Day 331: The War I Always Wanted

Within a minute of our stopping vehicles, two hundred people were swarming the platoon. Every kid in the neighborhood wanted to see the Americans up close. I hurried to find the linguist, hoping that she could say something that would stem the rising tide of potential shrapnel recipients. I could just see a kid stepping on a leftover cluster bomblet next to me, sending us all to hell.

An older kid in a striped shirt came up to me and asked in broken English if I spoke French. When I said I didn’t, he managed to make clear that he had someone he wanted me to meet. He left for a second and then brought back another guy, this one with his left arm in a sling.

The French speaker then managed to get across that the injured boy had been caught in the American bombing of this area several days earlier. He said he’d been hit with shrapnel. As he said it, he reached toward the other boy and pulled down his shirt, revealing a row of stitches and dried blood on his chest.

He paused, looking at me. Then he pointed to an apartment building and said, “Two children . . . from there . . . killed in same attack.” He looked me in the eye. “You should not kill children.”

I didn’t know what to say. Sorry? Does that cut it? I was skeptical but I decided to give it a try. “Sorry.”
The kid must have sensed the awkwardness for me because he suddenly declared, “George Boosh, good.” Then he continued “But you will understand,” he said, his eyes again meeting mine, “this is very hard for us.”

I had to say something then, so I just said, “I know.”

At the time that was more or less a lie, since I didn’t know. I couldn’t have known. Americans cannot comprehend what the Iraqi people have been through for the last five, fifteen, or thirty-five years.
...
Eventually the wounded kid blended back in with the crowd. In the end, we abandoned the debris field before any ordnance disposal people arrived to take over. It was getting dark and I wasn’t going to allow my platoon to become stranded in a minefield after nightfall. We left all of the ammunition and artillery pieces where they lay.

Dealing with this unexploded weaponry became a way of life in Baghdad. But in a city blanketed with all types of hardware originally primed to explode on contact, you knew it was going to happen.

I remember blowing through traffic trying to get to the site of the blast. The road down which we drove, like all the others in Baghdad, was dusty and crawling with little kids playing in the late afternoon sun. On our right was a row of homes—the southern edge of a neighborhood. To our left was an open field, strewn with bricks and garbage. All I could see ahead of us were the tall palm trees that meant we were close to the Tigris—and the farms along the river. We drove into the forest.

Arriving at the scene, I jumped out of my truck in a street that had suddenly become nothing more than a narrow alleyway. Immediately I could see that my platoon’s presence there would have a minor effect at best. Events were already in motion and there was nothing I could do to alter them. As I stepped out, the first thing I noticed among the moving soldiers and growing crowd of onlookers were the footprints on the dusty ground.

They were bloody footprints. But it wasn’t like somebody got some blood on his foot and then walked around leaving partial prints. These were solid crimson footprints. I could see every single toe. I could see the entire outline of the foot—where it narrowed at the arch, and then where it widened and curved back into the heel. They had come from an open gate to our right. I followed them in reverse for ten or fifteen feet. Walking inside the gate, I noticed the prints went as far back along the concrete path as I could see. They were spaced widely apart—as if the man had been running and bleeding profusely at the same time. I turned and followed them back out on the street. This time, though, I followed them to their source.

He was an Iraqi civilian and he was lying on his back, nearly naked. He wasn’t moving, and there was blood everywhere. Kneeling over him and working feverishly were two sergeants I recognized from Charlie Company. Sergeant Salido was bent over the man trying to insert an IV into his right arm, in a last desperate attempt to replenish his limp body with fluid. At the same time, Sergeant Iosefo was performing CPR.

Watching his hands and his face as he worked, I could see desperation beginning to work its way into Salido’s movements. The man’s circulatory system was rapidly failing and Salido couldn’t find a vein. Suddenly he looked up and cried out, “I can’t find a vein! I can’t . . . .” His eyes were searching for anyone who could help him. For some reason I noticed he was still wearing his glasses. Then, for a brief second, we made eye contact, and I stood there, frozen.

Salido knew that no one could help him. We were all the same there—everyone was nearly equally ignorant in how to treat traumatic injuries. His statement seemed to have been posed more out of exasperation than anything else—as if he were trying to preemptively explain to the universe why the man was going to die. As he went back to work, I noticed that the man’s eyes had already rolled back in his head.

Sergeant Iosefo was across from Salido, trying to perform mouth-to-mouth. He pumped one, two, three, and then bent over to breathe into the dying man’s mouth. I watched him do this three times. But then the man’s lungs began to fill with fluid, and the next time Iosefo blew into his lungs, the man began to vomit. Iosefo kept going. He kept pounding on the man’s chest and breathing, pounding and breathing, until finally, he started to gag himself on the man’s vomit. Gasping and coughing, he finally quit and sat back. Iosefo didn’t move—he just sat there next to the body, staring straight ahead. By that time, Salido had also stopped. He dropped the man’s arm and stood up.

A black cloud of flies then descended on the body. It was as though they had been courteous enough to allow the Americans some time to save the man before diving in to feast on the fresh blood. It was as if they had done this before—like they were laughing at our naiveté, at our surprise that people really did die.

Save that guy?, they buzzed. Are you kidding? Couldn’t you tell ten minutes ago that he was going to die by the way his body temperature dropped as soon as he hit the ground? By the way his eyes rolled back in his head? This is Baghdad, sheltered Americans. Get used to it.

One of my soldiers quickly grabbed his camouflaged poncho and covered the Iraqi.

I never saw the wounded Americans. They had remained inside the gate. All I knew was that one of them had been a new guy, a new platoon leader actually, named Bilotta. I had only met him two days earlier while he was on his first patrol with his platoon. He was a big guy and a former West Pointer who, when I met him, seemed to be in the fog of confusion that envelops new officers when they first take command. He was instantly likeable, though, and had seemed eager to get started. From what I could gather, his legs were now somewhat shredded by fragmentation.

Once the scene had been cleared, and onlookers and hysterical family members had been placated, we headed back to the palace to which we’d moved that morning. When we arrived, everything was normal. Guys were lounging and listening to music and some were sitting on cots eating MREs. The rest were sweeping and clearing away debris in order to make their new home livable.

While I was sitting alone on my cot, staring at CDs I had no real interest in listening to, Phil came over. He was taking a break from fixing up his area and came to ask if I could get a picture of him standing next to the indoor pool they had discovered while exploring the grounds. I said sure and we walked across the courtyard to the pool house. As we approached the steps leading up to it, Phil turned to me and asked, “So what’d you guys do today? Anything interesting?” He hadn’t heard about the UXO incident.

“Well,” I said, “I just watched a guy die right in front of me. That was interesting.”
He said, “Who, wha—American or Iraqi?”
“Iraqi,” I answered. “Civilian.”
His face turned serious. “You . . . I mean, you okay?”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, for just a split second, I wasn’t okay. I thought I was going to get choked up. But then the feeling passed as quickly as it had come. “Yeah, fine,” I said. “Where do you want me to take your picture?”

The first time I watched something die I was fourteen years old. I had a pellet gun that I used for paper targets and for shooting pine cones out of trees. One day I had a friend over who also liked to shoot. Except when it was his turn, he chose to aim at a blue jay that had landed on the fence. The bird never saw it coming. My friend hit it with a single shot, dropping the bird onto the grass below. I was horrified, but didn’t say anything.

We walked over to the wounded animal and knelt down beside it. The hole was large, I thought, for a pellet. Its heart was still pumping and I could see the afternoon sun glinting off the bright red blood that was pooling in the bird’s chest. The blue jay was gasping and convulsing, its eyes shifting in pain and fear. I wanted to do something to help, but knew that I couldn’t. We watched as the bird slowly became still. My friend just picked it up by the legs and threw it over the fence without another thought.

That day in Baghdad was kind of the same thing.

~~The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion Of Glory And The Reality Of War -by- Brandon Friedman

Day 297: Crusade

Nearly a month into the war, the so-called Israeli problem was considerably less vexing in Riyadh and Washington than it had been in January. Delta Force and the SAS combed western Iraq with a fury that chased Scud missile crews into an ever-shrinking patch of desert near Al Qaim. Seventy-five to 150 counter-Scud sorties flew overhead every day. The Iraqis rarely fired now except when bad weather enhanced the concealment. From an average of five daily Scud launches during the first week of war, the attacks in the subsequent two weeks tapered off to fewer than one a day. Patriot launches diminished proportionately, and anxiety over the stockpile of PAC-2 missiles abated. (The Pentagon sent 120 new PAC-2s to Israel before resuming shipments to Saudi Arabia, much to CENTCOM’s irritation.)

Version 34, a new software package intended to correct Patriot’s proclivity for firing at false targets, arrived in Israel and Saudi Arabia on February 4. Israel, which commanded the six Patriot batteries on her soil, four of them operated by U.S. Army crews, had ordered all launchers switched from automatic to manual firing modes after the January 25 barrage in an effort to target only incoming warheads instead of debris. American air defense experts considered the order ill advised: men could not react as swiftly as computerized machines. Even so, the dispute seemed inconsequential, since the average warning time of incoming missiles, flashed to Tel Aviv from the Pentagon over the Hammer Rick line, had doubled from two or three minutes to five or six. In the American view — at least as it was publicly expressed —

Patriot was flawless. "The Patriot’s success, of course, is known to everyone," Schwarzkopf told the press. "It’s one hundred percent so far. Of thirty-three [Scuds] engaged, there have been thirty-three destroyed." In Tel Aviv and at the Israeli embassy in Washington, this gasconade was known as "the Patriot bullshit." The Israelis had a point. American claims were based largely on faith and wishful thinking. None of the twenty-one Patriot batteries in Saudi Arabia possessed "embedded data recorders," digital instruments capable of measuring precisely what occurred when a Patriot intercepted a Scud that had disintegrated at Mach six fifteen kilometers above the earth. That was because U.S. commanders feared the recorder equipment would interfere with missile operations. The Israelis, by contrast, had three recorders and a computerized system used to track all Scud fragments and analyze each engagement. Imperfect though they were, the Israeli data strongly suggested Patriot shortcomings.

This infirmity was hard for the Pentagon to admit. Having proclaimed Patriot a war hero, the Army was reluctant to pull its champion off the pedestal. (Not until more than a year after the war would the Army acknowledge that it had "high confidence" in only ten of the Scud kills proclaimed in Israel and Saudi Arabia; a subsequent study found that as few as 9 percent of engagements resulted in confirmed "warhead kills," although in other cases Patriots apparently knocked the Scuds off course or "dudded" the warheads.) Yet even the Israelis recognized the political and military utility in lauding the missile.

When an Israeli officer suggested publicly disclosing qualms about Patriot, Avraham Ben-Shoshan, the military attache in Washington, snapped, "You shut up. This is the best weapon we've got against the Scuds because it’s the only weapon. Why tell Saddam Hussein that it’s not working?"

In private conversations with the Americans, however, the Israelis showed no such reluctance. On February 4 at the defense ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, Major General Avihu Ben-Nun, commander of the Israeli air force, confronted Colonel Lew Goldberg, head of the Pentagon’s Patriot management cell. "The Patriot doesn’t work," Ben-Nun declared bluntly. Of twelve Scud-Patriot engagements analyzed by the Israelis, at most only three warheads had been destroyed. Some Patriots had apparently caused damage by chasing Scud debris into the ground. "You ought to stop producing the Patriot until you fix it," the Israeli general added. "Sir, would you rather have nothing until we can produce something that’s perfect?" Goldberg replied. "Or would you rather have this, which is doing a large part of the job?" Ben-Nun responded with a scowl and a shrug. Two days later, back at the Pentagon, Goldberg presented the Army’s top generals with a briefing entitled "Israeli-Patriot Issues" and classified "Secret-Close Hold." On his first page, Goldberg quoted Ben-Nun: "System doesn’t work."

As if to prove the point, another Scud hit Tel Aviv on Saturday morning, February 9, damaging more than two hundred buildings and wounding twenty-seven Israelis. One flaming chunk of debris landed in the middle of a third-floor apartment; the tenant dialed the police and complained, "The missile’s in my living room and it’s burning my home down."

~~Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War -by- Rick Atkinson

Day 68 : Book Excerpt : The Big Book of Pain

In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, US Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on NBC news. In his statement he obliquely referred to the fact that the US would: ‘work the dark side, if you will. We have to spend time in the shadows’. Precisely what he may have meant by that is open to speculation, but undoubtedly a part of the dark side included what the CIA – in a master-stroke of obfuscation and double talk – now refers to as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’. In a December 2004 memorandum the US Justice Department stated that such enhanced techniques as prolonged, forced standing; forcing prisoners to wear hoods; subjecting them to loud noises and deprivation of sleep, food and drink might be considered inhumane but did not constitute torture. That point might be argued by the victims of England’s seventeenth-century Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, who were subjected to identical tortures to the point where they confessed to having engaged in intercourse with Satan himself. In an attempt to clarify the Justice Department’s memorandum – but without actually saying anything at all – spokesman Erik Amblin refused to specify what specific interrogation techniques might be cruel and degrading but would still not qualify as torture. He did say, however, that: ‘acting with the specific intent of causing prolonged mental harm’ would be illegal under US and international law. Does this mean that causing a prisoner to have a mental breakdown is acceptable if it was unintentional? Does everyone have the same tolerance to torture? If not, then do US interrogators call in a psychologist to determine each individual’s emotional and physical threshold to pain before torturing them?

In an eerie reflection of Heinrich Himmler’s order specifying limits on when and how much torture could be inflicted on prisoners, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ on a single prisoner who was being held at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who was suspected of being involved in planning the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Once this genie was officially out of the bottle, and US interrogators realised that censure and punishment for inflicting torture were unlikely to be levelled against them, the practice quickly spread to US forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

In May 2004, pictures of American soldiers, inflicting a litany of torture and abuse on prisoners being held at the Abu Ghraib Correctional Facility near Baghdad, Iraq, appeared on almost every major television network in the world. Like something out of the Middle Ages we saw photos – taken by the perpetrators themselves – of prisoners being beaten, kicked and slapped; their bare feet being jumped on by soldiers in combat boots. In other pictures prisoners were stripped naked and arranged in decorative piles, forced to masturbate and simulate fellatio, dragged around on the end of a leash like dogs and threatened with unmuzzled, attack-trained dogs. When called to account for her troop’s acts, the General in charge of Abu Ghraib at the time of the incident, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, insisted it was all the fault of ‘a few bad apples’. But was it? Or was it a case where the prisoners had been so dehumanised that no-one really cared how horribly they were abused? The ensuing investigation revealed that military interrogators came and went without even being asked to present identification. No authority figures checked on the prisoners’ status or well-being. To complicate matters even more, the prisoners and their guards did not speak the same language. Unless there was an interpreter present the guards had no way of knowing what the prisoners were saying. This in itself made the prisoners seem alien and suspicious.

What is certainly not open to speculation is the later testimony of American military policemen Chip Frederick and Ken Davis; both of whom served at Abu Ghraib at the time of the incident. Frederick stated: ‘It was clear that there was no accountability’, and Davis added:

    As soon as we’d have prisoners come in, sandbags instantly (went over) their head. They would flexicuff them; throw them down to the ground; some would be stripped. It was told to all of us, ‘they’re nothing but dogs’. You start looking at these people as less than human and you start doing things to them that you would never dream of.

~~The Big Book of Pain: Torture and Punishment Through History -by-Mark P Donnelly & Daniel Diehl