Part 6 (1/2)

”The lead vehicle fires a warning shot to get them out of the way,” Teeples later recounted to Poirier. ”A gunner in one of the rear vehicles puts his head down and opens up with a fifty cal, just opens up, and lays down seven people.” (A .50 caliber is a heavy machine gun, its rounds capable of penetrating many armored vehicles. When those big rounds. .h.i.t the human body they can sever limbs and explode skulls. More than one American soldier described the fire as coming from a .50 caliber; Bray later said emphatically that it was a lighter M-240.) Teeples was very clear, Poirier said in an interview, that ”it was unaimed fire,” and ”some innocent people died.”

Teeples declined to be interviewed for this book. But Lt. Col. Tobin Green, a 3rd ACR officer who was standing next to him atop the Baath Party headquarters building, said the convoy was attacked by the demonstrators. ”I witnessed soldiers from the 82nd come under attack from Iraqis throwing rocks and bricks at exposed men with complete force at distances of no less than three feet. The column came under fire from enemy riflemen on the edge of the crowd,” he said by e-mail.

Another 3rd ACR officer who was an eyewitness that day came down between Swannack's and Poirier's accounts.

The demonstration was approximately 200 persons-- [S]ome shots were firedfrom AK-47 a.s.sault rifles from the rear of the demonstration. Generally, these shots were not aimed, sometimes they were. The Humvee gunner from their D Co. (Ant.i.tank Company), did fire a burst of .50 cal. The Iraqi who was killed I remember the most was an elderly man who took a .50 cal round to the head at short range. Given that I was not in that soldier's position, I cannot say he made a bad call.

The Fallujah hospital director told Human Rights Watch that three people were killed that day, and sixteen wounded.

Bray argued credibly that his unit behaved well and honorably in both incidents. He noted that both before and after Fallujah, it handled difficult situations well. His one regret, he said, is that some soldiers used automatic weapons to return fire when it would have been better to respond with single shots. But at the same time, he recalled the Black Hawk Down Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993, in which eighteen American soldiers had died. ”I didn't want my soldiers cut off and isolated,” and so didn't want them to second-guess themselves about responding when threatened. incident in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993, in which eighteen American soldiers had died. ”I didn't want my soldiers cut off and isolated,” and so didn't want them to second-guess themselves about responding when threatened.

The key to the events in Fallujah, Bray said, isn't the behavior of his soldiers but the malignant character of some people in the town. By April 25, the sole policeman there who had been helping U.S. troops operate a checkpoint was shot in front of his house, and the word ”Traitor” was written on his forehead. ”There was something evil in that town,” Bray recalled. In his view, Human Rights Watch overestimated the casualties in the first incident because it collected statistics that reflected violence all the way from Ramadi to Baghdad for a three-day period. As for the criticism by fellow American soldiers, he said it came from units fresh to Iraq and unfamiliar with the situation. ”Dave [Teeples] doesn't quite understand what is happening” that day in Fallujah. ”This is the first fight for him and his guys. I tell them, 'The war's not over.'” Earlier that day he had seen a 3rd ACR soldier standing on a balcony in Fallujah without any body armor on. ”I told him, 'Son, you don't know where you are.'”

The incidents of April 28 and 30 became a cause celebre for the people of Fallujah, who would raise them repeatedly in negotiations with U.S. forces over the next year. ”It continually comes up,” said a U.S. military intelligence official who sometimes dealt directly with insurgents there.

Added Col. John Toolan, commander of the Marines who would fight a battle in Fallujah a year later, ”They used it against us all the time.”

Frances ”Bing” West, the embedded defense a.n.a.lyst and author who has spent more time studying U.S. military operations in al Anbar province than any other unofficial observer, concluded that the Sunnis-and especially the people of Fallujah and the rest of al Anbar province-had never been defeated in the spring invasion. In that sense, the April incidents may have been not so much a cause of later troubles as a reflection of an existing problem: The Sunnis still wanted to slug it out.

At any rate, Fallujah would continue to be the victim of U.S. military absent-mindedness, with its problems underestimated and a variety of different Army units deployed to it in stopgap moves. ”In Fallujah, they didn't trust us,” recalled Capt. Lesley Kipling, the MP officer. ”Units were constantly rotating through there. I think that is one of the biggest reasons that place never calmed down.” Over the course of a few months, the city was patrolled by parts of 82nd Airborne, then by Poirier's MP-led task force, then by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, then by part of the 3rd Infantry Division, and then by the 82nd Airborne when it returned later in 2003. Finally it would be turned over to the Marines, with a battle following soon after. ”Fallujah had five different units handling it between April '03 and April '04,” said one Army intelligence officer who served in al Anbar province. ”This is exactly the wrong way to prosecute a counterinsurgency fight.”

The 4th Infantry Division vs. the Marine Corps At the northern end of the Sunni Triangle, another Army division made a similarly belligerent entrance. In mid-April the Marines briefly occupied Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, and were preparing to turn it over to the Army's 4th Infantry Division. Unusual for an officially produced doc.u.ment, the official history produced by the 1st Division of the Marine Corps is disapproving, even contemptuous, of what it calls the 4th Infantry Division's ”very aggressive” posture as that unit came into Iraq. ”The lead elements of this division began to arrive in Tikrit on the 19th [of April], and were given a thorough orientation to the peaceful situation in town, and the continuing exercise in self-governance being worked with local leaders,” stated the draft of the 1st Marine Division history of its time in Iraq in 2003. Despite that, it continued, [t]he arriving staff of the 4th 4th Infantry Division had a sterner perspective on the situation. They characterized their recent road march to Tikrit from Kuwait as an ”attack,” and remained convinced that the situation in Tikrit required a very aggressive military enforcement posture. The dichotomy between the two peacekeeping strategies was unsettling for the Marines, and many winced when Army Apache attack helicopters swooped into the division battles.p.a.ce without coordination and began to strafe abandoned enemy equipment indiscriminately, often in close proximity to Marine forces or innocent civilians. Infantry Division had a sterner perspective on the situation. They characterized their recent road march to Tikrit from Kuwait as an ”attack,” and remained convinced that the situation in Tikrit required a very aggressive military enforcement posture. The dichotomy between the two peacekeeping strategies was unsettling for the Marines, and many winced when Army Apache attack helicopters swooped into the division battles.p.a.ce without coordination and began to strafe abandoned enemy equipment indiscriminately, often in close proximity to Marine forces or innocent civilians.

Strikingly, the draft of the Marine history became even more pointed when it was revised. The final version noted that the Marines threw a farewell dinner to cement relations.h.i.+ps with local tribal leaders. ”The design was to use this opportunity to pa.s.s down relations.h.i.+ps based on trust and mutual respect,” the history stated. ”The meeting was successfully concluded, with plans for future contact with the northern tribes established.” Then, it goes on to say, somewhat ominously, ”the meeting might have been even more productive had senior officers from 4th Infantry Division been willing to attend.”

The history dryly notes that the Marines, ”despite some misgivings,” turned over the area to the 4th Infantry Division and departed on April 21. ”Stores that had re-opened quickly closed back up as the people once again evacuated the streets, adjusting to the new security tactics,” the final draft of the history reported. ”A budding cooperative environment between the citizens and American forces was quickly snuffed out. The new adversarial relations.h.i.+p would become a major source of trouble in the coming months.”

The Army perspective was quite different. Lt. Col. Gian Gentile, who was executive officer of the Army brigade relieving the Marines in Tikrit, later argued, ”The Marines' velvet glove covered some dangerous problems that we were soon to face.” When the Army sent out a night patrol, which he said the Marines hadn't done, it encountered looters carrying off rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds.

Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the 4th ID commander, later said that he was ”very confused” by the Marines' criticism. ”It was such a short period of time” that the two services overlapped in Tikrit, he said. At any rate, he knew of only one instance of an Army Apache helicopter firing without needed clearance from the Marines.

But it wasn't just Marines who were taken aback by the 4th ID's aggressive stance. Unlike most Army divisions, it hadn't been deployed for decades, missing out on Panama, the 1991 Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. At its home base of Fort Hood, Texas, it sometimes was mocked as the second team, taking a backseat to its neighbor, the 1st Cavalry Division. Then it was a.s.signed the role of invading Iraq from the north in the spring 2003 attack, only to be prevented from executing that mission when the Turkish government declined to permit the movement of U.S. troops through its territory.

It is remarkable how consistently other soldiers were put off by the 4th Division's stance during its early days in Iraq. ”We slowly drove past 4th Infantry guys looking mean and ugly,” recalled Sgt. Kayla Williams, then a military intelligence specialist in the 101st Airborne. ”They stood on top of their trucks, their weapons pointed directly at civilians.... What could these locals possibly have done? Why was this intimidation necessary? No one explained anything, but it looked weird and felt wrong.” Her gut sense would be borne out in the coming months, as the 4th ID would commit more than its share of abuses of Iraqis.

On April 19, as Pentagon officials continued to insist that there were enough troops to do the job and that commanders on the ground agreed with them, Maj. Gen. Mattis, one of the senior U.S. military commanders in Iraq, noted in an internal message that the incoming Army occupation force lacked sufficient numbers of troops. ”The lack of Army dismounts [regular infantry] is creating a void in personal contact and public perception of our civil-military ops,” Mattis wrote.

At month's end, despite the concerns about the lack of troops, the Marines were told to execute previously existing plans to pull out and head home. ”Most of us were flabbergasted to be told to leave Baghdad at the end of April,” recalled Marine Col. John Toolan. ”I turned over my sector, which was east Baghdad, to 2nd ACR [Armored Cavalry Regiment], which had about one-fifth the capability of my regiment.”

Even before he left Iraq, Toolan recalled, Mattis, his commander, took him aside and said he thought that the situation was deteriorating and that the Marines would be pulled back into Iraq eventually. ”Don't lose sight of what you've learned,” he recalled Mattis telling him, ”because you're going to need to get your guys ready to come back.” Off the top of his head, Mattis picked November 10-an easily remembered date because it is the Marine Corps's birthday-as the target date by which he wanted his troops to be ready to head back to Iraq. In fact, the deployment order would arrive on November 7.

”Mission accomplished”Publicly, at least, all was going well.

One of the roles of a president is to provide strategic context-to explain how the public, and especially how subordinate officials, should think about a situation. On May 1, 2003, President Bush ostentatiously flew in a Navy combat aircraft to the USS Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier steaming off the coast of southern California. The day is remembered, somewhat unfairly, as the occasion of Bush's Mission Accomplished speech. Bush never used that phrase, which was hanging prominently on a huge banner displayed on the s.h.i.+p's island-the tower where the captain and the flight controllers operate-so that television cameras focused on the president would pick it up. But his comments were in line with that theme. ”Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” he began, standing on the s.h.i.+p's flight deck. ”In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” an aircraft carrier steaming off the coast of southern California. The day is remembered, somewhat unfairly, as the occasion of Bush's Mission Accomplished speech. Bush never used that phrase, which was hanging prominently on a huge banner displayed on the s.h.i.+p's island-the tower where the captain and the flight controllers operate-so that television cameras focused on the president would pick it up. But his comments were in line with that theme. ”Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” he began, standing on the s.h.i.+p's flight deck. ”In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

He did nod toward the operations that remained, which he seemed to characterize as a mop-up job. ”We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated.” Doing all this, and establis.h.i.+ng democracy, ”will take time, but it is worth every effort.” And, as he often would do in discussing Iraq in public, he circled back to the 9/11 attacks, clearly his starting point on the road to Baghdad. ”The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the eleventh, 2001,” he said.

In both image and word that day, what Bush did was tear down the goalposts at halftime in the game. But even as he spoke it was becoming clear on the ground that contrary to official expectation the stockpiles of WMD weren't going to be found. The poor intelligence on WMD would continue to haunt troops in the field-and, arguably, helped arm and protect the insurgency that would emerge in the following months. In bunkers across Iraq there were tens of thousands of tons of conventional weaponry-mortar sh.e.l.ls, RPGs, rifle ammunition, explosives, and so on. One estimate, cited by Christopher Hileman, a U.S. intelligence a.n.a.lyst for Mideast matters, was ”more than a million metric tons.” Yet U.S. commanders rolling into Iraq refrained from detonating those bunkers for fear that they also contained stockpiles of poison gas or other weaponry that might be blown into the air and kill U.S. soldiers or Iraqi civilians. The COBRA II invasion plan unambiguously stated, ”The Iraqi Ministry of Defense will use WMD early but not often. The probability for their use of WMD increases exponentially as Saddam Hussein senses the imminent collapse of his regime.”

Such cert.i.tude made American commanders wary of destroying weapons bunkers. ”You never knew which one was WMD, okay?” said one regretful Marine battalion commander. So the bunkers often were bypa.s.sed and left undisturbed by an invasion force that already was stretched thin-and the insurgents were able to arm themselves at leisure.

The U.S. focus on WMD also provided a kind of smokescreen that unintentionally protected the insurgents during the spring of 2004. One senior military intelligence officer recalled arguing that a good roadmap of the nascent opposition in Fallujah could be developed simply by translating the roster of residents of that city-that the U.S. military possessed-who had volunteered for suicide missions against Israel. Then, he recommended, map their houses and visit each one-as soon as possible. But he couldn't ”get it translated-all the a.s.sets were focused on WMD.” Thousands of weapons experts, translators, and other specialists, along with all their support personnel, were working to find unconventional weapons that didn't exist, and soon were being attacked with conventional weapons that did but that had been ignored by U.S. officials.

The United States loses the initiative When top Pentagon officials refused to acknowledge the realities of Iraq, the opportunity to take hold of the situation slipped between the fingers of the Americans. In military terms, in April and May, the U.S. military lost the initiative-that is, it stopped being the side in the conflict that was driving events, acting at the time and place of its choosing. ”When the statue came down, that moment, we could have done some great things,” Zinni said, looking back. ”The problem is, we had insufficient forces to secure and freeze the situation and capitalize on that moment.”

A year later, a formal Pentagon review, led by two former secretaries of defense, James Schlesinger and Harold Brown, came to a similar conclusion about the lack of mental agility at the Pentagon. ”In Iraq, there was not only a failure to plan for a major insurgency, but also to quickly and adequately adapt to the insurgency that followed after major combat operations,” they wrote, along with two other members of the panel appointed to review the military establishment's handling of Iraq during the summer and fall of 2003. ”The October 2002 Centcom war plan presupposed that relatively benign stability and security operations would precede a handover to Iraq's authorities.”

When those rosy a.s.sumptions weren't borne out, the Pentagon's leaders.h.i.+p failed to adjust, most notably by sending more troops. Keith Mines, a State Department diplomat a.s.signed by the CPA to al Anbar province in 2003, later wrote an a.n.a.lysis of how what he called ”the minimalist force structure” undercut the occupation in the summer of 2003. He was uniquely placed to do so: A former Special Forces officer, he had a solid understanding of both military and political tactics and a feeling especially for how they interact. ”First,” he wrote, ”a larger force could have stopped the looting,” which tainted the occupation and destroyed necessary infrastructure. For lack of troops, the border was left largely open, a particular problem in western Iraq, where he operated, and where ji-hadists could move freely across from Syria. In addition, there weren't enough soldiers to train Iraqis, and so contractors were used, but their ”timeline stretched into 2006 before the new force would begin to deploy.” But the worst effect may have been the lack of adequate troops to manage detainees-a problem top commanders in Iraq wouldn't recognize until 2004, after it had led to a scandal that damaged the American image globally. The oddity, Mines concluded, was that there were two known models for successful counterinsurgency operations, and the U.S. had managed to avoid both. One was El Salvador in the 1980s, where a tiny group of just fifty-five U.S. military advisers had worked with local military units. The other was postwar Germany, where a large and overwhelming force was garrisoned. But in Iraq ”we have worked the middle ground, with just enough forces to elicit a strong response from Iraqi nationalists but inadequate forces to make the transition work.”

Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who would command the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq for a year, said that the initial U.S. approach helped create the mess that followed. ”We set ourselves up for what happened when we violated two principles that are absolutely fundamental for success. One is unity of command. The other is ma.s.s.” In other words, he argued, the U.S. approach failed to heed two of the most basic rules of military operations: First, have everybody working toward the same goal, with one person in charge. Second, have enough people and machines to get the job done. Together these flaws ”led directly to Abu Ghraib,” because inadequate leaders and overstrapped units were given tasks far beyond their limited abilities and resources.

Col. Teddy Spain, from his front-row seat as chief of U.S. military police forces in Baghdad, came to agree with that a.s.sessment. In April, Spain made his first foray into Baghdad, conducting a reconnaissance mission before moving his headquarters north to the capital. He was surprised by what he saw. ”The first time I went into Baghdad, they were breaking into ministries and burning buildings, but I didn't have the a.s.sets-all my people were down south guarding supply routes and EPWs,” or enemy prisoners of war.

With those troops, he said later, he might have been able to bring security to Baghdad. If he had had those MP units that had been dropped from the invasion plan months earlier, ”I think we could have taken control of the streets much better. I think Baghdad would have been different. I just didn't have the a.s.sets.” He would prove not to be alone in these bitter regrets.

HOW TO CREATE AN INSURGENCY (I).

SPRING AND SUMMER 2003.

M.

y soldiers are starting to lose their positive att.i.tudes and are constantly asking when we will go home,” Capt. Lesley Kipling, the MP officer, wrote to her boyfriend on May 9.

The feeling of postwar impatience was the same at the Pentagon, recalled an officer who was on the Joint Staff at that time: ”There was a mind-set by the first part of May: Major combat operations are over, let's think about drawing down the force.”

From late spring to midsummer 2003 was a time of meandering and drift for the U.S. occupation of Iraq. It took months for incorrect a.s.sumptions to begin to be discarded and for commanders to recognize that large numbers of U.S. troops were going to be in Iraq for some time. ”In the two to three months of ambiguous transition, U.S. forces slowly lost the momentum and the initiative they had gained over an off-balance enemy,” Maj. Isaiah Wilson later wrote. ”During this calm before the next storm, the U.S. Army has its eyes turned toward the ports, while Former Regime Loyalists (FRL) and budding insurgents had their eyes turned toward the people. The United States, its Army, and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since.”

As the situation turned violent, some U.S. soldiers began to question why they were in Iraq. ”Motivation was not a problem during the initial stages, however once we transitioned into SASO [stability and support operations, the U.S. military term for peacekeeping] it became a problem,” one Army lieutenant observed that summer on an Internet discussion board for young officers. ”It didn't take much time before I realized that they were lacking any sense of purpose________ They didn't know why they weren't going home, why they couldn't see their first child born, and why we were helping an ungrateful and hostile populace.”

Added an intelligence officer who was attached to a Navy SEAL unit at the time, ”The air went out of the tires almost overnight.”

Watching sofas go by Baghdad was falling apart in front of the eyes of the U.S. military, with buildings being looted and parents afraid to let their children outside, but no one had orders to do anything about it. Looking back several years later, Col. Alan King, the head of civil affairs for the 3rd Infantry Division, spoke of April 2003 with a slow, chilled tone of horror in his voice. ”I got to Baghdad and was told, 'You've got twenty-four hours to come up with a Phase IV plan______ On the night of April 8, Col. [John] Sterling, the chief of staff of the 3rd ID, came to me and said, 'I just got off the phone with the corps chief of staff, and I asked him for the reconstruction plan, and he said there isn't one. So you've got twenty-four hours to come up with one.'” King was stunned. He had been asking for months for just such a plan, and had been told that when the time came, he would be given it.

Lacking clear orders about what to do once in Baghdad, the 3rd ID more or less stayed in place in the capital. ”You didn't find many dismounted patrols with the 3rd ID,” recalled Jay Garner, a retired Army general and not one to lightly criticize his old peers. ”They kind of stayed with their platforms”-that is, their tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

On April 6, Lt. Douglas Hoyt, a platoon leader with the 3rd ID, saw looters for the first time. ”I remembered looking through the sights on my tank at people and trying to determine if they were hostile or not,” he recalled later. He didn't stop them. ”It was not our mission at the time.”

The division's official after-action review states that it had no orders to do anything else: ”3RD ID transitioned into Phase IV SASO with no plan from higher headquarters,” it reported. ”There was no guidance for restoring order in Baghdad, creating an interim government, hiring government and essential services employees, and ensuring that the judicial system was operational.” The result was ”a power/authority vacuum created by our failure to immediately replace key government inst.i.tutions.” In a surprising criticism for an Army division to make-especially one that had led the way in toppling an enemy government- the 3rd ID report laid the blame for all of this at the feet of its chain of command, leading to Franks to Rumsfeld and Bush: ”The president announced that our national goal was 'regime change.'Yet there was no timely plan prepared for the obvious consequences of a regime change.”

The report also faulted the political thinking that led American forces to be declared liberators rather than occupiers, because that led military commanders to operate in a hands-off way that allowed the chaos to increase in Baghdad. ”As a matter of law and fact, the United States is an occupying power in Iraq, even if we characterize ourselves as liberators,” stated the staff judge advocate's section of the division report. ”Because of the refusal to acknowledge occupier status, commanders did not initially take measures available to occupying powers, such as imposing curfews, directing civilians to return to work, and controlling the local governments and populace. The failure to act after we displaced the regime created a power vacuum, which others immediately tried to fill.”

”No one had talked about what would happen when we got there,” said Capt. David Chasteen, a 3rd ID officer. ”There was no plan for that. They literally told us once we got there they'd pull us back out, take us home. Once we got there it was a cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k, just trying to figure out what to do.” Normally the division's officer for coordinating defenses against nuclear, biological, and chemical attacks, Chasteen was a.s.signed in Baghdad to work at the city's international airport, which had become a giant U.S. military base. ”I was customs, immigration, looking at people's pa.s.sports, I had no idea what I was doing. Such a nicely planned operation that went so well, why didn't anyone think about what the next step would be?”

It wasn't just a lack of planning or guidance from civilians that led to the U.S. inertia, it also was a lack of understanding or interest among senior military commanders. ”The civilian leaders.h.i.+p did not foresee the need for extensive Phase IV operations, and thus did little planning beyond near-term relief,” said one Pentagon official who was involved in war-gaming the invasion plan, and who later quietly a.n.a.lyzed its failures. ”This was fine with the military, which had traditionally focused on Phase III operations, did not want to do Phase IV operations, and figured that someone else would step in.”

Brig. Gen. David Fastabend told the story of reading an article in which a fellow Army general was quoted as saying that Army doctrine hadn't prepared him for what he faced in Iraq during the late spring of 2003. When he met this officer, Fastabend, who was involved in developing doctrine-that is, how to think about how to fight and operate-questioned him about that statement. ”I don't understand why you said that,” Fastabend said. ”Look, in 1993 we introduced 'military operations other than war,' and then we introduced the idea of 'full-spectrum operations.' From '97 to 2001 we introduced the idea that operations are a seamless combination of offense, defense, stability, and support. How could you say that your doctrine didn't prepare you for what you experienced in Baghdad?”

”Yeah, Dave, I know,” this officer responded. ”I read all that stuff. Read it many times, and thought about it. But I can remember quite clearly, I was on a street corner in Baghdad, smoking a cigar, watching some guys carry a sofa by-and it never occurred to me that I was going to be the guy to go get that sofa back.”

The pacification of Ar Rutbah One of the notable exceptions to this sense of drift was in areas where Army Special Forces operated, in far northern and western Iraq. Those soldiers were much more accustomed to living and working with foreign populations.