American Heroes

by Oliver North

  The masters of the media forecast a minimal turnout, again. But once again they were wrong. Nearly ten million people cast votes in the referendum, with nearly four out of five voting "yes" for their new constitution. Even the Sunnis came this time.

  The constitution that the Iraqi people overwhelmingly affirmed provided for free, fair, and direct legislative elections every four years by secret ballot. It established a democratic system of government with an independent judiciary, checks and balances on power, and protection of women's and minority rights. It established a framework for determining how Iraq's vast oil wealth would be distributed to all the Iraqi people. It also meant that Iraqis would go to the polls yet again in December.

  IRAQ VOTE III: THE NEW GOVERNMENT

  Back in Iraq with Mal James, cameraman

  15 DECEMBER 2005

  When cameraman Mal James, producer Greg Johnson, and I returned to Iraq again in December 2005, we went straight back to Ramadi—capital of Al Anbar province—the country's largest and the heart of the so-called Sunni insurgency. There, we embedded with the 3rd Bn, 7th Marines, out of Marine Corps Base, Twentynine Palms, California. Well over half of these young Americans had previously seen action in Iraq or Afghanistan—and in some cases, both.

  We chose to go to Ramadi again because Abu Musab al Zarqawi had pledged to turn election day in the provincial capital into a "bloodbath." Though he had made similar vows during the first two votes, this was also the city with the lowest turnout in the country.

  Lt. Col. Roger Turner's 3rd Bn, 7th Marines, was assigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 28th ID, from the Pennsylvania National Guard. The brigade commander, COL John Gronski, a Pittsburgh native, met us at the brigade LZ when we got off the helicopter in the middle of the night. My first question to him was about the upcoming elections.

  "I think you will be surprised," he said. "In the first election last January, less than 5 percent of the people here voted. Last October it was about 25 percent. This time it's going to be a whole lot more."

  I asked Lt. Col. Turner the same thing when I saw him the following morning: "Will they vote?"

  "The people here now know that there is a lot at stake for them," he replied. "Boycotting this election won't help them, no matter what Zarqawi says. His tactics have backfired. Turnout is going to be a whole lot bigger than anyone expects."

  The U.S. troops referred to 15 December as "E-Day." The "E" of course stood for "election." But it could easily have been "E" for the "elaborate" plans made to provide for safe elections while reducing visible American presence. By agreement with the provincial governor and officials in Baghdad, there would be no U.S. patrols or security units in the streets on election day.

  To prevent car bombers, all motor vehicles except Iraqi security forces and election officials were banned from being driven from sunrise until sunset on the 15th. An Iraqi armored brigade, equipped with Soviet-era tanks, was dispatched from Baghdad. And hundreds of blue-clad Iraqi "provincial police" armed with AK-47s were "deputized" to provide security at polling places.

  There were also quiet measures taken to "backstop" the Iraqi security. The night before E-Day, sniper teams and quick-reaction units surreptitiously moved out to preassigned positions where they could "overwatch" the polls and other key locations within the city. These small units—none was larger than a platoon—were ordered to stay out of sight but to be ready to respond instantly in case they were needed.

  Mal James and I joined a Marine rifle platoon that was co-located with an Iraqi army company at a "strongpoint" in the heart of one of the most vicious neighborhoods in the violent city of Ramadi. A few yards up the heavily barricaded street was a polling place, due to open at 7:00 a.m.

  A U.S. Marine sniper watches over a street in Fallujah, Iraq

  Here's a portion of my report for FOX News the following day:

  The polls opened here in Ramadi with a bang. Just down the street, at an intersection, an IED detonated beneath the treads of an Iraqi Army tank—thankfully without serious casualties. Afterwards, for a time, the streets were nearly empty. But then, using the loudspeakers on the minarets towering over the mosques, imams, sheiks, and tribal leaders urged people to get out and vote. One local imam told his followers, "God will bless you with a great life if you go out and vote." That and similar messages were broadcast from mosques all around town.

  Terrorists like Zarqawi told the people to stay away from the polls or they would be killed. They came anyway—leaving the electoral sites with smiles and purple fingers. There were lines that wrapped around the block and extended for hundreds of people. Ten polling places ran out of ballots and had to send out for more.

  At the end of this historic day, there was not a sound of gunfire, but instead, as the polls closed, there was a call to prayer. It was even an occasion for celebration as the neighborhood children were out in the streets, after dark, playing soccer with equipment given to them by Americans in uniform.

  A soldier hands out soccer balls to local children

  By the time the polls closed late on 15 December, more than twelve million Iraqis had voted—an astounding 70 percent of the electorate. Despite threats of terror and reprisals they trekked to nearly 6,500 polling stations and patiently waited in long lines to elect a 275-member National Assembly—the first freely elected, constitutionally determined legislature in the Arab world. For the very first time the Iraqi people—not the United Nations, not a foreign colonial power, not Americans—had drawn up their own national charter, nominated candidates, and elected their own government.

  When election day was over, LCpl Jeffrey Heath stood in front of our FOX News camera while I asked him if the day had been a success. His reply: "Absolutely. This is why we're here—to help the Iraqi people gain the kind of freedoms that we take for granted back in the States." I couldn't have said it better myself.

  Of course, holding an election isn't the last step in establishing a democracy; it's the first. An effective democracy requires rule of law, functioning courts, a balance of power, and civil institutions of government that are responsive to the needs of the people. Real democracies respect individual liberties and protect its citizens from violence—violence from criminals, hostile neighbors—and from their own government. All of that is a colossal challenge in a country besieged by sectarian strife, foreign terrorists flooding over its borders, and suicidal violence. Such an environment is not only deadly for people who are simply trying to provide for their families in Iraq; it is also lethal for the American troops helping to bring security and stability to the country.

  As if to make that point, just three days after the election, LCpl Samuel Tapia, a mortar gunner in Weapons Company 3rd Bn, 7th Marines, was felled by enemy fire in Ramadi. He was on a patrol with Combined Anti-Armor Team Blue when a single shot from a sniper killed him, not three hundred yards from where people had lined up to vote on 15 December.

  The balloting that LCpl Samuel Tapia helped protect had elected a government in Baghdad that was an imperfect democracy in its formative stages. It was susceptible to internal partisan political fratricide, homicidal suicide terrorists, IED makers, and Jihadists seeking to exploit Sunni-Shia-Kurdish rivalries. And it was very vulnerable to a failure of will in the United States.

  The young warriors manning lonely outposts in Ramadi understood all of this. But they also knew that in helping to secure three elections in Iraq, they had been eyewitness participants in a dramatic moment in history. What they could not comprehend was the criticism to which they were subjected by much of the media and descriptions of the enemy as "opponents of the occupation," or "militants." The U.S. troops in Al Anbar know that the foes of freedom and democracy in Iraq are not "freedom fighters." They are terrorists, thugs, criminals, and cowards.

  The troops were stunned to learn that politicians at home were less interested in the outcome of the Iraqi elections
than they were in condemning their commander-in-chief for eavesdropping on terrorist phone calls. The soldiers and Marines we were with were equally disappointed that the elections had done nothing to squelch the clamor to "bring the troops home."

  After my final report from Iraq before heading home for Christmas with my family, a young Marine approached me and asked, "What do you want for Christmas?"

  It was the middle of the night, and we were standing atop a heavily sandbagged "strongpoint" known as "Outpost Horea" in downtown Ramadi, Iraq—long the bloodiest city in this very bloody country. In the dark, the Iraqi soldier standing watch beside the American looked toward us as a cold breeze rustled through the camouflage netting over our heads.

  "What do I want for Christmas?" I repeated, somewhat surprised by the question. "I want you to get home safely."

  The twenty-one-year-old Tennessean, girded in sixty-five pounds of armored flak jacket, night-vision-equipped helmet, grenades, and several hundred rounds of ammunition, reflected on that for a moment and replied, "So do I."

  Then, quietly, from the young Iraqi soldier beside us, words in broken English that stunned me: "As do I—but not too soon."

  That exchange, just days after a historic election, reflected the dramatic transition sweeping through Iraq at the end of 2005. While politicians and the mainstream media in the United States were focused on negative news, young Americans and their Iraqi counterparts were courageously going about the dangerous task of building a new nation from the ashes of Saddam's dictatorship and the ravages of Jihadist terror.

  But as I left for home at the end of 2005, it was far from certain that politicians on Capitol Hill in Washington could muster the same tenacity as our troops. It was apparent that if Congress "pulled the plug" on Iraq, the elections they had helped secure would prove to be a brief flirtation with democracy and the country would descend into anarchy. And none of them wanted that as the legacy of their sacrifice.

  12

  TURNAROUND

  CLOSING THE TERROR PIPELINE

  By the time cameraman Mal James, senior producer Greg Johnson, and I returned to Iraq in May 2005, the terrorists who had been repudiated in the January elections were doing all they could to prevent the next Iraqi ballot. This was the constitutional referendum in October. Oil rich Wahhabi supporters of Sunni terror groups and Iranian-government backers for radical Islamists in the Middle East had good reason to be concerned.

  On 14 March 2005, two months after the first Iraqi vote, over a million Lebanese—including Sunnis, Druze, and Christians—took to the streets of Beirut to demand that the Assad regime in Damascus quit interfering in Lebanon. The largely peaceful street demonstration in an Arab capital was a powerful sign of what "power to the people" could mean not only in Lebanon but in Syria, Iran, and Iraq.

  A "house-borne IED" is detonated by U.S. Marines during Operation Matador

  In the aftermath of the Beirut demonstrations, foreign money, specialized ordnance, and "volunteers" for anti-coalition forces began pouring into Iraq from Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Along the length of the Euphrates River valley, Abu Musab al Zarqawi resuscitated Al Qaeda in Iraq from the defeat it had suffered in the November 2004 liberation of Fallujah. To the east, Shiite militias and death squads, many with direct connections to Tehran, began running rampant through neighborhoods from Mosul in the north, south through east Baghdad, all the way to Basra.

  As Iraqi civilian and coalition casualties increased, so did negative publicity and calls by Washington's political elite to "get out now." As usual, there was little "good news" from Iraq. And when there were insufficient "bad news" stories about U.S. troops, the media just made them up.

  Shortly after we arrived in Iraq, Newsweek magazine published a fictional account about U.S. military interrogators desecrating the Koran at the military detention facility at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba. The most outrageous charge was that a guard had flushed a copy of the Koran, the holy book of Islam, down a toilet.

  We first heard about the allegation over a loudspeaker on a nearby mosque while we were covering a U.S. Marine civil affairs team operating in a small village along the Euphrates River. After listening for a few minutes, the "terp" (interpreter) for the Marines gave us a rough translation along with the salient observation, "This isn't good."

  He was right. Within twenty-four hours there were deadly riots and demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. In Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq, imams, quoting the Newsweek article, incited violence by accusing "American infidels" of defiling Islam's holy book. Radical Islamic Web sites and propaganda organs sped the story globally—often embellished with other false charges—and issued calls for martyrs to join the Jihad.

  Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker eventually recanted the phony report, saying, "We regret that we got any part of our story wrong and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst." But by then it was too late for the scores of Muslims who had been killed and wounded in the melees.

  With Producer Greg Johnson during Matador

  In the midst of this uproar, the Marines were doing their best to staunch the flood of foreign terrorists flooding down the Euphrates River from Syria into Iraq. On 7 May RCT-2 launched an offensive, code-named "Operation Matador," aimed at interdicting "known infiltration routes, and disrupting sanctuaries and staging areas" in the Euphrates River valley.

  Our FOX News team headed for Al Qaim—the place the Marines called "the Wild West"—about a mile from the Syrian border. A young Marine combat cameraman, LCpl Aaron Mankin, jumped on a CH-53 helicopter with us. We flew from Fallujah to Al Qaim, the forward operating base of 3rd Bn, 2nd Marines, commanded by Lt. Col. Tim Mundy. Two years earlier we had been embedded with his older brother, Sam, in the advance on Baghdad and beyond.

  Mundy's forward operating base was situated at a rail yard on the edge of Al Qaim at the far western edge of Anbar province, on the banks of the Euphrates River. From the roof of Mundy's battalion command post we could see into Syria. The nearby city, surrounded by the Western Desert and out of reach of any authority, had a long history of smuggling, gun-running, and cross-border banditry. One of the Marines described the sullen inhabitants of the riverside town of khaki-colored buildings as "much like the bar-room scene in the movie Star Wars."

  On 07 April 2005, Al Qaeda terrorists had assaulted the main Al Qaim police station and then ambushed an Iraqi army unit en route to reinforce the beleaguered garrison. Three days later the Marine base was hit by a barrage of 122-mm rockets. Increasingly bold attacks on Mundy's resupply convoys and security patrols convinced Marine commanders that it was time to "shut the back door to Abu Musab al Zarqawi's terror recruiting pipeline."

  Mundy's battalion was reinforced with additional M-1 tanks, armored assault vehicles, LAVs, engineers, a joint Army-Marine-Navy Seabee bridge detachment, Special Operations troops, and Company "L," 3rd Bn, 25th Marines—a Marine Reserve rifle company from Columbus, Ohio. On 7 May, Mundy's Marines swept out of their forward operating base in an armored column protected by Marine F/A-18s and AH-1 Cobras overhead.

  To ensure that his armor could operate on both sides of the river, Mundy ordered his engineers and bridge detachment to place a floating span across the waterway. Then, to close an expected enemy escape route he seized the bridge at Karabilah. The fight to take and hold this key crossing became an epic battle, as the Silver Star citation for Lt. Brian Stann attests.

  The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star Medal to Brian M. Stann,1st Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the enemy as 2nd Mobile Assault Platoon Leader, Weapons Company, 3rd Bn, 2nd Marines, RCT-2, 2nd Marine Division, II MEF (Forward) in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM from 8 May to 14 May 2005. During Operation MATADOR, Lt. Stann led his reinforced platoon on an assault through a foreign
fighter and Mujahadeen insurgent defense-in-depth to seize the Ramana Bridge north of Karabilah, Iraq. On three separate occasions, he traversed four kilometers of enemy-occupied urban terrain in order to maintain his battle position. With each deliberate attack he controlled close-air support and the direct fire systems of tanks and heavy machine guns, destroying enemy positions along the route. At one point, the enemy massed on his platoon and fired over thirty RPGs, machine guns, detonated two IEDs, and attacked the unit with three suicide VBIEDs. Lt. Stann personally directed two casualty evacuations, three vehicle recovery operations, and multiple close air support missions under enemy small arms, machine gun and mortar fire in his 360-degree fight. Inspired by his leadership and endurance, Lt. Stann's platoon held the battle position on the Euphrates River for six days, protecting the Task Force flank and isolating foreign fighters and insurgents north of the river. Lt. Stann's zealous initiative, courageous actions, and exceptional presence of mind reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.

  By dawn on 8 May, Mundy had effectively split his reinforced battalion into two armored task forces, one on each side of the river. As the two units began a parallel sweep through the sprawling settlements that lined the water's edge, the terrorists had nowhere to run.