Chapter 43
And at the time, it was funny, in a perverse kind of way.
You didn't know which direction they'd attack from, but the tactics were almost always the same. The insurgents would start out with automatic fire, pop off a bit here, pop off there. Then you'd get the RPGs, a flurry of fire; finally, they'd scatter and try to get away.
One day, we took out a group of insurgents a short distance from the hospital. We didn't realize it at the time, but Army intel pa.s.sed the word later on that the insurgent command had made a cell phone call to someone, asking for more mortarmen, because the team that had been hitting the hospital had just been killed.
Their replacements never showed up.
Shame. We would have killed them, too.
Everyone knows by now about Predators, the UAVs that supplied a lot of intelligence to American forces during the war. But what many don't know is that we had our own backpack UAVs-small, man-launched aircraft about the size of an RC aircraft kids of all ages play with in the States.
They fit in a backpack. I never got to operate one, but they did seem kind of cool. The trickiest part-at least from what I could see-was the launch. You had to throw it pretty hard to get it airborne. The operator would rev the engine, then fling it into the air; it took a certain amount of skill.
Because they flew low and had relatively loud little engines, the backpack UAVs could be heard on the ground. They had a distinctive whine, and the Iraqis soon learned that the noise meant we were watching. They became cautious as soon as they heard it-which defeated the purpose.
Things got so heavy at some points that we had to take up two different radio bands, one to communicate with our TOC and one to use among the platoon. There was so much radio traffic back and forth that comms from the TOC would overrun us during contact.
When we first started going out, our CO told our top watch to wake him every time we got into a TIC-a military acronym that stands for "troops in contact," or combat. Then we were getting in so much combat that he revised the order-we were only to notify him if we'd been in a TIC for an hour.
Then it was, only notify me if someone gets injured.
Shark Base was a haven during this time, a little oasis of rest and recreation. Not that it was very fancy. It had a stone floor, and the windows were blocked by sandbags. At first, our cots were practically touching, and the only homey touch was the banged-up footlockers. But we didn't need much. We'd go out for three days, come back for a day. I'd sleep, then maybe play video games for the rest of the day, talk on the phone to back home, use the computer. Then it was time to gear up and go back out.
You had to be careful when you were talking on the phone. Operational security-OpSec, to use yet another military term-was critical. You couldn't say anything to anyone that might give away what we were doing, or what we planned to do, or even specifically what we had done.
All of our conversations from the base were recorded. There was software that listened for key words; if enough came up, they'd pull the conversation, and you could very well get in trouble. At one point, somebody ran their mouth about an operation, and we all got cut off for a week. He was pretty humiliated, and of course we reamed him out. He felt appropriately remorseful.
Sometimes, the bad guys made it easy for us.
One day we went out and set up in a village near the main road. It was a good spot; we were able to get a few insurgents as they tried pa.s.sing through the area on their way to attack the hospital.
All of a sudden, a bongo truck-a small work vehicle with a cab and a bed in the back where a business might carry equipment-careened from the road toward our house. Rather than equipment, the truck was carrying four gunmen in the back, who started shooting at us as the truck drove across the fortunately wide yard.
I shot the driver. The vehicle drifted to a halt. The pa.s.senger in the front
A short while later, I spotted a dump truck heading down the main road. I didn't think all that much about it, until it turned into the driveway of the house and started coming straight at us.
We'd already interviewed the owners of the house, and knew no one there drove a dump truck. And it was pretty obvious from his speed that he wasn't there to pick up some dirt.
Tony shot the driver in the head. The vehicle veered off and crashed into another building nearby. A helo came in a short while later and blew up the truck. A h.e.l.lfire missile whooshed in, and the dump truck erupted: it had been filled with explosives.
FINALLY, A PLAN
By early June, the Army had come up with a plan to take Ramadi back from the insurgents. In Fallujah, the Marines had worked systematically through the city, chasing and then pus.h.i.+ng the insurgents out. Here, the insurgents were going to come to us.
The city itself was wedged between waterways and swampland. There was limited access by road. The Euphrates and the Habbaniyah ca.n.a.l bounded the city on the north and west; there was one bridge on either side near the northwestern tip. To the south and east, a lake, swamps, and a seasonal drainage ca.n.a.l helped form a natural barrier to the countryside.
The U.S. forces would come in from the perimeters of the city, the Marines from up north, and the Army on the other three sides. We would establish strongholds in various parts of the city, demonstrating that we were in control-and essentially daring the enemy to attack. When they did attack, we would fight back with everything we had. We'd set up more and more footholds, gradually extending control over the entire city.
The place was a mess. There was no functioning government, and it was beyond lawless. Foreigners entering the city were instant targets for killing or kidnapping, even if they were in armored convoys. But the place was a worse h.e.l.l for ordinary Iraqis. Reports have estimated that there were more than twenty insurgent attacks against Iraqis every day. The easiest way to be killed in the city was to join the police force. Meanwhile, corruption was rife.
The Army a.n.a.lyzed the terrorist groups in the city and decided there were three different categories: hard-core Islamist fanatics, a.s.sociated with al-Qaeda and similar groups; locals who were a little less fanatic though they still wanted to kill Americans; and opportunistic criminal gangs who were basically trying to make a living off the chaos.
The first group had to be eliminated because they would never give up; they would be our main focus in the coming campaign. The other two groups, though, might be persuaded to either leave, quit killing people, or work with the local tribal leaders.h.i.+p. So, part of the Army plan would be to work with the tribal leaders.h.i.+p to bring peace to the area. By all accounts, they had grown tired of the insurgents and the chaos they had brought, and wanted them gone.
The situation and plan were a lot more complicated than I can sum up. But to us on the ground, all of this was irrelevant. We didn't give a d.a.m.n about the nuances. What we saw, what we knew, was that many people wanted to kill us. And we fought back.
THE JUNDIS
There was one way the overall plan did affect us, and not for the better.
The Ramadi offensive wasn't supposed to be just about American troops. On the contrary, the new Iraqi army was supposed to be front and center in the effort to retake the city and make it safe.
The Iraqis were there. Front, no. Center-as a matter of fact, yes. But not quite in the way you're thinking.
Before the a.s.sault began, we were ordered to help put an "Iraqi face on the war"-the term command and the media used for pretending that the Iraqis were actually taking the lead in making their country safe. We trained Iraqi units, and when feasible (though not necessarily desirable) took them with us on operations. We worked with three different groups; we called them all jundis, Arabic for soldiers, although, technically, some were police. No matter which force they were with, they were pathetic.
We had used a small group of scouts during our operations east of the city. When we went into Ramadi, we used SMPs-they were a type of special police. And then we had a third group of Iraqi soldiers that we used in villages outside of the city. During most operations, we would put them in the middle of our columns-Americans at the front, the Iraqis in the center, Americans at the rear. If we were inside a house, they would sit on the first floor, doing security and talking with the family, if there was one there.
As fighters went, they sucked. The brightest Iraqis, it seemed, were usually insurgents, fighting against us. I guess most of our jundis had their hearts in the right place. But as far as proficient military fighting went...
Let's just say they were incompetent, if not outright dangerous.
One time a fellow SEAL named Brad and I were fixing to go into a house. We were standing outside the front door, with one of our jundis directly behind us. Somehow the jundi's gun got jammed. Idiotically, he flicked off the safety and hit the trigger, causing a burst of rounds to blow right next to me.
I thought they'd come from the house. So did Brad. We started returning fire, dumping bullets through the door.
Then I heard all this shouting behind me. Someone was dragging an Iraqi whose gun had gone off-yes, the gunfire had come from us, not anyone inside the house. I'm sure the jundi was apologizing, but I wasn't in the mood to listen, then or later.
Brad stopped firing and the SEAL who'd come up to get the door leaned back. I was still sorting out what the h.e.l.l had happened when the door to the house popped open.
An elderly man appeared, hands trembling.
"Come in, come in," he said. "There's nothing here, nothing here."
I doubt he realized how close it came to that being true.
Besides being particularly inept, a lot of jundis were just lazy. You'd tell them to do something and they'd reply, "Inshallah."
Some people translate that as "G.o.d willing." What it really means is "ain't gonna happen."
Most of the jundis wanted to be in the army to get a steady paycheck, but they didn't want to fight, let alone die, for their country. For their tribe, maybe. The tribe, their extended family-that was where their true loyalty lay. And for most of them, what was going on in Ramadi had nothing to do with that.
I realize that a lot of the problem has to do with the screwed-up culture in Iraq. These people had been under a dictators.h.i.+p for all their lives. Iraq as a country meant nothing to them, or at least nothing good. Most were happy to be rid of Saddam Hussein, very happy to be free people, but they didn't understand what that really meant-the other things that come with being free.
The government wasn't going to be running their lives anymore, but it also wasn't going to be giving them food or anything else. It was a shock. And they were so backward in terms of education and technology that for Americans it often felt like being in the Stone Age.