American Heroes

by Oliver North

  In reality, the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam are practically nonexistent—on the battlefield. But in the press and politics, it didn't matter that there were few similarities, except that ground combat remains a brutal, vicious experience for all who engage in it.

  In Vietnam, U.S. troops faced nearly a quarter of a million conscripted but well-trained, disciplined, and equipped North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regulars and upwards of 100,000 highly organized Viet Cong (VC) insurgents on a constant basis from 1966 onward. Both the NVA and the VC "irregulars" were well indoctrinated in communist ideology; received direct aid from the Soviet Union, Communist China, and the Warsaw Pact; and benefited from logistics and politico-military support networks in neighboring countries. During major campaigns against U.S. and South Vietnamese forces—of which there were many each year—both the NVA and the VC responded to centralized command and control directed by authorities in Hanoi. None of that has been true in Iraq.

  Since the summer of 2003 in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, enemy combatants have been a combination of disparate Sunni Jihadi-terrorists, disenfranchised Baathists, Shiite militias aligned with Iran, fanatical foreign Wahhabi-subsidized Mujahadeen linked to Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood-supported radicals, and well-armed, hyper-violent criminal gangs, often with tribal connections that are stronger than any ideological, religious, or political affiliations. Though many Jihadists receive indoctrination, munitions, and refuge from a network of mosques and sectarian Islamic groups, centralized command, control, and logistics support is virtually nonexistent.

  Operating in small independent "cells" instead of organized, disciplined military units, the enemy in Mesopotamia has no ability to mount any kind of protracted offensive against U.S. or even lightly armed Iraqi government forces. Increasingly dependent on improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and suicide-bomb attacks to inflict casualties, the opposition in Iraq is more "anarchy" than "insurgency."

  The second great myth about the campaign in Iraq is the casualty rate. This is always the most difficult aspect of any war to address, because all comparisons seem cynical. For those of us who have held dying soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen, or Marines in our arms—and the families of those killed—this is particularly painful. Yet, the casualty rate is one of the oft-cited reasons for why we were "forced" to get out of Vietnam, and why we are once again being urged by the press and politicians to "end the bloodshed" in Iraq. While no one should ever claim "my war was tougher than your war," here's a reality check:

  • Over the course of the entire Vietnam War, the "average" rate at which Americans died as a consequence of armed combat was about fifteen per day. In 1968–69, when my brother and I served as rifle platoon and infantry company commanders—he in the Army and I in the Marines—thirty-nine Americans died every day in the war zone. In Iraq, the mortality rate for U.S. troops due to enemy action is less than two per day.

  • During the 1968 "Tet Offensive" in Vietnam, there were more than 2,100 U.S. casualties per week. In Iraq, the U.S. casualty rate from all causes has never exceeded 490 troops in a month.

  • As of December 2007, after more than fifty-seven months of combat, fewer than 4,000 young Americans have been killed by enemy action in Iraq. That's roughly the same number killed at Iwo Jima during the first ten days of fighting against the Japanese.

  Every life lost in war is precious, and every loss is grievous for their friends and families. Unfortunately, our media seems intent on using every one of those killed to make the point that they died for nothing. It's a technique that was perfected during Vietnam. Those who shape American public opinion apparently intend to make it true for Iraq.

  On 27 February 1968, after a month of brutal fighting and daily images of U.S. casualties on American television, Walter Cronkite, then the host of the CBS Evening News, proclaimed that the Tet Offensive was proof that the Vietnam War was "no longer winnable." Four weeks later, Lyndon Johnson told the nation that "I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President." It didn't matter that Tet had been a decisive victory for the U.S. and South Vietnamese.

  The war in Vietnam wasn't lost during "Tet '68," no matter what Walter Cronkite said. Rather, it was lost in the pages of America's newspapers, on our televisions, our college campuses—and eventually in the corridors of power in Washington.

  By mid-2003 we had reason to pray that the campaign in Iraq wouldn't be lost the same way.

  "The thugs we're fighting in Iraq aren't, for the most part, organized soldiers. They're mostly criminals and cowards. They talk real tough when they're strutting around on television with their guns and their buddies behind them. But kick in their door in the middle of the night and stick a gun in their face, and they cry like little girls and wet themselves."

  — An unnamed Special Operations soldier in Iraq, 2004

  Smoke billows from a building hit with a TOW missile launched by soldiers of the Army's 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) on 22 July 2003 in Mosul, Iraq. Saddam Hussein's sons Qusay and Uday were killed in the battle as they resisted efforts by coalition forces to apprehend and detain them.

  DYING TO KILL US

  Daytime summer temperatures in the "land between the rivers" average more than 105 degrees. By July 2003 the anti-war rhetoric in Washington and European capitals was just as hot. Coalition efforts to jump-start reconstruction were slowly getting underway but few of the "good news" stories made it to air or on the front pages. Even when Saddam Hussein's vicious sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed in a gunfight with U.S. troops in Mosul, the media found reason for criticism.

  Uday, the elder sibling, had been responsible for recruiting foreigners to fight for his father's regime. Qusay had headed the Amn Al Khass, Iraq's internal intelligence and security force. Both brothers had a well-deserved reputation for extraordinary cruelty and had been accused of torture, numerous rapes, and scores of murders.

  On 21 July, an Iraqi civilian tipped off a young U.S. Army sergeant in Mosul that the deposed dictator's sons were hiding at a particular address in the city's Al Falah district. In less than twenty-four hours soldiers from the 101st Airborne, commanded by MG David Petraeus, and Special Operators from Task Force 20 had confirmed the information and cordoned off the neighborhood.

  To prevent civilian casualties the troops evacuated the surrounding homes and businesses and urged the fugitives to surrender. Instead of doing so, they opened fire on the U.S. troops surrounding the building. In the subsequent assault both brothers, their sole bodyguard, and Qusay's teenage son were killed. Five U.S. troops were wounded.

  The success of this operation was quickly obscured by protests in the media that U.S. troops had used "excessive force" and complaints that Saddam's sons should have been "taken alive for their intelligence value" and then "tried for their crimes."

  The remains of a suicide truck bomb in Baghdad

  With the summer heat in Iraq came a wave of "suicide bombers"—individuals carrying explosives on their bodies—or driving vehicles laden with ordnance and intent on dying in the Jihad. On 19 August a terrorist driving a Russian-made flatbed truck pulled up next to the Canal Hotel, headquarters for the UN mission in downtown Baghdad. Beneath a tarpaulin on the truck were a five-hundred-pound bomb and dozens of mortar and artillery rounds, land mines, grenades, and plastic explosives—all readily available throughout Iraq. Unchallenged, the driver parked the lethal load beside a brick wall surrounding the hotel and detonated his cargo. The blast killed twenty-five people, including the UN special representative to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and wounded more than one hundred others. Scenes of the carnage, some of it videotaped as the bomb exploded, were broadcast around the world almost instantly.

  Over the course of the next several months there were scores of such suicide attacks that killed hundreds and maimed thousands of noncombatants. On radical Islamic Web si
tes the perpetrators were called "martyrs." President Bush described them as "the enemies of civilization." By the time our FOX News War Stories team—cameraman Griff Jenkins, senior producer Pamela Browne, and I—returned to Bayji with Pepper Jackson's 3rd Bn, 66th Armor, in October 2003, suicide bombers and IEDs were the number-one killers of American troops and Iraqi civilians.

  Jackson's troops and the rest of the 4th ID didn't let the increasing risk from suicide bombers and IEDs deter them from continuing their hunt for Saddam and his cronies. And on 13 December their patience and perseverance were rewarded.

  American soldiers trapped him like a cornered rat hiding in a hole. And when he was caught, Saddam Hussein—the blustering, bloody tyrant who asked others to die for him—didn't even try to defend himself with the weapons at his disposal. Just days before the capture, I interviewed MG Ray Odierno, the 4th ID's commander. He assured me that his troops were going to find Saddam near Tikrit. They did.

  Saddam was responsible for two horrific wars and the deaths of hundreds of thousands. His record was replete with the kind of atrocities that brought the United States into two world wars, a bloody campaign in Korea, and the war I fought in—Vietnam. He had raped, tortured, robbed, starved, and murdered his own people. He acquired and used weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors and countrymen. He had attempted to assassinate an American president and trained and supported Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and Muslim Brotherhood terrorists who killed Americans.

  The image of Saddam as a filthy, decrepit, coward captured—not killed—by an American soldier was a powerful message to repressed people all over the globe that this is the way brutal despots go. Placing him on trial before the people of Iraq, who subsequently sent him to the hangman's gallows, sent a clear signal to totalitarians—be they in Damascus, Tehran, Pyongyang, or Havana—that they are accountable to the people they have tortured.

  Though tens of thousands of Iraqis celebrated Saddam's capture, the jubilation was less than universal. Critics in the European press decried the "humiliation" of videotaping "a former head of state" being examined by a U.S. military medical officer. The "mainstream media" in America speculated that the capture was "timed to improve Bush's poll numbers" and opined that Saddam would be tortured. Madeline Albright, who had been secretary of state in the Clinton administration, asked on FOX News: "Do you suppose that the Bush administration has Osama bin Laden hidden somewhere and will bring him out before the election?"

  The surreal reaction to Saddam's capture was revealing. Media elites could have focused on the extraordinary courage, tenacity, and discipline of U.S. and coalition troops who had defeated Saddam's army and then captured the "Butcher of Baghdad." Instead, many of the most powerful shapers of public opinion persisted in denigrating the young Americans serving far from home in harm's way and insisting that they were engaged in a fight that couldn't be won. None of this was missed by those who were intent on spreading their Jihad and driving "the infidels" from what they called "the lands of the Prophet."

  Despite pervasively nega-tive press coverage, most of the U.S. troops I have covered simply refuse to be disheartened. But there is also no doubt in my mind that it has made their task much more difficult.

  An Iraqi man takes his aggression out on one of the many large public murals of Saddam Hussein— he is hitting the mural with his shoe, which in Muslim culture is akin to spitting at someone

  10

  BLOODY ANBAR

  "THE MOST VIOLENT PLACE ON THE PLANET"

  The 31 March 2004 press wire photos and videotapes from Fallujah were horrific. They showed children in Fallujah, Iraq, dancing gleefully while teenagers tore at the immolated bodies of four American security contractors who had been killed in an ambush. The perpetrators had set up cameras to document the atrocity and had provided tapes to radical Islamic Web sites. Numerous Arabic television networks immediately broadcast the horrific images. From his hideout on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Osama bin Laden claimed that "Al Qaeda in Iraq" had conducted the operation.

  This Iraqi interim governing council approved the draft of a new constitution, a key step in returning full sovereignty to the Iraqi people

  The murders at the end of March finished a month that had begun with considerable hope. Though a wave of suicide bombings had killed hundreds of Iraqi civilians during January and February, on 8 March the Interim Governing Council (IGC) approved a draft constitution and transitional administrative law. The IGC, comprised of Iraqis from across the political and sectarian spectrum, affirmed a bill of rights. This assured, among other things, freedom of religion, speech, education, and assembly, along with universal suffrage.

  For Sunni radicals like Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Jordanian who headed Al Qaeda in Iraq, or Moqtada al Sadr, the fanatical Shiite cleric commanding the Mahdi Army, the freedoms promised by the new constitution—and particularly women's equality—were abhorrent. They, along with disenfranchised Baathists and thousands of foreign Jihadists, set out to make sure that democracy in Iraq would fail. In Al Anbar province, the largest in Iraq, they almost succeeded.

  Shortly after the murders in Fallujah, Christian Galdibini, my FOX News cameraman, and I arrived in Al Anbar. We were there to cover the Marines and soldiers who were engaged in the most intense fighting since the liberation of Baghdad a year earlier. The cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the provincial capital, were the heart of the "Sunni Triangle," areas west and north of Baghdad in which most of Iraq's Sunni minority lived. After several days of covering gunfights in and around Fallujah, we arrived in Ramadi and embedded with 2nd Bn, 4th Marines, out of Camp Pendleton, California, and the Army's 1st Brigade Combat Team from Fort Riley, Kansas.

  In an earlier war, the command arrangement in Ramadi would have been considered unusual: a U.S. Marine Corps infantry battalion was assigned to a U.S. Army brigade, which in turn was part of the MEF. But in fact, as the Silver Star citation for the U.S. Army brigade commander sergeant major attests, it was a task organization that worked amazingly well, particularly given the shocking ferocity of the enemy.

  The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star medal to Ron Riling, Command Sergeant Major, U.S. Army, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action while serving as CSM for the 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, near Ramadi, Iraq, on 6 April 2003. On that date CSM Riling and his brigade commander were notified that Marines attached to their brigade were pinned down by enemy fire. He quickly organized his forces and began moving to the embattled Marines. When his own elements entered the main town of Ramadi, they immediately came under direct fire coming from every direction. The Marine squad had been pinned down by snipers and was in desperate circumstances when CSM Riling's physical-security detachment arrived on the scene. The squad leader was dead, lying in the middle of the street, and three of the seven Marines were seriously wounded. The senior remaining Marine was a corporal. CSM Riling's force fought its way through withering enemy fire and linked up with the Marines where they were absorbed into the team and fought their way out together. After CSM Riling's team evacuated the injured Marines and recovered a Marine squad leader's body, another Marine platoon in the area came under attack by insurgents armed with RPGs. CSM Riling directed two Bradley fighting vehicles from the brigade's reserve into the fight to squelch the attacks.

  Lt. Col. Paul Kennedy

  In the midst of one hyper-violent engagement, Lt. Col. Paul Kennedy, the commanding officer of 2nd Bn, 4th Marines, described the province as "the most violent place on the planet Earth." Jim Booker, his sergeant major, nodded and said, "You're telling me." They were right.

  Practically every day—and most nights—for month after month there were furious gunfights on the mean streets of Ramadi. The action was nearly always a sudden, close-quarters, adrenalin-pumping experience for the U.S. troops engaged. Depending on the neighborhood, the en
emy could be Baath Party loyalists, a criminal gang, or members of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The zealots in Zarqawi's Al Qaeda organization were a mixture of foreign fighters and young Iraqis. They were well armed and vicious, whether their target was an Iraqi police or military outpost, a U.S. convoy, or Iraqi civilians.

  The Silver Star citation for SgtMaj Jim Booker aptly describes the courage required of those who struggled to bring law and order to the province.

  The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star medal to James E. Booker, Sergeant Major, U.S. Marine Corps, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the enemy while serving as SgtMaj, 2nd Bn, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I MEF, U. S. Marine Corps Forces, Central Command, in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM from February to September 2004.

  SgtMaj Booker courageously exposed himself to enemy fire while leading Marines and eliminating enemy forces in several battalion engagements. On 31 March 2004 the forward command element came under intense machine gun and RPG fire. With utter disregard for his own safety, SgtMaj Booker dismounted the vehicle, engaged the enemy, and forced their withdrawal. He pursued his attackers down several darkened city streets and mortally wounded a RPG gunner who was engaging the Command Group. SgtMaj Booker subsequently led a search that resulted in the arrest and capture of an eight-man cell and several weapons. On 10 April 2004, the forward command element came under fire from insurgents during cordon and search operations. He calmly led a team of Marines in a counter-attack, personally clearing several buildings, eliminating one insurgent fighter, and facilitating the evacuation of a severely wounded Marine. SgtMaj Booker's efforts enabled the forward command element to regain freedom of maneuver and inspired Marines to fearlessly engage the enemy. By his bold leadership, wise judgment, and loyal dedication to duty, SgtMaj Booker reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.