The next day, ‘Marty’ from DynCorp showed up at the appointed time and we were all ushered into the same auditorium where we had been holding our orientation briefings. We met together to sign for the M-4 carbines and Beretta pistols, and the ammunition that we would each be issued. Finally, after a couple of weeks in Iraq, we were getting weapons. I think there was an inaudible sigh of relief among our group. The process went pretty smoothly and, once completed, Marty left and we returned to our tent, where we sat down and started loading the magazines that came with our weapons. We were finally able to strap on our side-arms and feel more comfortable. At least now we knew we’d have a fighting chance if the insurgents ever decided to pay us a visit. Plus it just felt more natural—cops get so used to wearing a weapon on their side that it becomes second nature and they don’t even realize it. It becomes a part of their body. We all felt whole once again, and no longer naked.
Once the issuing of weapons was out of the way, our day fell into pretty much the same pattern we had followed up to that point. Some of us went to the PX and others just wandered around the Adnan Palace compound or hung out in the tent. Later that night, despite the assurances that were in a very safe and secure environment, there was what appeared to be a large-scale firefight about 300 meters away, near what would become the courthouse where the Saddam Hussein trial would take place. Sometime after dark we were roused by the sound of small-arms fire and explosions coming from east of our compound. We all scrambled out of the tent and looked at each other with concern. Near to our tent there was a perimeter guard tower, so I climbed up the ramp to get a visual, to try to understand what was happening.
In the darkness it was difficult to see exactly what was taking place, but there was obviously a lot of shooting and flashes of light off in the distance. Stan and Ruby stood down below the guard tower watching and I reported back to them what little I could see of what was taking place. Stan and Ruby looked concerned, and I felt the same way.
“Can you see what’s going on?” Ruby asked.
“Not much really,” I responded. “Just a lot of light flashes and shooting.”
Both Stan and Ruby had faced dangerous situations before, but this was something new. All of us were in a strange environment and facing potential threats we had never faced before, and had only heard about on the evening news back home. I’ll admit to a recurring dream I had some nights about getting captured by the insurgents and having my head lopped off by a terrorist like Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was running around Baghdad at that time. He was doing just that, lopping off captured Westerners’ heads. It was not a pleasant night for me when that dream popped into my head, I can assure you.
The distinct sound of automatic small-arms fire, as well as what looked like muzzle flashes, could be clearly seen and heard off in the distance. We watched with rapt attention as the firefight appeared to move around the base of what would become the Iraqi courthouse. Occasionally a small explosion would interrupt the gunfire. It was a very confusing situation for us spectators, and it lasted for approximately 15 minutes, with my colleagues and I having a front-row seat from behind the compound walls.
During the firefight our small group also experienced its first ‘casualty’. Wallie, who had been walking across a parking lot towards our tent when the shooting erupted, was struck in the face by a small piece of flying debris or shrapnel, apparently emanating from one of the explosions occurring off in the distance. Though his injury was slight, barely breaking the skin, it was a foreboding of what was to come, as Wallie would be ‘wounded’ again later, while inside his room in the ‘Tin Hut’ at the Baghdad Police Academy.
Needless to say, there were a number of comments among those of us watching the battle, concerning ‘how safe we were’, as we had been told the preceding days, and how we ‘shouldn’t be concerned about not having weapons’. Once again we discovered that we had not been told the truth by those running the ICITAP program.
The gunfire finally subsided and then came to an end, but I’m sure that not many of us slept soundly, unsure if we might be the next target of what seemed to us to be an insurgent attack just a few hundred meters away. The next morning, Barney stopped by the palace and we told him of the battle. He was surprised not to have heard anything about it. His response was “You’re kidding me?” We all assured him that it wasn’t a matter for levity and that one of our group had actually been hit in the face by a piece of flying debris from one of the explosions.
We subsequently found out that the firefight we had witnessed had not actually been a firefight at all. We were told that a rocket from somewhere outside the Green Zone had been fired into the fortified area and had struck a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, parked near the courthouse building. The ammunition inside the Bradley had begun to ‘cook off’, giving the appearance of a firefight in the dark. Regardless of the cause, the entire incident was rather disconcerting to those of us who witnessed it, and we certainly let Barney have it about all the earlier assurances that we had been given that we didn’t need weapons. I’m guessing a few of our group probably started to have second thoughts about what they had gotten themselves into.
There is one thing you simply never do to a cop—you don’t try to bullshit him. Cops don’t respond real well to bullshit being sent our way as a response to anything. By now, our feelings about the Adnan crowd were that all they knew how to do was to bullshit people. There was bad blood developing between us ‘grunts’, who were soon to be on the front lines at the various police academies around Iraq, and the people running the program back in the Green Zone. They were the typical REMs (Rear Echelon Motherfuckers, to use a military term), that every war has. There have always been people filling support positions back in the rear areas, and in the military there are about 10 REMs for every warfighter who is actually out there on the front lines doing the fighting, the bleeding, and the dying.
One of the common jokes we shared was at the expense of those self-appointed senior managers within the ICITAP program. Oftentimes you would walk into the Adnan Palace foyer and see senior ICITAP types standing around in groups of two or three, arms folded across their chests, appearing to be in high-level discussions about our project to bring Western democratic policing to Iraq. In fact, it was nothing more than a ‘harrumphing’ session.
It always reminded me of the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles, when Brooks played the character of Governor Le Petomane. I recall one scene in particular from the movie where Le Petomane and his aides are all standing around in the governor’s office, arms folded across their chests while harrumphing to each other. One aide forgets to harrumph and Brooks walks over and says, “I didn’t get a harrumph from you,” to which the offender quickly harrumphs in reply. I always thought of that scene when I witnessed the pompous asses from the Green Zone who stood around in their little groups. Their lofty, high-level conversations were nothing more than attempts to impress each other with what was likely nothing more than pure bullshit. An exercise in ‘Hey, look at me, I’m important’.
ICITAP had more official titles than one could shake a stick of TNT at. There was chief of staff, executive officer, regional director, regional investigations director, regional academy director, academy director, training director… and on and on and on. There were so many titles it was hard to keep track of them. We all became convinced that these positions were not necessarily given to the most qualified or the best leaders, but to those who got to Iraq first and laid a claim, or those who were the best at currying favor—the ‘brown-nosers’ to be more specific. Among our group of lowly instructors we had former police chiefs, senior detectives, GS-15s from federal agencies, who had overseen large staffs and budgets and who were obviously very well-qualified to hold senior positions within ICITAP, but they didn’t get to Iraq first, so they were relegated to just being Iraqi police trainers.
In reviewing the careers of some of the senior managers, it was obvious that most of them had no more experience in leadership positions or senior law-enforcement management than any of those in my group. One individual in particular, Dane Borotsky, who had ‘retired’ as chief from a western state police department, was one of the most pompous of all of them. Dane passed himself off as some moral authority, thumping his bible in our faces and passing judgment on those of us who didn’t share his religious beliefs. In fact, as we would later learn, Chief Dane had ‘retired’ from his last job at a fairly large police department under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations made by a female employee. He was not the paragon of virtue and moral authority that he portrayed himself as.
I’ve never had much use for hypocrites, and Dane certainly fit that description. He could regularly be found as close to any high-ranking military officer as he could get without actually being inside the guy’s clothes with him. We used to joke that his nose was so far up some general’s ass that if the general turned a sharp corner he’d break Dane off at the ankles. He was also a great ‘harrumpher’.
Most of the other senior managers of ICITAP were so forgettable that I really can’t remember names, only that they all fit the same general profile. In our group we had a real retired GS-15, not one of the phony GS-15 ‘equivalent’ ICITAP employees, like the rank that was listed on our CAC cards. Dalma had served in a senior position with the U.S. Border Patrol and was a highly qualified individual. We also had senior-level agents from the Customs Service and the IRS, former police chiefs, and senior corrections officers as well, including Wallie, who had worked for a period of time at the White House.
Unfortunately, these talented and highly qualified individuals were relegated to positions as instructors of police cadets, instead of being given an opportunity to bring some real leadership and professionalism to the ICITAP program—a program that was in dire need of real leadership. When your program’s slogan is ‘Never have so many done so little for so much,’ there is an obvious need for an overhaul.
The day after we received our weapons, we decided it was time to venture out on our own and do some exploring—within the Green Zone of course. Rather than just go to the PX and chow hall, we decided to check out the neighborhood around the Adnan Palace. What had become something of a rite of passage for everyone who served in Baghdad, military and civilian alike, was to wander over to the Crossed Swords monument and parade boulevard to check them out and take some photos. Naturally, we all had to have our photo taken standing in the middle of the boulevard with the swords rising behind us. The monument consists of two arches, each formed by a pair of hands holding swords, rising across the boulevard and meeting in the middle. Descriptions do them no justice, you have to see them to understand how impressive they are.
We also walked about halfway down the boulevard to the large elevated stand, where Saddam and his senior leadership once stood to review the Iraqi troops parading past them. The viewing platform rose about 30 feet above the boulevard and I had to admit to a little bit of a funny feeling standing there, knowing that my feet probably were standing in the same place Saddam Hussein had once stood. Of course, that didn’t stop us from all taking the obligatory photographs, standing where Saddam had fired his rifle into the air. Naturally, we all had to mimic that famous pose, as did every other American who came to Baghdad.
We also decided to walk over towards the zoo area and what was referred to as ‘Memorial Park’. There were a couple of dusty old fighter jets parked there and a few other monuments of one sort or another. Everything was in a state of disrepair and looked very much neglected. After over 10 years of sanctions, it was easy to understand how things had fallen into this state.
While it felt good to get out of the Adnan compound, it was a little surreal walking around the Memorial Park area. We were very near the wall separating the Green Zone from ‘Injun territory’, and you never felt completely safe. Actually, considering the mortars and rockets that were regularly fired into the Green Zone, you never were completely safe.
Just before Christmas 2004, after a couple of weeks residing at the Adnan Palace tent, we were paid a visit by one of the staff and advised that we would finally be moving over to the Baghdad Police Academy the next day. Two from our group, Tommy and Daniel, were being assigned to the police academy at the Al Assad Air Base, about an hour’s flight north of Baghdad. The Al Assad Academy was much smaller than the Baghdad one, and had a much smaller cadet population. There were several other smaller regional police academies spread out across Iraq. The one in Sulaymaniyah, up north in the Kurdish region of Iraq, was highly coveted by everyone. Compared to Baghdad and all the other parts of Iraq, the Kurdish area was relatively safe and peaceful. The Kurds were friendly towards Americans and one could actually walk the streets somewhat freely in ‘Suly’, which was certainly not possible anywhere else in the country.
We were also advised that there was going to be a Christmas party at the Baghdad Country Club, next to the Adnan Palace, that evening, and that we could pay $20 if we wanted to stay and join the fun, and then catch a later PSD over to the Baghdad Police Academy. I for one had had enough of the Adnan crowd, as well as living out of a duffle bag and a suitcase. I was more than ready to move on regardless of where it was, so I chose not to stay for the party. Stan and Ruby and a few others elected to attend the party, a decision they later regretted. According to Stan they were basically lost in the shuffle. The Adnan crowd spent the entire time currying favor with senior military officers and paid no attention to any of the people from our group. They described it as a stuffy affair and a total waste of time, and a waste of money. There wasn’t much return on the $20 investment—no fun was had by all, at least not from our group.