109 Compared to Iraq, the average American soldier in Afghanistan had roughly double the chance of losing a limb: All statistics in this paragraph, except where noted below, from Hannah Fisher, “U.S. Military Casualty Statistics: Operation New Dawn, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom,” Congressional Research Service, February 5, 2013.
109 German researchers found: See Lechner, et al.
109 At the height of the fighting seasons: See Fisher’s Congressional Research Report.
110 The wounded to killed ratio in World War II was 2.1: See same Defense Casualty Analysis System and iCasulaties.org for Afghanistan and Iraq. All ratios consider battlefield deaths compared to battlefield wounded. For World War II, an additional 30,000 missing are added to the deaths category, since they constituted such a large percentage of the lost.
110 In World War II, 7 percent of soldiers: Per Department of Veterans Affairs paper titled “Traumatic Amputation and Prosthetics,” May 2002: http://www.publichealth.va.gov/docs/vhi/traumatic_amputation.pdf (retrieved on October 1, 2015).
110 multiple amputation rate also jumped to 30 percent: See Krueger, et al.
110 The greatest percentage of amputations, 42 percent of the total: Ibid.
112 HO is frustrating because: For clinical background on HO, see Ted Melcer, Brian Belnap, Jay Walker, Paula Konoske, and Michael Galarneau, “Heterotopic Ossification in Combat Amputees from Afghanistan and Iraq Wars: Five Case Histories and Results from a Small Series of Patients,” Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development, 2011; 48(1):1–12.
112 HO was previously classified as “infrequent,” but the latest research: See Benjamin Potter, Jonathan Forsberg, Thomas Davis, Korboi Evans, Jason Hawksworth, Doug Tadaki, Trevor Brown, Nicole Crane, Travis Burns, Frederick O’Brien, and Eric Elster, “Heterotopic Ossification Following Traumatic and Combat-Related Amputations. Prevalence, Risk Factors, and Preliminary Results of Excision,” The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, American Volume, March 2007, 89(3):476–86.
CHAPTER 8
130 small entrance known as the Hero’s Highway: The hospital in Balad closed down in 2011. For a photo of the flag-draped tent, and a brief retrospective, see http://www.usmedicine.com/agencies/department-of-defense-dod/end-of-era-us-military-dismantles-its-hospitals-in-iraq/ (retrieved on September 26, 2015).
132 Whipples were first performed in Europe in the nineteenth century: For clinical background, see Chandrakanth Are, Mashaal Dhir, and Lavanya Ravipati, “History of Pancreaticoduodenectomy: Early Misconceptions, Initial Milestones and the Pioneers,” HPB (Oxford), June 2011, 13(6):377–384.
135 A 2007 Washington Post investigation revealed a system: Dana Priest and Anne Hull, “Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army’s Top Medical Facility,” The Washington Post, February 18, 2007.
135 One of the guys OD’d and died: Ibid.
137 The trip was sponsored by World TEAM Sports: This bike trip was not a one-off; the organization continues to sponsor events around the country (http://worldteamsports.org/).
138 Jukes would go on to climb 20,075-foot Lobuche: See Brian Mockenhaupt, “The Other Side of the Mountain,” Outside, March 2011. For a review of the film, see Jeanette Catsoulis, “Therapy from a Mountaintop,” New York Times, November 1, 2012.
138 In October he requested that his left leg be removed: In some ways, Frost’s story is the more typical one. While only 15 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan combat-related amputations occur after twelve weeks (Daniel Stinner, Travis Burns, Kevin Kirk, Charles Scoville, James Ficke, and Joseph Hsu, “Prevalence of Late Amputations During the Current Conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Military Medicine, December 2010; 175(12):1027–9), medical studies have also found that patients who choose to have their limbs removed, rather than salvaged, have better long-term outcomes (William Doukas, Roman Hayda, Michael Frisch, Romney Anderson, Michael Mazurek, and James Ficke, “The Military Extremity Trauma Amputation/Limb Salvage (METALS) Study: Outcomes of Amputation Versus Limb Salvage Following Major Lower-Extremity Trauma,” Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, American Volume, January 16, 2013; 95(2):138–45).
141 The holy grail for the industry was an implantable version: Swedish scientists would later attain this standard: Max Ortiz-Catalan, Bo Hakansson, and Rickard Branemark, “An Osseointegrated Human-Machine Gateway for Long-Term Sensory Feedback and Motor Control of Artificial Limbs,” Science Translational Medicine, October 8, 2014.
CHAPTER 9
145 On September 11, 2001, hundreds of military EOD technicians: Per background interviews with EOD technicians assigned to work Secret Service duty at the time.
145 nearly 10 percent of the total active duty EOD force: This actually says more about how small the joint EOD force was (only about 2,500 total enlisted operators) prior to 9/11. To fight the wars that followed, the force would more than triple in size.
145 the first medal for heroism earned by an EOD tech: For the entire story of Prewitt on that day, see Stephen Phillips, “A Remembrance of 9/11,” Small Wars Journal, September 11, 2010.
147 on his left Dr. Doug Owsley: For a profile of Dr. Owsley, see Aaron Elkina, “35 Who Made a Difference: Douglas Owsley,” Smithsonian.com, November 1, 2005.
147 Maude was a Vietnam veteran, the highest-ranking officer to die at the Pentagon on 9/11: For the official obituary of Lieutenant General Maude, see http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/22/us/lt-gen-timothy-l-maude-53-an-army-deputy-chief-of-staff.html (retrieved on September 28, 2015). The last officer of similar rank to die by enemy action was Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., the son of Confederate General Buckner, who died after leading the invasion of Okinawa in 1945.
149 Brueghel, Bosch: Of Brueghel, see The Triumph of Death and The Fall of the Rebel Angels. Of Bosch, see especially The Last Judgement and the last panel of the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights.
150 Brassfield-Mora: The Military Times series of newspapers keeps small stories of deceased soldiers at http://thefallen.militarytimes.com/.
151 At the height of the Iraq Surge, an average of 175 such incidents: The Long War Journal keeps a useful archive of IED statistics in Iraq: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2007/12/iraq_by_the_numbers.php.
152 The storage area at TEDAC looks like the warehouse: For a peek inside TEDAC, see Del Quinten Wilbur, “Inside the FBI’s Giant Bomb Warehouse,” Bloomberg Business, June 26, 2014.
157 Special Forces only began to send the same units back to the same Afghan villages in 2010: See Linda Robinson, One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare (New York: Public Affairs, 2013), 51.
158 ASP 3: Wikileaks is full of reports of ordnance stolen from ASP 3 in Samarra, for example: https://wardiaries.wikileaks.org/id/DBE88E0D-1072–47D4-B994-AE67FAD2C7AF/ (retrieved on September 28, 2015).
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167 When the Taliban ordered a string of assassinations in the summer of 2011: See Julian Borger, “Afghanistan Government Under Threat After Second Assassination in a Week,” The Guardian, July 18, 2011, and Alyssa J. Rubin, “Assassination Deals Blow to Peace Process in Afghanistan,” New York Times, September 20, 2011. Also, Linda Robinson’s One Hundred Victories, page 61.
168 Talon robots cost only $100,000: They cost much more at the start of the war, $250,000 each. But by the end of Iraq and Afghanistan, bulk orders cut the price significantly. According to the latest September 2015 brochure, the cost is even lower, $60,000.
168 Captain Rob Yllescas: See Tapper, page 379. “… Yllescas must have been bit by a radio-controlled IED. He’d been singled out and targeted.”
168 Casualties during the Iraq Surge leapt 20 percent for Green Berets: See the memorial wall at the Green Beret Foundation: http://www.greenberetfoundation.org/memorial-wall/ (retrieved on September 28, 2015).
168 doubled for EOD techs: See memorial wall at the EOD Warrior Foundation: http://www.eodwarriorfoundation.org/eod-memorial (retrieved on September 28, 2015).
168 SEAL
teams didn’t lose a single man in Iraq until 2006: See the memorial at the Navy SEAL Foundation: http://www.navysealfoundation.org/about-the-seals/our-fallen-heroes/ (retrieved on September 28, 2015).
172 Ad Dawla al Islamiyya fin al-Iraq wa al-Sham: The Islamic State (also known as ISIS) began as the Al Anbar arm of Al Qaeda in Iraq (see Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (New York: Regan Arts, 2015)). It evolved through several names as leaders were killed during the Iraqi Surge, and eventually broke from central Al Qaeda over disputes concerning (among other things) the doctrine of killing civilians in “martyrdom” attacks. There is evidence that, in his last years, Osama Bin Laden greatly regretted the civilian deaths Al Qaeda had inflicted, and had come to see them as counterproductive (see especially, Mark Bowden, The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012) and Don Rassler, et al, “Letters from Abbottabad: Bin Laden Sidelined?” Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, May 3, 2012).
172 “You do not care for the widows and orphans of our slain brothers: Ibid.
172 “You have lost your focus on the Great Satan brought near: Ibid.
173 the warheads all wrapped in aluminum foil: Background interviews with EOD techs who worked in Tikrit in 2008. They found many rocket warheads wrapped in aluminum foil.
173 “We wrap our fingers in tape: A good demonstration of Iraqi insurgent bomb building procedures can be found in Molly Bingham (Director) and Steve Connors (Director), Meeting Resistance [documentary], United States: Nine Lives Documentary Productions, 2007.
173 Battle of Manhattan: Osama Bin Laden’s term for the attacks of 9/11.
173 “We have not received the remote detonators: Osama Bin Laden, when he was a mujahideen leader in Afghanistan in the 1980s, received remote detonators and surface-to-air missiles from the United States. See George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003).
173 you bring those wishing to be shaheed through Syria: Background interviews with US military intelligence officers, on the suicide bomber pipeline and procedures in western Iraq. The two methods of coercion described here, enticement and shame, were very common. For additional suicide bomber background, see Lankford.
174 black banners of Khurasan: Per Soufan, Al Qaeda saw itself as the champion of Khurasan, a historical designation for an area that now encompasses large portions of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan, and Turkmenistan.
176 The final report would determine that Fye was simply unlucky: Provided to me courtesy of Fye. The internal report was filed by the EOD team leader who did the post-blast investigation of Fye’s incident, and was communicated via typical SITREP (situation report) channels.
CHAPTER 11
182 They were contractors: As predicted by P. W. Singer in Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).
182 French police began tabulating the lengths of forearms: The father of French biometrics was Alphonse Bertillon, who, besides measuring noses and arms, invented the mug shot, and in the early twentieth century, wrote influential papers on the science of fingerprinting.
182 Scotland Yard adopted fingerprinting in 1901: This system, known as the Henry Classification System, was widely used by all police departments until the 1990s.
183 Conducting a census of the population is a classic counterinsurgency strategy: General David Petraeus’s much-praised counterinsurgency manual Counterinsurgency, Field Manual 3–24 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, December 2006), has a section on census operations. See page 3–29: “In some cases, it may be necessary for Soldiers and Marines to go door to door and collect census data themselves.” For additional historical background, see Michael S. Shrout, “Biometrically Supported Census Operations as a Population Control Measure in Counterinsurgency,” School of Advanced Military Studies (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: United States Army Command and Staff College).
184 unlike the HIIDE, FBI standard nail-to-nail rolled fingerprints: It took years for the DoD’s biometrics system to conform to the standard system used by other government agencies. See, for example: United States Government Accountability Office, GAO-11–276 Defense Biometrics: DoD Can Better Conform to Standards and Share Biometrics Information with Federal Agencies, March 2011.
186 Afghanistan’s naming convention: For a longer treatment of challenges with Afghanistan’s use of names, see Joseph Goldstein, “For Afghans, Name and Birthdate Census Questions Are Not So Simple,” New York Times, December 10, 2014.
190 Army Colonel A. T. Ball, and he said their mission was “sensor-to-shooter” fusion: In September of 2007, Colonel Ball wrote his own public affairs media release on the mission of Task Force-ODIN: https://www.dvidshub.net/news/12463/task-force-odin-using-innovative-technology-support-ground-forces#.VgVaHqSmDIU (retrieved on September 28, 2015).
191 She read Dick Couch and Linda Robinson: Hard to find a better introduction to the world of Special Forces. See Dick Couch, Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior (New York: Crown, 2007), and Linda Robinson, Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces (New York: Public Affairs, 2005).
191 Soliman also read War Torn: Tad Bartimus, Denby Fawcett, Jurate Kazickas, Edith Lederer, Ann Bryan Mariano, Anne Morrissy Merick, Laura Palmer, Kate Webb, and Tracy Wood, War Torn: Stories of War from the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2002).
192 The 9/11 Commission Report had recommended: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004), pages 385–89.
195 He gestured at the Tea Boy huddled: The exploitation of Tea Boys (also called Dancing Boys) is known as bacha bazi, or “boy play” in Pashto, and it has a long and ignoble tradition. To learn more, see Joseph Goldstein, “U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boy by Afghan Allies,” New York Times, September 20, 2015, and Ben Anderson (Director), This Is What Winning Looks Like [documentary], United States: VICE Media, 2013.
196 Say the Ayatul Kursi to yourself: The Throne Verse is the 255th verse of the second chapter of the Koran. It is often recited in times of trouble or distress. For a typical example, see Hassan Blasim, The Corpse Exhibition and Other Stories of Iraq (New York: Penguin, 2013), 160.
196 She is Nuristani, maybe, or one of Alexander’s Greeks: The people of Nuristan, in far northeastern Afghanistan, have red hair and blue eyes, and legends persist that they are descended from Greeks left behind after Alexander the Great’s invasion. In The Outpost (page 49), Jake Tapper describes this thought as “a long-discredited myth.”
198 Dostum put the foot soldiers of his enemies in shipping containers and forgot about them: General Dostum has a long history of such atrocities, including one incident, while he was on the CIA payroll, known as the Dasht-i-Leili Massacre. See James Risen, “U.S. Inaction Seen After Taliban P.O.W.’s Died,” New York Times, July 10, 2009.
199 an old dry kariz maybe: A common tactic. See Robinson, One Hundred Victories, page 40.
200 Afghan Arab movement founded by Abdullah Azzam: The best background I know on the roots of modern jihad is Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin, 2004).
200 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, received a degree in mechanical engineering: See 9/11 Commission Report, page 146.
201 his wiring adaptation changed with it: Personal experience while working in Iraq.
202 When he uploads a new circuit design to a Chinese specialty manufacturing company: Background interviews with analysts who worked in CEXC in Iraq and Afghanistan.
203 sung by Syrian insurgents: An excellent overview of a few katibats in Syria that named themselves for Chechen heroes can be found at this quasi-jihadist news site: http://www.esinislam.com/Articles201306/WritersArticles_MarkazKavkaz
_0603htm#AllahIsGreat (retrieved on September 28, 2015).
203 In the midst of the worst Russian artillery bombardment: The best first-person jihadist account of the 1990s wars in Grozny that I have found is Aukai Collins, My Jihad (New York: Pocket Star Books, 2002).
204 Her 2011 article, “Al Qaeda Foot Soldiers: Anne Stenersen, “Al Qaeda’s Foot Soldiers: A Study of the Biographies of Foreign Fighters Killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan Between 2002 and 2006,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 2011 (34):171–98.
205 It was just Abu Abdul Raham al-Muhajir: As previously mentioned, noted a few times in Soufan’s The Black Banners.
205 In his Wikipedia profile: Filed under his given name, rather than his Al Qaeda hadith alias. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushin_Musa_Matwalli_Atwah (retrieved on September 29, 2015).
205 I eventually found Midhat Mursi: See Stenersen, “‘Bomb-making for Beginners’: Inside an Al-Qaeda E-Learning Course.”
205 some misreported: See, for example, Brian Ross and Habibullah Khan, “U.S. Strike Killed Al Qaeda Bomb Maker,” ABC News, January 18, 2006, and Dan Darling, “Al Qaeda’s Mad Scientist: The Significance of Abu Khabab’s Death,” The Weekly Standard, January 19, 2006.
205 some correct: See, among others, Jeffery Simon, “Al-Qaida Confirms Death of Poisons Expert in Pakistan,” The Guardian, August 3, 2008, and Aamir Latif, “A Key al Qaeda Bomber Maker Is Killed (Again),” U.S. News & World Report, July 29, 2008.
205 NBC says the FBI had used the wrong photo: See Lisa Meyers, “U.S. Post Wrong Photo of ‘al-Qaida Operative,’” NBC News, January 6, 2006 (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11042211/#.VgWb0aSmDIU) (retrieved on September 29, 2015).
206 a gait recognition algorithm: A few months after 9/11, the Department of Defense started a program called Total Information Awareness. According to a report in the New Yorker (Ryan Lizza, “State of Deception,” New Yorker, December 16, 2013), “The T.I.A. system was intended to collect information about the faces, fingerprints, irises, and even the gait of suspicious people.” The program was shut down in 2003.
All the Ways We Kill and Die Page 33