Embedded

  As I write this I am still trying to get my head around the fact Krissoff is dead. Remarkably, I feel no self-pity. I know that warriors die so other men can live in peace, and that’s just how it is. I am proud and feel privileged to have known such a great warrior, a great Marine, and a great friend. His soul will live forever in my mind. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman put it best in the movie Full Metal Jacket: “Always remember this: Marines die. That’s what we’re here for. But the Marine Corps lives forever. And that means you live forever.” Nate Krissoff will live forever in the minds of warriors of the present and the future. Semper fi.

  The Marines Encounter More Tragedy

  Tragedy befriended the United States Marine Corps in December. In addition to Krissoff’s death, a CH-46 helicopter missed the landing pad on top of the dam and landed in Lake Qadisiyah. Lance Cpl. Elliot Weeks and Lance Cpl. Michael Goble, two of the Marines working with our MiTT, had been on top of the dam at the time of the incident and witnessed the entire thing. Weeks recapped for me. “Sir, the bird was lifting off, and as it was moving past the edge of the dam structure, it just nosedived into the lake and then floated on the water’s surface. We ran to the scene, jumped in the water, and started pulling people to safety. It was crazy.”

  Weeks and Goble’s immediate and selfless reaction was admirable. They were both heroes.

  A rule of thumb in the Marines states that initial reports are always incorrect. But the initial reports we got on the helicopter crash were way off the mark. The 2/3 had one confirmed Marine KIA and three missing in action (MIA) but presumed dead. A horrific day for the U.S. Marine Corps. One of the MIA was the 2/3 operations officer, Maj. Joseph Trane McCloud. Losing him was a huge blow to the Marine battalion. This was terrible news to receive a few weeks before Christmas. My prayers were with their families.

  The night after the helicopter crash I lay in bed and listened to the rescue helicopters searching for our fallen comrades in the lake. They began moving search efforts to the Euphrates River, thinking the bodies had gone through the dam. It was heart wrenching and surreal to listen to the helicopters buzz overhead as we tried to sleep, but it was also comforting. We knew the Marines would recover the fallen no matter what the cost or inconvenience.

  When they couldn’t find the bodies from the air, the Marines took some very drastic measures in order to find them: they shut down the dam and drained the Euphrates. The site was breathtaking. There were a few things I was sure I’d never witness in my lifetime: the parting of the Red Sea, Africa taking over the world economy, and the draining of the great Euphrates River. To see the two-hundred-meter river, the lifeblood of civilization, driven to a small stream was a spectacle. I’m sure there were quite a few Iraqis in Fallujah and Baghdad who were wondering what was going on upstream.

  The helicopter crash story had even made the news on CNN. The official report noted four confirmed dead and ten survivors, which jibed with what we had been hearing from the Marines in the dam. While it was absolutely tragic for the four men who died, I was very thankful ten men had survived. When I first heard of the crash, I thought for sure there would be no survivors given the unforgiving conditions of Lake Qadisiyah.

  Later I got a firsthand look at how ridiculous the Arab media is—and at the same time I realized that our own media was not that far ahead. The Arab media reported that there was a possibility the helicopter had been shot down by insurgent gunfire and that thirty Marines may have died in the incident. Their evidence came from some Haditha resident who claimed to have seen a flyer posted on a Haditha mosque by a member of the Islamic state of Iraq. What a bunch of bullshit.

  Our media reporting wasn’t much better. Our own highly respected newspaper, the Washington Post, published buffoonery. In a press release dated December 5, 2006, Nancy Trejos, a Washington Post staff writer, wrote a couple of absurd things. First, she claimed that the mayor of Haditha, Ibraheem al-Bayati, said the helicopter had been shot down by insurgents with machine-gun fire as it was taking off from town. This was impossible because before the crash the mayor of Haditha had been sent to Abu Ghraib for being an insurgent. I guess Trejos interviewed him from prison to get his expert opinion on an event that happened in Haditha. Ridiculous.

  Trejos then made another absurd claim—that an Iraqi army officer named Lt. Hussein Muslih was making the same claims as this Ibraheem al-Bayati character. This was equally absurd. I was the S-1 adviser to our Iraqi battalion and I have asked every Iraqi officer and looked through every administration roster for the past year—there is no evidence that anyone with the name Hussein Muslih ever existed. Moreover, I had the Iraqis check with the brigade, and they said there was no such officer in the entire brigade. This means that this Washington Post writer either made stuff up or cut and pasted propaganda from the Islamic State of Iraq’s website and claimed the site’s work as her own. The amount of lying, misinformation, and false claims in the Arab media—as well as in our very own—is appalling.

  As if all this weren’t bad enough, one day in December I woke up to a group of bomb sniffing dogs searching around the MiTT camp. Apparently Colonel Abass had heard rumors that many of the jundi were also in the Mahdi army. He had been catching jundi bringing in bits of explosives. Perhaps he thought that they were assembling some sort of explosive device piece by piece and that it would be wise to investigate the camp for safe measure. I swear this place gets crazier and crazier every single day. Tension just fills the air.

  The Icing on the Cake

  When it seems things cannot get any worse, they sometimes do. I knew my wife had been struggling during my absence. I spoke with her on the phone and found that she was officially clinically depressed. I was proud of her for telling me the truth and proud of her for going to the doctor to get drugs and counseling, but her timing was not impeccable. Her news came when Marines were dying all around me and big issues were at hand. I wished I was there to help her out. Or at minimum, I wished things weren’t quite so terrible in Iraq so I’d have more time to talk to her. It was just one more thing to add to the list of shit that was going wrong around me.

  Chapter 23

  Light at the End of the Tunnel?

  Late December 2006–January 2007

  Things had to change. All I seemed to see and hear was bad news. I wanted to see something positive, but it just wasn’t happening. I was curious to hear what the news back home had to say about the situation. Actually, I already knew without even watching: Fox News thought things were going great, and CNN thought things were falling off a cliff into oblivion. At least our media had their bets hedged.

  Today we came together as a MiTT and decided on the future of our Iraqi battalion. Everyone agreed that because our numbers had dropped so dramatically it made sense to consolidate. Major Pyle agreed to ask higher headquarters if we could consolidate all the jundi in the Triad and bring them to Camp Ali. I thought it was a good short-term solution. Longer term, the only way to be successful was to get more soldiers.

  The MiTT members were not the only ones thinking strategically. 2/3 had been drawing up some dramatic plans in an effort to stop the rampant violence in the area. It planned on digging huge trenches and building earthen berms around the Triad cities. Also, they intended to outlaw all nonessential vehicle traffic and create single entry and exit areas into each of the Triad population centers. Once the villages were contained, they would systematically purge each area of insurgents. In essence they were implementing martial law.

  At face value the 2/3 plan seemed like a great idea, at least for the short term. 3/1, the Marine battalion that was caught up in the so-called Haditha Massacre, did the exact same thing during Operation River Gate and ended up having a relatively peaceful deployment.

  Signs of Hope in the Triad?

  2/3’s counterinsurgency-control measures were working wonders. The vehicle traffic ban, entry and exit checkpoints, and the berms around the towns caused insurgent activity to plummet. On the flip side these rules also made
normal life in the Triad a near impossibility. Teachers could no longer get to school, the cost of everyday goods like food and gas went through the roof, smuggling rings popped up throughout the Triad, and visiting relatives in a nearby area became impossible.

  While all the Triad villages showed progress, Haditha’s success was the brightest. Haditha had been the hottest place in all of Iraq, with an average of thirty to forty attacks a week. Now there were one to two a week. Additionally, Haditha’s all-girls school was back open, women were now walking around the streets without burkhas, shops were reopening throughout town, and there was a renewed sense of hope in the area. All of this was compelling. Only two weeks earlier we had been living in complete Armageddon. The reduction in violence was the best Christmas gift we could ever have received.

  Political Reconciliation Stalled

  Despite appearances it seemed the Iraqis were not on track for success (at least as the West sees it). They probably never will be successful. Not until their entire culture changes. I wish I could say something more positive about the situation, but I can’t. I’ve seen the man behind the curtain pulling the strings.

  I had been living at the FOB in Barwana and had had the opportunity to mentor Lieutenant Ahmed, the 2nd Iraqi Company commander. His actions before an important meeting with all the Barwana area leaders, including local sheiks, the Iraqi Police commander, and the 2/3 Fox Company commander, were a perfect example of how Iraqi cultural traits of laziness, poor leadership, and selfishness lead to poor outcomes. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed into the meeting because they wanted the meeting to have a primarily Iraqi face. Instead, I was to make sure that Ahmed, the Iraqi army representative in the town of Barwana, was ready to attend.

  About thirty minutes before the 1030 meeting, I went to wake up Ahmed. He was conked out. He looked like a dead body. I tried to wake him. “Ahmed, you know the big meeting is going in thirty minutes. You have to wake up!” He grumbled something in Arabic that I didn’t understand. I gently grabbed him by the shoulder and said, “Ahmed, you are the leader of the Iraqi army in Barwana, you must go to this meeting to represent the army!” Ahmed replied, “Jamal, I was on a patrol last night until 0200. I’m tired. I’m hungry. Who cares about the meeting? Nobody will agree on anything anyway.” Trying to appeal to his anti-Iraqi police stance, I said, “Ahmed, if you don’t go, the only representative for Iraqi security forces will be the Iraqi police commander. Do you want him speaking on the Iraqi Army’s behalf?” Ahmed just turned over in his rack. “Jamal, tell them I am not going. Have one of the jundi go if they need somebody.”

  Stunned, I looked as him in disgust as he rolled over on his rack. I thought about how, when I first came to Iraq as an adviser, I would not accept this behavior and would make the Iraqis get up and go. But now, if Ahmed, the leader of the Iraqi Army in Barwana, didn’t have the motivation to help win the war and foster political reconciliation in his small area of Iraq, why the hell should I? America wasn’t in Iraq to win the war for the Iraqis. The Iraqis were here to win the war for the Iraqis—with our help if need be. We could win the war for them, or at least attempt to, but the minute we left, the country would revert to the way things have always been. What is the point of us even helping in the first place, if when we leave the place, it is going to revert to an ass-backwards tribal society in the desert?

  Political bickering was evident at not only the local level in the Triad. While the drop in violence was especially promising for the Triad’s future, the continued rhetoric in Baghdad among the Sunni and Shia powers was having direct effects on our ability to accomplish our mission. One day Colonel Abass and Qutaiba, the lead Iraqi construction contractor, received calls from the Ministry of Energy (MOE) and the Ministry of Water (MOW). Their message was direct: all of the contractors and all of the current construction already underway needed to be stopped and moved elsewhere because the land Camp Ali rested upon was officially the property of MOE and MOW and not the property of the MOD. According to the MOE and the MOW, the MOD had not been cleared to commence construction, even though construction had been given the green light many months ago during the project’s planning phases. Talk about a complete waste of money and time. To make matters worse, the Iraqi contractors on base (who were exclusively Sunni) had gone on strike. Now we didn’t even have the personnel to fill in the holes that had already been dug around camp.

  It seemed there was a sectarian contest going on between the various ministries that was keeping the project from continuing. I could not pinpoint the reason for the bureaucratic bullshit, but I could pinpoint one direct effect—huge waste. The Iraqi and American governments were going to lose millions of dollars over this because a few guys at the Iraqi ministries couldn’t get along and make a decision that was mutually beneficial to everyone.

  When ridiculous bureaucratic decisions are made at the higher level of government in Iraq, the jundi always know what is going on (or at least, they think they do). The most common conspiracy theory I heard from the jundi is that the Shia ministers who dominated power in Baghdad did not want the government spending any more money in Al Anbar and would rather it was spent on projects in support of Shia interests around Baghdad and southern Iraq. I wasn’t sure if their theory was correct, but I imagined there was probably a kernel of truth to it.

  Marine Lance Corporals Have All the Answers

  Lance Cpl. Andrew “Mac” McMonigal, at the ripe old age of eighteen, summed up the general assessment of our adviser team. We had been sitting on a security cordon in our Humvee for twelve hours during a mission to rid the northern part of Haditha of insurgents. Mac yelled from the Humvee’s turret, “Sir, you want to see my moto [motivational] tattoo?” Tired of listening to lance corporal stories for twelve straight hours, I replied halfheartedly, “Sure Mac, whatcha got?”

  McMonigal quickly dropped down into the cab of the Humvee and folded out his bottom lip. He mumbled, “Sir, this is my moto for life. What do you think? Pretty cool, eh?” I glanced at the inside of his lip. Tattooed in thick black ink was “fuck it.” I responded, “Mac, you’ve got to be kidding me. You had ‘fuck it’ tattooed on the inside of your lip? What is wrong with you, man?” Lance Corporal Morgan, the driver, chimed in. “Sir, we’re infantry grunts. Our lives suck. ‘Fuck it’ is our moto.” I laughed. “Yeah, I guess you have a point.”

  Part 5

  ALL GOOD THINGS MUST COME TO AN END

  Chapter 24

  Civil War and Democracy in Iraq

  December 2006

  I had a chance to sit down with Colonel Abass while I was fixing his computer. I asked him some deep questions about his thoughts on Iraq’s future, the invasion, and the current state of conflict in the country. Speaking with Colonel Abass was always an eye-opening experience. He had been an Iraqi military commander for twenty-four years. He had lived all over the country and survived, which was a testament to his intelligence and ability to understand his environment.

  I listened intently to Abass’s insights. “Jamal, the Americans say they have come to our country to help,” he said. “I believe in their hearts this may be true. But this help reminds me of when the British came here in the sixties and seventies to fix the problems with our palm grove trees, which were infested with disease. They told us that we needed to treat our trees or they would all die of infestation. The Brits convinced us, but the problem only got much worse. All of the palm groves were destroyed. They didn’t help anything, they just made the situation worse.”

  Abass shuffled around in his chair, sat upright, and continued. “I believe this second attempt of Westerners to help Iraq is similar to the so-called help the Brits gave us forty years ago.” The room was silent for a moment. I then asked Abass a fundamental question. “Do you think we caused the current crisis in Iraq?” His response was crisp and clear: “Yes, of course.”

  Before I could ask him to elaborate on his bold assertion, he ranted about the idea of freedom and why it would never work in Iraq. “T
he Iraqi people have not known democracy—ever,” he said. “How can we just let them have it? I see democracy and freedom as vaccinations. If you give someone vaccines who has never had any exposure whatsoever, the medicine that is meant to help them will actually kill them. A better method would be to give this medicine slowly and in small chunks so the people could adapt to it. Over time the vaccine would be much more effective.” I sat and thought about his analogy, and it began to make sense.

  Colonel Abass elaborated further on what America calls freedom. “Let me just tell you that freedom is not a healthy thing in Iraq,” he declared. “You must remember that Iraqis are like caged lions. Imagine if you had a lion in a cage all of its life and then you let it out of the cage without any guidance or rules. This lion will do whatever it wants and wreak havoc. This is the mindset of the Iraqi people. The Americans dropped freedom in their laps and they acted like freed lions. The Iraqis have never lived with freedom or lived as a civil people. They have not had the chance to learn how to do it.”

  I reflected on Colonel Abass’s statements. “Jamal, you know, the freedom Americans have granted Iraqis is not the same freedom Americans have,” he continued. “Americans are not free like Iraqis are free. Americans cannot kill their neighbor for stealing their goat, cannot shoot an enemy because of a tribal feud, cannot kill their daughter for ruining the honor of her family. Americans do not have our freedom. They are simply free to operate in a highly constrained civilized system. The freedom granted to Iraqis is the truest of freedoms. It allows everyone to do anything they want without repercussion. In one word, anarchy. The only true freedom. Anarchy is what America has granted Iraq.”