No True Glory (12 page)

McKnight ran to the Hyundai truck, which was still idling. As Garcia predicted, the Iraqi soldiers followed, clambering into the truck bed, spraying bullets in every direction. The truck jerked and bucked forward, McKnight making no effort to change gears. Sitting next to McKnight, Garcia could see rifles poking out of windows and along rooftops. The store owners had joined in. Down the alleys he saw crowds of men running, trying to get into firing positions in front of the truck. A U.S. Army Humvee with a .50 caliber whizzed by, followed by another, heading for the rear of the convoy. The gunner gestured to McKnight to accelerate.

McKnight didn’t have to be encouraged. To his right, bearded men were rolling barrels into the road. Some boys were throwing rocks, while others crouched in the roadside ditch, pitching objects under the truck’s tires. McKnight’s scalp tingled as he imagined grenades going off. Then he saw they were flipping small stones, playing some sort of game.

A pickup truck skidded out of an alley and jerked to a stop in front of him. McKnight swerved to the left, bounced off two parked cars, then regained control and headed down the dirt median strip. Men were throwing rocks, concrete blocks, and pieces of metal onto the highway. Others were shooting.

A bullet smashed the driver’s mirror next to McKnight’s shoulder. Another went through the windshield. McKnight was praying. In front of him a large blue farm truck—the kind used to haul cattle to market—blocked two lanes. The rear half was on fire, thick black smoke pouring into the air. As McKnight trundled by, several men were throwing a bucket of gasoline onto the truck, more interested in their private bonfire than the escaping convoy.

The scene was not a military action; it was madness. Some Shiite militia supporters of Sadr were shooting at the Americans; others were firing at the Iraqi soldiers, half of whom were Shiites; some shop owners were screaming about the damage to their stores; others had grabbed their AKs and were shooting at nothing; cars and trucks were dented, smashed, and lit afire; boys were laughing, throwing rocks, and scampering about as if at a carnival. McKnight was driving for his life, taking in the bizarre sights, including one man running toward the truck, AK in hand, waving and smiling. McKnight couldn’t tell whether the man wanted to help him or kill him.

It took an hour for the convoy to zigzag out of the congestion and bedlam. Like steel balls in a pinball machine, the trucks banged off cars and median railings and bumped over rocks and chunks of concrete. Men in old work shirts and baggy trousers were running out of the alleys, firing AKs from the hip, then ducking away. The Marines saw none of the organized fedayeen in their black ninja outfits or black kafkas, only ordinary unemployed Iraqi men swept up in a frenzy not one of them could explain. Garcia saw one man standing in an alley, with a pistol in each hand, shooting straight up at the air.

As the convoy threatened to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, two Apache helicopters swooped in, and the mob raced for the safety of the buildings. The battalion finally broke clear of the street of little horrors, drove a few miles along a stretch of deserted highway, then pulled into a wide defensive circle to regroup.

“I ruined the engine driving in second gear. There was no way I was going to shift and risk stalling out,” McKnight said. “I’ll never joke about a Hyundai again.”

For all the chaos, damage was light. A U.S. Army retriever truck had been hit by an RPG, disabled, and left behind to be burned by the mob. Two wounded Iraqi soldiers needed helicopter evacuation. An American soldier had been shot in the face and killed protecting the convoy. Garcia admired the bravery of the American soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the 36th Infantry in the four Humvees. Throughout the fight they had driven up and down the gauntlet, ensuring no one was left behind.

Once the trucks had circled in a solid defense, more than a dozen Iraqi soldiers changed into civilian clothes and ran away at high speed. The Marine advisers were dumbfounded. The Iraqi officers, who had resolutely refused to surrender the Americans to the mob, shrugged. The soldiers lived in the area, they explained, so they wouldn’t be harmed.

When the officers showed no leadership, the advisers took charge, setting the Iraqis on line, sighting in fields of fire for the machine guns, insisting that two-man fighting holes be dug around the perimeter. The Iraqi officers stood and watched. The Marines were angry that an undisciplined, chaotic mob—a wild surge of mankind without any coordination or unified purpose—had flummoxed the 2nd Battalion and forced it into pell-mell retreat.

“We were embarrassed. We expected the battalion to behave better. They should have easily controlled that mob,” Davis said.

Chagrined, Davis called Maj Lane in Fallujah, explaining that the battalion had to return to base to regroup. They would pick up more ammunition and fly out by helicopter that night. As they piled back onto the trucks, the Marines took muster: two Iraqis were wounded and twenty-eight were “missing in action,” having deserted.

During the ride back there was excited jabbering in the trucks, and when they arrived at the airfield, dozens of Iraqi soldiers approached Lane, proffering their ID cards. We quit, they said. We won’t die in Fallujah. It was an American plot for Shiites to attack Sunnis, they said—the Americans had led them into an ambush. The Americans could have sent tanks to crush the mob; instead they wanted the Iraqi soldiers to be massacred.

Other Iraqi soldiers pressed forward, chanting at the mutineers, “Cowards! Cowards!” The Iraqi officers stood off to the side. Fallujah was an American problem, they said; it was wrong for Iraqi soldiers to fight there.

Maj Davis ordered the Marines to take the weapons of one hundred agitators, who were placed in a gymnasium under guard. They would be stricken from the payrolls and dismissed the next day, along with the battalion and company commanders. Davis took the roll call again. Of 695 soldiers, eight were wounded, 106 had deserted, and 104 had mutinied. Thirty percent of the battalion had evaporated.

Davis called Lane. “We’ve had a mutiny,” he said. “We’re not coming to Fallujah.”

8
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THE TIPPING POINT

WHILE THE MARINES WERE ASSESSING THEIR next steps in Fallujah, the insurgents were preparing a major offensive against another city. On April 5, electronic intercepts and agent reports vaguely suggested trouble might be brewing in the provincial capital of Ramadi, thirty miles west of Fallujah. With 400,000 people, Ramadi was larger than Fallujah, with narrower streets and smaller houses, and the same dingy, crowded atmosphere. The largest and most vibrant city in Anbar, Ramadi was the seat of the senior Sunni mufti and the only Anbar city with a smidgen of influence in Baghdad. Ramadi was the tipping point, the pivotal city that signified whether the insurgents or the government controlled Anbar Province. The vague warnings of an insurgent offensive did not signal any grave danger, though; the city had been relatively peaceful for a year.

In mid-March the Marines had relieved an Army National Guard unit, the 1st Battalion of the 124th Infantry Regiment, in Ramadi. Stretched thin, the battalion had mixed nighttime raids with daytime mounted patrols, primarily along the main avenues. The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hector Mirable, had tried to persuade the tribes to patrol their own sectors. He spread $700,000 in contracts among the sheikhs, but few projects were completed. “The sheikhs claimed to be the power brokers. But they hoarded the money for their own families and the others got little,” Mirable said. “The sooner the sheikh system goes away, the better.”

The new battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Kennedy, had decided to concentrate on military tactics and avoid Iraqi politics. Mirable had kept a lid on the violence, guarding the heart of the city, but Kennedy set a more ambitious goal: control of the whole city. A former instructor in infantry tactics, Kennedy told Battalion 2/4 that they would concentrate upon foot patrols. “Let’s work for the reputation that we’re everywhere,” Kennedy told his company commanders. “There’s no place we won’t go, night or day. We’re going to own this city.”

The governor of the province, Kareem Burgis, invited the battalion staff to dinner and endorsed the concept. Kennedy had received a glowing report about Burgis from Keith Mines, the senior CPA adviser who was leaving the city as Kennedy arrived. A special forces major in the reserves who had spent years in the jungles of Latin America, Mines was a diplomat who understood insurgencies. He referred to Burgis as “my key Iraqi partner and the unifier of the region’s various factions.” Mines, who believed Ramadi was coming along nicely, talked Burgis up in Baghdad, calling the governor “a man of vision and moderation who shares our goals.”

With the support of the governor, the Marines spread out across the city. Kennedy set up headquarters on Hurricane Point at the western end of Ramadi, a small peninsula jutting out into the Euphrates. He kept with him Weapons Company as the battalion’s Quick Reaction Force. From a nearby base, Fox Company patrolled daily. The eastern end was covered by Echo and Golf Companies, based three kilometers down Route Michigan, the main highway that ran through the middle of the city, in a walled compound called the Combat Outpost.

Eight-hour foot patrols became the routine. For the first few days, traffic in the city slowed as drivers stared in disbelief at the small groups of Americans, most escorted by packs of shouting children. Downtown Ramadi was eight kilometers long and five kilometers wide, containing 45,000 buildings. The Marines walked into neighborhoods miles away from main avenues and poked around courtyards where the dogs had never smelled an American. By the end of March, shin splints and bone bruises were common and even the fittest in the battalion were fatigued.

The patrols were wearing, too, on the insurgents, who resented Americans walking around wherever they pleased. One morning outside Hurricane Point the Marines found a scraggly gray donkey with “Bush” painted on one flank and “American forces” on the other. After washing off the paint, two corporals kept it as a pet until its smell and braying led to its banishment. A few days later the donkey came back looking for another meal, again with mocking graffiti on its flanks. Still, the insurgents hadn’t done anything to make it clear that they, and not these new Americans, owned the streets. It wasn’t clear who was
awat,
or soft cake—the Marines or the insurgents.

On April 5, when electronic intercepts picked up unusual chatter, Kennedy sought out Governor Burgis, who said he, too, had heard that something was brewing. The police chief, Muhammad Jaddan, warned Kennedy that the
irahabin
(or criminals, an Iraqi term for the insurgents) were bragging that they would kill many Americans. Every Iraqi policeman seemed to know the irahabin, yet not one had been arrested.

A voluble, outgoing man with nicotine-stained teeth, Police Chief Jaddan had a mixed reputation. When spot checks had turned up ghost names on police payrolls, Jaddan had claimed the real records had been destroyed in a fire. Still, he seemed a likable rogue and had worked amicably with the previous American unit.

A few days earlier, Kennedy and Sergeant Major James Booker were driving back from dinner with the police chief when a volley of four rockets ripped out of a side alley. The Humvees skidded to a stop, and the Marines hopped out and attacked down the alley. The insurgents fled under the cover of an RPK machine gun, but one stopped in the shadows to fire another rocket-propelled grenade. Booker got off two snapshots with his rifle. The man fell, got up, and ran away. Using a flashlight, the Marines followed the blood trail, so thick at first that they mistook it for a pool of spilled oil. They found the man bled out under a car inside a courtyard.

The next day an aide to the police chief yelled at SgtMaj Booker, complaining that he had killed his cousin. The aide was a thug, part of a Mafia-type element Jaddan kept on his staff. Rumors persisted that some of Jaddan’s aides had been “long away,” returning after Saddam had released all hardened criminals from prison a year ago.

Booker let the man rant for a few minutes before replying.

“I apologize for my shooting. I fired twice,” he said. “I should have killed that son of a bitch with my first shot.”

On April 4, Iraqi police, health, and education officials did not show up for scheduled meetings and morning traffic was unusually light. Police Chief Jaddan advised bringing tanks into the city, as if he were a sympathetic fan at a sporting event. Kennedy asked the CIA for help. He wanted to launch a preemptive attack before he was hit. The CIA came up with a list of suspected insurgent leaders and their home addresses. Digital overhead photos showed in detail every street, alley, and house. In a city with thousands of buildings, sixteen were pinpointed for search in Operation Wild Bunch. At one in the morning of April 6, Marines were banging on doors.

Captain Rob Weiler, commanding Weapons Company, drew a house in the southeast sector. After a Humvee broke down the gate to the compound, Weiler, a large, imposing man, strode up to the front door and banged on it with his M16. A mild-mannered man invited him in, offering tea. Speaking through Weiler’s interpreter, he said he had recently been released from Abu Ghraib prison, showing papers with American signatures. Weiler thought the papers were in order, but the interpreter said he was pronouncing his name in a peculiar fashion. The Marines were looking for two brothers. Ah, said the man, his brother had been killed in the war against Iran. Yes, it’s true, said his mother.

The interpreter asked who lived next door. No one knew. That’s strange, the interpreter murmured to Weiler. The two knocked on the door next door, and a smiling man let them in and politely led them through each room. Everything was in order but his papers, and there was no weapon in either house. He seemed too accommodating.

Weiler brought both men back to Hurricane Point. After four hours of questioning, their cover stories fell apart. Operation Wild Bunch had netted two insurgent commanders—the Farhan brothers, Adnan and Majeed.