When people ask me about Kuwait when I return home, I thought, my response will be that Kuwait is Kuwait. A large, flat desert with oil refineries and oil operations as far as the eye can see, tons of immigrant labor, and some world-class heat. I hoped that the only other time I would visit Kuwait in my lifetime would be during the return trip out of Iraq.
Iraq
We landed at Baghdad International Airport, commonly called BIOP (I’m not sure why the U.S. Army decided to use the acronym BIOP and not BIAP). The aircrew lowered the rear cargo door on the C-130 and the brilliant light of Iraq pierced the cabin. We immediately woke up and untangled ourselves from the netting of the C-130 that was acting as our seats.
Watching the cargo door fall to the ground, I wondered if rounds would start flying past us. Before this my only memorable images of Iraq involved bullets and explosions. As a first timer into a combat zone, my visions of Iraq were based more on the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day than reality. Fortunately, we were on the most secure base on the planet—Camp Victory.
Camp Victory is the U.S. Army’s crowning achievement in base construction. The base exemplifies the Army’s ability to fortify an enormous piece of earth and, at the same time, convince the Iraqi people beyond any doubt that we are here to stay for a long time. One step into the camp and it was hard for me to imagine we would be leaving Iraq any time in the next century, let alone the next few years. Not only was it huge, but it was surprisingly posh. Even the tents in the transient field quarters had outstanding amenities: air-conditioning, a floor-cleaning service, and wireless Internet. In addition to the stellar amenities in the tents, there were KBR chow halls with delicious food and enormous exercise facilities everywhere. I did not feel as though I was in Iraq. In truth I felt as if the C-130 had taken a wrong turn and landed at a Club Med in the middle of the desert somewhere. Things were looking up.
Despite the surprising comforts of Camp Victory, the place took the wind out of my sails. When I landed in Iraq, I was prepared to walk in the footsteps of the combat Marines who fought famous battles in Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. But in the midst of Camp Victory luxury, my epic vision of being a hard-charging, leather-tough combat Marine vanished.
Camp Victory had a few telltale signs that reminded me we were in Iraq. First, large blimps flew above the camp—the same airships you see flying above NFL stadiums on Sundays. Not surprisingly these aircraft have a different purpose in Iraq. The blimps over Camp Victory were there to pinpoint enemy mortar locations when terrorists decided to launch them into the base.
Another sign we were in Iraq: everyone at Camp Victory carried loaded weapons. After witnessing the caliber of the people who carried the weapons—typically overweight U.S. Army, National Guard, and U.S. Air Force personnel—my biggest fear was not dealing with a terrorist who managed to get through twenty-five layers of camp security but an Air Force airman who negligently discharged his weapon.
The most surprising detail I noticed around Camp Victory was that the place was filled with civilians. It seemed like Halliburton had taken over Iraq. I had been under the impression I would be surrounded by military personnel, but it seemed there were more civilians there. I wanted to kick myself for not buying Halliburton stock and the stock of other defense contractors at the beginning of the war. That trade would have been like taking candy from a baby.
Transient tent life was good. I met many interesting folks. People say Disneyland is a great place for people watching; I would argue that the transient tents at Camp Victory provide the best people watching in the world. There are hardened combat vets on their way out of Iraq (half of whom are mentally warped), “fresh meat” coming into Iraq, Filipino and Nepalese housekeepers who keep the place clean, and an assortment of civilian contractors who do a range of things from cleaning shitters to managing multimillion dollar engineering projects.
From what I observed in the transient tents, there was a high correlation between motivation level and time spent in Iraq. As one would expect, those who had just arrived in Iraq were full of piss and vinegar, whereas those who had been there for a long time were typically pissed and smelled like vinegar. An Army sergeant put it best when I asked him about life around camp. “Sir,” he said, “when I got here I was excited about the additional combat pay. Now that I’ve been here eight and half months, been in numerous IED [improvised explosive device] attacks, and haven’t had sex in a long time, I can’t wait to get the fuck out of this place.”
The evening after we landed we got our first small taste of the difference between camping at Yellowstone and camping at Camp Victory—mortar attacks. The attacks were nowhere near our tents, but I could still hear the rumble and feel the small earthquakes beneath me as the shockwaves moved across the ground. What I learned about mortar attacks is that you can’t worry about them because you can’t do anything to stop them.
I did some simple calculations to figure out how improbable it was to get whacked by a mortar on Camp Victory. My back-of-the-envelope calculations were based on the camp being six square miles, the mortar attacks being randomly distributed around the camp, and there being concrete barriers and sandbags everywhere. First, a six-by-six-mile area is roughly one billion square feet. Next, let us assume one of the average mortars the insurgents fling into the camp has a kill radius of about a thousand square feet, after we take into account all blast protection measures in place around camp. When you use this simple model you end up with literally a one-in-a-million chance (1000/1,000,000,000 ≈ 1/1,000,000) of having a mortar land close enough to kill you at Camp Victory.
Is a one-in-a-million chance a big deal? I remember reading a statistic somewhere that every year a nontrivial percentage of Americans are injured while trying bizarre sexual positions. I liked my chances with the mortars. If I died from a mortar attack at Camp Victory, I reasoned, at least my wife would get four hundred thousand dollars from the military’s life insurance fund, I would be buried in Arlington Cemetery, and I would be awarded a Purple Heart. This all sounded better than the alternative: “Kama Sutra gone extremely wrong.”
If the mortars reminded me that I was in Iraq, touring Saddam Hussein’s Al Faw Palace reminded me of the injustice during Saddam’s rein. The palace is stunning and truly ostentatious. Imagine one of the Arab palaces in the Disney movie Aladdin. Now put a lake around the palace and fill it with exotic fish species, tended to at all times by a small army of immigrant labor. Next add fifty acres of personal hunting grounds, stocked with nonnative exotic wildlife shipped in from all corners of the globe. Finally add on a few satellite palaces for all of your sons and some additional “recreational” palaces to house your indoor swimming pools. This is the basic setup for Al Faw Palace.
The inside of the sixty-two bedroom, twenty-nine bathroom palace is even more stunning. As you approach the palace there is an elaborate thirty-foot front door made of the most precious metals and woods on earth. Once you enter the palace door, a crystal chandelier the size of a Honda Civic hovers above your head. If you move another twenty feet inside the palace, on your right you will see a gold-plated emperor’s throne Yasser Arafat gave Saddam as a gift (see photo 1). In addition the entire interior of the palace, save the thrones and chandeliers, which are made of gold, crystal, and other precious materials, is made of hand-carved marble stones. There is even a bathroom made of pure gold inside the palace. I must admit oil-rich dictators who have a knack for stealing from the United Nations’ Oil for Food program really know how to live.
The next day we took a sixty-mile flight from Camp Victory to Camp Taji, which is twenty miles north of Baghdad. We didn’t exactly travel in style. We managed to stuff around twenty bags of equipment and six passengers into the Black Hawk helicopter, maxing out the payload in the process.
The helicopter flight over Baghdad was exhilarating. The entire time I felt as though I was an action hero in a movie. The Black Hawk pilots fly anywhere from one hundred to three hundred meters off the de
ck at around two hundred miles per hour. The purpose of flying at low altitude and high speeds is to make it difficult for insurgents to attack the aircraft. Of course, the speed is nice for dodging dangers on the ground, but when you have the Black Hawk filled to the brim with twenty bags and half your body is hanging outside the helicopter, the hairs on your neck start to stand on end.
The sights of Baghdad fascinated me. The views made me forget the danger. The Baghdad area is stunning when you put aside the daily car bombs and bristly people. Our path followed the Euphrates River, which slices straight through the heart of the city. I have never seen such lush green vegetation and palm trees in my life. This is saying something, considering I have lived in Hawaii.
From the air the disparity between rich and poor is illuminated. Certain homes in Baghdad are truly royal, complete with gargantuan private swimming pools, Euphrates riverfront views, mansion-sized dimensions, amazing architecture, lush gardens, and extravagant landscaping. Meanwhile only half a mile farther along the Euphrates, people live in extreme poverty. The slum areas of Baghdad make the nastiest parts of South Side Chicago or West Philadelphia look like a Beverly Hills gated community: trash is everywhere, sewage is flowing through the streets, people are muddling about, scrap metal collection piles are on the corners of the roads, and feral animals run rampant.
Despite the drastic differences in circumstances throughout Baghdad, there is one equalizing feature for all inhabitants in the area—the mighty Euphrates River. It is the region’s lifeblood. From above Baghdad it looks as though God decided to put an aorta in the center of the city. I had never realized how important water is to this region of the world: without water in this region, there is no civilization.
The helicopter crew chief yelled in our direction, breaking my gaze on the landscape. “Gents, the bird is landing in five minutes. Prepare your gear.” SSgt. Jonathan Chesnutt (“Nuts”) yelled, “Camp Taji, here . . . we . . . come. Yeehaw!”
Chapter 3
Preparing for Combat Adviser Duty
July–Early August 2006
We settled into Camp Taji, where we would live and train for the next few days. The camp is a joint base, one section designated for Americans and one section designated for the Iraqi army. The American side of camp is gigantic, with all of the over-the-top amenities found at Camp Victory. The base is another shining example of the U.S. Army’s finer attempts at fortifying the hell out of a piece of earth.
Camp Taji
Unfortunately, there were no fancy amenities for us; we would be living on the IA side of Camp Taji. The IA side of the camp was more spartan, but despite its lack of comforts, it had a huge advantage: we were immersed in Iraqi culture and language. Alas, a coin has two sides. A negative of the IA camp was that the U.S. Army ran the show because of the IA’s incompetence. Usually, the U.S. Army is a decent outfit and the Marines get along nicely with them; however, this time things were different. The Army had decided to put a manly female first sergeant, nicknamed the “Behemoth,” in charge of the IA camp. We had to follow the Behemoth’s rules at all times.
The Behemoth introduced herself then ranted, “Let me put a few things up front to you gentlemen. This is my camp and you will follow my rules.” She paused and started on her laundry list of rules. “My first rule is that you must be in full PT [physical training] gear, to include tennis shoes, and have your weapon with you when traveling to the heads.” Our team’s Navy corpsman, James “Doc” McGinnis, protested. “Are you telling me I have to wear my tennis shoes to the shower and bring my weapon? That would imply that I have to walk over to the shower in my tennis shoes, take my tennis shoes off, put my shower shoes on, get out of the shower, put my soggy feet into my tennis shoes, and then travel back to the barracks—and the barracks are thirty feet away! And to compound things, you want me to somehow watch my weapon while I’m cleaning my balls and have soap in my eyes?” Everyone on the MiTT laughed. The Behemoth replied defiantly, “Yes, exactly. Have a nice day gentlemen.” She squeezed her large rear through the door to our barracks and exited the room. That woman was scary.
After our encounter with the Behemoth, I put on my full PT gear—with tennis shoes—and scurried to the restroom. As I entered the head I saw a janitor. He greeted me in flawless English. “Hello, how are you doing today?” Figuring I had an Iraqi who was fluent in both English and Arabic, I attempted to ask him some questions. I rattled off Arabic phrases for a good thirty seconds, caught my breath, and waited for a response. Confused, the man again said, “Hello, how are you doing today?”
Perplexed, I spent another minute trying to engage the janitor. He was as interactive as a pet rock. Finally he responded with something I could understand: “I Filipino.” I realized I was not dealing with an Iraqi at all. I was dealing with a Filipino laborer who did not understand Arabic or English. He only knew one line in English and he knew it well. Phew, I had been worried my Arabic was no good.
We killed time watching back-to-back episodes of the TV series 24 for a couple days until finally the U.S. Army’s Camp Taji Military Adviser Course started. Major Gill, a supermotivated U.S. Army officer, taught our first class on the ins and outs of the PRC-148 radio, a personal hand-held radio with which we would communicate. Our next class, on how to operate a personal locator beacon (PLB), a device that sends signals to friendly forces if activated, was terrible.
Everyone on the MiTT thought the PLB was a perfect example of the waste, fraud, and abuse in Iraq that stabs the pocketbook of the American taxpayer, and a sign that whoever was purchasing gear for the military hadn’t spent much time in the field carrying these items on their back. The PLB is a device about the size of a large baked potato that all embedded advisers are required to wear at all times. It is bad enough we were required to wear additional gear (I guess eighty-plus pounds was not enough); however, the PLB was especially rotten because it was a neon yellow color that blended in perfectly with a banana tree.
To make matters even worse, the concept behind the device is a joke. Apparently, when taken prisoner by the insurgents, we were somehow supposed to take this potato-sized, neon yellow device from its pouch, set it right side up (in any other position it does not receive a signal), extend the antennae skyward, and press two buttons simultaneously for five seconds. Great. I was sure the insurgents would give me a timeout to get my PLB up and running.
Following our PLB class a U.S. Army officer gave us an intelligence and operations update on the team we were replacing in Haditha. The news was not good. The day before the team had hit a pressure-plate IED, which totaled a Humvee, killed two Iraqis, and seriously wounded two others. Moreover, overall attacks in the Triad area had spiked from fifteen events the week before to almost forty. It was amazing how hanging out on the enormous, stalwart U.S. Army bases could give a person the perception that things were not that bad in Iraq. The reality was that we expected to run into a buzz saw when we arrived in Haditha.
I started training with the Joint IED Defeat Task Force (JIEDD TF). The JIEDD TF is the Department of Defense’s well-funded ($1.23 billion for the 2005–6 funding cycle) solution to solving how they can keep a bunch of fifth-grade-level-educated, twenty-something Arabs from making hamburger meat out of service members. Thus far, their success had been poor. There had been an enormous increase in IED attacks and IED lethality over the past couple of years. I hoped the JIEDD TF was like fine wine and would get better with time.
Our class was taught by two former U.S. Army Special Forces Delta operators who spoke to us about winning the fight against IEDs and the various enemy techniques, tactics, and procedures (TTPs) that we may face in Al Anbar Province. The class was lame, as we had been through numerous similar courses in predeployment training. What I did find interesting was that this was my first chance to witness some men who were in the fabled Delta Force.
Delta Force operators are supposed to be the baddest of the bad, the guys who kill you with their stare and have lighting bolts fly from thei
r asses at their discretion. I cannot remember the names of the instructors, but I am going to guess they were Max and Stone Cold. The main speaker, Max, talked about how he had not killed many people face to face but had killed hundreds of people with the radio (either with indirect fire, air support, or calling in a quick reaction force). He suggested we follow suit and ensure our communication procedures are tight. Max summarized his advice: “The radio helps you figure out who is coming to help out if you are stuck in an ambush, who is calling for fire, who is calling in the MEDEVAC [medical evacuation], who is calling EOD [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] teams, and so forth. Without proper radio procedures, you are fish bait for the insurgents.”
As a follow-on to the JIED TF classes we were given a brief on a brand-new piece of gear the Marines were fielding in Al Anbar called the Chameleon. By the time we hit the deck in the Triad we were supposed to have Chameleons on all of our Humvees. We had heard rumors of the device before the deployment, and the word on the street was that it came straight from the hands of God. It is an electronic countermeasure (ECM) device that sets the gold standard for stopping radio-controlled IED attacks. The specifics are classified, however. The U.S. Navy lieutenant junior grade teaching the class confided to everyone, “I can’t get into the details, but I can tell you that the Chameleon will block any radio-controlled device the insurgents currently have and anything they will have in the foreseeable future.”
Hearing the lieutenant junior grade’s news was outstanding. I was glad we would have large force fields around our Humvees, blocking all the IEDs in Al Anbar Province. There had to be a catch, right? Well, the catch was that the Chameleon blocks all radio-controlled IEDs—the IEDs triggered by cell phones, garage door openers, wireless telephones, and so forth. Sadly, the Wile E. Coyote method of connecting a group of explosives to a long copper wire with a trigger device attached to the end worked like a charm.
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