“THE BEST WEAPON AGAINST AN ENEMY IS ANOTHER ENEMY.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche –

CHAPTER 20: AWAKENING

WHEN I RETURNED TO THE TOC, PAT FAGAN HELD A PRINTOUT of a New York Times article titled Most Tribes in Anbar Agree to Unite against Insurgents below a photograph of four Iraqis carrying a lifeless body in the aftermath of coordinated suicide bombings in Fallujah and Kirkuk.320 Sheik Sattar had made his debut on the national and international stage, stating boldly:

“We held a meeting earlier and agreed to fight those who call themselves mujahedeen. We believe that there is a conspiracy against our Iraqi people. Those terrorists claimed that they are fighters working on liberating Iraq, but they turned out to be killers. Now all the people are fed up and have turned against them. We are determined to go ahead with this plan and eliminate the gangs that claim jihad. We are in a battle with the terrorists who kill Sunnis and Shiites, and we do not respect anyone between us who talks in a sectarian sense.”³²¹

In an effort at balanced journalism, The Gray Lady cited a Reuters’ article quoting Abu Farouk, a self-proclaimed senior leader of Al Qaeda in northern Ramadi, “We have the right to kill all infidels, like the police and army and all those who support them. This tribal system is un-Islamic. We are proud to kill tribal leaders who are helping the Americans.”³²²

While only a quarter of the thousand-word article was positive, this was still the best news coming out of Ramadi in months. Two days later, Al Qaeda responded in the Arab media claiming the entire Anbar Awakening movement was a lie, and that Sheik Sattar was an invention of the CIA. Interestingly enough, I saw this assertion echoed months after my leaving Iraq in an “award-winning documentary.”323

Later that week, I was sitting in Colonel MacFarland’s office when he got the call extending the Ready First to a fifteen-month tour of combat. When he told me the news, which I had been expecting, I straightened up in my chair and told him the Conquerors were up to the task.

“It’s only the Ready First,” MacFarland replied. “You and your brigade are going back at twelve months.”

The news caused me a mixture of emotions. On the one hand, I hated the thought of running out on the units we had been fighting beside for the past four months—especially now, when we were beginning to see real progress. On the other, I would be undeniably happy to get the hell out of Ramadi. Another two months of hard fighting certainly sounded better than five more months.

The Iraqi army battalion had been fighting alongside of us for months, showing steady improvement and continuing a process that began when they assumed responsibility for 5 Kilo in February under Mark Lovejoy. They independently planned and executed missions with no more support than the able assistance of Kris Stilling and the advisor team. In my mind, they were “good enough” when we arrived in June, and had become more proficient every day. They could execute any tactical mission assigned to them, and in the grand scheme of things rated about average compared to infantry battalions in any other country’s army, aside from the United States and a handful of our NATO allies. They had their problems like any other unit, but most of those were administrative and logistical, areas that were out of the unit’s control. Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa and most of his officers were Saddam-era professionals and knew what they needed to do to get better.

Despite their controlling an area of operations for nearly eight months, they had never been officially “validated” by Coalition forces, which was a necessary step before they could conduct independent operations by the convoluted Training Readiness Assessment process. When Major Dave Raugh first told me that the Iraqi battalion needed to conduct an exercise to demonstrate their proficiency, I thought he was joking. When he turned out to be serious, I tried pushing back the requirement with the Ready First, but in the end, the orders came down to execute the validation exercise.

No one was happy about this. Within the Task Force, we had other missions requiring our attention. The advisor team felt the unnecessary operation disrupted the training and tactical operations that the Iraqis were already conducting and displayed mistrust on the part of U.S. forces. To the Iraqis, it was a slap in the face professionally. No one had a problem going out on a mission. All of us went out every day, but there was no sense in going out the gate needlessly, especially when chances were someone was going to be injured.

I directed the Iraqi army battalion to conduct a raid in the White Apartments in Tam’eem, a mission we called Operation VALOP. Team Dealer had been patrolling in and out of that complex daily for the past three months, so we felt confident that the Iraqis would not be kicking over a hornets’ nest of terrorist activity. Still, while the attacks around the White Apartments had trailed off since the establishment of COP Crab, they had not completely stopped. I had faith in the Iraqi army battalion, but I did not want to send them into a pitched battle in an unfamiliar area. It was as close to a milk run as I could give them. Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa and his staff accomplished every required task: They issued an operations order, conducted a rehearsal, started the operation on time, secured the perimeter, and systematically and thoroughly searched the objective. It was by no means perfect, but again, T. E. Lawrence “tolerably.”

Figure 32. LTC Deane, Kris Stillings, LTC Mustafa and an unidentified Iraqi watch the sandtable rehearsal for Operation VALOP on Camp Defender. 17 September 2006. Click on the photo for bonus features.

I had been in the White Apartments on at least five previous occasions, most recently a week prior. Something was different this time: the locals seemed glad to see us. Not us exactly, but the Iraqi army. They welcomed their compatriots with smiles, man kisses, and a salaam alaykum, which was very different from the reception that previous U.S.-only operations in the complex received. Dragon and I followed Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa at a distance, evaluating him as he led his men. I could hardly believe my eyes. The locals were genuinely happy to see the Iraqi army. A man came forward and introduced himself as the muktar of the White Apartments. (This post was something like an alderman’s, with the authority to solve minor disputes.) We had been trying to identify him since June, but no one pointed him out to us, nor did he identify himself – until now.

Figure 33. Iraqi troops along with American Advisors lock down the white apartments during operation VALOP. At the far end of the street is an Iraqi T-72. 20. September 2006. Click on the photo for bonus features.

“Hey, I asked you last week who the muktar was, and you told me you didn’t know!” I protested.

Dragon did not have time, or the necessity, to translate. The muktar may not have spoken English, but he figured out the gist of what I was saying from my body language and tone. He looked me in the eye, hacked up a wad, and spat on the floor, before saying in English, “I don’t like Americans.”

He then warmly put his arm on Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa’s back, gave him a broad smile, and led him into the apartment for tea and snacks.

Dragon saw my anger. “Walk away,” he said, stepping in front of me and shaking his head from side to side.

I started to argue, but Dragon continued shaking his head while making a “tistis” sound. He was right; it was not worth the fight. I stood wordlessly in the hallway as the two men disappeared into the apartment. It was clear to me that the sooner the Iraqi security forces took over responsibility for Tam’eem; the better it would be for everyone.

During this operation, the Iraqi army caught a couple of low-level terrorists, finally identified the muktar of the apartment complex, and gained actionable intelligence from the residents. What the mission did for me was to validate the need to get the Iraqi security forces in front. At the time, the plan was for the U.S. to establish security and create “breathing room” for the Iraqi security forces to develop capability, and then turn it over to the Iraqis. The truth on the ground proved the Iraqis needed to be partners in providing security from the start.

Figure 34. An Iraqi Army Humvee pulls security at the White Apartments during Operation VALOP. Notice the nest of wires that could hide possible triggers for IED’s. Click on the photo for bonus features.

I saw this as analogous to bench-pressing: If the U.S. forces do all the heavy lifting in establishing security, and then hands over a figurative two-hundred pound barbell to the Iraqi security forces, the bar is going to come crashing down hard, much like the failure of the Iraqi security forces in 2005. However, if we gave the Iraqi security forces the barbell with one-hundred pounds on it, spotted it for them, and kept coaching them, soon enough they would be able to lift the weight on their own. The faster I could get Mustafa’s battalion and then the Iraqi police to provide security all across AO Conqueror, the better it would be for all involved. Watching the locals immediately warm to an Iraqi colonel they saw for the first time left an impression on me. How would they respond to a police force that was with them around the clock?

Figure 35. Iraqi soldiers drinking tea with an Iraqi family in the white apartments during Operation VALOP. 20 September 2006. Click on the photo for bonus features.

On 21 September, the 3/8 Marines completed their tour and ripped with 1/6 Marine commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Bill Journey.³²⁴ That night, Sergeant Allen Bevington of Alpha Company, 40th engineers, and his squad were interrogating a pressure plate IED when the enemy exploded a second command-detonated IED, killing him and seriously wounding two others.³²⁵

The Awakening Council’s formation resulted in immediate impacts that I did not foresee, nor would I have even dared to hope. Although widely ignored in the U.S. press, news of the Anbar Awakening featured prominently in the Arab media every day, and Sheik Sattar’s political stock was rising meteorically across Iraq. By now, he routinely communicated with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, and in fact, Maliki was often the one making the call.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, and its leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, recognized the clear threat to the New Islamic Caliphate in Ramadi presented by the Anbar Awakening Council long before this truth registered with most of the Coalition chain of command. They issued a further statement stating that they understood the error that the people of Anbar had made in siding with the sheiks, and would spare the lives of anyone who asked for forgiveness and swore allegiance to Al Qaeda, except for Sheik Sattar, who al-Masri declared he would kill personally.

“A begging Sattar will tremble at my feet before he dies!” he boasted through several outlets in the Arab press.

Sheik Sattar answered the challenge the next day on Arab television. “Al-Masri will feel my wrath!” he declared, looking directly into the camera, speaking passionately, “He will die like the dog he is in the streets of Ramadi, if the coward is even brave enough to show his face. The last thing the dog will see is me cursing his family as I take his life!”

By now, I was meeting with Sheik Sattar at least every other day. His entourage had grown quite large, with a group of men crowded around a television set waiting for the hourly newsbreak. Invariably Sattar was the lead story, his comments full of fire:

“The streets of Anbar will run red with the blood of the terrorists! The people of Anbar reject Al Qaeda as the criminals and murderers they are. We will crush them under the soles of our shoes. They are traitors to Islam!” This was great stuff, and Sheik Sattar delivered the message with all the panache of a WWE wrestler hyping a pay-per-view cage match.

After a few weeks, the Awakening Council began running commercials on Arab satellite television stations showing images of the heroic Iraqi police raiding a house and capturing a terrorist dressed in a black cat-burglar outfit while the crowds outside cheered. The scene cut to men dancing in traditional Arab costumes, and then cut to a white stallion running through the desert. These commercials were equal parts art house symbolism and cornball silent movie drama. The men gathered at Sheik Sattar’s house would start shushing as soon as the news came on, listen in dead silence, and then cheer wildly when the broadcast ended.

A perfect storm was rising in Ramadi. The people were tired of the violence and desperately wanted a voice in their governance, and realized their mistake in siding with Al Qaeda in the first place. A charismatic leader emerged in Sheik Sattar. Also, there were now enough Iraqi policemen to begin confronting the terrorists. All this occurred as the U.S. forces changed tactics by constructing combat outposts that secured the neighborhoods around peoples’ homes. Perhaps most importantly, we developed a solid line of communication between the Coalition and the Sunnis.

While President Bush emphasized “staying the course” in Iraq, a drumbeat of defeat was coming from the American media, exemplified by a New York Times editorial—“Trying to Contain the Iraq Disaster”326 —and politicians, led by then-Senator Barack Obama, advocating for a pull out by the end of 2006.³²⁷ It appeared to the Sunnis that U.S. forces were leaving sooner rather than later. They had to choose between Al Qaeda and the Coalition/central government in Baghdad. They had realized months prior that their future did not lie with Al Qaeda, but had been unable to figure out a way to get out from under the terrorist organization’s thumb. While they remained suspicious of the government in Baghdad, they saw the Coalition as the honest broker in the relationship. The Sunnis in Ramadi bristled at the strict Sharia law Al Qaeda was imposing. They instead envisioned a more secular government for themselves in the post-Saddam era, but the oppression of Al Qaeda and the failure of the Iraqi-only push to reject the terrorists, combined with the daily abuse inflicted on the Sunnis by Shia death squads in Baghdad left them few viable alternatives. Although most Sunnis continued to believe that the hated Persians controlled the government in Baghdad, they saw that their last, best hope was to throw in with the Coalition and the Maliki government.

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On 26 September, a massive command wire IED struck a Team Dealer Humvee commanded by Staff Sergeant Jose Lanzarin, killing him instantly, and injuring Staff Sergeant Akinola Oladipo, Specialist James Yoon, Specialist Erik Rillera, and Specialist Shane Zitkovich.³²⁸ The terrorists followed up the blast with a barrage of small arms fire. Two Team Dealer Bradleys rolled to either side of the wrecked Humvee to protect the wounded, gunners laying down a stream of suppressive fire with machine guns and 25 mm turret-mounted chain guns.

The remaining members of the platoon raced to the firefight immediately, quickly pulling the wounded from the destroyed vehicle. As soldiers tried to evacuate the casualties amid a rattling onslaught of enemy fire, Specialist Zitkovich—covered in blood from his own injuries—ran back to the destroyed vehicle, snatched up his M249 SAW machine gun, and laid down withering bursts of covering fire as his fellow soldiers carried the remaining wounded to safety. As Lieutenant Perfecto Sanchez maneuvered his Bradley through the streets of Tam’eem to assist his wounded men, a second pressure plate IED exploded under his track. The blast injured him, Specialist Joshua Ingram, and Specialist Taylor though fortunately their wounds were minor. Bursts of 25 mm chain gun rounds from the damaged Bradley, supported by intense fire from his wingman’s vehicle, dispersed the attackers. The platoon counterattacked aggressively and found a large cache of IED-making material hidden in a nearby abandoned house as they pursued the fleeing terrorists.329

Staff Sergeant Lanzarin had served in Team Dealer for almost five years. A quiet man, he was part of the nucleus of NCOs that made up the identity of the company. From the outside, his death, more than any of the others, seemed to be a real punch in the gut for Team Dealer—partly because “Sergeant Lanz” was well-respected by the men of Team Dealer, and partly because we were all getting close to leaving.

Staff Sergeant Lanzarin’s Hero Flight was the same as all the others, and yet, like the memorial services, it had its own, individual character. Soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors flanked the path outside the Camp Ramadi morgue—a wooden Seahut located out of sight behind Charlie MED. They stood in near silence, reflecting on the loss, and thinking about their own mortality. A single bulb illuminated the area immediately outside the morgue’s door. The rest of the area was a mixture of shadows and darkness. At the edge of the light, a tan Humvee ambulance, doors open, awaited Sergeant Lanzarin’s remains for his final ride to the Medevac helipad. Command Sergeant Major Ramon Delgado, Colonel MacFarland, Command Sergeant Major Graham, and I walked through the assembled Soldiers, shaking hands and assuring them that everything would be all right. At 2145 hours, First Sergeant Shaw called the assembled troops to attention. The doors of the morgue opened Chaplain Artie Maxwell walked out ahead of the four Team Dealer non-commissioned officers serving as pallbearers. First Sergeant Shaw ordered “Present Arms.” Crisp salutes honored the fallen sergeant, recognizing a hero who had given his life for his nation. Artie walked slowly to the ambulance, reciting the 23rd Psalm:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

Although spoken all too often in Ramadi and across Iraq, Artie’s words had a comforting effect. The Dealer NCOs carefully placed Lanzarin’s remains into the ambulance for the final 100-yard ride to the helipad. First Sergeant Shaw commanded “Order Arms”, and in unison, the salutes dropped. Wordlessly, the formation closed ranks behind the ambulance and followed it into the darkness to the edge of the helipad. The chopping sound of two Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters in the distance soon replaced the constant hum of the generators powering Camp Ramadi. As the whir of the rotors grew louder, the members of the silent crowd stood a little straighter. As the helicopters flared to land, a dust cloud of sand and pebbles filled air, prickling the faces of the assembled soldiers. The back ramps of the Sea Knight dropped, and two crew chiefs moved swiftly across the helipad, came to attention, saluted, then led the Dealer NCOs to the aircraft for Lanzarin’s trip back to home. Colonel MacFarland and I stood next to the ambulance in silence.

Within minutes, the back ramp rose, and the assembled crowd snapped to attention. As the whine of the engines increased, First Sergeant Shaw’s voice filled the air again. “Present Arms.” With the blades spinning faster, the lifting helicopter’s prop wash blew sand harder into the faces of the troops gathered in formation, this time, holding their salutes until the birds were out of sight. Again, Shaw commanded the formation, “Order Arms.” For Staff Sergeant Lanzarin, it was the beginning of his journey back to his grieving family. For the rest of us, it was time to continue the mission.

Some soldiers left immediately, grieving on their own. Others milled about in small groups, telling stories about their departed friend, “Remember that time back in Baumholder….” or “You remember when he took the….” Some just stood, quietly sobbing or kicking the dirt and vowing vengeance.

As we walked down the hill from the helipad, Colonel MacFarland put his arm around me and asked me how I was doing.

What the hell? Why was Colonel MacFarland consoling me now? I was a battalion commander; I could not allow myself to have a bad day. Although I had been running on caffeine and nicotine for the past four months, I doubted that I looked any worse than I did the day before. Was something wrong? Had my wife or kids got hurt back in Baumholder? This just did not make sense to me.

“Sir, I’m fine. We’re fine,” I replied as I slinked out of his embrace. I admired Colonel MacFarland and liked him personally, but we both have Irish roots, and we are not the most emotionally demonstrative of a race. I had a job to do, and for the sake of the unit, I could not go wobbly now. My job was to lead the living.

“Tony, you know Dealer has taken twenty-five percent casualties?” he asked as I was lighting a cigar, getting back into character.

“Yes sir. More counting the guys from Dagger. Kris Stillings’ advisor team has lost almost fifty percent,” I acknowledged.

Colonel MacFarland had seen a lot of injury and death in the past four months, as had we all. Up to that point I had never thought of it a percentage, but as individuals. Scotty Love and Crombie were dead, Rozanski had lost his legs, and Sergeant McCool was shot. Now Sergeant Lanz was gone. If the numbers added up twenty-five percent, so be it. We had a mission to accomplish. My guess is that one of the staff officers at the brigade headquarters ran the numbers, and the magnitude of what Team Dealer was accomplishing and the cost associated with their success hit Colonel MacFarland all at once.

“I’ll get you some more help,” he promised.

I was truly grateful. I thanked him, and he turned and walked away into the night.

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By late September, our replacements, the Steel Tigers of Task Force 1-77 AR, 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Micatto “Bear” Johnson, began flowing into Ramadi. Bear Johnson arrived a week prior to his unit to conduct a leader’s reconnaissance. His parent brigade, also out of Germany, had assumed the Call Forward Force mission. They were being held at their home station rather than deploying to Kuwait. Johnstone went out daily with both Team Comanche and Team Dealer in an effort to gain an understanding of AO Conqueror, and seemingly hit an IED every time. Not to say Bear was bad luck, but I made a note to myself to travel with him only when absolutely necessary, and never in the same vehicle. The security detachment and I had not hit an IED up to that point and I was not about to start this close to leaving.

Finally, the Anbar Awakening started to gain notice both in the Western press and at the highest levels of the military, even if just barely. We did high-fives all around when a PowerPoint Slide that Captain Fagan helped produce weeks earlier made its way into the Chief of Staff of the Army Daily Briefing in Washington. On 27 September, a story on Sheik Sattar’s pledge to cooperate with Prime Minister Maliki appeared on the Reuters website—of course, nestled into a larger article outlining the needless deaths of innocent Iraqi women and children.330

That day I also gave my first and only national news interview with David Kerley from ABC News’ Nightline. I told him about the Awakening’s success, and took him through Zangora, ending the tour at Sheik Sattar’s house. Sattar was not home when we arrived, but his younger brother Sheik Jabbar—it seemed that all the Bezias were sheiks—was available for an interview. Kerley spoke with Jabbar and a couple members of Sattar’s entourage before thanking me and giving me a cool ABC News key chain. I found out later that the piece never aired. His editors decided there was no story there. “Anbar was lost” remained the theme, and a conversation with a couple of sub-sheiks was not going to change that.

The next afternoon, Lieutenant Greg Bew’s tank platoon attached to 1/6 Marines stuck a massive IED in Central Ramadi, severely injuring Private First Class Johnathan McCoy, and well as wounding Staff Sergeant Jeremy Ricketts and PFC Michael Pope. This was the first tank within the task force destroyed by the blast of an IED. LT Lloyd Osafo, a replacement fresh from Germany was beginning his RIP with Lieutenant Bew. When I met the casualties at Charley Med, Osafo was standing in the back watching the doctors work on the wounded soldiers, and to me appeared to be visibly rattled.

“Osafo, you OK,” I asked.

“I will be fine. Just didn’t expect this on day one,” he replied.

“No one does,” I replied.

A week later, terrorist attacked the same platoon, this time with an even larger IED and a ground assault. The IED destroyed a tank and seriously injured Specialist Jose Cadena, while wounding Staff Sergeant Cedric Warner and Specialist Sylvester Plazola. The platoon immediately repulsed the attack, with Osafo killing a number of terrorists with his 50-caliber machinegun. The lieutenants learned quickly, thanks to the NCOs in their platoons.

That same afternoon, Lieutenant Mike Lettiere’s platoon was conducting census operations in eastern Tam’eem. He was another lieutenant who took charge of a platoon in combat. Growing up in Rockville Center on Long Island, he graduated from Chaminade High School in 2000 before heading Baltimore and attending Loyola University on an ROTC scholarship. When Mike addressed his platoon for the first time, he told them he did not know everything and wanted to learn from everyone in the platoon. He promised that he would do everything he could to ensure his men’s safety and that they were in Iraq to make a difference. What stuck Lettiere was how quickly things could change, and how leaders had to “switch on” at a moment’s notice.331

I always felt the area near the Euphrates Canal was the most dangerous portion of our sector, since soldiers were susceptible to small arms fire from across the canal, and it was a long, IED infested route to get the wounded back to Charlie Med. It was one of the few places in AO Conqueror where a patrol could become isolated. Sergeant Jesus Cadena and his men had been patrolling the area since early in the morning and needed to make a navigation check as he led his squad toward an abandoned house. There he could get his bearings and the men could drink water and get a break from the blistering heat. Nearing the doorway, he caught a glimpse of two men kneeling near a staircase against the back wall of the house.

As the team stacked outside the house preparing to enter, the two men broke for the back door. Sergeant Cadena charged through the doorway, raising his M-4 and shouting in Arabic for the men to stop. A terrorist hugged the wall inside the doorway, awaiting the first American to come through. As Cadena passed through the doorway, he heard the distinctive metallic click of a pistol’s hammer falling just inches from his right ear.

Misfire.

Instinctively he wheeled toward the assailant, firing six rounds into the gunman’s chest. Specialist Matthew Erickson, the last soldier in the stack behind Sergeant Cadena, turned to a nearby open window and saw four men with weapons running toward the back door. As Erickson raised his M249 squad automatic machine gun, one of the terrorists turned and began firing. Erickson stood his ground, firing sustained bursts as enemy bullets cracked into the air around him, shattering the window frame and showering him in wood and plaster chunks as he covered Sergeant Cadena’s withdrawal. Another terrorist tossed a grenade through the window, striking Erickson in the chest before landing on the ground in front of him. The specialist yelled “Grenade!” and the team members reacted immediately, diving to the ground prior to the harmless detonation. A second after the blast, Erickson hopped to his feet and resumed firing. Cadena regrouped and led his team in storming the house again in pursuit of the terrorists, but by this time, the terrorists had fled out the back.

Cadena and his men pursued the assailants through the maze of half-built houses, but quickly realized they had lost the fleeing enemy among the buildings. Leading his men back to conduct a detailed search of the house, they discovered a hole in the floor near the staircase containing a cache of weapons, including two Dragunov sniper rifles, a PKM machine gun, two RPGs, homemade explosives, ammunition and the night vision goggles belonging to Sergeant Lanzarin. For their actions, both Sergeant Cadena and Specialist Erickson received a Bronze Star with V for device for Valor.

The following day, Navy SEAL Michael Monsoor threw himself on a grenade, saving the rest of the team at the cost of his own life. For his actions, Monsoor earned the Medal of Honor.332

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The Road Dogs of the support platoon, led magnificently throughout the deployment by Lieutenant Patrick Webinger and Sergeant First Class Manuel Gonzalez, were the executors for every crazy mission I dreamed up. At the start of the deployment, the seventy-three member platoon consisted of cooks, fuel handlers, and cargo handlers—some school-trained, others tankers assigned to the battalion. Upon arriving in Ramadi, we reassigned the tankers to fill shortages in the scout and mortar platoons, and sent the cooks, led by Sergeant First Class Gerald Donaldson, to supervise the contractors in the mess hall. The requirement to guard the main gate of Camp Ramadi pulled out a majority of the rest, leaving only eighteen men to accomplish the mission. The nucleus of the platoon was Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Varnum, Sergeant Michael Suarez, and Specialists Richard McCurdy, Jason Strickland, and Donald Cole. They hauled concrete walls, conducted logistical resupply of the Iraqi positions, escorted detainees during battalion level operations, and denied enemy infiltration routes by burning reeds in Tam’eem. Throughout July, during the construction of the checkpoint for the Iraqi Highway Patrol, the Road Dogs were working from 0500 to midnight every day, catching a few hours’ sleep in the cab of their trucks as they could, before heading out on the next day’s mission. Webinger and Gonzalez began rotating their soldiers through twelve-hour guard duty shifts on the front gate as a break from being on the road.

Lieutenant Pat Webinger was born in Spokane, Washington, attended Gonzaga Prep High School before graduating from the University of Portland with a degree in biochemistry in 2003. Pat’s family and parochial school ingrained in him a sense of service and the need to help others. His brother was already an Army captain and what he was doing seemed exciting, so Pat applied for an ROTC scholarship. As tank platoon leader in Baghdad, Patrick saw more than his share of combat on his first deployment, deploying to Najaf and al Kut at the height of the Shia uprisings. This tour, he was the catchall for the battalion. Whenever I would give him an off the wall mission, he would squint his eyes and answer with “Yea, OK, yeah, yeah,” not quite knowing how he would accomplish it, but having faith that he and his men would figure it out.333

On 1 October, the crazy mission du jour was the construction of the Tway police station in the tribal area, since I had been unsuccessful in convincing Colonel MacFarland to assign the engineers of Charlie Rock to do the job. Colonel MacFarland agreed with our plans to build the station; we just had to do it with our own assets. An hour after nightfall, Team Comanche rolled in and deployed a protective ring around the house that had belonged to the schoolteacher days prior. The support platoon’s up-armored ten-ton cargo trucks filled with Texas Barriers and steel crow’s nests quickly rolled out the back gate of Camp Ramadi for the first of many two-mile rides that night. Whenever possible I wanted to put up concrete blast walls rather than the maintenance-intensive, dirt-filled HESCO blast walls. Frankly, I fully expected the United States government to leave Iraq in a complete mess when we pulled out. At least with concrete walls, we would leave the police permanent defensive barriers to fight from after we left.

Lieutenant Watson’s engineer platoon met the truck convoy when it arrived and slung concrete walls into place as fast as the support platoon could deliver them. As the sun rose, the haunting sound of the call to prayer could be heard echoing from minarets in the distance as the policemen hoisted an eight by twelve foot Iraqi flag over the position, signaling the transformation of the half-finished house into a police station—or substation, at least. The place was not a marvel of architectural design, but it provided protection from the inevitable suicide bomber attack. Thanks to Captain Nick Franklin and the team working with the Ready First’s Iraqi Coordination Cell, the uniforms, badges, guns, radios, Chevy Silverado pickup trucks and furniture were awaiting the opening of the new station, and a company of new policemen stood ready to go to take the fight to Al Qaeda.

Although the U.S. Army Soldiers’ Creed declares, “I will not accept defeat,” but in this case, I had neither the time nor the energy to do battle with the multiple levels of higher headquarters, and neither did Jim Lechner. The U.S. Army MP Company providing police advisor teams throughout Anbar province was already tapped out on personnel, and I was not about to embark on another bureaucratic battle over whether or not a police substation should be entitled to an advisor team. Knowing we could not just leave the newly graduated policemen without some Coalition oversight, I played my last ace, a two-time company commander named Captain Jonathan Cornett who had just returned from R&R after relinquishing command of Highlander Company.

Captain Jonathan Cornett grew up the son of Christian Missionaries, having lived everywhere from Alaska to Zimbabwe before his father became a pastor in Nashville, Tennessee. His family had a long military history and Cornett felt the call to serve his nation, so Jonathan enlisted in the Tennessee National Guard as a tanker while attending Tennessee Technological University. He participated in the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003 as part of V Corps and then moved to the 2/1 AD brigade staff as a battle captain during the deployment. He had commanded Comanche for over a year before moving to the Highlanders.334

I placed Captain Cornett in charge of First Lieutenant Stephen Winter and a squad of military police from my parent brigade, with orders to train the police at the Tway station. They performed brilliantly in an extremely fluid environment, living on-site and providing inspirational leadership and coaching as they and the Iraqis built the place from the ground up.

Two days after the station opened, we held a recruiting drive. Hundreds of men from twelve to eighty showed up, all claiming they were in the requisite eighteen to thirty-five age bracket. We quickly weeded out the too young, too old, illiterate and infirm, although most of the younger ones kept coming back with different fake IDs. Clearly, it was now cool to be an Iraqi policeman, and the men of Ramadi were responding to the sheiks’ call-to-arms to join with the Coalition.

I had long realized the physical importance of the Tway station in securing Zangora, but I underestimated the psychological effect it would have in getting the Iraqis to protect themselves. Overnight, the hastily assembled outpost became both a symbol of the Anbar Awakening and a rallying point for Iraqis who wanted to rid their province of Al Qaeda. The traditional role of the policeman in Iraq is very different from the U.S., something I did not realize at first. Despite my vast knowledge of police work gleaned from watching years of Law and Order and other police dramas on television, nothing prepared me for this. The Iraqi police employed officers, non-commissioned officers and policemen, with only the officers having arrest powers. While projecting large numbers of policemen onto the street was critical to mission accomplishment, even more important was having the right officers leading the station from the beginning.

Sheik Sattar besieged me to make a local named Saddam an officer, saying that he would do a fantastic job. Saddam looked like an NFL offensive lineman. He was perhaps the biggest Iraqi I had ever seen, and certainly the scariest. Since I was starting to get good at the carpet selling business myself, I told Sattar that I would need another hundred recruits to make Saddam an officer. Sheik Sattar agreed immediately. Although his paperwork was a bit sketchy, it was passable enough that we made Saddam a major.

Iraqis, in general, tend to crowd around the most important man in the room regardless of the situation. Proximity meant social status, and Iraqi society was all about status. This held true for everyone except Major Saddam. When Saddam entered a room, the other Iraqis would avoid eye contact and leave quickly. Personally, the first time I saw him, my hand instinctively went to the trigger housing of my M-4, and I placed my thumb on the selector switch.

Issuing uniforms, patrol belts, 9 mm Glocks, and badges to the new recruits went well into the night. As I walked out the door of the Tway station at almost 0200 hours the next morning, I bumped into Major Saddam wearing his badge on his black tracksuit, with his police patrolman’s belt slung over his left shoulder. Naturally, we did not have a uniform or belt that would fit him. I told Dragon to ask him where he was going.

“To catch terrorists,” Saddam replied.

I remember thinking that this was either going to be really good or bad.

I slept in until almost 0900 hours the next morning, then sat at my office desk drinking coffee while I went through the detention reports from the previous night. On top of the pile was a detention packet for four terrorists arrested by the police from the Tway station. First night out and they had already captured some bad guys—so far, so good. I made it through the first paragraph of the report, and I saw the comment, “The detainees were severely beaten.”

I can have a quick temper, and this time there was no stopping it. I ran next door into TOC and told the operations sergeant to get Sergeant First Class Hayes up here immediately. I knew from experience that when reports are passed up the chain of command, staff flunkies sensationalize the reports, almost like the kindergarten game of “Telephone.” A report of “slightly injured” becomes “injured,” and then “severely injured,” until the big boss receives a report of “four dead”. The Iraqi police and the Iraqi highway patrol were already doing enough damage to prisoners without us throwing fuel on the fire by embellishing facts. We accurately reported and documented the condition of every detainee, but as Jack Webb would say, “Just the facts.”

Sergeant First Class Hayes was an outstanding tanker and a great NCO. A former drill sergeant, he had already served as a platoon sergeant of a tank platoon and was paying his career dues as a staff NCO. He had originally been the Task Force Conqueror intelligence sergeant, but when we arrived in Ramadi, I put him in charge of the detainee-holding cell. Hayes ran a tight ship and did a fantastic job in documenting the evidence found on detainees, a direct reason for the high rate of our detainees receiving long-term detention at Camp Bucca. Sergeant Hayes also kept me out of trouble by running the detention cell by the book. The night we captured the killers of Lieutenant Love and Specialist Crombie, I looked at the two of them sitting on a cot outside the detention cell, zip-tied and shaking. They could not have been over twenty-years-old and were trembling with fear. I was beside myself that these punks had killed two great Americans.

“Why can’t we just shoot them?” I asked Hayes, only half-rhetorically.

Hayes looked at me. “Sir, you need to take your ass back to your office right now.”

He was right, and I left. Nothing good was going to come from sticking around.

We captured most of our detainees at night, so what little sleep Hayes got was during the day. Within fifteen minutes, he came to my office in his physical training uniform.

“Sarge, what the hell?” I asked him. “I told you not to editorialize on these reports, and here you go writing shit like severely beaten. You know this is going to get blown out of proportion up the chain.”

“Did you see them bitches?” Hayes asked, without missing a beat.

“What?” I demanded.

“Look at the pictures, sir.” Hayes replied.

I flipped past the first page of the detainee packet to see the photos, and quickly realized that severely did not do justice to the pummeling these men received. They looked like zebras due to the marks left by the telescoping nightsticks we had issued the police only the day prior.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Hayes. My bad,” I apologized.

“It’s all right, sir. Conquer or Die.” Sergeant First Class Hayes, always the professional, replied.

Then he saluted and walked off mumbling, “Waking my ass up for some bullshit…”

I went into the operations center and told the security detachment to get ready to go to the Tway police station. We needed to have a talk. Again, I did not want to thwart the initiative of the Iraqi police, but I could not allow them to beat confessions out of the locals. Times had changed, and we were establishing the rule of law. Furthermore, if the police were beating the locals, it would make great fodder for Al Qaeda’s propaganda campaign.

When I arrived at the Tway police station, I found Captain Cornett and we went to see Major Saddam, who was beaming with pride.

“Four terrorists. Four confessions!” he reported glowingly.

“Major Saddam. You cannot beat confessions out of terrorists. Those days are over,” I informed him sternly.

Saddam was dumbfounded. “What do you mean? That is what the police do!”

“Saddam, you hated the police under Saddam Hussein, didn’t you?” I asked.

“Yes, everyone did. They tortured us and stole from us. They were bad men.”

“Then why are you beating people?” I inquired.

“Because they are terrorists. They are guilty!” he replied defiantly.

“Well sooner or later, won’t the people start hating you for beating them?”

Saddam paused long and hard, and then cracked a broad smile and started nodding his head and pointing at me.

“Ahhh. Very smart. Very smart. I see,” he remarked thoughtfully.

I felt like I was watching the Grinch’s heart grow three sizes that day. We never had a problem again with the men of the Tway station passing along beaten detainees.