No True Glory (55 page)

posted a video . . .
BBC News, “Zarqawi Beheaded US Man,” May 13, 2004.

bloody torso . . .
See Nicholas Berg,
Wikipedia.org
.

outsiders . . .
Press conference at the Falluja Liaison Center, May 20, 2004.

murderous bastards . . .
Ibid.

more defeats . . .
Testimony before Congress, May 21, 2004, quoted in
Project for the New American Century,
May 24, 2004.

reporters . . .
Daniel Williams, “Reporting Under the Gun in an Ambush Zone,”
Washington Post
Foreign Service, June 8, 2004, p. C1.

joined them . . .
Daniel Williams, “Despite Agreement, Insurgents Rule Fallujah,”
Washington Post
Foreign Service, June 7, 2004, p. A15.

mess with . . .
Laura King, “Insurgents and Islam Now Rulers of Fallouja,”
Los Angeles Times,
June 13, 2004.

sharia . . .
Ibid.

haircuts . . .
Associated Press, “Hardline Islamic Leaders Assert Power in Falluja,” May 26, 2004.

latest haul . . .
Major David Bellon, e-mail to author, September 18, 2004.

trickled into . . .
Fooad Al Sheikhly and Jeffrey Gettleman, “Iraqi Official Says U.S. Raid Aimed to Kill Foreign Rebels,”
New York Times,
June 21, 2004, p. A9.

liberated city . . .
Dahr Jamail, “Falluja, Pacified,”
New Standard,
June 3, 2004.

for ransom . . .
Sameer N. Yacoub, “Fallujah Police Accused of Giving Up Shiite Truckers to Sunni Executioners,” CNN NEWS, June 15, 2004.

disemboweled . . .
Hannah Allam, “Extremism Sweeping Iraq Among Sunni, Shiite Muslims Alike,” azcentral.com, June 15, 2004.

communards . . .
Alistair Horne,
Seven Ages of Paris
(New York: Vintage Books, 2004), p. 262.

Zarqawi . . .
Edward Worg and James Glanz, “South Korean Worker Is Beheaded by Iraqi Terrorists,”
New York Times,
June 23, 2004, p. A11.

Sun-il . . .
See Kim Sun-il,
Wikipedia.org
.

supposition . . .
Daniel Williams, “Despite Agreement, Insurgents Rule Fallujah,”
Washington Post,
June 7, 2004.

thirty bombings . . .
Michael Rubin, “The Fallujah Problem: A Job That Needs Doing,”
National Review,
June 25, 2004.

against safe houses . . .
Associated Press, “Large Explosions Rock Falluja,” June 22, 2004.

executing fourteen . . .
Borzou Daragahi, “Fallujah Ruled Taliban-style: Liquor, Pop Music Banned by Militants Who Are Taking Control of Iraqi City,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
June 24, 2004.

CHAPTER 22

faint heartbeat . . .
Damien McElroy, “New Iraqi Police Fight US Troops Who Trained Them,”
Daily Telegraph,
June 27, 2004.

all-day battle . . .
Edward Cody, “Scores Killed as Insurgents Launch Attacks Across Iraq,”
Washington Post,
June 24, 2004.

bombs . . .
Naseer Al-Nahr, Al Jazeera, July 7, 2004.

right direction . . .
Dexter Filkins, “Fallujah Pullout Left Haven of Insurgents, Officials Say,”
New York Times,
July 8, 2004, p. A1.

worst place . . .
CNN,
CNN Presents: Countdown to Handover of Iraq,
June 27, 2004, transcript.

vipers . . .
Los Angeles Times,
October 24, 2004.

fiefdoms . . .
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, “Fallujah Is Calm by the Time I Arrive,”
Weekend Australian,
July 3, 2004.

new jihadists . . .
Michael Ware, “Meet the New Jihad,”
Time,
June 27, 2004.

incubator . . .
Edward Cody, “Sunni Resistance to US Presence Hardens,”
Washington Post,
July 7, 2004, p. A1.

massive force . . .
Jack Fairweather reporting from Baghdad for the
Telegraph
(UK), July 3, 2004.

electrician . . .
Hamza Hendawi, “Insurgent-held Fallujah Was Under Sway of Local Electrician and Mosque Imam,” Associated Press, November 24, 2004.

upscale compound . . .
Anthony Shadid, “Sunni Cleric Says Fallujah Attracted Hundreds of Recruits,”
Washington Post,
December 12, 2004, p. A32.

Zarqawi took him . . .
Charles Crain, “Iraqi Leader Authorizes U.S. Strike in Fallujah,”
USA Today,
July 19, 2004, p. 6.

Islamic Emirate . . .
Pepe Escobar, “The Islamic Emirate of Fallujah,”
Asia Times,
July 16 and 31, 2004.

under way . . .
James Glanz and Erik Eckholm, “Reality Intrudes on Promises of Rebuilding Iraq,”
New York Times,
June 30, 2004, p. A1.

four thousand . . .
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Demise of Iraqi Units Symbolic of U.S. Errors,”
Washington Post,
September 25, 2004, p. A1.

Decisions about Fallujah . . .
Gregg Zoroya, “If Ramadi Falls, ‘Province Goes to Hell,’ ”
USA Today,
July 11, 2004, pp. 31, 1A.

31 killed . . .
Ibid.

284 wounded . . .
Lawrence W. Korb and Nigel Holmes, “Two Years and Counting,”
New York Times,
March 20, 2005, p A13.

Overall, the Marines comprised 20 percent of the American personnel in Iraq and had suffered 30 percent of the fatalities. Contrary to the myth that the poor, the minorities, and the uneducated do the fighting for America, 95 percent of the fallen had graduated from high school, 75 percent were white, 11 percent Hispanic, and 9 percent African American—numbers that roughly reflect the population as a whole.

scared away . . .
Gideon Long, “Iraq’s Road to Reconstruction Studded with Potholes,” Reuters, February 23, 2005.

any alarm . . .
Pamela Hess, “Ramadi Posts Seen as ‘Symbol of Occupation,’ ” United Press International, August 19, 2004.

Al Jazeera’s office . . .
Hassan M. Fattah, “The Arab Media Decide to Focus Coverage on the Voting, Not the Violence,”
New York Times,
January 30, 2005, p. A14.

police station in Najaf . . .
Headquarters United States Central Command, August 5, 2004. Release Number 04-08-19.

negotiate . . .
John F. Burns and Sabrina Tavernise, “Iraqi Government Gives Sadr a Final Chance to End Uprising,”
New York Times,
August 19, 2004.

stolen police cars . . .
“Najaf Unrest,”
Los Angeles Times,
October 2004.

pulverized corpse . . .
Major Bellon, e-mail to author, August 17, 2004.

head . . .
John F. Burns and Erik Eckholm, “In Western Iraq, Fundamentalists Hold U.S. at Bay,”
New York Times,
August 29, 2004, p. A1.

years to come . . .
Pamela Hess, “Marines Disband Fallujah Forces,” United Press International, August 14, 2004.

dealt with accordingly . . .
Major Bellon, e-mail to author, August 26, 2004.

inside the city . . .
Pamela Hess, “Fallujans May Be Invited into Iraqi Army,” United Press International, August 15, 2004.

terror had spawned . . .
John F. Burns and Erik Eckholm, “In Western Iraq, Fundamentalists Hold U.S. at Bay,”
New York Times,
August 29, 2004, p. A1.

CHAPTER 23

country . . .
Craig Whitlock, “Iraqi Soccer Team Pitched Aside by Paraguay in Semis,”
Washington Post,
August 25, 2004, p. D1.

best people . . .
Grant Wahl, “Iraqi Soccer Players Angered by Bush Campaign Ads,”
Sports Illustrated,
August 19, 2004.

twelve thousand trained . . .
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Demise of Iraqi Units Symbolic of US Errors,”
Washington Post,
September 25, 2004, p. A1.

to $6.6 billion . . .
David S. Cloud and Greg Jaffe, “US Diplomat Wants More Funds for Iraqi Security,”
Wall Street Journal,
August 30, 2004, p. A1.

dismembered . . .
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “Allawi Holds Meetings with Insurgents,”
Washington Post,
August 30, 2004, p. A1.

from scratch . . .
Chandrasekaran, “Demise of Iraqi Units Symbolic of U.S. Errors,”
Washington Post.

for nothing . . .
Stephanie Barry, [email protected], September 5, 2004.

Jerry L. Durrant . . .
Alissa J. Rubin, “Ineffective Iraqi Force in Falluja Disbanded,”
Los Angeles Times,
September 11, 2004, p. A1.

Rumsfeld . . .
Alissa Rubin and Doyle McManus, “Why America Has Waged a Losing Battle on Fallujah,”
Los Angeles Times,
October 24, 2004, p. 1.

Myers . . .
Press Conference, Pentagon, September 28, 2004.

police . . .
Stephen Farrell, “Allawi Lays Down His Law,”
Australian
, September 14, 2004, p. 1.

CPA did . . .
Ibid.

Marine side . . .
UPI, “Only Four in Fallujah Brigade Join US Side,” October 11, 2004.

cancer of Fallujah . . .
Dexter Filkins, “U.S. Plans Year-End Drive to Take Iraqi Rebel Areas,”
New York Times,
September 19, 2004.

voted ten to two . . .
Karl Vick, “Fallujah Group Comes to Table,”
Washington Post,
October 7, 2004, p. A14.

over Zarqawi . . .
F. J. Bing West, “This Time a Fight to the Finish?”
Los Angeles Times,
October 17, 2004.

suicide bomber . . .
Associated Press, October 30, 2004.

CHAPTER 24

drifting . . .
Beth Gardiner, Associated Press, “Iraq Won’t Allow Falluja to Remain Under Insurgent Control,” September 30, 2004.

martyrs . . .
Bernard Lewis,
What Went Wrong?
(Phoenix Books, 2002), p. 10.

playing favorites . . .
The collegial cooperation between the army and Marines, which seemed so normal, had taken a century to achieve. In World War I, concerned that the Marines might emerge as a second army, the revered Army General “Black Jack” Pershing refused to permit Marine units to fight together as a unified division. As World War II drew to a close, relations between the army and Marines in the battle on Okinawa were so bitter that General George C. Marshall pledged that army soldiers would never again fight under a Marine general. In Vietnam the overall commander, General William C. Westmoreland, reported to Washington that he distrusted Marine operations, and his successor, General Creighton Abrams, refused to accept a Marine general as his deputy, accusing the Marines of “inertia” and “pedestrian tactics.” See Lewis Sorley,
Thunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), pp. 208–209, 390–391.

Vietnam rocked both services to their core, as disgruntled draftees threatened established traditions and discipline. Both services rallied and by the mid-1980s had forged stronger organizations and new war-fighting concepts. In NATO Europe the army championed an Air-Land Doctrine for coordinating massive volumes of firepower to destroy the massive Soviet Army. The Marines, reacting against the search-and-destroy tactics of Vietnam, developed a Maneuver Warfare doctrine that relied upon speed to seize objectives along the world’s littorals. Army and Marine officers met to exchange ideas, while Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Bill, which transferred power from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the theater commanders.

The result was that in the first Gulf War in 1991, the CentCom commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf, praised the Marines for the speed of their two-division attack, carried out according to Maneuver Warfare principles. And in April 2003, the march of the 1st Marine Division to Baghdad proceeded with remarkable speed, again applying Maneuver Warfare.

But while the two Gulf Wars (1991 and 2003) erased mutual suspicions between the two services and proved the soundness of joint planning at the high level, each service fought as a separate entity at the division level. During the attack on Baghdad in 2003 the 1st Marine Division, the 82nd Airborne Division, and the 3rd Infantry Division fought in their own individual battle spaces.

In the August battle in Najaf and the November battle for Fallujah, the operational cooperation between the two services reached a new zenith: Marine and army battalions fought side by side.

politicized . . .
Patrick Cockburn, “Falluja: The Homecoming and the Homeless,”
Independent,
December 11, 2004.

battalions . . .
Order of Battle for Operation Phantom Fury.

p. 261 UAVs . . .
Eric Schmitt, “Remotely Controlled Aircraft Crowd Dangerous Iraqi and Afghan Skies,”
New York Times,
April 5, 2005, p. A9.

CHAPTER 25

surged forward and swept south . . .
On the west end of the city Battalion 3/5 led off. At the same time, one kilometer to the east, the tanks and Bradleys of Task Force 2-7 charged south from the railroad station, followed by Battalion 3/1. After relieving pressure on a team from 2nd Force Recon Company, already fighting in the city, 2-7 headed toward Jolan Park. Farther to the east Regimental Combat Team 7 sent an army armored battalion (2-2) through the berm, headed for Highway 10, followed by two Marine infantry battalions (1/8 and 1/3) advancing roughly abreast.

wiping . . .
Malay’s wiper was his three rifle companies advancing abreast, with his executive officer, Major Todd Desgrosseilliers, moving behind the companies with huge D-9 bulldozers to crush shooters trapped in bypassed buildings and engineers to blow the monstrous munitions caches. “We’re the old Green Bay Packers sweep,” Major Robert Piddock, the operations officer, said. “The opposition knows we’re coming, and there’s not a damn thing they can do to stop us.”