In this superbly written book detailing the battles for Fallujah, Richard Lowry focuses on powerful accounts of the tactical campaign. Braving the toughest urban combat since World War II, our Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen cleared the way for success at the operational and strategic levels of Operation Iraq Freedom (OIF-I). As the Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I) commander during Operation New Dawn, I was honored to observe the superb performance of our young men and women. Quite simply, their valiance turned the tide. Today’s readers and tomorrow’s historians will be most thankful that Richard devoted years of his life to ensure New Dawn not only accurately documents these battles, but also rightfully gives the credit to those young Americans whose sacrifices made success possible.
In the fall of 2001, I was already on orders to leave my assignment in the Pentagon as Vice Director of the J8 to command the 24th Infantry Division and Fort Riley, Kansas. On the afternoon of September 11, 2001—after the Twin Towers had collapsed, after American Airlines Flight 77 had slammed into the Pentagon, and after I saw firsthand the devastation that could be wrought by global terrorism—I knew that I would be focused on training and preparing soldiers for war. I had no vision of what that war would look like, but I knew that the Army in which I enlisted after high school graduation and had served ever since was going to be at war in the twilight of my career.
That afternoon, I could not have envisioned becoming the CENTCOM Chief of Staff during the final planning phases of Operation Iraq Freedom, nor of taking command of the III Corps, deploying it to Iraq, and becoming the senior commander of the ground forces there with the mission of helping its people hold their first free elections.
I had never heard of Fallujah, and I certainly could not envision developing a Corps Operation three years later to rid this city of the thugs, criminals, foreign fighters, insurgents, and Al Qaeda operatives whose occupation of Fallujah was a significant obstacle to Iraqi democracy. On the afternoon of September 11, I could not have imagined that my entire career would now point to one operation: an end to the enemy occupation of Fallujah, which was a malignant tumor that needed to be cut away and destroyed. Defeating the enemy there would be essential to Iraq’s first successful elections in January 2005. Fortunately, we had the world’s best warfighters, whom Richard has so aptly honored in his book.
On my pre-deployment sight survey prior to moving III Corps Headquarters to Iraq, I met with General John Abizaid and learned that LTG Ric Sanchez would remain in Iraq as the Coalition Joint Task Force-7 (CJTF-7) Commander focused on the strategic level of Operation Iraq Freedom. General Abizaid needed me to focus on the day-to-day operations. As colonels, Ric and I overlapped for a year at Fort Riley and were accustomed to working together. Based upon General Abizaid’s guidance, I leaned into the operational fight and intelligence that supported it. With a career in the operational Army, I was ready to use my education, training, and experiences to successfully achieve our goals in Iraq.
Violence was down during the first three months of 2004 because of Saddam’s capture, but that changed on March 31 when insurgents in Fallujah dragged four Blackwater contractors from their SUVs, beat them savagely, and set them on fire. The brutal desecration of their bodies—pictures of which were infamously broadcast around the world—prompted some leaders to advocate immediate retaliation. Although a response was justified, hindsight tells us a more carefully considered reaction would have better served our short- and long-term goals.
Two concurrent decisions proved also to be missteps: the capture of one of Muqtada al-Sadr’s top deputies, and the closure of Al Hawza, a newspaper published by his supporters. For good reasons, many leaders—from Anbar, Baghdad, CENTCOM, DoD, and on to the White House—were focused on a battle of revenge in Fallujah. But because of these three uncoordinated, concurrent decisions with respect to Fallujah and Sadr, the Coalition was fighting extreme Sunni and Shia forces across almost the entire country of Iraq by the second week in April.
While LTG Sanchez and Ambassador Paul Bremer focused on Fallujah, I turned to the remainder of the country to help the Coalition’s division and brigade commanders get the resources to successfully put down the uprising. The enemy destroyed about a dozen bridges on our main supply route from Kuwait, and ambushed convoys at will across the country. Battle was joined in neighborhoods across Baghdad. Large 5, 000-gallon tankers could be seen burning from our headquarters. The British and coalition partners were holding their own in the south, but the Poles and coalition partners in south-central Iraq needed help.
All units took on the task of guarding logistics convoys, and notwithstanding the significant fight in which they found themselves in the northern part of the Sunni triangle, we carved a reserve out of the 1st Infantry Division. We increased this reserve by taking a Stryker Battalion from the Multi-National Brigade-North, which added risk to an economy of force operation—a risk that I believed had to be taken.
American, Iraqi, and international media were strongly criticizing Marine tactics in Fallujah, while supplies of ammunition, fuel, and water were running low. As a result of our inability to disrupt the enemy’s effective use of information operations, the political support for continued operations was withdrawn and the Marines were ordered to pull out of Fallujah. The solution was to form an Iraqi unit, the “Fallujah Brigade,” which would be tasked to control the city and bring the Blackwater contractors’ murderers to justice. Although we all wanted the “Fallujah Brigade” experiment to be successful, very few coalition leaders were optimistic.
As we were transferring authority of Baghdad from the 1st Armor Division to the 1st Cavalry Division, young soldiers were being killed during their last and first weeks in-country. But we decided to keep the 1st Armor Division an extra ninety days to give the Coalition the combat power to put out the up-rising hot spots, especially in the central south part of Iraq.Working closely with leaders like Jim Conway, Jim Mattis, Marty Dempsey, Pete Chiarelli, John Batiste, and Carter Ham, the following critical lessons learned were seared into my professional heart during the spring of 2004:
I promised myself that I would absorb these lessons and ensure that I learned from them. My gut told me that I would need them before my tour in Iraq was complete.
Behind the chaos of the April uprising, the plans for creating the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I) and its subordinate ground component command, the Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I), were taking shape. By June 2004, MNC-I was fully operational and MNF-I was in its initial operation capacity. CJTF-7 and CPA were inactivated, Iraq was a sovereign government, and the Fallujah Brigade experiment had indeed proven to be a terrible failure: its leaders were in full cooperation with our enemies. The experiment to let Iraqi forces control a city had failed, and our enemies had a safe haven from which to operate.
The density of our enemies in Fallujah gave our special operations forces a “target-rich environment.” As these special operations attacks continued over the summer of 2004, and as I realized that the international media was not covering them as fully as they had, I coined the non-doctrinal term “IO Threshold.” Simply put, the IO Threshold is the boundary below which the media is not interested and above which they are. This concept would play an important part of the second battle of Fallujah.
One evening while in an informal meeting with General Casey and his staff, I asked, “In how many Iraqi cities do we have to have successful elections for the total elections to be successful?” I answered my question: “Baghdad, Basra, Mosel” and then paused. My good friend General Casey picked up the idea and challenged his staff to develop an answer. I knew that if Fallujah was one of these cities, we would have to retake it from the enemy in the coming months.
Over the summer and fall as the Fallujah cancer grew, few leaders in MNF-I, in the Iraqi government, in the Coalition partners, or at home in America were willing to accept the status quo there. Too much violence from Fallujah was moving north to Mosel, east to Baghdad, and south to Sunni insurgents who were in a good position to impact our main supply route into Baghdad. Fallujah had to be taken before the election of January 2005.
From my earlier experiences, I insisted the retaking of Fallujah would be a Corps operation. When we eventually attacked the enemy there, we would have to be ready for the same kind of nationwide uprising that we experienced in April. The Corps is a resource provider, and I ordered that the fuel, water, and ammunition available inside Iraq be doubled. For example, we went from storing 7, 000, 000 gallons of diesel fuel in Iraq to almost 15, 000, 000 gallons. Subordinate commanders across the Coalition were brought into the planning process. Senior commanders and civilian leaders supported our planning process with very positive coordination. For once, the bureaucrats were prone to say “yes” instead of “no.” The full power of the Coalition would be brought upon the enemy in Fallujah. My staff recommended that this operation be called “Operation Phantom Fury,” and as the Commander of Fort Hood, Texas’s Phantom Corps, I approved. Fury was a very good description of my intent.
Despite our resolve, we did have some lingering concern of the attack’s timing and the US presidential election. On a secure video conference outlining the attack to President George Bush, he assured us that he saw no connection between the American election that November and our mission in Fallujah. In addition, the president gave commanders in Iraq the guidancewe needed to successfully take out the cancerous safe haven there.
With total support from the chain of command, our options grew. Special programs gave us valuable and timely intelligence. Iraqi battalions were recruited and trained. The 1st Cavalry’s Blackjack Brigade Combat Team’s early departure was delayed. After gaining the United Kingdom’s support, we moved one of their battalions to just southeast of Fallujah to free more Marines for the Fallujah fight. General Casey won the confidence of Prime Minister Allawi and the support of the young Iraq government. As the battle neared, Prime Minister Allawi disbanded the Fallujah Brigade, established a 24-hour curfew, and prohibited the carrying of weapons in Fallujah—actions that were instrumental to success in Operation New Dawn (we agreed with the Iraqi leaders to rename the operation as an important concession to help win their support).
A dominate combat power force was planned, and this force began to train and ready itself for Operation New Dawn. The team work in preparation was splendid—from the tactical level to the strategic level all were aligned, but with one very subjective part unknown: Information Operations.
Doctrinally we were doing everything right in the Information Operations domain. Deception feints were successful. Psyops operations were also very successful, as almost 90% of the population departed Fallujah. And even with more than 200, 000 moving out of the city, the exodus did not create the humanitarian problem many predicted. Our electronic warfare efforts were superb: we listened when we wanted to and jammed when we did not want the enemy to communicate inside or outside Fallujah. We knew the enemy remained convinced that we would not attack them and that if we did, they would prevail. We could not hide the movement of massive combat power, but our operational security supported our IO efforts, and the enemy remained confused before and during the battle. Computer network operations were managed well above the NMC-I/MNF-I levels. Doctrinally, we were on top of the Information Operations, but I saw one remaining challenge: “The IO Threshold.”
Since the first battle for Fallujah was lost in some measure due to the enemy’s use of information—albeit false information—General Casey could have imposed strict rules of engagement for the second battle of Fallujah. On the other hand, General John Sattler, MNF-W Commander, had every right to unleash as much combat power as he needed to protect his force and achieve the mission.
Relationships are as important in the military as they are in other professions; friendships make those relationships tight and loyal threads bind warfighters. And so it was with General George Casey, LtGen John Sattler, and me. George trusted his team to adhere to our standard rules of engagement and allowed his operational and tactical commanders to orchestrate this battle. I would go to John and tell him that we can’t lose this battle before it starts, so his prep must stay beneath the IO Threshold. In turn, I’d go to George to gain his support for using all available combat power, regardless of what the media says, until the enemy was defeated. We were confident that our Marines and soldiers would defeat the enemy in Fallujah.
There were, of course, IO challenges we could anticipate and for which we could plan. We took control of the hospital the evening before the main attack on Fallujah, removing it from the enemy’s IO platform. If the enemy uses a mosque, school, or hospital from which to fight, that structure loses its protection under the Fourth Geneva Convention and Rules of Land Warfare.But since a majority of our young men and women carry digital cameras in their pockets, I asked them to take a picture of the enemy’s misuse of these facilities before rightly using over whelming combat power against them. When I visited young commanders, I emphasized to them that to win this battle I needed digital pictures coming my way as much as they needed main gun tank rounds headed toward the enemy. I knew our Marines and soldiers were good enough to win the total information war.
We were ready with a plan to strike at the enemy’s strength quickly with over whelming combat power, political support from home, the Coalition Partners, and the sovereign Iraqi government, and an understanding of the “IO Threshold” by commanders and warfighters alike. The real burden then fell to Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen to get the job done. Richard Lowry has masterfully captured the hard, dangerous, personal fight these men and women waged in Operation New Dawn. His research and accuracy will not only be enjoyed by readers today, but also help historians for years to come. He has honored young leaders and warfighters as he covers their actions, often minute-to-minute, throughout one of the toughest urban combats in which Americans have fought.
I want to thank Richard for the honor of writing this Foreword because his book superbly records the major challenge of III Corps’ success in Iraq.Each of the major units in the Corps fought numerous successful tactical battles. The operational success achieved in Operation New Dawn by MNF-W, MNC-I, MNF-I and the Iraqi Government then led to the strategic success of national elections in January 2005.
In New Dawn: The Battles for Fallujah, Richard Lowry has brilliantly set forth the successes of the young men and women of all the services who fought and supported Operation New Dawn. To them and Richard, we owe a debt of gratitude. God Bless them all and God Bless America!
— Lieutenant General Thomas F. Metz, US ARMY (Ret.)
First MNC-I Commanding General