Shock Factor (32 page)

In the article, Casteel described the incident on the twenty-ninth as a turf war between some American MPs and the Iraqis at the MOI, a battle that went all the way to the prime minister's office. His version of events categorically denied the Iraqi Police were abusing prisoners. Instead, he claimed the MPs overreacted after seeing the Iraqi cops drag some detainees outside into the sun.

Casteel's version of events did not match the reality documented by 2–162's scout platoon. When Mike Francis's story ran, complete with photographs of the Iraqi Police in the middle of beating the prisoners, Casteel's account and the
Boston Globe
article were completely discredited.

Upon returning home, 2–162's snipers identified Casteel as the gray-haired man who entered the compound late in the afternoon on the twenty-ninth. Though he declined to be interviewed for this book, it is probable that whatever he said to the Iraqi Police that day helped secure the release of the prisoners.

Exactly who the prisoners were and why they were arrested also remains unclear. The Sudanese swept up in the Al Betawain raid claimed they were innocent of any wrongdoing, and quite possibly that was true. However, many of the Sudanese males we encountered in 2003 had come to Iraq to fight as volunteers for the Saddam Hussein regime. Some were tied to al-Qaida, which had used Sudan as a base of operations for years prior to 9/11. During one fight in the spring of 2003, I smoke-checked three Sudanese who were fighting alongside a Fedayeen group that had launched a counterattack against our regiment.

In 2004 and 2005, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHRA) documented repeated instances of forcible eviction, assaults, murders, and blackmail against the Sudanese immigrants living in Iraq. This campaign of terror was carried out by Shia militia groups—the same ones that had penetrated the Iraqi police force. Between December 2004 and February 2005, seventeen Sudanese immigrants were killed in these militia attacks.

Why were the Sudanese targeted by the Shia militia groups? The easiest explanation is that many of them had come to fight for Saddam in 2003 and the fall of the regime trapped them in the country. They had been volunteers of a Sunni regime that had oppressed the Iraqi Shia population for decades. The militias went after them as payback.

Another answer is that at least some of the Sudanese were a link in the al-Qaida Iraq network that was just taking shape in 2004. By targeting them, the Shia militias and the police had hopes of unraveling, then destroying, as many al-Qaida nodes as possible.

Whatever the case, many of these Sudanese tried to flee Iraq, only to end up confined in camp K-70 in Al Anbar Province only a few kiloyards from the Jordanian border. They languished there for years in harsh conditions until the Romanian government opened up a special refugee facility for them in Timisoara. By early 2009, 138 Sudanese had reached Romania safely, including 40 children.

Whether innocent or not, the fact was the Shia militia had made terrorizing the Sudanese in Baghdad a priority. The Al Betawain raid could have been part of that campaign.

As for the other prisoners, Lieutenant Colonel Hendrickson and the other men on the ground that day believed that some of them may have been criminals or insurgents. This was the main reason why Hendrickson did not immediately order the prisoners untied when the Volunteers first entered the compound. Only after seeing the torture facility inside the rectangular building did he give that order. Whatever the case, one thing was abundantly clear to the Volunteers: guilty or innocent, no human being should ever have to endure what those prisoners had. Though many aspects of what happened that day are clouded in shades of gray, that part will always be black and white for the Oregonians.

For 2–162's scout sniper platoon, the day represents a lost opportunity. Ninety-three prisoners were in that compound on June 29. Had they been left to do the right thing, all ninety-three would have made it out alive. Despite the order to withdraw, they saved sixty men. Their actions that day were noble and just. They could take pride in what they were able to accomplish given the minefield of politics, ethnic warfare, and international diplomacy they encountered.

Yet it is the fate of the lost thirty-three that continues to weigh on the Oregonians. They had entered a chamber of horrors, one that scarred them as Buchenwald scarred the GIs who stumbled upon it in 1945. Even eight years later, the memories of that day are raw and spiked with pain. Recalled Kyle Trimble, “We were denied closure. We never got it. And now, we live with that every day.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Off the Chain

Maries's snipers spent July in the triangular rotation established earlier in that spring. The routine soon devolved into tedium. Day after day, they sat atop the MOI and the Sheraton watching and waiting. The Shia Uprising ended in late June, crushed by additional American forces. A tenuous calm marked the mid-summer days as the Mahdi Militia melted away to lairs throughout the city to recruit, reequip, and rebuild.

To a man, 2-162's snipers felt they could have been doing much more than watch and report activity around northeast Baghdad. They drafted creative plans designed to maximize their value on the battlefield. Some of the men wanted to use the scout platoon to insert them into key locations around the city where they could set ambushes or take out local Mahdi leaders that the battalion's Intel shop identified for them.

Lieutenant Boyce, the scout platoon commander, wanted to employ his snipers more dynamically as well. He listened to his shooters and looked for ways to exploit them if and when the lull in the fighting ended. Until that day arrived, the rotation continued, and the snipers grew increasingly frustrated.

For the time being, the rotation stayed the same. Truth was, the battalion was still searching for the best way to approach its mission. Finding the balance between helping rebuild the neighborhood and killing the bad guys living in it took a delicate hand, and Lieutenant Colonel Dan Hendrickson understood all too well that every civilian casualty simply increased the level of resistance his men would face the next time they patrolled the streets.

In an environment like Baghdad in the summer of 2004, snipers can bring all sorts of force multipliers to the table. They can overwatch specific areas to deny them to the enemy. This is particularly useful when trying to keep major roads open to vehicular traffic. Put a sniper team atop a building near a freeway, and those shooters lock that area down. They could deal out death to any cell of insurgents unlucky enough to enter the kill zone to plant a roadside bomb. The minute their shovel hits the dirt, they will end up well aerated by our shooters.

Snipers can also take out heavy weapons teams. Machine guns, mortars, artillery—they are the best casualty-producing weapons on an asymmetrical battlefield. In 2004 the Mahdi Militia possessed ample quantities of all three weapons. They had even mounted heavy machine guns on flatbed trucks, like the “technicals” seen in the movie
Blackhawk Down
. While the firepower these weapons can pour out at our troops can be deadly, the crews themselves are almost defenseless to a well-emplaced sniper team. When covering a friendly patrol, we make a point of searching for these weapons, and they become our top-priority targets. We remove those threats with our precision fire. Take out the machine-gun crew and that deadly weapon won't rake through our men. Kill the mortar team and no more rounds explode among them. Once again, our capabilities on the battlefield can be used to save American lives.

A smart enemy knows that these crews are vulnerable, and they will support them with whatever forces they have available. I learned this firsthand during a mission in Somalia in the spring of 1993. At the time, the security situation inside Mogadishu, the capital, was spinning out of control. Dime-store warlords carved out mini-fiefdoms in the city's streets, stealing food relief supplies from the UN in order to gain power over the starving populace. He who had the food controlled the people in desperate need. We had been sent in to create order out of the anarchy and help the UN regain control over the distribution of relief supplies. Not surprisingly, the tin-pot warlords did not like this at all, and as our deployment wore on, the level of violence escalated.

One night, we established a hide to overwatch several large warehouses full of heavy weapons, tanks, and armored vehicles that belonged to Mohamed Farrah Aidid, Somalia's most powerful warlord at the time. We had inserted into the area ahead of an American raiding force whose mission it was to seize Aidid's weaponry. Nobody expected a fight, but when we planned the operation I did not want to take any chances. Should Aidid's men decide to give us a scrap, my men would be out on a limb, in need of speedy support or reinforcement. Just in case that happened, I brought a machine-gun team and a forward air controller with us and set up on a rooftop overlooking the warehouse complex. That gave us additional firepower, plus access to air power and all the killing force of our AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunships.

In hopes of dissuading Aidid's men from fighting us, we planned a major show of force just before the raiding element hit the warehouses. In this case, a pair of Cobras were to roar overhead and intimidate the crap out of the street warriors. Believe me, there is nothing more gut-liquifying than the sight of an AH-1's business end pointed your way, bristling with Hydra and Zuni rockets plus a 20mm machine cannon.

The best laid plans …

While our hide remained undetected that night, we heard all sorts of unusual sounds coming from the warehouses. Engines rumbled in the darkness. Men shouted orders. Come dawn, we discovered they'd set up two ZSU-23 antiaircraft gun systems around the warehouses. Manned and ready to fire, they posed a deadly threat to our Cobras. I had a direct line to our task force commander, General Jack Klimp, who ordered me to disable the first ZSU without hurting the gunner. Our objective that day was to seize weaponry, not start a firefight and cause casualties among Aidid's men.

I aimed at the ZSU's ammunition feed tray and took the shot with a Barrett .50 cal. The bullet went straight through the feed tray and struck the gunner, blowing him back over his seat and out of sight.

Okay, so that didn't go so well.

What followed wasn't any fun either. The other ZSU opened fire on our building, its quad 23mm cannons raking the front facade. My spotter screamed, “They're tearing the building apart! You gotta stop them!”

I swung my heavy rifle over until the sight settled on the ZSU's gunner. He went down with one trigger pull. At that point, Aidid's men opened fire from all over the warehouse complex. Bullets keened and whined around us. So much for avoiding a fight with a show of force. We'd been compromised.

Two Russian-built tanks had been pulled out of the warehouses during the night. Some of Aidid's men broke cover to try and crew them. We could not afford to face those monsters; their main guns would turn our building to rubble in minutes while their coax machine guns pinned us in place. We ignored everyone else to stop this threat. Not a Somali made it to the tracks, but we had a tiger by the tail. There were too many fighters for us to tackle, and they knew where we were. I could see this ending badly if we didn't have help soon.

Thank God we planned ahead. Our forward air controller spoke into his radio, and a moment later two Cobras thundered directly over our building and waded into the fight. Their twenty-millimeter guns spewed shells, knocking Aidid's men right out of their sandals and leaving the battlefield dotted with dead and dying Somali mercenaries. Soon they were dropping buildings with well-placed rocket shots.

We prevailed that day. Looking back, it could have ended much differently. Without the air support, I'm not sure we would have been able to survive. Fortunately, we had backup. But I often wonder what would have happened had those Cobras not arrived so quickly after we had neutralized the antiaircraft guns.

Being detected and overwhelmed by numbers or firepower is a sniper's worst nightmare. In the unconventional fighting we employ, we are in our element when isolated and working in small teams. Our ability to move with stealth and speed, use concealment to avoid detection, and carry out surprise attacks where the enemy least expects them are key assets that make snipers a force multiplier on the battlefield.

Unfortunately, American infantry leaders are often loath to use us to the best effect. If given a choice, a battalion commander is almost always going to try to overcome resistance with firepower and crushing weight of numbers. The idea of sending a sniper section forward to break the enemy's will, or eliminate key weapons, seems far too risky. Naturally casualty-averse (and rightfully so), the prospect of seeing their snipers detected and overwhelmed before help can arrive causes our chain of command to be reluctant to employ us. We've tried to change that mind-set and show our battalion commanders what we can do by giving them sniper employment classes, but the conventional mind-set remains. When our brethren have been overwhelmed on the battlefield, such as in late 2004 when Iraqi insurgents took out two USMC sniper teams, those commanders who tend to err on the side of caution see their decisions justified. And so, when serving with regular line infantry units, snipers are often underutilized.

But there are always some battalion commanders willing to think outside the box. They're the ones we love. They give us the flexibility we need to maximize our effect on the battlefield. They take risks, and they pay big dividends. I loved working with those officers during my time in the Corps. They exist all over the U.S. military and can rise to the occasion in creative and unusual ways when circumstances demand it.

Fortunately, the Volunteers had just such a commander. Lieutenant Colonel Dan Hendrickson, 2–162's police officer and citizen warrior, never considered “inside the box” a comfortable place to be. He could be a stern disciplinarian and taskmaster, but he also listened to the officers and men in his command. Ideas percolated from the bottom up within the battalion, and Hendrickson was open to new ideas from anyone in his chain of command. That flexibility would serve the Volunteers well in the dog days of summer when all hell broke loose once again in the streets of Baghdad.