American Heroes

by Oliver North

  By the time the operation began, Fallujah had become a stronghold for Abu Musab al Zarqawi and his Al Qaeda in Iraq. Hundreds—some estimated thousands—of foreign Jihadists had crept through the coalition cordon around the city to help reinforce Al Qaeda defenses. Though tens of thousands of civilians had fled Zarqawi's oppression, those who remained were forced to live under the strictest form of Islamic law.

  The attack, spearheaded by two U.S. Marine regimental combat teams, RCT-1 and RCT-7, was supported by two U.S. Army mechanized battalions—2nd Bn, 7th Cavalry Regiment (1st Cavalry Division), and the 2nd Bn, 2nd Infantry Regiment (1st ID). The Army's M-1 Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and organic artillery added a heavy armor punch that proved to be crucial in the house-to-house, block-by-block fighting.

  Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commanding the I MEF—and the overall commander for the operation—committed four new Iraqi infantry battalions to the attack. He integrated them within his RCTs. The Iraqi units were fresh from training and not as well equipped as their U.S. Marine and Army counterparts, but their bravery and tenacity impressed the Americans they fought alongside.

  In urban combat, most of the action is at the small unit level. That's how it was inside Fallujah. Fire teams, squads, and platoons advanced on a narrow frontage down streets that required clearing every room in every building. Many of the structures had sophisticated barricades, firing ports, and even escape tunnels constructed by Zarqawi's zealots.

  One Marine said: "We encountered two types of enemy combatants—those who wanted to live and those who stayed there to die. The first kind were mostly Iraqis. But it was the second kind—those who wanted to die—that made this fight so tough. They were the worst. If we didn't kill them, they would surely kill us."

  As the attack progressed through the heart of the city, the soldiers and Marines uncovered entire buildings that had been used by Al Qaeda as slaughter houses—not for animals but for people. Zarqawi's thugs had used video cameras, DVDs, and computers to store the grisly images of torture, rapes, and beheadings. The atrocities were so graphic that one civil affairs NCO described them as "more sickening than anything I could imagine happening to another human being."

  Dozens of soldiers, U.S. Navy medical corpsmen, and Marines were cited for courage during the bloody fight for Fallujah. Though most of the heavy fighting was over in ten days, Marines were still being engaged by cells of suicidal terrorists until just before Christmas. Perhaps the most telling example of how vicious the fighting was is the Navy Cross citation for 1stSgt Bradley Kasal.

  Though we didn't know it at the time, the furious fight for Fallujah was the beginning of the end for Al Qaeda in Iraq. Abu Musab al Zarqawi had escaped—some said dressed as a woman—but his home base was gone. Hundreds of his foreign fighters were dead, and his computers, communications equipment, and reams of documents were being searched by U.S. intelligence experts. The battle had cost the lives of more than fifty Americans killed and three hundred wounded. But as 2004 ended, for the troops on the ground there was hope that the Iraqis might just pull off what most "experts" thought was impossible before Fallujah—free and fair elections.

  The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Bradley A. Kasal, 1st Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while serving as 1stSgt, Weapons Company, 3rd Bn, 1st Marine Regiment, RCT-1, 1st Marine Division, I MEF, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Central Command, in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM on 13 November 2004. 1stSgt Kasal was assisting 1st Section, Combined Anti-Armor Platoon as they provided a traveling overwatch for 3rd Platoon when he heard a large volume of fire erupt to his immediate front, shortly followed by Marines rapidly exiting a structure. When 1stSgt Kasal learned that Marines were pinned down inside the house by an unknown number of enemy personnel, he joined a squad making entry to clear the structure and rescue the Marines inside. He made entry into the first room, immediately encountering and eliminating an enemy insurgent, as he spotted a wounded Marine in the next room. While moving toward the wounded Marine, 1stSgt Kasal and another Marine came under heavy rifle fire from an elevated enemy firing position and were both severely wounded in the legs, immobilizing them. When insurgents threw grenades in an attempt to eliminate the wounded Marines, he rolled on top of his fellow Marine and absorbed the shrapnel with his own body. When 1stSgt Kasal was offered medical attention and extraction, he refused until the other Marines were given medical attention. Although severely wounded himself, he shouted encouragement to his fellow Marines as they continued to clear the structure. By his bold leadership, wise judgment, and complete dedication to duty, 1stSgt Kasal reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.

  11

  WILL DEMOCRACY WORK?

  THE ELECTION IN AFGHANISTAN

  9 OCTOBER 2004

  In the last week of September 2004, War Stories producer Steve Tierney, cameraman Mal James, and I arrived at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The 25th ID was in the midst of being augmented by a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division and elements of the 10th Mountain Division in order to provide security for the first free and open elections in the country's history.

  With producer Steve Tierney in Afghanistan

  We all took up "residence" in what was once a Soviet troop billet. We were promptly assaulted by lice, fleas, centipedes, biting flies, and venomous scorpions. A battalion medical officer explained that we were the first Americans to occupy the building. Only half in jest, Mal suggested that the site had been used by the Russians for bizarre biological warfare experiments. Going on patrols with U.S. soldiers setting up security outposts for the upcoming elections was a respite from being eaten alive by the crawling critters.

  As the day for the elections approached, correspondents from the U.S., European, and Arab media flooded into the country. Nearly all of them forecast that the elections would be a dismal failure. That was certainly what the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda were preaching—and backing up their prediction with the threat of death for any woman caught going to the polls. The prognosticators of gloom and doom calculated that a "largely ignorant" society "with no tradition of democracy" would simply stay home on election day. Some said that the voters would be "confused" by so many candidates (there were sixteen) for president.

  It turned out that they were all wrong. On 9 October 2004, more than eight million Afghanis—nearly 70 percent of the nation's registered voters—braved Taliban and Al Qaeda threats, mud, and minefields to cast a ballot at one of 4,800 polling sites.

  In some places, there was over a foot of snow on the ground, but the voters came anyway, many wearing their best clothes to mark the dignity of the occasion. Well before the polls opened, entire families were waiting patiently in mile-long lines for the chance to cast a ballot and dip a finger into a container of indelible purple ink.

  The election turnout was a stunning rejection of the radical Islamist agenda. Though the Taliban and Al Qaeda tried to intimidate voters—particularly women—from going to the polls, it didn't work. In Konduz, while a group of women were standing in a long line to vote, an IED detonated a few hundred yards away. The women defiantly stayed in line.

  When all the ballots were counted, Hamid Karzai—with more than 50 percent of the votes—was named the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan. MAJ Scott Nelson, U.S. Army, a spokesman for the Multinational Force Headquarters in Kabul, put it this way: "Terrorists . . . suffered a resounding defeat at the hands of millions of Afghans voting for freedom."

  MAJ Nelson was right on. And less than four months later, a nearly identical scenario was played out in Iraq.

  IRAQI VOTE I: NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ELECTION

  "By our efforts we have lit a fire as well—a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress; and one day th
is untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corner of our world."

  — President George W. Bush, second inaugural address, 20 January 2005

  An Iraqi woman prepares to vote by dipping her finger into ink

  30 JANUARY 2005

  The media "run up" to Iraq's first free and fair election on 30 January was almost identical to the coverage before the Afghan elections. For weeks before the ballot, the U.S. press and political opponents of the Bush administration in Congress predicted a "minimal" turnout and "invalid" results because the "Sunni population will boycott" the balloting.

  The vote to elect members of provincial legislatures and a 270-member National Assembly was specifically targeted by Abu Musab al Zarqawi and his Al Qaeda organization in Iraq. Al Qaeda propaganda organs made it known through radical Islamic Internet postings, videos rebroadcast on Arabic television, and in graffiti scrawled on walls that "we have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology." Zarqawi went on to brand anyone who took part as an "infidel."

  Iraqi men display their inked fingers after voting

  U.S. intelligence officers noted that as the elections approached, radical Islamic Web sites operating in Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hamas-controlled territory in Palestine, and Hezbollah-controlled areas in Lebanon were all advocating the same thing: "stop the Iraqi elections." Quiet overtures to Arab governments nominally on "our side" in the War on Terror were less than effective in shutting down these sites. Though U.S. government officials won't say one way or the other, it's unlikely that the leaders in any of these countries looked forward to democratic elections anywhere in this part of the world.

  To counter the blitz of anti-election propaganda, the government of interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the U.S. embassy in Baghdad launched a major "get out the vote" effort. Television, radio, and newspaper ads produced by pro-democracy organizations encouraged people to turn out on election day. In one TV commercial, an elderly Iraqi man was confronted on the street by a group of masked, armed thugs. The man was soon joined by a handful of his neighbors, then more, until the mass of ordinary citizens greatly outnumbered the terrorists who set off running from the crowd of unarmed but courageous Iraqis.

  The voiceover said in Arabic, "On January 30th, we will meet our destiny and our duty. We are not alone and we are not afraid. Our strength is in our unity. Together we will work and together we will prevail." No ad like this could possibly have been broadcast under Saddam's rule—or under Al Qaeda.

  A week before the election, a poll taken by the Arabic-language paper Asharq Al-Aswat indicated that more than 70 percent of the thirty-three thousand people queried intended to vote in the election. Nonetheless, the U.S. media persisted in predicting that the vote would fail. "Is a 50 percent turnout enough?" one reporter asked at a State Department briefing the day before the Iraqi ballot. Apparently the reporter was unaware that in U.S. congressional elections, fewer than 45 percent of those eligible to vote bother to cast a ballot.

  Working with the Interim Governing Council in Baghdad, the U.S.-led Multinational Military Force designed rigorous security procedures for protecting polling places, voters, and international observers on election day. But because there were too few "vetted" and trained Iraqi police and military units to guard the six thousand polling places, coalition military personnel were called upon to shield numerous voting locations. In provinces like Al Anbar, heavily contested by Al Qaeda, most of the election sites were protected by American or other non-Iraqi coalition units.

  The presence of Western troops guarding ballot boxes and the threat of violence—particularly in Anbar province—very likely did suppress turnout. But countrywide, 58 percent of those who were registered ignored the risk by placing an indelible ink-stained fingerprint next to the name of their chosen candidates.

  Despite nine suicide bombers and more than a dozen mortar attacks on polling places around the country, more than eight million Iraqis cast ballots in the first multiparty election held in Iraq for more than half a century. The January 2005 election marked the first time in the entire five-thousand-year history of Mesopotamia that every man and woman, regardless of tribe, religion, or ethnic origin, was allowed to cast a ballot.

  Even Arab television networks like Al Jazeera noted this "grand moment in Iraqi history" —as President Bush put it in a press conference the day after the election. The accomplishment was even more remarkable, considering that more than seventeen thousand provincial and national candidates had been willing to put their lives on the line in vying for office.

  Three days after the Iraqi election, while ballots for local candidates were still being counted and validated, President Bush delivered his 2005 State of the Union Address. Seated next to Laura Bush in the balcony of the House chamber was Sofia Taleb al-Suhail, an Iraqi woman who had just voted in a free election for the first time in her life. Behind the First Lady were Janet and Bill Norwood, the parents of Marine Sgt Byron Norwood, who had been killed during the assault to liberate Fallujah. Mr. and Mrs. Norwood stood to a sustained ovation when President Bush introduced them. But the applause became thunderous when Sofia reached out to hug the mother of the fallen Marine. It was a powerful and touch-ing moment to remind all who watched about the sacri-fice young Americans were making to help bring freedom to the people of Iraq.

  IRAQ VOTE II: THE CONSTITUTIONAL REFERENDUM

  "The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes."

  —James Buchanan, fifteenth president of the United States

  15 OCTOBER 2005

  The responsibility of the 270-member Iraqi National Assembly elected on 30 January was very straightforward: to select a president, two deputy presidents, a prime minister, and a cabinet. And of equal importance, the assembly was charged with the Herculean task of drafting a new Iraqi constitution by 15 August and submitting it to a popular referendum by mid-October.

  Having failed to stop the first election, Al Qaeda, Baath Party sympathizers, and radical sectarian militias redoubled their efforts to stop the process dead in its tracks. And they almost succeeded.

  In the weeks after the January elections, violent attacks against the Iraqi police and coalition forces increased dramatically. Car bombs, truck bombs, IEDs, suicide attacks, and pitched battles against U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians increased in both frequency and lethality.

  On 28 February a suicide car bomber in Hillah, sixty miles south of Baghdad, killed more than 120 civilians and wounded at least 150 more as they waited in line for government job interviews. It was the deadliest single attack on noncombatants since Saddam Hussein murdered thousands in his wave of repression after Operation Desert Shield in 1991. The message to the people was clear: the coalition cannot protect you.

  In April, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi stepped down as prime minister and was replaced by a fellow Shiite, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. The new governing coalition immediately gridlocked over important constitutional issues, such as how much power minority Sunnis and Kurds would have in a democratic Iraq. Because most of the nation's known oil reserves are in Kurdish and Shiite controlled areas of the country, resolving those issues proved to be nearly impossible.

  By May 2005, when our FOX News War Stories team—Mal James, Greg Johnson, and I—returned to Iraq, the remnants of Al Qaeda that had escaped Fallujah were reconstituting themselves in Al Anbar along the Euphrates River valley and north of Baghdad in Diyala province. To the south and east of the capital, Shiite militias were on a killing spree—"cleansing" entire districts and neighborhoods of any Sunni they could find. At the end of the month, Baghdad estimated that nearly seven hundred Iraqis had been killed by terror attacks.

  On 28 August, the Sunni legislators in the National Assembly rejected a draft of the new Iraqi constitution and threatened to leave the government. Three days later nearly one thousand Shia pilgrims, marching to a religious s
hrine in Baghdad, died in a stampede created when rumors spread that Sunni suicide bombers had infiltrated the procession.

  In Washington the press and the politicians blamed the increasing carnage on the stalled political process and the lack of progress on a new national charter. Apparently the critics had forgotten—or did not know—that it took four arduous years for Germany and seven for Japan to assemble sovereign governments after World War II. And in the United States, twelve years passed between Patrick Henry's cry of "give me liberty, or give me death" and the ratification of the United States constitution in 1787.

  A car bomb is detonated in south Baghdad

  In Iraq, there was no one in the country's first freely elected legislature who had any firsthand experience with democracy. As they struggled to create a constitution, they had to contend with gunfire, suicide bombings, assassinations, bitter sectarian rivalries that went back more than a millennium, and horrendous bloodshed. Yet, in eight and one-half months after Iraq's first election, the often fractious, frequently deadlocked Iraqi National Assembly managed to draft a charter for their country that could be put before the people.

  As the date for the constitutional referendum approached, there were again dire predictions that Sunnis would boycott the vote, as they had in January; and that Al Qaeda and sectarian violence would limit turnout. Once again, the critics were wrong. More than 62 percent of all registered voters braved the threat of death from IEDs, mortar attacks, and suicide killers to go to the polls.