "kicking off the summertime" festivities include:

Many US airlines are offering summer packages to those looking to have a good time and enjoy the sun.

Better off without Saddam Baghdad was shut down today when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered everyone off the streets of the capital from 2 p.m. until 5 p.m. Al-Maliki declared a state of emergency after insurgents set up roadblocks in the center of the city and opened fire on US and Iraqi troops outside the Green Zone. All morning, Iraqi and U.S. military forces fought with insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and rifles in busy Haifa Street, which runs into the Green Zone, site of the U.S. and British embassies and the Iraqi government.

Firefights also erupted in the south Baghdad area known as Dora. A roadside bomb in the southeast of the city killed another two US soldiers, while in the Anbar province two marines died in combat in separate attacks.

In Basra, a car bomb exploded in a market and nearby gas station, killing five and wounding 18. Another bomb went off in a Sunni mosque in Hibhib, northeast of Baghdad, killing 10 worshippers and wounding. At least 19 other people were killed in Baghdad, yet somehow they are better off without Saddam. Also, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is still dead.

Ten days ago, Al-Maliki launched a massive security operation, deploying tens of thousands of troops into the city streets in a futile attempt to rein in the insurgent and sectarian violence.