“GOVERNMENTS ARE INSTITUTED AMONG MEN, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.”
CHAPTER 13: TIPPING POINT
THE CHARISMATIC SHEIK SATTAR AND I SPENT HOURS TALKING about the situation in Ramadi, about reestablishing a viable police force and forming an effective government, about world events, and about our families. Sattar toted a chrome plated, Texas Sesquicentennial Commemorative Issue Colt .44 six-shooter, the kind of weapon you would expect to see carried by someone in a ten-gallon hat driving a convertible Cadillac El Dorado with a longhorn hood ornament. Sheik Sattar knew that he needed to project strength before the people of Anbar would follow him in any attempt to reject Al Qaeda.
“My grandfather fought the British in the 1920 uprising,” Sheik Sattar once told me with pride.
“Mine too, back in Ireland,” I answered.
It was a bonding moment for the both of us. During these discussions, I would regularly ask him, “What’s stopping Iraq from becoming like Germany or Japan? Sure, they fought America in a previous war, but they’re now peaceful and prosperous nations allied with the U.S.”
I also pointed out that the American government had paid a fortune to both former Axis partners for decades’ worth of basing rights in their countries, and that local businessmen surrounding the bases got rich off soldiers’ paychecks. Furthermore, Sattar knew neither country had sent troops to support the Coalition against the Saddam Regime, so they certainly were not puppets of the American government.
I once told him that when peace came to Ramadi, I would retire from the Army and together we would open up McDonald’s franchises throughout Anbar. A thoughtful look came over Sattar’s face when I made this proposal. After pausing for a moment, he said, “If every soldier bought one hamburger and one drink a day….”
You could almost hear the cash register chiming in his head and see the dollar signs in his eyes. The Sunnis were natural businessmen, and Sattar knew that throwing in with the Americans made good business sense.
I also told Sattar to read the papers. The American public was tiring of the war and, sooner rather than later, the U.S. would leave Iraq. A CNN headline in August 2006 stated that sixty percent of Americans opposed the war, in stark contrast to the seventy-two percent that supported the war in 2003.252 Unless the Iraqis established a functioning government in Baghdad, it would be the Sunnis and the “Persians” slugging it out after we left. To the Sunnis, the Persians were the boogeyman, encompassing Iran, some of the Maliki government, and all of the Shia death squads. Most Iraqis I dealt with spoke only Arabic, and only paid attention during conversations when Dragon was interpreting my comments, but whenever I said “Persians,” they squirmed in their seats and leaned in, trying to understand me. Sheik Sattar was keenly aware of the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis by Shia death squads in Baghdad. Although Al Anbar was a Sunni stronghold, the locals knew they could not stand up against Iranian-backed Shia extremists for long if things completely devolved into an Iraqi civil war.
The sheiks felt the government in Baghdad was no help to them, but few if any local leaders from Anbar were communicating with the national government. I constantly told Sattar, “You and your sheik buddies need to get behind the provincial government. Tell the provincial ministers to get back to work governing Anbar.”
Dragon translated my comments into flowing Arabic that made sense to his listeners. He was much more than a translator or even an interpreter. He was an American citizen with a security clearance serving as both cultural advisor and a walking history book on events in Ramadi over the past two years. Most importantly, he understood the culture and the Sunnis trusted him. He knew who the players were, and he understood how to talk to the local people. He also understood that making a point with a sheik required a level of subtlety going far beyond the simple, direct communications typically employed by the Americans. Dragon’s talents and insights were invaluable to me and the task force. Dragon, like all the translators in Iraq, used an alias to protect his identity. Born in the Middle East as Serge Franjie, Dragon was a bit of a renaissance man—fluent in Arabic, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew, as well as holding a law degree from the Sorbonne. He immigrated to the United States in 1979, and became an entrepreneur, starting a number of small businesses along the way. When the insurgency started in 2003, he recognized the threat that Al Qaeda posed to if it took root in Iraq. He signed-up to become a translator to help do his part in stopping the killing of U.S. Soldiers and innocent Iraqis.253
Home delivery of the New York Times was spotty throughout Anbar during the summer of 2006, so Sheik Sattar was forming his own opinions of the war. He loved President George Bush—both of them in fact, but especially W. This was true of most Iraqis I met. In their eyes, President Bush was the hero who liberated Iraq from Saddam and gave the Iraqi people the opportunity for a democratic government. Sattar constantly told me his greatest dream was to meet President Bush and thank him for all he had done for Iraq.
“When the Americans arrived in 2003, I met them with flowers,” Sheik Sattar once told me. I was not sure if this was true, or if he was simply repeating Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s predictions, but that was his story now, and he was sticking to it. Sattar was obsessed with the thought of democracy, although he did not completely understand it.
As a group, the Sunnis had boycotted the post-Saddam elections in 2004. By now, they realized that miscalculation had cost them an opportunity to have a voice in the government. Elections were not new to Iraq, but free and fair elections were. Throughout his reign of terror, Saddam held elections every seven years, routinely bringing in 99 percent of the vote, with some estimates oddly ranging as high as 110 percent.254 My guess is that some of the Sunnis we were dealing with were the very same ones that stuffed the ballot boxes for Saddam; they simply did not believe the elections would be fair. Sheik Sattar routinely changed subjects during conversations, asking, “So if your President is not re-elected, then he just leaves office?” Inevitably, he would shake his head in disbelief at the response.
There was always a crowd around the Bezia compound. The assembled group would have frank conversations on wide-ranging issues, very different from the “I hope to work with you for a peaceful and prosperous Iraq,” that I busted out during our first meeting. Sattar once told me that after the death of al-Zarqawi on 7 June 2006, the terrorists were in the middle of a struggle for control of Al Qaeda in Iraq, until a Coalition spokesman announced a week later that Abu Ayyub al-Masri was the organization’s new leader. The contenders to the Al Qaeda throne stopped fighting once we seemed to coronate their new leader.
Another time, Sattar handed me a Coalition handbill that we used as part of our own information operations campaign to sway the locals to support the population. The handbill was a picture of an old man holding a baby, running away from an explosion. At the time, it took Baghdad’s approval to print a Coalition handbill; local commanders were not authorized to create their own messages. The explanation I received was the man represented the choice of violence or peace for the children of Iraq, and that the locals would respond to the message. Sattar asked me to stop handing them out because they were scaring the women.
With his father, two brothers, and countless cousins murdered by Al Qaeda, Sheik Sattar saw the terrorist organization as truly evil, and he wanted it defeated across the globe. Sattar assured me that his tribe spanned the Middle East, Africa, and Afghanistan, and once Al Qaeda was defeated in Iraq, the Abu Risha across the world would join forces with the Americans to kill Al Qaeda there as well. I never really knew what to make of that comment, but I did file it away just in case I ended up in Afghanistan, or Africa. Sheik Sattar had facilitated the recruitment of over 800 policemen up to this point, so he could back up his talk with action.
As a group, the Sunnis had formed Saddam’s power base. Individually, however, they were terrified of getting on the wrong side of the regime. The sheiks did not understand the fuss about the treatment of captives at Abu Ghraib prison. Compared to what went on during Saddam’s era—torture, dismemberment, and murder— a chubby girl marching a prisoner around on a dog leash did not seem that bad. Saddam routinely imprisoned anyone suspected of disloyalty, tossing senior military or government leaders into prison just to keep them from getting ideas about forming a coup. The most fortunate political prisoners just got a couple of months of beatings before returning to their previous position in society. If they were unlucky, they got a power drill to the knee or elbow. The hapless prisoners got the power drill into the back of the head.
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The police recruiting was going so well that by late September the five-hundredth policemen would be due back from the police academy, so it was time for me to live up to my end of the bargain and build the police station I promised Sheik Ahmad back in June. I huddled with my two all-star majors, Dave Raugh and Chuck Bergman, as well as the assistant operations officer, Captain Nick Franklin, logistics officer Captain Kali Kalicharan, and the assistant signal officer, Lieutenant John Perez, and told them that we were going to build the police station in the tribal area ASAP.
A commander should have the experience and knowledge to provide detailed guidance to his staff in any situation, but building a police station in a war zone was not part of the curriculum at any of the Army schools I attended, nor was it in a field manual. I honestly had no idea what the job would entail, and I would have been at a loss for answers if anyone asked me a hard question.
“Conquer or Die, Sir!” was all I heard as they all went in different directions. Luckily, having staff officers who were veterans of the initial deployment and had accomplished similar tasks, rather than Advance Course graduates was paying off. I knew I had dodged a bullet there.
Captain Nick Franklin was from New York City and kept some of the accent and most of the attitude. His dad was an Army reservist, and both Nick and his brother wanted to join the military from a young age. Nick graduated from West Point with a degree in Political Science and Arabic. He had been a platoon leader on the previous fifteen-month deployment to Baghdad and the support platoon leader upon return to Germany.255 On top of serving as the assistant operations officer and running the daily task force patrol meeting where the companies requested enabler support, Nick “honchoed” the support for the Iraqi security forces. He was a problem solver who knew how to get things done.
What I did not expect about building a new police station was the push back I got from Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I) headquarters. I am still unsure how they found out what we were doing. It turned out that MNSTC-I had a “master plan” on the number, location and manning level of police stations in Iraq, and regardless of a subordinate commander’s assessment, a groundswell of popular support, or events on the ground, the Green-Zone-living, reflective-belt-for-safety-wearing MNSTC-I staff sent a message firmly stating we were prohibited from building a police station.
I did everything I could at my level to get the station built but had no luck. It was time to make it the higher headquarters problem and I turned to Lieutenant Colonel Jim Lechner. Even Jim could not get Baghdad to budge. This called for a high-level cigar-smoking summit between Jim and me in my office. Army regulations clearly state that smoking is prohibited in U.S. government facilities. Luckily, I was in a building that our Iraqi hosts graciously lent us, and I felt it rude and culturally insensitive not to abide by their customs and traditions.
At least, some of their traditions.
Jim and I sat in my office for an hour trying to figure out how to get around the prohibition on the new police station. My credibility, and by extension the credibility of the Ready First, and the Coalition in general was on the line. We would appear untrustworthy unless we followed through on our promise. Worse, it would devastate the success we had enjoyed all summer in recruiting police. Our Jon Lovitz, “Yeah, that’s the ticket!” moment came when we decided to call it a police sub-station. When MNSTC-I saw a request to build a police substation, they approved it immediately. The sub-station had the same requirements for logistical support, the same number of policemen, the same construction plan and cost, but now that it was a called a police sub-station and not a police station, everything was good. As long as the master plan was intact, the higher headquarters was happy. Amazing.
In addition to the political infighting with higher headquarters concerning the police, we still had a violent tactical fight on our hands. While we constantly tried to understand the evolving situation in AO Conqueror, we had yet to find a local leader to deal with in Tam’eem. The Ready First’s push into southern Ramadi along with our constant presence at the street and neighborhood level were causing the dynamics of Tam’eem to change. Although ninety percent of the attacks on the task force occurred there, the enemy appeared to be using Al Anbar University as a staging area and then moving north to attack in Tam’eem. It made sense. What better place to start a revolution than on a college campus, with plenty of young, easily swayed, idealistic young men ready to commit violence and professors who either believed in the cause or could be easily intimidated? We knew we had to stop the attacks emanating from the university in a manner of which Baghdad would approve, so that the population would understand that we were protecting their university, not taking it away from them. If we got this wrong, it would be a great propaganda victory for Al Qaeda.
On 4 July, F Troop observed mortar fire emanating from the university and landing harmlessly in the desert. We surmised that the campus was now a mortar training range, a terrorist version of the Infantry Mortar Platoon Leaders Course at Fort Benning, Georgia. This development really angered me. The AIF occupying the university obviously believed themselves to be untouchable and did not even bother to shoot the mortars at Coalition forces while they trained. The next day, Team Dealer detained four men who said they were university students that were conducting reconnaissance on their static locations. It was time to act. First, I wanted to isolate the campus, so I pushed F Troop into the small villages surrounding the university and sent in the Civil Affairs Group (CAG) on humanitarian missions, handing out water bottles and gaining “atmospherics” of the campus. I again tried reaching out to the university president, but he wanted nothing to do with us. The Iraqi government was ostensibly paying a 100-man force of armed guards to protect the university, but I never saw any sign of them. My guess is the terrorists intimidated the guards into staying away from work, but kept them on the books so to get a cut of their paychecks. Although I never saw the authorized security forces on my trips to the university, I did observe academics, students, and a handful of men who looked like they had no business on any college campus in the world.
On 7 July, an IED destroyed a Humvee on Route Gremlin, the two-lane paved road passing close to the University before heading south into the open desert just south of campus. On 10 July, Team Dealer engaged two different groups of men planting IEDs in the road north of the University. Three days later, a route clearance patrol discovered an IED planted on Route Gremlin, and on 19 and 20 July, terrorists attacked F Troop on the same road, destroying two more Humvees and causing causalities. In response, I directed the troop commander, Captain Dan Enslen, to get off the roads and maneuver through the desert to avoid the IEDs. That worked for a couple of days until F Troop hit a land mine planted in the desert sand. Since the locals never moved cross-country, it was safe for the AIF to plant land mines in the desert where only Americans went. This also caused us to rethink our assessment of the university insurgency, since Al Qaeda was not concerned with civilian casualties. Maybe the mujahedeen were in charge? Either way, enough was enough: it was time to lock down Al Anbar University.
I knew that there would be a huge backlash from the locals and the Iraqi government if we set up a U.S.-only checkpoint on the university grounds; and even if we did receive approval, I did not have the American forces to operate it. Our Iraqi army battalion lacked the combat power to establish a combat outpost on the university grounds, and I did not want them stuck in a static position guarding a gate. I had planned to build the university checkpoint as soon as there were enough Iraqi police to operate it, but we could not wait that long. I asked Lieutenant Colonel Jim Lechner what the Iraqi forces brigade had available. Jim came up with a newly formed company of Iraqi military police (MPs) that was part of the fledgling 7th Iraqi Army Division headquarters. While military police are not civilian police, they were certainly better suited for the message we were trying to send than American soldiers. I now had enough available troops and evidence of terrorist activity to bring Colonel MacFarland a plan to take back the university.
Colonel MacFarland was not afraid to make a hard decision and agreed to it immediately. He told me to start planning for the operation and to pick a date. We knew that an operation of this magnitude and political sensitivity needed approval all the way up the chain of command, and that would not be forthcoming overnight. Surprisingly enough, MEF Headquarters immediately agreed, and even the MNC-I Headquarters came around within a couple of days. When it made it to the four-star MNF-I Headquarters, there was some consternation, as well as coordination with the Iraqi Government, forcing us to shift the date a week, but they eventually they agreed to the plan as well.
The Conqueror staff assembled in the Ready First conference room to brief Colonel MacFarland on the final plan. As the first PowerPoint slide announced the name of the mission, Operation Toga, MacFarland quietly said, “Knowledge is good.”
I busted out laughing. With all the bad things going on across Ramadi, for the brigade commander to quote the Faber College motto from Animal House was a display of his character, leadership, and his ability to keep his sense of humor during the darkest of days. Colonel MacFarland could quote Hobbs and Locke one minute and lines from cult movies the next.
We began finalizing our plan for constructing the combat outpost on the campus as we continued working with the sheiks on police recruiting, all the while fighting a deadly urban battle on an around-the-clock basis. Everyone in the task force put in exhaustive hours trying to accomplish the mission. Luckily, we had the lessons learned from the other task forces who had already constructed COPs to serve as a guide. By this time, Captain John Hiltz and the men of Charlie Rock had become expert COP-builders. They did not time their projects by a “work schedule”; instead, they worked until they dropped from exhaustion, got a couple of hours of shut-eye, and then went back to it until they collapsed again.
Charlie Rock had the process of building a COP down to a science, starting with preassembling the components in the relative safety of Camp Ramadi. Once the actual building began, combat vehicles, infantrymen, and snipers formed a protective ring around the site so Charlie Rock could emplace an outer ring of Jersey barriers to stop the inevitable and impending exploding dump truck. Then the inner ring of T-Walls went up, providing more protection from the truck bombs and small arms fire. Next, they erected the prefabricated crow’s nests above the site to provide security to the COP, thereby freeing tanks and Bradleys to continue to press the fight with the enemy. Finally, they installed the air conditioning, lights and electricity to make life bearable for the troops living there. As a point of pride, Charlie Rock’s goal was to have the first dismounted patrol from the new COP, where the men had been sweating their asses off in 110-degree heat while carrying ninety pounds of equipment, return to an air-conditioned COP.256
Mid-morning on 21 July, a thirty man Iraqi company along with members of the advisory team made their way back to OP 293 after a three-hour dismounted patrol in 5 Kilo. As they neared the outpost, a pickup truck with a PKM machine gun mounted in the bed sped around the corner and attacked the rear of the formation. A terrorist force of about twenty men with AK 47s and machine guns joined the ambush, wounding an Iraqi soldier near the tail of the column in the initial hail of gunfire. Chief Warrant Officer Jason Forgash was at his usual position at the front of the column directly behind the patrol’s point man. The patrol turned to face the threat and immediately began laying suppressive fire and advancing on the technical vehicle, attempting to halt its advance.
Finding himself now at the back of the action, Forgash ran to the sound of gunfire in order to get a better vantage of the enemy. Laden with nearly one-hundred pounds of equipment counting his body armor, ammo, and radios, he lagged behind his lightly equipped Iraqi patrol mates. Halfway to his objective, he stopped and bent to aid a wounded Iraqi laying in the road while the remainder of the platoon rushed forward. That was when he was shot. As he described it, “it felt like a three-hundred-pound man jumped on my chest,” knocking him to the ground. In the blink of an eye, he popped to his feet while dozens of thoughts swirled through his head, “The body armor stopped the bullet; the pain is just from the impact. There must be a sniper shooting at me because of the radio antennas I’ve got to find cover. Why am I standing here alone; where are the rest of the Iraqis?”
Within seconds, a couple of Iraqis circled back and together they entered a tire shop for cover. Forgash opened his body armor, revealing a blood-soaked Marine Corps desert camouflage blouse. An AK 47 round had struck him in the chest, entering just above the side plates and exiting through his stomach. He grabbed an oil soaked rag from a nearby countertop and stuffed it in the wound to staunch the bleeding while keying the hand mike on his radio in a desperate call for help.
Sergeant First Class Jeffery Folks, a tanker assigned to the advisor team, was monitoring the patrol from the air-conditioned command post at OP 293 when he heard the call. Folks told his buddy to “hang on,” then grabbed the mike on the task force command net, announcing, “Troops in Contact. 5 Kilo. Dismounted patrol under fire. Friendlies wounded. Out.”
Realizing he could continue helplessly monitoring the radio for now, or go and try to save his friend, Folks dropped the mike, grabbed his gear and ran out the door. A soldier from the police advisory team happened to be standing nearby the command post. Folks pointed and yelled, “You. MP. Get the fuck in! Man down.”
“Man down” was all the MP needed to hear.
As Folks jumped behind the wheel, the MP slid into the turret behind the trigger of the M240 machine gun and the lone vehicle and its two-man crew bolted from the safety of the compound, heading directly into the firefight.
Folks first saw the wounded Iraqi lying in a ditch alongside Route Michigan and maneuvered his vehicle between the withering fire and the wounded man. The MP on the machine gun blazed suppressive fire, while Folks jumped out and loaded the wounded Iraqi into the truck. In the chaos, no one had Chief Forgash’s exact location, including Folks. Realizing that time was of the essence, and knowing Forgash for the combat leader he was, Folks continued driving towards the loudest firing and quickly located the Chief and the Iraqi soldiers in the commandeered tire shop.
Understanding the gravity his wounds, Forgash remained on his feet and continued directing the Iraqis until Folks—who had beaten the quick reaction force and the air support to the scene—pulled up in the Humvee. As Forgash was loaded into the Humvee, Folks handed him another towel and told him to keep the pressure on the wound, while the MP on the machine gun continued to lay volumes of suppressive fire against the enemy. Sergeant Folks slammed on the gas, spun a U-turn and raced back through the firefight, covering the four kilometers to Camp Ramadi in record time. Terrified that he would pass out and bleed to death in the back of the vehicle, Forgash kept telling himself, “Got to stay awake. Don’t pass out,” as searing pain racing through his body every time the vehicle hit a bump along the pothole-ridden road. As the Humvee skidded to a stop outside of Charlie Med, Forgash saw the large Red Cross on the wall and heard a commotion of medics coming to help him, when he lost consciousness.257
Once the enemy broke contact and the situation was secure, I walked to Charlie MED to see the extent of Chief Forgash’s injuries. I was glad to see Captain Joe Rappold, the brilliant Navy surgical team leader and tremendous surgeon. Due to his talents, every Task Force Conqueror soldier who was breathing when he came through the doors of Charlie Med lived to have a fighting chance with further treatment in Balad and beyond. After surgery, Captain Rappold’s assessment was that Chief Forgash’s chances were less than fifty-fifty. Forgash had lost a lot of blood and had suffered a major gunshot wound to the gut. The only thing going his favor was how quickly he had made it to the surgery table.
Chief Forgash and I had bonded during the attack on ECP 3 six weeks earlier, and although the loss of any soldier under an officer’s command is a deeply personal event, the loss of one that he also has a personal relationship with is even harder. After some nervous moments waiting for the Medevac helicopter to arrive, Chief Forgash began his journey to Balad.
Jason Forgash graduated from Orange High School in Orange County California in the spring of 1987, with three desires in life: become a police officer, continue his education, and serve his country. At eighteen years old, he had two years to wait before he was eligible to apply for the police academy. In the meantime, he would work on the other two goals. He enrolled in a local junior college to obtain an associate’s degree before entering the police force, and he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. Two years later, Forgash entered the police academy and became a police officer in La Habra, California. He stayed with both the police department and Marines, reaching the rank of sergeant in the police force and Chief Warrant Officer 3 in the Corps. Ramadi was Jason’s third combat deployment, having already served in Kabul during 2002, and attacking with the 1st Marine Division during the initial invasion of Iraq. As he later told me, “the other two tours were nothing like Ramadi. When I was there, I always had the feeling there were cross-hairs on my back.”258
Forgash went from Balad to Landstuhl to Bethesda Medical Center, spending four painful months recovering from his wounds, before eventually being medically retired from the Marine Corps, rejoining the police force, and beginning work on a doctorate in clinical psychology.259
Later that afternoon, I called Sergeant First Class Folks into my office and handed him a blank Department of the Army Form 638, the Army Awards Recommendation Form.
“Folks. Fill the top out with your previous awards and the rest of the crap,” I told him.
“Sir, what’s this for? I was just doing my job,” Folks said, bewildered.
“Sarge, you broke about twenty rules in saving Forgash’s life. You’re getting either a medal for bravery or a court martial for being stupid. I’m still not sure which. Your call,” I replied.
Folks thought it over for what I considered an excessively long time. “I guess I’ll take the medal,” he replied sheepishly.
Prior to our arrival in Ramadi, Sergeant First Class Folks was not the man I would have picked to display such valor. Jeff Folks was born and raised in Spokane Washington, where he found attending North Central High School boring. Wanting some adventure in his life, he visited the Army recruiter during his junior year, a couple of days after his seventeenth birthday. Because of his age, Folks needed parental consent to enlist. He implied to his mother that he was joining the Army reserves, not the regular Army, so she signed the paper. Two weeks later, he was moving out for basic training. After his first tour, Folks reenlisted to became a Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) soldier and a Spanish linguist, deploying for Operation Just Cause in Panama. An injury prevented Folks from staying on airborne status, a prerequisite for being in the PSYOPS program, so the Army told him that he was going to become an infantryman. Folks figured the physical limitations keeping him from serving in a PSYOPS unit would also hinder his career in the infantry as well, so after a few phone calls and some wheeling-dealing, he became a tanker.260
When he first arrived at the task force, Folks was a quiet and unassuming guy who plugged along at his job. He was an assistant operations sergeant in the TOC but hated working there. He volunteered to join the advisor team and had been with the Iraqis every day since. Over the course of a few weeks, Folks had transformed from an NCO, who was kind of just there, to a seasoned, confident combat veteran who seemed capable of anything.
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Across the Ready First’s AO, casualties mounted as operations to take back the city continued. Task Force Bandit had a secured a foothold in southern Ramadi and was conducting census operations around the new COPs to get a feel for their new neighborhoods. The Currahees and 3/8 Marines were also expanding their presence in the city. It was a daily grind of soldiers protecting the combat outposts and then going on patrol to canvas the population. All the time, the enemy watched, attacking when and where they could.
On 17 July, Staff Sergeant Michel Dickinson II, assigned to A Company, 9th PSYOPs, was on a dismounted patrol when a sniper took his life.261
On 19 July, Bulldog Company from Task Force Bandit sent an armored patrol along Route Sunset between COP Falcon and COP Iron to ensure it was clear of enemy presence. Staff Sergeant Mark Vecchione was the tank commander of the lead tank in the patrol when his vehicle hit an IED and began to burn. When the crew could not immediately extinguish the fire, Vecchione ordered them to evacuate and move to safety while he began moving to the loader’s side to pull the release on the external fire extinguishers. While attempting to save the vehicle, Vecchione triggered a second IED, the explosion killing him instantly.262 The tank continued to burn for hours, eventually requiring a brigade-level effort to recover the tank.263
Two days later, the terrorist attacked a 3/8 Marine dismounted patrol with an IED, killing Corporal Julian Ramon, a Columbian immigrant from Flushing, New York, who was on his second tour in Iraq.264 The enemy was seemingly everywhere and no nowhere.264
On 22 July, one of the Superfriends came in with a tip that a high-value target was at a bomb-making factory in Tam’eem. We diverted a Dealer patrol lead by Lieutenant Ian Blackstone conducting census operations to investigate. As the patrol began moving towards the suspected enemy hideout, a furious, continuous burst of automatic weapons fire from PKM machine guns and AK-47s erupted. The withering fire pinned them down for several minutes. Clearly, we had walked them into an ambush. Eventually the men of Team Dealer gained the upper hand, suppressing the enemy with overwhelming firepower. By then, however, Staff Sergeant Christopher Swanson265 lay mortally wounded with a single gunshot wound.266
Staff Sergeant Swanson was a squad leader I had gotten to know pretty well during the train-up in Kuwait. He had an outgoing personality and was an incredibly effective leader. Swanson was the kind of leader men wanted to follow, and was well on his way to becoming a command sergeant major. A week earlier, I had seen him in Charlie Med getting a small piece of shrapnel pulled out of his butt after the Humvee he was riding in hit an IED. I joked with him that he had the “million dollar wound,” as if the enemy could only wound a soldier once.
On 24 July, Al Qaeda tried to reassert its dominance with a coordinated citywide series of attacks against Coalition forces, striking at fifteen locations across Ramadi in less than thirty minutes, with eight of the attacks occurring in one deadly ten-minute span. Well over one hundred fighters engaged in the offensive, with six of the attacks defined as “complex”–meaning more than one engagement method. While the attacks briefly rocked us back on our heels, within minutes the Coalition restored the relative order, killing at least twenty-eight terrorists267 who had with nothing to show for their effort.
Lieutenant Colonel Jim Lechner and the members of the brigade’s Iraqi Security Force Cell were driving down Route Michigan after having just completed an inspection of the newly established police station at Ramadi General Hospital with when the violence erupted. Their four-vehicle patrol drove into a terrorist ambush of IEDs, RPG, and small arms fire. One of the rockets struck the lead Humvee, instantly killing Captain Jason West,268 the Ready First’s assistant S-1.269 The spate of attacks also claimed the life of Specialist Dennis K Samson, assigned to Bravo Company 1-506th, killed by enemy small arms fire near TQ.270
Undaunted by their heavy casualties, the AIF remained on the attack. On 26 July, Al Qaeda attacked COP Falcon in force, causing Bajema and his men to fire every weapon system they had to repel the enemy, and requiring ammunition resupply during the four-hour gun battle.271 The next day, three Marines from Weapons Company, 3/8 Marine, Corporal Timothy D. Roos,272 Lance Corporal Adam R. Murray,273 and Private First Class Enrique C. Sanchez,274 died when an IED destroyed their vehicle.275
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July had been a brutal month for us as far as casualties. Although acts of courage such as Sergeant First Class Folks’ lifesaving rescue mission were almost commonplace across the task force and the Ready First, relying on the bravery of our soldiers was not going to win the battle. The brigade continued making gains in central Ramadi, and we continued our progress in recruiting policemen from the tribal area. We had also received permission to secure Al Anbar University. We expected that Operation Toga would help alleviate some of the violence in Tam’eem by denying the enemy a safe haven, but it would not eliminate it. The key to victory was the Iraqi security forces, but for the time being, the Iraqi army battalion had a long way to go, and the police remained a broken force.
I had decided to take R&R after the university operation, although, in retrospect, I should have taken it during our time in Kuwait. I figured it was only a matter of time before we received orders extending our tour from twelve to fifteen months, so now seemed as good a time as any. Between Operation Toga and R&R, I knew I would not see Sheik Ahmad and Sheik Sattar for almost a month, so I needed to have them meet with Major Chuck Bergman before I left. Chuck would be commanding the task force in my absence, and be responsible for maintaining the relationship with the Bezias. The sheiks needed to feel as comfortable dealing with him as they were dealing with me. As usual, Sean Frerking attended as well, but now as a captain, since I had promoted him earlier in the day.
Sheik Sattar had scheduled a meeting for 1 August with tribal leaders from across Ramadi, who wanted their young men to join the police. Every week, the Bezias brought more tribal leaders to meet us. Some contributed men willing to sign up as police recruits while others made wild promises claiming they could field a division of soldiers, and a few just drank tea with us and never talked to us again. We knew that sheiks wanting to meet with us was a promising sign, but there was still only scattered support from the locals, and getting large numbers of police recruits continued to be a constant struggle.
When we arrived at the Bezia’s compound, only Sheik Sattar was there to meet us. I asked him where his brother was, and Sattar told me that Ahmad had taken a vacation. I thought it strange that anyone with the means to go on vacation from a war zone would be living there day to day—I assumed anyone who could leave Ramadi would get out and stay out. On the other hand, I knew that Europeans, regardless of income level, take vacations for the month of August. Maybe the Iraqis did too? In any event, I never saw Sheik Ahmad again. Sheik Sattar had taken over as the tribal leader, even though we did not realize it at the time.
This meeting was attended by Sheik Khaled A’rak Ehtami Al-A’layawi, his son Sheik Taher Sabbar of the Aley Jassim tribe, and a couple of other sheiks from across the Euphrates River, These sheiks did not seem like they were best friends with Sheik Sattar, nor did they support their tribesmen joining the police. I believe they saw the meeting as an opportunity to tell a senior American officer how badly the Coalition was doing in stopping Al Qaeda. After about an hour of listening to them carp about the lack of protection we were providing, I had heard enough of their complaining. The Sheiks were going to have to get on board with the police recruiting.
“Dragon, tell them they all look the same to me,” I said to my interpreter.
Dragon is normally a very soft-spoken man. He had a personal investment in the war, having been in Ramadi for over two years at the time, and did not want to see me destroy the progress we had made. He looked me in the eye and said very matter-of-factly, “I’m not telling them that.”
“Tell ‘em, Dragon. Word for fucking word,” I snapped.
Dragon shrugged, grimaced, and repeated in Arabic what I said. The room fell silent for a moment and then erupted with angry outbursts from all the sheiks at once. It was hard for me to tell exactly what they were saying, but judging from the tone and body language, I calculated their mood to be somewhere between indignation and anger.
“Back in Nebraska, we all wear cowboy boots, blue jeans, plaid shirts, and cowboy hats,” I went on to say, knowing the Iraqis watched a lot of Hollywood movies on satellite TV. “If you came to my town, you couldn’t tell us apart. Since I lived in Nebraska all my life, I could tell you who belonged there and who didn’t. I can tell you who’s a good man, and who’s a bad man. I can tell you which families are good and which ones are bad. Why? Because I’m from there, and I know the situation in ways you’ll never understand.”
It was almost as though the lights went on in the sheiks’ heads. They listened with attentiveness while Dragon explained the finer points of my argument over the next few minutes. At one point Dragon told them that the Americans were over here dying for them, then asked them what they were doing to free themselves. After thirty minutes of back and forth, they all agreed to support the police and to talk to their neighboring tribal leaders as well.
The locals were tired of Al Qaeda’s murder and intimidation tactics and wanted to fight back. They just needed a platform that allowed them to band together in a manner they deemed to be honorable. We offered them that opportunity by recruiting their young men into the police force. The sheiks recognized that when their sons join the Iraqi police, they had a real chance to drive Al Qaeda from Ramadi. We had just facilitated the mujahedeen’s split from Al Qaeda.
The sheiks saw a clear distinction between the two forces fighting the Americans. To the tribal leaders, the mujahedeen consisted of local men who were angry over the U.S. invasion of their country or the de--Bathification policies, but they were not inherently bad or lawless. Frankly, if I were an Iraqi, I would probably have joined the muj myself. In their eyes, the conflict was a Middle Eastern version of Red Dawn, and the Americans were the bad guys. In that sense, most of the young men attacking us were Arab Patrick Swayzes.
As they say in Arabic, “Wolferine!”
Overall, the sheiks that I met throughout 2006 all seemed like honorable enough men. By no means did I trust them, but we found ways to work together with obvious benefits to both sides. The sheiks were businessmen and they knew that in order to stay in business they had to live up to their end of the bargain. I had more of an advantage that a typical partner in an American business arrangement: if one of the sheiks broke his word, I could zip-tie his hands and send him to prison. I saw the sheiks as representative of the population as a whole. While they observed the tenets of Islam, they appeared to me to be more like the Muslim version of Christmas and Easter Catholics than radical jihadists.
Hail and Ed ul-Fitr Muslims if you will.
The Al Qaeda followers, however, operated with a completely different set of objectives than the homegrown muj. These jihadists were religious zealots who wanted turn the clock on Iraqi society back at least one thousand years. Al Qaeda was looking to tax their business transactions, both legitimate and illegal, enforce strict Sharia law, including observing the Ramadan fast, which prohibited eating or drinking anything, including cigarette smoking, during daylight hours through the holy month. The Iraqis I met wanted no part of Al Qaeda or Sharia Law. Over the years, I have heard many theories put forward about why the sheiks rebelled against Al Qaeda. These hypotheses ranged from too much abuse to forced marriages. At the time, however, it appeared to me the smoking ban was what really caused their ire to rise.
As the meeting was breaking up, Sheik Khaled cornered me. “I have three wives, eighteen sons, and a hundred men in my tribe. I was a General in Saddam’s army for over thirty years and a hero of the Iranian War. Saddam then imprisoned me for two years where I was beaten and tortured. He then released me and reinstated me as a general. Now since you Americans have come, I get $24 a month pension from the government. How am I to provide for my family and my tribe? You are no different from me, a military man. Are you going to become a farmer or a trash collector? No, you are not. What am I supposed to do?”
What he said made a lot of sense. How were these guys making money, feeding their families or moving forward in life?
“I hear you,” I told him. “But are things going to be better under Al Qaeda five years from now? Ten years? The best shot you’ve got is throw in with the Coalition.”
Sheik Khaled then went on a lengthy animated diatribe in Arabic. The only word I understood was Bremer. He said it a lot, and he was not happy when he spoke it. It quickly became clear to me that he blamed Coalition Provisional Authority Administrator Paul Bremer for everything that had gone wrong in postwar Iraq. The de-Baathification of the Iraqi government, orchestrated by Bremer in 2003, excluded the predominately-Sunni educated elite of Iraqi society and was the cause of many of the problems that we dealt with in 2006. Almost every Sunni was a Ba’ath Party member because joining the party was the way to get ahead in the Saddam era, and it decreased an Iraqi’s chances of ending up in an Abu Ghraib torture cell. In the end, Sheik Khaled promised to speak with the surrounding tribes, agreeing to encourage them to renounce Al Qaeda and send their tribesmen to join the Iraqi police. I told him that I would get him in contact with Lieutenant Colonel Dan Walrath to work out the details, since Sheik Khaled’s tribe lived in Task Force Regular’s AO across the Euphrates. I assured him things would get better.
Figure 19. Meeting with tribal leaders at the Abu Risha compound. From Left, Sattar Bezia Abu Risha, Taher Sabber Bdeywi abu Aley Jassim, his father Sheik Kahlid abu Aley Jassim who was later beheaded, unidentified, LTC Deane, Sheik Al Bou Diab, unidentified, Major Bergman, chai boy. 1 August 2006. Photo courtesy Charles Bergman. Click on the photo for bonus features.
I finally left the meeting at 0200 hours, feeling a little more optimistic that we could leverage the sheiks into getting the muj to stop attacking us. If they did that, we could defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq and provide the security to allow the Iraqis to build their brand new nation. These thoughts ran through my mind as I made the short drive back to Camp Ramadi, but as I rolled through the gate, my focus shifted.
We had a university to take over.