Smells Like Dead Elephants

by Matt Taibbi

  It was a drive of several hours back to the FOB in Mosul that night, and after we made it without incident we sacked out for the night. While we were sleeping, another soldier got shot outside the wall, but he wasn’t with us. Moreover, word filtered back the next day that the first police station we’d visited in Tal Afar the day before had been shot up with AK fire. When we gassed the vehicles before leaving the FOB, we ran into another squad that had been hit; I talked to a twenty-year-old Californian named Anthony Matthews who was just coming back from medical leave after taking an IED in the face. Matthews looked just barely old enough to have a beard and reminded me of someone I’d see pumping Slurpees in a Georgia truck stop, but his face was already lightly scarred from the bomb fragments. Like most of the Iraq casualties of late, he was a gunner.

  “What happened? I got blowed up,” said Matthews, who told me right up front that he disliked the media. “I blew up at this one reporter,” he snarled. “She was like, ‘So you saw an IED?’ And I was like, ‘Motherfucker, I touched an IED.’ I got six pieces of shrapnel in my face, so don’t talk to me about seeing.”

  The guys in the squad listened vaguely to the story, then jumped in their vehicles and drove off, past the spot where the sniper had picked off one of ours the night before, past the spot where the other MP had caught shrapnel in his chest two nights ago, and then finally out of town and due north. If the enemy was watching, we didn’t know it; not even a cat crossed our path all day long. Eventually we made it to a Kurdish city called Irbil, where everybody loved us and we got to stay in a hotel and eat pizza and watch shitty American soap operas on a giant projection television in the hotel lobby, where we lolled around with our feet up on the furniture like cows sleeping in high grass.

  Kurdistan is paradise for American troops. “If only they were all Kurds” is something you’ll hear said often by soldiers. Oppressed for centuries by Arabs of all stripes—Sunni, Shia, Syrian, Iraqi—the Kurds have been legitimately worshipful of American troops. This raw countryside with low, rolling mountains and smiling dark-haired men and women in Western dress provides a stark contrast to the rest of Iraq, covered in garbage and full of people who sneer in the best-case scenario.

  The rumor in Kurdistan is that the local Kurdish militia—the formerly anti-Saddam guerrillas, the Peshmerga—will kill ten civilians for every American killed, which means you can walk the streets here. So we walked the streets, with their old markets of hanging clothes and cheap gold chains and big baskets of nuts and fruits, bought ice cream, winked at girls, and snapped pictures of ruins. Conquering heroes. We were Donald Rumsfeld’s wet dream.

  But later that night, after we visited an Iraqi police target-shooting range, a somber mood fell over the squad. Who knows what it was. Maybe it was because it didn’t really feel right being here, if you weren’t getting shot at. “I’d just like to feel like I was participating,” said Corporal Jimmy Shepard, an affable weight lifter. The lot of us were crammed into a pair of civilian SUVs run by the MPs up there—they have no need to drive in armor all the time in Kurdistan—and on the way home from the range, everyone’s head was hanging as the sun went down on another incident-free day. The 158th is a wonder when it’s loose and working; it doesn’t do too well with silence.

  Just then something horrible befouled the air. One of the guys had farted, breaking up the somber moment. It was the perfect response to the overserious “war is hell” vibe threatening the atmosphere.

  “That shit just ain’t right,” Spicer protested.

  “That’s as wrong as two boys fucking,” agreed Wilkerson.

  Then the group broke out singing a song called “Gay Factory Worker from the South” and the mood was restored. The trip ended a few days later without incident. The 158th was never going to get hit.

  II. THE BIG SCORE

  Porkfest in the Desert

  Iraq is many things—a horrifically dangerous war zone, a crumbling nation-state, a lousy place to buy a blintz. It is also a privateer’s paradise, a macro version of one of those ­department-store contests where the contestant gets to run up and down the aisles cramming as much shit as possible into his shopping cart. Except the time period is ten years, not ten minutes.

  By the time we reached a Kurdish city called Sulimaniyah, less than a week into my trip, the euphoria I’d felt in my first days with the 158th was rapidly giving way to more predictable feelings of paranoia and self-recrimination. As a journalist in Iraq, you can’t help but start to feel like what you are, which is a vermin and an outsider. In many ways, being embedded with U.S. troops in the liberal-media/Michael Moore age is sort of like being asked to march into Sunday services in a Lexington, Kentucky, megachurch wearing an assless biker-dominatrix costume: one is conscious of having been the subject of many past sermons. In the army mind-set, the relative success and failure of the Iraq War is all a matter of perception, and if you follow that calculus far enough, which a certain unmistakable minority of soldiers will, all of the bombings are actually the media’s fault.

  Any journalist in Iraq who does not regularly feel the urge to puke his guts out from conscience-sickness is probably not in the right line of work, because increasingly almost anything he does here is a gruesome betrayal of someone or other—the soldiers and their mission if he tells too much of the truth, himself and the public if he does not.

  I was already beginning to feel weighed down by that issue when we reached Sulimaniyah, having seen things that I knew would fall under the category of “not helpful” if they appeared in print. The job in Suli was a visit/inspection by Currier of the Sulimaniyah Police Academy, a training facility built by the Americans and maintained by a pair of steely-eyed, sun-beaten Las Vegans whom I will call Bob and Ray. As the conduits to American funding of the school and, indirectly, the region, Bob and Ray clearly enjoyed the status of local emirs of the Man Who Would Be King genus, suckling languidly at the teat of the war effort and cheerfully overseeing various budget-devouring ­construction initiatives. When I arrived, they were in the middle of building a full-size “mock police station,” complete with every conceivable bell and whistle for use in teaching recruits, while also training police recruits of various stripes and enthusiasms—some had been rejected when portraits of Saddam Hussein were discovered in their shirt pockets.

  The whole setup reeked of some idle midwestern retired police officer’s ultimate leisure fantasy: a tit job, a nice fat income, an endlessly replicating budget kept thousands of miles and a war zone away from any scrutiny by Washington, a huge staff of mute, mustachioed subordinates to build cabinets and sweep floors, a pool table, a satellite TV, and a big yard full of rocks and desert plants to pump a few rounds into when things get slow. Yes, they lived in grim, modular trailers, but that seemed like a fair trade-off for a honey life. I could barely contain my jealousy.

  Bob and Ray clearly had a plan in place for Currier’s visit: to beg shamelessly for $4 million more to expand the facility. They had already gotten $4.8 million, but who knows what the final cost would end up being. Private contractors play an intimate role in almost every aspect of the Iraq War operation, performing a whole range of tasks traditionally handled by the military—driving convoy trucks, providing security for government officials and other important personages, even “sucking shit,” as the soldiers call cleaning out sewage. The profits can be astronomical, and there is plenty of evidence that costs to the taxpayer are ballooning due to the prevalence of cost-plus contracts, a system under which the more the contractor spends, the more he makes. In cost-plus, every company in a chain of subcontractors simply adds its own percentage profit charge to whatever moneys have been spent—as high as 30 or 40 percent in some cases—so that a $150,000-per-year security guard may end up costing the government $600,000 or more. Henry Bunting, a former Halliburton purchasing officer, recently said that he often heard officials at Halliburton subsidiary KBR say, “Don’t worry ab
out price. It’s cost-plus.”

  It’s clear that there is a lot of money to be made in Iraq—soldiers who are miserable will come back for a few years to get themselves a house or a boat or two. A lot of the contractors seem to be guys like Bob and Ray—southern or western ex-cops or ex-military personnel (according to one report, 32 percent come from a few southern states) who come to the Middle East with halos over their heads “to help,” and go home a few years later with that big score tucked away.

  Americans are a missionary people; we cannot resist wanting to help other nations. Of course, the Iraqis know, instinctively, that nothing on earth is more dangerous than an American who visits your land and suddenly gets that goofy-ass Tim Allen Home Improvement fixer-upper look in his eyes. And it’s comical to see how powerful that philanthropic urge becomes when it is attached to 4 million potential dollars. Pleading their case to Currier in the air-conditioned quiet of their trailer offices (plywood furniture, beat-up couch, bookshelf full of Christian hymnals and Michael Crichton novels), the pair began their pitch by comparing their plight to that of a similar training facility the army apparently had in Jordan, where some $12 million had apparently been spent just on a staff recreation center.

  “I mean, if you’re going to do that,” said Bob, an older man with silver hair, “you might as well just take the money and go light a match to it.”

  “And here we ask for just four million dollars!” complained Ray, a younger type with a slight potbelly stretching from a striped artificial-fabric polo shirt. “And the money is just very hard to get our hands on.”

  Diplomatically, Currier said nothing, and the conversation shifted to a discussion of widespread problems with recruits across the province. Seeing Currier’s despair at the long list of obstacles, Bob smelled an opening and pounced like an animal.

  “I think the thing to do is invest another ten to fifteen million right here and do it right,” he said bluntly.

  A bold move but it fell flat. Nothing from the colonel. Bob and Ray were physically leaning forward in their chairs by this point.

  Currier: “Do we have training for NCOs, commissars, et cetera?”

  Bob: “It would be wonderful to run a class for these guys. We’d do some training for them, sure.”

  Bob smiled. It was the smile of a vacuum-cleaner salesman face-to-face with a housewife. Training? We can do training. Heck, this little baby cleans carpets of all types, from shag to Persian. . . . Let me show you what I mean, ma’am. . . .

  Bob smiled again. It was time for him to bring out his ace in the hole, Major General Sabah Jalal Gharib, head of local law enforcement. I would see a number of these inspection-­budgetary meetings, and the playbook was almost always the same. The local official, a toothy personage with a lit cigarette, a gray suit, and a mustache, was usually introduced by the American bureaucrat-privateer, propped up as the second coming of Fiorello La Guardia or Augusto Pinochet or both, and praised to the heavens for his hatred of Saddam and his devotion to the cause. He is invited to speak briefly. When he finishes he is applauded, called a “good guy,” and then shuffled to the side. Finally, a request for funding is made. It’s the same every time.

  In this case Gharib asked Currier for money to build more police stations, at a cost of just half a million bucks or so per station. Then he sat smoking a cigarette, leaving the rest of the meeting to Bob and Ray.

  “We only received a thousand rounds of ammo in the last shipment,” said Bob. “You yourself know what a thousand rounds is good for.”

  “Every time we ask supply for new cars,” said Ray. “And every time it’s the same refusal. Look at us. We have old, beat-up cars!”

  The memory of having just paid a monstrous tax bill burned in my skull as the sound of Ray complaining about having to drive an old car in Iraq bounced around in my ear. It dawned on me that this was how the appropriation process works in Iraq—your Bob and your Ray just have to ask for the money, and it arrives!

  I would later be told that this particular training academy had been funded out of a nonmilitary appropriation called the International Narcotics League. More than a month after that, I would visit Congress and learn from several congressional aides that there was no way for even a U.S. congressman to find a budget where these programs exist—they’re simply not in the public record. Unless you fall onto the info by parachute, there is no way to find out what is being built in Iraq, and for how much.

  When the meeting ended, Gharib suddenly decided to take his important guest on a long, winding tour of the natural wonders of Sulimaniyah, which included a twisting skyline roadway that climbed beehive-style up a small mountain overlooking the city. The trip involved a large convoy of vehicles, and I was wedged into an SUV with an eclectic group that included Ray (who was driving) and a few other soldiers.

  The talk in the car turned to the local population. The general theme of the conversation was that the Kurds were great folks, just like us, except when they weren’t and were still a backward bunch of primitives.

  “They’re so advanced here,” said Ray. “They’re always looking to the future. All schooling here is free, even the university. They even pay the students, so that . . .”

  “So that they can concentrate on their studies,” said one passenger, Sergeant Arne Eastlund, approvingly. He laughed. “That’s great. I wonder where they got that idea?”

  “They dress more in the Western fashion here,” noted Ray.

  “That’s good,” said Eastlund.

  Suddenly, a sergeant named Pistone chimed in. “You don’t see many joggers or Rollerbladers here,” Pistone said, looking out the window at the flow of Kurdish pedestrians trudging through their markets. “Or mountain bikers. Weird.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” said Eastlund.

  At the top of the hill, we drove through a recreation area full of picnickers. The Kurds sat on the hillside on carpets and sheets, drinking, smoking and eating homemade meals.

  “You don’t see many concession stands or salesmen here,” said Pistone. “In America, in a place like this, there would be salesmen and concession stands everywhere.” There was a tinge of empathetic regret in his voice.

  “Hmm,” said Eastlund.

  Just then we drove past a young Kurd who, upon seeing the convoy of Americans, stood up from his picnic and very deliberately pulled out his middle finger to show to each and every one of us.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Pistone. “Did he just flip us off?”

  “We should tell the Peshmerga,” said Ray. “They’ll take care of him. They’ll send us his fingers in the mail.”

  “Yeah, we should,” said Eastlund.

  “Motherfucker,” snarled Pistone.

  We drove higher and came across a bunch of Kurdish children playing on a swing set that had been constructed high up on the mountainside.

  “Oh, that’s good,” chuckled Pistone. “Just let your kids fall off the mountain. I mean, who’s gonna herd the sheep ­tomorrow?”

  “I wonder if they even have DUI laws in this country,” mused Eastlund, watching the traffic come down the hill.

  “Yeah, I doubt it,” said Pistone. We drove further and he looked over at a bunch of teenagers dancing and snorted, “Yeah. Drinking and dancing on the side of a mountain—a real good idea.” Near the top of the hill Pistone raised an eyebrow as he looked out the car window. “They got trash baskets up here. Surprising.”

  For those of us who still wonder why it is that we actually invaded this country in the first place—and this is a question that even the most creative conspiracy theorist will still have trouble answering convincingly—all it takes is a few scenes like this to understand that this isn’t just about oil.

  There is a certain psychologically inevitable quality to our blundering overseas, a kind of burning, insane desire to fuck with people we don’t l
ike or respect in the slightest, to cure the disease of their cultures, as it were, by drying them out in the sun of our creepy suburban enlightenment. What kind of madmen come to the ancient territory of mountainous Kurdistan and search expectantly for Rollerbladers out the window of an armored vehicle? This kind of weirdness comes far too naturally to us for this to be an accidental consequence of the invasion; it has to be part of the reason we’re here, too.

  It was a long twenty minutes down the hill and back into the city downtown, where we arrived just in time to see a small crowd of bubbly college-age girls walking home from one of the local institutes.

  “Hey, how about that?” said Eastlund.

  “Yup,” said Ray cheerfully. “They dress almost like American girls here!”

  III. LOST IN BAGHDAD

  A Bet on the Wrong Horse

  Back to Baghdad, which they say is one of the largest cities in the world. I wouldn’t know. For most Americans in the capital, life in Baghdad just means a bigger FOB—one with walls twice as high, twice the number of guards, bigger cafeterias with twice as many varieties of pie. Beyond the barricades is a complex city of ten million, in whose streets a subterranean civil war is played out in daily assassinations between religious sects; one soldier, whose responsibilities included visiting a city morgue, told me that there were dozens of bodies to pick up every morning, many missing heads or kneecaps. But all of this is theoretical to most Americans, for whom the biggest difference life in the capital offers is the much higher number of nitpicking officers who never leave the FOB—called “fobbits” in army parlance. In the rougher regions, you will not find many officers who patrol the grounds looking for soldiers who forget to salute or commit the crime of bringing a book into the cafeterias (there might be an IED inside).

  Upon returning to Baghdad from my trip north, I had a—vision. The vision coincided with my transfer out of the unit of charmed Okies in the vast Camp Liberty suburb and into a far more miserable and serious situation in a smaller FOB across town.