by Couch, Dick
“This really shook us up,” Chuck Forbes said. “I had visions of us moving to the valves and some Republican Guard dude sitting on the platform with a detonator in his hand, waiting for us to get close to the explosive charges on the pipelines. I talked it over with some of my senior enlisted men, and they concurred. So I took it up to Captain Harward, who then commanded the SEALs on the eve of the Iraqi invasion. He readily agreed. At the eleventh hour, we decided to take out the opposition first, then secure the infrastructure.”
The SEALs were operating under liberal “rules of engagement.” They were free to shoot anybody doing anything other than surrendering. By now, the SEALs were sure they’d been spotted by someone on the MABOT platform. It was time to move. Forbes took a deep breath and turned to his special boat team chief. “Let’s do it, Chief. Take us in hard.”
“Stand by to run in on step,” Chief Collins said quietly into his lip microphone. In the other two craft, the coxswains acknowledged the order and passed a warning to those embarked in their boats. “Hang on, everybody,” Collins said in a conversational tone. “Stand by . . . and hit it!”
There was a growl as six turbocharged engines quickly revved to full power and bellowed in unison. All three boats flew across the top of the water toward the MABOT platform. The roar of the engines canceled all conversation, yet Forbes whispered aloud to himself, “Oh please God, let us get on that terminal before they have time to react.” The “pucker factor” was through the roof. The SEALs assumed that at any moment their fragile boats could be ripped apart by heavy machine-gun fire or rocket-propelled grenades. Or the oil terminal could erupt in a fireball and take them with it.
The SEALs’ plan was simple: gain footholds on the platform, take control of the Republican Guard troops as fast as possible, race to at least a dozen critical nodes and chokepoints on the structure where explosives were probably rigged up, and stop them from being blown. If the SEALs couldn’t move fast enough, it was possible that the last thing in their lives they’d ever hear would be a small primary detonation, followed by a gigantic fireball.
In the lead boat, Lieutenant Forbes aimed his assault rifle’s laser pointer at the platform’s access ladder so the boat pilot could guide them in. The boats reached the edge of the platform. The SEALs quickly scaled the ladders, fanning out toward preassigned spots on the platform. In the distance, Forbes could see groups of Republican Guard troops clad in oil-worker uniforms freeze in their tracks, shouting something the SEAL couldn’t understand. Other Iraqis were waving, and others were diving to the floor.
Relieved, Forbes thought they were surrendering. But then he heard it. It was the last sound on earth he wanted to hear, and it erupted from somewhere deep in the bowels of the MABOT oil platform. It was the distinct sound of a muffled explosion. Forbes braced himself for what he assumed would be the last moment of his life. But nothing happened, and he never found out what the noise was.
Forbes recalled, “We swarmed over that housing complex as fast as we could get from the RHIBs up to the platform level and to the main structure. With the Republican Guard now in place, our ROEs were very liberal and for good reason. If there was any sign of noncompliance by an Iraqi or one of them made a sudden move, like he was reaching for a detonator or even a cell phone, we had authorization to shoot to kill. Any sudden movement was all it took for them to earn themselves a bullet. Really, we didn’t know what to expect; we were ready for anything.
“When I say things could have gone a lot worse, I mean a whole lot worse. They were very well armed. We found AK-47s, RPGs, antiaircraft guns, even SA-7s—the Russian-made heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles. And a ton of explosives. While most of us dealt with the Republican Guard, the search teams found charges made up to sections of the pipeline and the valving. They were not primed or wired up, but the charges were in place. It took a while to find all of it. From the time we went aboard until we had the terminal secure was about an hour and a quarter.”
“We treated those Iraqis really well while the search teams moved about the facility,” recalled one of the SEALs on the operation. “They were bound and gagged, but we drug out a stack of mattresses for them so they wouldn’t have to lie on the steel decking. We were so relieved that they didn’t put up a fight, we were downright nice to them.” Chuck Forbes praised his task force planners and his platoon SEALs. “They deserve a lot of credit, for getting that many people aboard the terminal that quickly. The Iraqis seemed to know we would come sooner or later, but were clearly surprised at how quickly we were on them.”
“It was as if they just didn’t want to die for Saddam,” mused one SEAL. “That, or destroying their nation’s oil export capability was just not in them. It was as if they were just going through the motions—doing just enough to make it look like they were going to fight or blow the terminal, but their hearts weren’t in it.”
By the time Forbes’s SEALs had cleared the berthing and living platform, they managed to round up twenty-three Iraqi Republican Guardsmen. To their relief, all of the priming charges and detonators were still in their packing crates. After declaring the facility secure, Forbes called in the U.S. Marine security force that would hold the terminal while the coalition forces occupied Basra and pushed northward for Baghdad.
At the KAAOT oil platform, the Polish GROM commandos enjoyed much the same success as the SEALs on MABOT, although there was not the same presence of the Republican Guard, nor were there the caches of weapons and explosives. With the taking and securing of the offshore terminals, along with coastal and inland infrastructure, the vital oil export capability had been made safe for the Iraqi people.
The SEALs, the GROM, and their support elements suffered no loss of life, and only a few combat wounds, that night of March 20–21, 2003. All five objectives, including the on-shore oil pumping stations, were secured with minimal damage to the installations and no environmental consequence.
Shortly after American armored columns set off from Kuwait to Baghdad, another group of SEALs and GROM commandos seized another important piece of Iraqi infrastructure, the Mukarayin hydroelectric dam, located some sixty miles northeast of Baghdad on a tributary of the Tigris River.
The success of the SEALs’ lightning raids on the Iraqi oil and hydroelectric facilities prevented an environmental disaster, furthered U.S. political, military, and economic ends, and helped achieve the objective of quickly toppling Saddam Hussein.
IN 2006 AND 2007, a detachment of U.S. Navy SEALs played a critical role in a pivotal campaign in the Iraq War: the Battle of Ramadi, the capital of strategic Anbar Province. The SEALs’ experience in Ramadi serves as a vivid microcosm of their experience throughout many battles and engagements of the long conflict. At the start of the battle, al-Qaeda terrorists and their insurgent allies had conquered much of the province, established a parallel government in many areas, and were in the process of forging a radical Islamic caliphate in the region, terrorizing local sheiks and inflicting atrocities and fear upon the population. When the battle was over, U.S. forces allied with Iraqi army, police, and tribal sheiks had recaptured most of the province and ushered in an era of fragile relative stability that largely endured until 2013.
The Battle of Ramadi was one of the fiercest extended campaigns of the Iraq War. For insurgents and foreign jihadis yearning to make a name for themselves, Ramadi was the Terrorist Super Bowl. For the SEALs it was a bloody, epic experience of land combat, urban warfare, and full-spectrum special operations. In the spring and early summer of 2006, the American and allied Iraqi forces were dug in at three main bases around the strategic Sunni-dominated provincial capital of Ramadi: Camp Ramadi; Camp Blue Diamond, at Hurricane Point on the banks of the Euphrates on the northwest side of Ramadi; and Camp Corregidor, a besieged outpost on the eastern side of the city. These bases supported a number of smaller strong-points scattered across Ramadi, including a very brave and embattled company of Marines at the Government Center outpost in central Ramadi. Next to Camp Ramad
i was an installation referred to as “Shark Base,” where many of the SEALs were stationed. All were under the threat of continual attack, and most took fire on a daily basis. The Marines at the Government Center fought off continuous attacks.
The insurgents had all but confined the Army and the Marines to their bases. Most patrols were made in force and usually resulted in contact. The insurgent grip on the city and the province also threatened the traditional authority of the Anbari tribal leaders. At this point there were really few options left for the Americans and their Iraqi army allies in Ramadi. It was becoming increasingly evident that they either had to drive the insurgents from the city or be forced to hunker down on their bases and in their bunkers, and watch the insurgent presence continue to escalate. It was unclear just exactly how they would rid the provincial capital of these insurgents, but they now realized that it would take a major effort to drive them out.
In the Battle of Ramadi, the SEALs had three interconnected missions: to train Iraqi military and police personnel, to conduct sniper missions, and to execute direct-action operations targeting terrorist and insurgent leadership. Throughout the battle, the SEALs reported to their own chain of command, but they also worked closely with an Army brigade commander responsible for the Ramadi “battlespace,” and with the Army, Marine, and Air Force troops assigned to the brigade task force he commanded.
In May 2006, there were some twenty-one major tribes in the greater Ramadi area. Only six of these were friendly to the Americans; the rest were hostile or, at best, sitting on the fence. The people of Ramadi were caught in the middle. The tribes and the people knew there was a fight coming, and they were waiting to see who was going to be the winner. That month, there was a change in the American military leadership in Ramadi and a new leader stepped into the role of the commander of the Ramadi area of operations, U.S. Army Colonel Sean MacFarland. He was most experienced with armored units and held a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech.
MacFarland had an offhand, self-deprecating manner like that of a Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper, something the SEALs in Ramadi picked up on immediately. Along with an easygoing and approachable demeanor, he brought solid experience to Ramadi. He was a counterinsurgency veteran, having worked in the footsteps of highly regarded Colonel H. R. McMaster in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar. He also brought with him a number of seasoned veterans, what one Army officer called the Tal Afar mafia.
There were two battle plans on the table. The “Fallujah model” called for a full-on assault—a single operation. As one Army officer put it, “We would just line up shoulder-to-shoulder and push the bastards west into the water.” The “Tal Afar model” was more subtle. It was a modified inkblot strategy that called for a rolling assault—taking the city one neighborhood at a time. No one, it seems, wanted a solution that would demolish a major Iraqi city and draw the negative media attention that attended the battle for Fallujah in late 2004, and a large number of refugees.
“To some extent,” explained the new brigade commander, “the final plan for Ramadi was one born of necessity. Ramadi is significantly larger than either of the other two Anbari cities. We simply lacked the overwhelming force to achieve a Fallujah-style offensive operation.” The SEAL task unit commander in Ramadi, a Lieutenant Commander named Jack Williams, became a critical, value-added force for Colonel MacFarland in the Battle for Ramadi. The SEALs and the Ramadi task unit, their role in the brigade battle plan and their participation in the Battle of Ramadi evolved as the battle unfolded. In the overall scheme of things, they were a small element and their operational portfolio did not require that they go out into the streets and fight in the way the Army and Marine, infantry and armor, were going to be asked to fight. Jack Williams saw this as an opportunity to do what he had come to Ramadi to do—to make a difference.
Williams recalled, “We were to train the Iraqi army scouts and make them better soldiers. We were also to conduct tribal engagement and to make ourselves useful to the brigade commander. But I had a great deal of latitude in the disposition of my task unit and in executing those orders. When Colonel MacFarland arrived, he was tasked with the job of taking Ramadi. I think he saw his job as twofold. First, he had to execute his battle plan, which became one of pushing out into the city and establishing outposts—to reclaim Ramadi, step by step. Second, he had to engage the local tribes and encourage them to work with us against al-Qaeda. When I learned the Army and the Marines were going into the streets to take back Ramadi, I told Colonel MacFarland, ‘Sir, what can we do to help?’ He basically wanted one thing from me; he wanted me to kill insurgents. So he incorporated the SEALs in his battle plan in that role. We joined the battle by helping to establish the combat outposts.”
Establishing a combat outpost in insurgent-held Iraqi territory was a dangerous, complex, and dynamic venture with a lot of moving parts. From the Army and Marine point of view, it was a difficult but proven counterinsurgency tactic. For the insurgents, it was an in-your-face push that moved the line of battle farther into their territory. For the SEALs, it was an offensive operation that allowed them to use their direct-action skills to best advantage.
In early June 2006, the SEALs in Ramadi were poised to strike the enemy in a way they had not done in their forty-five-year history: as a sustained direct-action force dedicated to supporting conventional troops in retaking a major urban area over a battle lasting many months. The focus of SEAL operations would be to support the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division of the United States Army in the battle to retake Ramadi. The order of battle on the eve of this struggle pitted four American Army battalions, one Marine battalion, and two Iraqi army brigades against an unknown and fluid number of entrenched insurgents. All told, there were some 5,500 Americans and 2,300 allied Iraqis going into the Battle of Ramadi and a Navy SEAL task unit with some thirty combat-ready SEALs.
The battle began on June 17 with two combat outposts (or “COPs”) being stood up simultaneously in the southwest and southeast sides of the city. A third outpost was established on June 18 in the southeast sector near Camp Corregidor. These respectively were COP Iron, COP Spear, and COP Eagle. These initial COPs were designed to block insurgent infiltration activity from the south. It took several days of fighting and building to seize and harden each of these three outposts and turn back the inevitable insurgent counterattacks. Over the course of the next seven months, thirteen COPs and many Iraqi police stations were established, then defended on a daily basis.
SEALs were involved from the beginning in nearly all of these operations. “The build-out was a seventy-eight-hour mission with the first forty-eight hours the most critical,” said Army Captain Mike Bajema. “I had to plan for rest breaks for all the engineers, builders, and drivers. The actual mission began with getting the security package in place and that started with the Navy SEALs.”
“We had gone in a few nights earlier to do our own recon of this COP site,” SEAL Lars Beamon said of the COP Falcon operation. “It was one of our few maritime operations we conducted in Ramadi.” COP Falcon was the first joint combat operation conducted by Captain Bajema and the SEALs. There would be more. Their relationship from the beginning was typical of the Army-SEAL bonding.
“We inserted by Marine rigid-hull inflatable boats (or ‘RHIBs’) off the Habbaniyah Canal and patrolled in on foot,” Beamon said of the SEAL recon. “Once ashore, we conducted a careful reconnaissance. We made a point to move about an extended area so we wouldn’t tip off the exact location of the new COP. Yet we were able to get some good IR [infrared] pictures of the COP buildings. This was a pretty dangerous area, down on the edge of the al-Mualemeen District. When we got to the neighborhood where the COP was to be sighted, we found two guys in the street planting an IED. We shot them both. Then we completed our recon and got back to the boats.”
After dark on the evening of June 24, an expanded SEAL element was again inserted by Marine RHIBs. The SEALs, their EOD techs, a Marine ANGL
ICO (Army/Navy Gunfire Liaison Company—a Marine air controller), interpreters, and their contingent of scouts quietly made their way to the objective. “We didn’t have to wait long to make contact,” Beamon said, “as we killed an armed insurgent on the way in. It let the Army know we were on the job. We went into the target house, a tall three-story residence. The scouts and the terps [interpreters] explained to the residents what was coming, and they took it stoically. These are people used to war. We set up shooting perches in the upper stories, and called Mike to tell him we were in place. Our job now was to provide a sniper overwatch along the routes that the lead Army elements were going to use to get to the COP location.”
As Army Captain Mike Bajema and his people were moving in, Lars Beamon and his SEAL snipers were moving out. Sometimes the SEALs will leave an overwatch element at the COP, but not this time. They patrolled out from the new COP, past the infantry and armor, to set up sniper overwatch positions along the routes they determined the insurgents were most likely to use to mount a counterattack. “Once the SEALs got in place on the outer perimeter,” Mike Bajema said of the Falcon operation, “we were as prepared as we could be to defend the battlespace around the COP. Now the Army engineers, the Navy Seabees, and the support elements rolled into Falcon and started a forty-eight-hour, nonstop build-out of the site. Trucks began to ferry equipment and building materials in from Camp Ramadi, often taking sniper fire as they came and went. They dropped more than two hundred twelve-foot concrete-wall T-barriers, set up two thousand meters of concertina, and strung God knows how many feet of electrical wire.”