by David Finkel
“Let’s do this,” Kauzlarich tried. “Let’s buy the right-size plastic containers.”
And so Timimi told another story about a time when plastic containers for water were distributed, and people used them sometimes to store water, and other times to store petrol, and ended up getting sick. “Educated people—they understand. But it’s very difficult to teach the citizens of Nine Nissan,” he said.
And so Kauzlarich suggested putting the big trash cans not in homes but in schools. “So we can teach kids to put garbage in the garbage cans,” he said.
And Timimi thought about this, and ignoring the fact that so many schools had been ransacked and were closed, he said: “Good!”
That was an outstanding meeting.
But more often, the meetings were like the one Kauzlarich had with a sheik who began by saying, “I wanted to have a meeting with you to thank you. I want to be the leader who brings peace to our area.”
And then he said that to do this he would need money and a car.
Also, “I need a new pistol.”
And bullets, too.
“Everybody wants something in this country,” Kauzlarich had said before the meeting, predicting what would happen. “Where is my telephone? Where is this? Where is that? When is America going to bring in paint? Walls? Electricity? Where’s the TV? Where, where, where?
“It’s a gimme gimme gimme society,” he continued, and then backed down a bit. He wasn’t blind to how bad things had become because of the war’s ruinous beginnings, and unlike many soldiers, he had read enough about Iraq, and about Islam, to have at least a fundamental awareness of the people he was among. “The whole religion of Islam is supposed to be a peaceful religion, in which the jihad is supposed to be that internal fight to be the best person you can be,” he said. “I mean the Iraqi people, they’re not terrorists. They’re good people.”
Where things got blurry for Kauzlarich, though, was in the meaning of good, especially in the subset of Iraqis whom Kauzlarich found himself dealing with. The sheik, for instance: at one point Kauzlarich threatened him with jail for possibly being involved in an IED cell, but then let him go after he promised to provide information about what was going on inside Kamaliyah and to help keep things under control. So was the sheik good or bad?Was he an insurgent, or was he an informant? All Kauzlarich knew for sure was that he was making uncertain bargains with someone who wore a heavy gold watch and a pinky ring with a turquoise stone, smoked Miami-brand cigarettes, lit those cigarettes with a lighter that had flashing red-and-blue lights, blew smoke from those cigarettes into Kauzlarich’s face while asking for money, for guns, for bullets, for a new cell phone, for a car, and referred to Kauzlarich as “my dear Colonel K.”
He also called Kauzlarich “Muqaddam K” at times, and in this he had plenty of company. Muqaddam was the Arabic equivalent of lieutenant colonel. It was what people began calling Kauzlarich soon after his arrival in February, which so pleased him that in response, to show his respect, he had been trying to use Arabic, too.
He learned to say habibi, which was “dear friend.”
He learned to say shaku maku (“what’s up?”), shukran la su’alek (“thank you for asking”), and saffya daffya (“sunny and warm”).
He learned to say anee wahid kelba (“I am one sexy bitch”), which made people laugh every time he said it.
The months went by. The meetings grew repetitive. The same complaints. The same selfish requests. The same nothing done.
He learned to say marfood (“disapproved”) and qadenee lel jenoon (“it drives me crazy”).
June came.
He learned to say cooloh khara (“it’s all bullshit”) and shadi ghabee (“stupid monkey”).
July now.
Allah ye sheelack, he found himself saying. I hope you die. “May God take your soul.”
On July 12, Kauzlarich ate a Pop-Tart at 4:55 a.m., guzzled a can of Rip It Energy Fuel, belched loudly, and announced to his soldiers, “All right, boys. It’s time to get some.” On a day when in Washington, D.C., President Bush would be talking about “helping the Iraqis take back their neighborhoods from the extremists,” Kauzlarich was about to do exactly that.
The neighborhood was Al-Amin, where a group of insurgents had been setting off a lot of IEDs, most recently targeting Alpha Company soldiers as they tried to get from their COP to Rustamiyah for Crow’s memorial service a few days before. Two IEDs exploded on the soldiers that day, leaving several of them on their hands and knees, alive but stunned with concussions, and now Kauzlarich was about to swarm into that area with 240 soldiers, 65 Humvees, several Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and, on loan to them for a few hours from another battalion, two AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships.
All together, it made for a massive and intimidating convoy that at 5:00 a.m. was lining up to leave Rustamiyah when the radar system picked up something flying through the still-dark sky. “Incoming! Incoming!” came the recorded warning as the alert horn sounded. It was a sound that, by now, after so many such warnings, seemed less scary than melancholy, and the soldiers reacted to it with shrugs. Some standing in the open reflexively hit the dirt. The gunners who were standing up in their turrets dropped down into their slings. But most did nothing, because the bullet had been fired, it was only a matter of time, and if they knew anything by now, it was that whatever happened in the next few seconds was the province of God, or luck, or whatever they believed in, rather than of them.
Really, how else to explain Stevens’s split lip? Or what happened to a captain named Al Walsh when a mortar hit outside of his door early one morning as he slept? In came a piece of shrapnel, moving so swiftly that before he could wake up and take cover, it had sliced through his wooden door, sliced through the metal frame of his bed, sliced through a 280-page book called Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, sliced through a 272-page book called Buddhism Is Not What You Think, sliced through a 128-page book called On Guerrilla Warfare, sliced through a 360-page book called Tactics of the Crescent Moon, sliced through a 176-page Calvin and Hobbes collection, sliced through the rear of a metal cabinet holding those books, and finally was stopped by a concrete wall. And the only reason that Walsh wasn’t sliced was that he happened in that moment to be sleeping on his side rather than on his stomach or back, as he usually did, which meant that the shrapnel passed cleanly through the spot where his head usually rested, missing him by an inch. Dazed, ears ringing, unsure of what had just happened, and spotted with a little blood from being nicked by the exploding metal fragments of the ruined bed frame, he stumbled out to the smoking courtyard and said to another soldier, “Is anything sticking out of my head?” And the answer, thank whatever, was no.
Another example: How else to explain what had happened just the day before, in another mortar attack, when one of the mortars dropped down out of the sky and directly into the open turret of a parked Hum-vee? After the attack was over, soldiers gathered around the ruined Hum-vee to marvel—not at the destruction a mortar could cause, but at the odds. How much sky was up there? And how many landing spots were down here? So many possible paths for a mortar to follow, and never mind the fact that every one of them comes down in a particular place— the fact that this one followed the one path that brought it straight down through a turret without even touching the edges, a perfect swish, the impossible shot, made the soldiers realize how foolish they were to think that a mortar couldn’t come straight down on them.
Resigned to the next few seconds, then, here they were, lined up at the gate, listening to the horn and the incessant, “Incoming! Incoming!” and waiting for whatever was up there to drop.
One second.
Two seconds.
A boom over there.
One second.
Two seconds.
Another boom, also over there.
And nothing here, not even close, no swish this time, so the gunners stood back up, the soldiers in the dirt dusted themselves off, and the massive convoy headed toward Al-Amin
to begin a day that would turn out to feature four distinct versions of war.
Arriving just after sunrise, Charlie Company broke off from the convoy and headed to the west side of Al-Amin. It was a saffya daffya day, and the soldiers found no resistance as they began clearing streets and houses. Birds chirped. A few people smiled. One family was so welcoming that Tyler Andersen, the commander of Charlie Company, ended up standing under a shade tree with a man and his elderly father having a leisurely discussion about the war. The Iraqis asked why the Americans’ original invasion force had been only one hundred thousand soldiers. They talked about the difficulties of life with only a few hours of electricity a day, and how much they mistrusted the Iraqi government because of the rampant corruption. The conversation, which lasted half an hour and ended in handshakes, was the longest, most civil one Andersen would have with an Iraqi in the entire war, and it filled him with an unexpected sense of optimism about what he and his company of soldiers were doing. That was the first version of war.
The second occurred in the center of Al-Amin, where Kauzlarich went with Alpha Company.
Here, sporadic gunfire could be heard, and the soldiers clung to walls as they moved toward a small neighborhood mosque. They had been tipped that it might be a hideout for weapons, and they wanted to get inside. The doors were chained shut, however, and even if they hadn’t been, American soldiers weren’t allowed in mosques without special permission. National Police could go in, but the three dozen NPs who were supposed to be part of this operation had yet to show up. Kauzlarich radioed Qasim. Qasim said they were coming. Nothing to do but wait and wonder about snipers. Some soldiers took refuge in a courtyard where a family’s wash was hanging out to dry. Others stayed bobbing and weaving on the street, which was eerily empty except for a woman in black pulling along a small girl, who saw the soldiers and their weapons and burst into tears as she passed by.
Here, finally, came the NPs.
“There are weapons inside,” Kauzlarich told the officer in charge, a brigadier general.
“No!” the general exclaimed in shock, and then laughed and led his men toward a house next door to the mosque. Without knocking, they pushed through the front door, went past a wide-eyed man holding a baby sucking his thumb, climbed the steps to the roof, took cover for a few minutes when they heard gunfire, jumped from that roof down onto the slightly lower roof of the mosque, went inside, and emerged a few minutes later with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, an AK-47, ammunition, and, placed carefully into a bag, a partially assembled IED.
“Wow,” Kauzlarich said after all this had been brought down to the street, and for a few moments, defying his own order to always keep moving, he stared at the haul, disgusted.
Weapons in a mosque. As a commander, he needed to understand why an imam might allow this, or even sanction it, because as it said in the field manual on Cummings’s desk, which was getting dustier by the day, “Counterinsurgents must understand the environment.” Good soldiers understood things. So did good Christians, and Kauzlarich desired to be one of those, too. “For he who avenges murder cares for the helpless,” he had read the night before in the One Year Bible. “He does not ignore the cries of those who suffer.”
Were these people suffering? Yes. Were they helpless? Yes. Was this their version of crying, then? Was the explanation somewhere in the words of Psalms?
But what about a statement released a few days before by an Iraqi religious leader, which said, in part: “Yes, O Bush, we are the ones who kidnap your soldiers and kill them and burn them. We will continue, God willing, so long as you only know the language of blood and the scattering of remains. Our soldiers love the blood of your soldiers. They compete to chop off their heads. They like the game of burning down their vehicles.”
What a freak show this place was. And maybe that was the explanation for the pile of weapons Kauzlarich was looking at, that it deserved no understanding whatsoever.
Weapons in a mosque, including an IED to burn vehicles and kill soldiers.
Unbelievable.
Shadi ghabees. Cooloh khara. Allah je sheelack.
“Shukran,” Kauzlarich said out loud to the general, keeping his other thoughts to himself. He made his way to his Humvee to figure out where to go next and was just settling into his seat when he was startled by a loud burst of gunfire.
“Machine gun fire,” he said, wondering who was shooting.
But it wasn’t machine gun fire. It was bigger. More thundering. It was coming from above, just to the east, where the AH-64 Apache helicopters were circling, and it was so loud the entire sky seemed to jerk.
Now came a second burst.
“Yeah! We killed more motherfuckers,” Kauzlarich said.
Now came more bursts.
“Holy shit,” Kauzlarich said.
It was the morning’s third version of war.
One minute and fifty-five seconds before the first burst, the two crew members in one of the circling Apaches had noticed some men on a street on Al-Amin’s eastern edge.
“See all those people standing down there?” one asked.
“Confirmed,” said the other crew member. “That open courtyard?”
“Roger,” said the first.
Everything the crew members in both Apaches were saying was being recorded. So were their communications with the 2-16. To avoid confusion, anyone talking identified himself with a code word. The crew members in the lead Apache, for example, were Crazy Horse 1-8. The 2-16 person they were communicating with most frequently was Hotel 2-6.
There was a visual recording of what they were seeing as well, and what they were seeing now—one minute and forty seconds before they fired their first burst—were some men walking along the middle of a street, several of whom appeared to be carrying weapons.
All morning long, this part of Al-Amin had been the most hostile. While Tyler Andersen had been under a shade tree in west Al-Amin, and Kauzlarich had dealt with occasional gunfire in the center part, east Al-Amin had been filled with gunfire and some explosions. There had been reports of sniper fire, rooftop chases, and rocket-propelled grenades being fired at Bravo Company, and as the fighting continued, it attracted the attention of Namir Noor-Eldeen, a twenty-two-year-old photographer for the Reuters news agency who lived in Baghdad, and Saeed Chmagh, forty, his driver and assistant.
Some journalists covering the war did so by embedding with the U.S. military. Others worked independently. Noor-Eldeen and Chmagh were among those who worked independently, which meant that the military didn’t know they were in Al-Amin. The 2-16 didn’t know, and neither did the crews of the Apaches, which were flying high above Al-Amin in a slow, counter-clockwise circle. From that height, the crews could see all of east Al-Amin, but the optics in the lead Apache were now focused tightly on Noor-Eldeen, who had a camera strung over his right shoulder and was centered in the crosshairs of the Apache’s thirty-millimeter automatic cannon.
“Oh yeah,” one of the crew members said to the other as he looked at the hanging camera. “That’s a weapon.”
“Hotel Two-six, this is Crazy Horse One-eight,” the other crew member radioed in to the 2-16. “Have individuals with weapons.”
They continued to keep the crosshairs on Noor-Eldeen as he walked along the street next to another man, who seemed to be leading him. On the right side of the street were some trash piles. On the left side were buildings. Now the man with Noor-Eldeen guided him by the elbow toward one of the buildings and motioned for him to get down. Chmagh followed, carrying a camera with a long telephoto lens. Behind Chmagh were four other men, one of whom appeared to be holding an AK-47 and one of whom appeared to be holding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The crosshairs swung now away from Noor-Eldeen and toward one of those men.
“Yup, he’s got one, too,” the crew member said. “Hotel Two-six, Crazy Horse One-eight. Have five to six individuals with AK-47s. Request permission to engage.”
It was now one minute and four seconds befor
e the first burst.
“Roger that,” Hotel 2-6 replied. “We have no personnel east of our position, so you are free to engage. Over.”
“All right, we’ll be engaging,” the other crew member said.
They couldn’t engage yet, however, because the Apache’s circling had brought it to a point where some buildings now obstructed the view of the men.
“I can’t get them now,” a crew member said.
Several seconds passed as the lead Apache continued its slow curve around. Now it was almost directly behind the building that Noor-Eldeen had been guided toward, and the crew members could see someone peering around the corner, looking in their direction and lifting something long and dark. This was Noor-Eldeen, raising a camera with a tele-photo lens to his eyes.
“He’s got an RPG.”
“Okay, I got a guy with an RPG.”
“I’m gonna fire.”
But the building was still in the way.
“Goddamnit.”
The Apache needed to circle all the way around, back to an unobstructed view of the street, before the gunner would have a clean shot.
Ten seconds passed as the helicopter continued to curve.
“Once you get on it, just open—”
Almost around now, the crew could see three of the men. Just a little more to go.
Now they could see five of them.
“You’re clear.”
Not quite. One last tree was in the way.
“All right.”
There. Now all of the men could be seen. There were nine of them, including Noor-Eldeen. He was in the middle, and the others were clustered around him, except for Chmagh, who was on his cell phone a few steps away.
“Light ’em all up.”
One second before the first burst, Noor-Eldeen glanced up at the Apache.
Come on—tire.
The others followed his gaze and looked up, too.
The gunner fired.
It was a twenty-round burst that lasted for two seconds.