Black Hearts Part 8

Cortez returned and said, aIf we are going to do this, letas go before I change my mind.a He and Barker started changing their clothes, putting on their black, silk-weight Polartec tops and bottoms and balaclavas to obscure their faces. They wanted to look like insurgents, they said, and ordered Spielman and Green to do the same. Green objected, saying he wasnat changing. At least take your patches off, Cortez said, which Green did. Spielman wore only his ACU bottoms and a T-s.h.i.+rt, while Green kept his whole uniform on. Cortez insisted they cover their faces, so Green tied a T-s.h.i.+rt around his head and Spielman put on a pair of sungla.s.ses, remarking that that was good enough.

Green grabbed a shotgun, and Cortez and Barker snagged M4s. Barker took Howardas because it had fewer accessories attached to it and was therefore lighter. Spielman picked up an M14, a larger, heavier rifle than the M4 frequently used as a longer-range weapon.

Cortez briefed Howard. Cortez told him they knew about an Iraqi girl who lived nearby and they were going to go out and f.u.c.k her. To Howard, it was the most insane thing head ever heard. He did not believe them, but he also could not believe that they were actually leaving for somewhere, leaving him and Sch.e.l.ler alone. Cortez gave him the radio and told him to call if there were any patrols or Humvees coming through.

The men, armed and disguised, headed out the back of the TCP.

Forty-five-year-old Qa.s.sim Hamzah Ras.h.i.+d al-Janabi was not originally from the Yusufiyah area. The ancestral seat of his branch of the Janabi tribe was Iskandariyah, fifteen miles to the southeast. Qa.s.sim grew up in a large, poor family comprised mostly of farmers. He was a gentle and thoughtful child according to his sister, and in his early adulthood, he was a guard at the Hateen Weapons facility near Iskandariyah. During Saddamas time, Iskandariyah was one of the capitals of the Iraqi military-industrial complex, and Hateen was one of the regionas major employers. When he was in his late twenties, his parents matched him with a cousin eleven years his junior, Fakhriah Taha Mahsin Moussa al-Janabi. They had a large wedding in 1987, even though the Iran-Iraq War was still raging and times were tough.

Qa.s.sim and Fakhriah had dreams. They wanted to own a house, have a large family, and earn enough money to provide anything their children desired, including college educations. After the 1991 Gulf War, the UN sanctions made life even tougher. Qa.s.sim, like everyone, just struggled to make ends meet. In the mid-1990s, the couple moved to Yusufiyah, to be closer to Fakhriahas family and to look for different work. During this period, the couple lived in several different homes and he held a number of jobs, sometimes as a farmhand, sometimes as a construction laborer. If their financial life was difficult, one part of their dream was coming true: they were building a big and handsome family.

A daughter, Abeer, was born in August 1991. She was tall for her age, somewhat gangly, and plagued with asthma, but Abeer was nonetheless beautiful, with big doe eyes, a small mouth, and gentle features. She was a spirited child who was, in the words of her aunt, aproud of being young.a Soon after Abeer came a son, Muhammad, another son, Ahmed, and another daughter, Hadeel.

In 2000, Qa.s.sim came into a job that provided a measure of stability. A landlord in Baghdad hired him to look after his five-acre plot of orchards and farmlands where he grew pomegranates, dates, and grapes, among other crops, in a hamlet near Yusufiyah called Al-Dhubat. The landlord paid Qa.s.sim about $50 a month to look after the grounds, but he also allowed the Janabis to live in the small, one-story, one-bedroom furnished farmhouse on the land for free. Qa.s.sim split the harvest with the landlord. Depending on the season, his half could yield Qa.s.sim an extra $30 a month.

Qa.s.simas family stayed in touch with his relatives in Iskandariyah and Fakhriahas relatives in Yusufiyah, visiting on holidays and weekends. They were always poora"so poor that Qa.s.sim never paid off a motorcycle he had bought from a relative for $20. The relative was so fond of the couple that he simply forgave the debt. Despite their poverty, the family was happy, the sons said. Qa.s.sim would take the boys to the market, play soccer with them, and help them with their homework, while Fakhriah stayed at home, teaching her daughters to cook the big meals that were her specialty. The children loved the small orchards, where they would play hide-and-seek among the rows of scraggly trees.

When the Americans invaded, people in the neighborhood and throughout the region were optimistic. The U.S. bombing campaigns had ruined what little infrastructure there had been under Saddam, but the people were sure that the Americans would bring not just peace and democracy but all of the electricity and water they would ever need, as well as new roads and sewer pipes. But soon, as they waited and waited, they realized, in fact, that was not going to happena"and thatas when the trouble started. The area began to fall apart from neglect and violence.

aWhen the Americans entered the country, they dissolved the military, the police, everything,a said Abu Muhammad, Fakhriahas cousin who lived in Mullah Fayyad then. aThe borders were open and chaotic. And terrorists and Al Qaeda were ready to enter the country.a Strangers started coming to town, beating people up, killing them. aAnd the people accepted it, because there was no other option. Fanaticism and radicalism, things we never had before, started happening. Even the government was built on radicalism.a In the fall of 2005, the people of Yusufiyah started seeing a lot more Americans, but even this brought no relief. It was no exaggeration to say, in many localsa eyes, that the Americans were as bad as the insurgents. Not only did the locals not feel protected, they felt persecuted. The patrols the Americans ran were brutish. aWhen they came to search a house, they would come without warning,a remarked Abu Muhammad. aThey would throw a flash-bang grenade by the door, storm in, scare the whole family.a The Americans would break things or even steal money and jewelry as they upended the house looking for evidence. Theyad leer at the women, point guns at the men, shout at them in English. If the homeowners were lucky, after the soldiers had found nothing, they would get an insincere apology. Qa.s.simas son Muhammad said whenever the soldiers came to the house, he was terrified. They would point guns straight at his fatheras chest and shout at him, even though his father had done nothing, yelling, aYou are Ali Baba, you are Ali Baba,a the pidgin Arabic-English phrase for acriminal.a Whenever the extended family got together, the relatives would talk about how bad things had gotten and what could be done. But what could be done? Nothing. Qa.s.simas brother-in-law was gunned down in cold blood by the Americans in Iskandariyah in early 2005, said his sister. The U.S. Army, she continued, admitted it made a mistake but never did a thing to make rest.i.tution, never did anything to the soldiers involved. Other family members got hauled off to jail for no reason, with no indication when they would ever be coming home. One member of the extended family got picked up just because there was a dead body outside his house, as if murderers dump their victims right outside their own homes. It made no sense.

Fakhriah was particularly worried about Abeer. Now fourteen years old, she was on the verge of womanhood and had started looking beyond the boundaries of her family. She dreamed of getting an education, marrying a well-to-do man, and moving to the city, where she could escape the tedium of country life. But her fragile beauty was attracting a lot of unwanted attention. Soldiers, whenever they saw her, would give her the thumbs-up and say, aVery good, very nice.a Muhammad and Ahmed once watched a soldier run a finger down the terrified Abeeras cheek.

By early March, the hara.s.sment of Abeer was getting so bad that Abu Muhammad told the family to leave Abeer with him. There were more people at his house and it was less secluded. Abeer stayed there only one night, on March 9 or 10. Qa.s.sim came the next day to pick her up. Abeeras parents had decided to bring her back home. It was no problem, Qa.s.sim said, Abeer would be fine. Since they had taken the girls out of school awhile ago, Qa.s.sim was able to watch them all day. With his protection, Qa.s.sim a.s.sured Abu Muhammad, they would be fine.

The house was only a few hundred yards to the northwest, across a couple of farm fields and dirt trails. Like the natural pathfinder he was, Barker knew the way over and under every ditch, ravine, and bridge. They hurried there, doing the half-walk, half-jog pace known as the Airborne Shuffle. Barker knew the route to that little cl.u.s.ter of houses so well that he had taken his Gerber hand tool. He knew they would encounter a chain-link fence en route. Halfway through cutting it, his hand got tired, so he pa.s.sed the tool off to one of the others to finish the job. They pa.s.sed another fence that had been cut on a previous patrol. They pa.s.sed three houses, knowing from trips through the area before that one of those was abandoned and one was still being constructed.

Sneaking up on the dingy home, Cortez and Barker broke to the right around a small shack in the front. Spielman and Green broke left. Spielman and Green found the little Hadeel and father Qa.s.sim in the driveway. Green grabbed the man and Spielman grabbed the girl and they marched them inside. Barker and Cortez cleared the house, checking the foyer, the hallway, and moving past the kitchen, where Cortez stopped to grab the woman, Fakhriah, and Abeer. Green and Spielman entered the house while Barker continued with the sweep, checking the bathroom and the toilet room, the bedroom and the living room. Then he headed up the stairs to the roof, checked the roof, and went back down the stairs.

The others had corralled the whole family into the bedroom. After they had recovered the familyas AK-47 and Green had confirmed that it was locked and loaded, Barker and Cortez left, yanking Abeer behind them. Spielman pulled the bedroom door shut and then set up guard in the doorway between the foyer and the living room while Cortez shoved Abeer into the living room. Cortez pushed Abeer down on the ground and Barker walked over to her and pinned her outstretched arms down with his knees.

In the bedroom, Green was trying to get the man, woman, and child to lie down on the floor. They were scared, screaming in Arabic. Green was shouting back, aGet down, get down now!a Back at the TCP, Howard was trying to get Cortez on the radio, each time saying there was a convoy coming and they needed to come back. They never responded. No Humvees actually came during the ten to fifteen minutes that they were gone, but Howard was panicked. Sch.e.l.ler and he were out there all alone.

In the living room, Cortez pulled Abeeras tights off. She was crying, screaming in Arabic, trying to struggle free as Barker continued to hold her in place. Cortez was masturbating, trying to get an erection. He started to make thrusting motions. aWhat the f.u.c.k am I doing?a he later recalled thinking at the time. aAt the same time, I didnat care, either. I wanted her to feel the pain of the dead soldiers.a In the bedroom, Green was losing control of his prisoners. They werenat getting down on the ground. Terrified, they were yelling, and they werenat responding to Greenas orders. The woman made a run for the bedroom door. Green shot her once in the back and she fell to the floor. The man, agitated before, now became unhinged. Green turned the AK on him and pulled the trigger. It jammed. He tried to clear it several times, but it kept sticking. Panicking, as the man started advancing on him, Green switched to his shotgun.

Green couldnat remember if there was anything in the chamber, so he pumped once and a full sh.e.l.l ejected. Then, Green said, aI shot him the way I had been taught: one in the head and two in the chest.a The first shot blasted the top of the manas head off. He dropped backward to the floor as buckshot from the following shots continued to riddle his body.

Then Green turned toward the little girl, who was spinning away from him, running for a corner. Green returned to the AK and tried to clear it again, and this time it worked. He raised the rifle and shot Hadeel in the back of the head. She fell to the ground.

aI was hyped up, the adrenaline was really high,a Green remembered later. aBut as far as the actions of doing it, itas something that I had been through a million times, in training for raiding houses. It was just eliminating targets, and those were the targets that they had told me to eliminate. It wasnat complicated.a Spielman ran over to the locked bedroom door and pounded on it. Green opened the door. Spielman asked if he was okay and Green said he was. Spielman looked at the carnage in the room and was furious. He spotted the unexpended shotgun round, picked it up, and said, aWhat the f.u.c.k is this?a Green explained that the AK had jammed. Spielman asked Green how many shotgun blasts he had fired and began searching the room for the casings.

As Green was executing the family, Cortez finished raping Abeer and switched positions with Barker. Barkeras p.e.n.i.s was only half hard. Despite all her squirming and kicking, Barker forced himself on Abeer and raped her.

Green came out of the bedroom and announced to Barker and Cortez, aTheyare all dead. I killed them all.a Barker got up and headed toward the kitchen. He wanted to look outside the window, see if anything was happening outside. As he did that, Green propped the AK-47 he was carrying against the wall, got down between Abeeras legs, and, as Cortez held her down, Green raped her.

The men were starting to get antsy. Spielman returned from the bedroom with several sh.e.l.ls. The group had been there several minutes now.

aCome on, come on, hurry up,a Cortez said, ahurry up and finish.a Green stood up and zipped his fly as Cortez pushed a pillow over her face, still pinning her arms with his knees. Green grabbed the AK, moved Cortezas knee out of the way, pointed the gun at the pillow, and fired one shot, killing Abeer.

The men were becoming extremely frenzied and agitated now. Spielman lifted Abeeras dress up around her neck and touched her exposed right breast. Barker brought a kerosene lamp he had found in the kitchen and dumped the contents on Abeeras splayed legs and torso. Spielman handed a lighter to either Barker or Cortez, who lit the flame. Spielman went into the bedroom and found some blankets to throw on the body to stoke the fire. As the flames engulfing Abeeras body grew, Green, hoping to blow up the house, opened the valve on the propane tank in the kitchen and told everybody to get out of there.

The four men ran back the way they had come. When they arrived at the TCP, they were winded, nervous, and scared. Howard was relieved to see them. They were out of breath, manic, animated. But as the elation accompanying their safety took hold, they started celebrating. They began talking rapid-fire about how great that was, how well done. Green was jumping up and down on a cot and they all agreed that that was awesome, that was cool.

Barker and Cortez took off their long-underwear outfits and scrubbed down their genitals and bodies with bottled water. They collected their clothes to burn in the pit behind the TCP. Cortez told Spielman and Green to burn their clothes, too, but Green resisted, saying what he was wearing was the only uniform he had. Cortez then handed the AK to Spielman and told him to get rid of it. Spielman walked over to the ca.n.a.l and heaved it in.

Once their adrenaline started to wear off and they began to calm down, as they were standing around the burn pit, Cortez told everyone that they could never speak about what had happened. They agreed that if it ever came up, they would say that they didnat know anything about it. Green said that if it ever went beyond that, just to blame everything on him. He would say he and he alone did it.

It was getting close to dinnertime. Barker started to grill some chicken wings. Spielman tried to go to sleep and Green relieved Sch.e.l.ler on guard. Green asked Sch.e.l.ler if he had heard any shots or anything suspicious. Sch.e.l.ler said he hadnat.

Several hours later, as Yribe was walking back to TCP2 after investigating the crime scene, he mulled over what he had seen. The house was ghastly for sure, but it wasnat the worst thing ever. And yet, there were a couple of things about it that were odd. You donat see a lot of girls that little murdered in Iraq, he thought to himself. It happens, but itas not common. Maybe the killers didnat expect the house to be filled with females? Maybe they were disturbed mid-crime and panicked? And the burning of the other girlas body, that was strange too. Burning was a huge desecration, so big, Yribe knew, that Hadjis usually saved that insult for the rare American corpse they could get their hands on. And then there was the shotgun sh.e.l.l. Shotguns are not common in Iraq. The shotgun is almost exclusively an American weapon, mostly to shoot open doors and gates. The sh.e.l.l was locally made, green with a bra.s.s tip, called a aBaghdad rounda because it had aBaghdada stamped on it. Soldiers sometimes traded them with contractors on the larger FOBs for their novelty value. G.o.d knows, contractors can get pretty lawless themselves, but there were no contractors in the area; they were too scared to go down here.

As Yribe approached TCP2 along the ca.n.a.l road to drop off Spielman and Cortez, Green was waiting in the street. He didnat have any armor on, and he was looking up and down the street expectantly, nervously. He pulled Yribe aside and asked him what was going on, what he saw. Yribe gave him a twenty-second rundown, saying it was pretty ugly, especially with kids and all getting whacked, but other than that, it was just another murder like all the other murders. They had a phrase for it: aYusufiyah happens.a aI did that s.h.i.+t,a Green said.

aWhat?a Yribe said.

aI killed them,a Green repeated. Barker was standing next to Green, but didnat say a word.

aWhat?a Yribe asked again. aWhat are you talking about?a aThat was me. I did it,a Green said. aI killed that family.a Caught off guard, Yribe dismissed the idea immediately as more of Greenas crazy talk. This is exactly the kind of stupid s.h.i.+t Green would say. And it was insane. How could a scrawny guy just slip away from a TCP by himself in the middle of the day and rape and murder a family? It just didnat figure. But Green kept insisting, and he knew details. He knew there were two parents and two girls, he knew there was a burned body, and he knew where the bodies were located in the house. Yribe was taken aback, but then he figured it was possible to have listened over the radio net as he was relaying the scene back to company headquarters. Yribe told Green to shut the f.u.c.k up, he didnat have time for his bulls.h.i.+t right now.

The next day, Cortez found his way up to TCP1 on a resupply or some other mission. He went to Yribe. He was in tears. He said he was so shaken up by what he had seen in the housea"the littlest girl reminded him of his niece, he saida"he needed to go to Combat Stress, but Fenlason wouldnat let him. Gimme a second, Yribe said. Yribe went to Fenlason and pleaded Cortezas case. The dude is really messed up, Yribe said, I think he really needs it. Fenlason relented and he sent Yribe to cover TCP2 while Cortez went to Mahmudiyah to see the psychiatrist there.

Yribe was anxious to get to TCP2. He had been thinking all night about what Green had told him, and it was bothering him. Yribe did not share any of it with Captain Goodwin when he briefed him on the crime scene. What was there to tell? That Green was talking s.h.i.+t again? He figured that Cortez must have gotten rid of the green shotgun sh.e.l.l, because it wasnat in the small packet of evidence they had turned in. Once Yribe got to TCP2, however, he yanked Greenas elbow.

aNow,a Yribe demanded, atell me everything, every single detail.a aNo,a Green said, anever mind. Forget I said anything. Iam either leaving Iraq in a body bag or as a free man. Just forget it.a aYou tell me what happened,a Yribe insisted, aor I will put you in that body bag myself.a Green started to talk. Again, Barker was there for the whole conversation, and again, Barker did not say a word. Green started telling Yribe everything he had told him the previous night, about the house, the four victims, details about the arrangement of the bodies, and what they were wearing, but in far greater detail than had ever been pa.s.sed over the radio, such detail that only someone who had been there could possibly know. As he talked and retraced his steps, Green adamantly insisted that he had slipped away unnoticed while the other men were sleeping and acted alone. Barker volunteered nothing, and Yribe asked him no questions. The thing that really convinced Yribe, though, was not just what Green was saying but how he was saying it. Ordinarily, Green was manic and boastful, either jokey or angry or hysterical. Right now, however, Green was just serious, sober, matter-of-fact.

When Green was finished, Yribe stood up and told him, aI am done with you. You are dead to me. You get yourself out of this Army, or I will get you out myself.a

21.

Twenty-one Days.

GOODWIN HAD LOW expectations of Fenlasonas meeting in Mullah Fayyad, but he was delighted to hear how well it had gone. aIt was awesome,a Goodwin said. aGra.s.s-roots politics right there.a When the group of Iraqi attendees made good on their promise to have a second meeting a few weeks later, Goodwin was there. Fenlason, working with the Civilian Affairs captain on FOB Mahmudiyah, secured $15,000 worth of medical supplies for the local doctor. When the men of 1st Platoon later found out about that, their rage was nearly uncontrollable. They can get fifteen grand for a Hadji doctor, they muttered to each other, but they canat fill our f.u.c.king HEs...o...b..skets?!

The events of the second meeting roughly mirrored the first, but that was fine. Everybody understood that no breakthroughs were going to happen overnight. This was the beginning of a long process. The Americans discussed how they wanted help locating insurgents. The Iraqis wanted safety and basic utilities restored. There was a circularity to the proceedings, but in all, Goodwin was enthused. aThey voiced their concerns, and we addressed them,a he said. aI said I would try to fix what I could. And I made promises where I could. We were moving forward.a Before the meeting broke up, however, the group talked about a couple of remaining issues. The men asked Captain Goodwin if he could get his soldiers to stop beating them up. He thought they were talking about arrests, where things maybe got a little rough. But then they clarified. No, they said. Sometimes, American soldiers would hit them and kick them with no provocation whatsoever at traffic checkpoints. Worse, sometimes they would appear at their homes in the middle of the night and pummel them for no reason at all, not even as part of an arrest. Goodwin knew that insurgent groups frequently used Iraqi uniforms, or were, in fact, actual Iraqi policemen whose true loyalties lay with the Mahdi Army, the Badr Corps, or some other militia. But U.S. Army uniforms were harder to come by than Iraqi ones, and anyway, he would have thought Iraqis could tell the difference. He chalked it up to the out-of-control rumor mills and conspiracy theories rampant in Iraq.

aYou can trust me when I say that theyare not my guys,a he told them.

aBut they look like you,a they said.

aTrust me,a he said. aThey are not my guys.a Finally, there was the matter of the murder of a family in the small nearby town of Al-Dhubat a few days ago. Did anyone, the Americans asked, know anything about that? Violence was rife, it was true, but this crime seemed, well, odd, for several reasons. The Iraqi elders said they had no leads, nothing to offer, except to say it was horrible, what inhuman things the insurgents could do. Is it any wonder no one feels safe?

Those opinions conformed to all the data that had been collected so far. The Iraqi Army had begun interviewing neighbors and family members the morning after the murders. Theories about who committed the crime were so conflicting as to be inconclusive. Some said the family was killed by the Iraqi Army. Others said it was the Americans. Some said it was the Badr Corps or the Mahdi Army. Others said it was a tribal feud or a family grudge gone bad. There were no eyewitnesses, or at least none who could offer a consistent story about what they saw. Since the bodies had been removed so quickly (the family was buried in a nearby cemetery the day after, with only stones as grave markers), and since so many soldiers had tramped through the house, there was literally no usable physical evidence beyond a few AK-47 sh.e.l.l casings. A U.S. intelligence officer in the area a few weeks later asked about the incident and got much the same answers from the locals. Although the investigator found the atmosphere tense and unnervingly anti-American, n.o.body claimed Americans were the perpetrators in any greater numbers than for any of the other theories. Without conclusive evidence, and with no one presenting a compelling rationale that would favor one hypothesis over another, it was instantly a cold case, like literally tens of thousands of murders in Iraq that year. The resources devoted to any further investigative work on the crime plummeted to zero.

Yribe, like most of 1st Platoon, never liked or respected Fenlason. He was a know-it-all with not nearly enough battlefield experience to be telling him or anyone else in the platoon what to do, Yribe felt. And Yribe thought Fenlason was way too soft on Hadj, preferring to make time with them to score points with the higher-ups than to do anything that might actually benefit his own men.

On March 19, 1st Squad was doing a cordon-and-knock mission in one of the small villages around Mullah Fayyad and Yribe was surprised to see Fenlason come along for this one. They had searched about fifteen or twenty houses when, at one home, no one was answering the door. After they pounded and pounded, finally someone opened up.

aThe Americans want to search the house,a said the interpreter. aDo not be afraid.a As soldiers fanned out, Yribe walked down a hallway. He knocked on the last door. It was locked. While he was jiggling the handle and laying his shoulder into it, getting ready to knock it in, an old man behind the door holding a pistol pulled it open. As Yribeas momentum carried him, surprised and with his weapon down, into the room, the two men practically b.u.mped into one another, and the old man fired.

Yribeas rifle was not pointed forward, it was across his chest, barrel down, so his reflexive motion was not to pull the trigger but to stroke the man across the face with the b.u.t.t of his rifle, knocking him back hard and opening a gash above his eye. Yribe got on top of him and got ready to keep pounding him. Fenlason and 1st Squad leader Chaz Allen were there, though, and threw Yribe off the man, yelling, aStop!a Yribe patted himself down to see if he was shot. The old man had missed. Yribe looked down and saw Fenlason giving first aid to the man, helping him up, giving him water. Yribe was enraged.

aWhat the f.u.c.k are you doing?a Yribe asked. aWe should kill him.a He had to walk out of the room or he was going to go berserk on both of them. Fenlason called some other soldiers to take the man outside and have him patched up by Doc Sharpness until they decided what to do with him.

af.u.c.k this! f.u.c.k this! f.u.c.k this!a Yribe yelled.

aHey, pal, slow down,a said Fenlason. aYou need to cool off. What is the problem?a aThe problem is we should kill that motherf.u.c.ker, not take him in. He f.u.c.king tried to shoot me.a Allen pulled Yribe aside and said, aWhen you entered that room, where was your weapon? You had it slung down like Mr. Cool Guy. If your weapon had been up at eye level where it should have been, you could have shot him and it would have been a clean shot. But we all know you canat go back in there and kill him now.a Some of the other guys started teasing Yribe about it.

aDude, you had a chance,a they said, aand didnat f.u.c.king kill a guy? A guy who actually had a gun! What a f.u.c.king loser.a aNo,a quipped Watt, athatas not his M.O. Yribe only shoots women and children.a aThatas f.u.c.king cold, Watt,a Yribe said.

At the end of the mission, Fenlason called Goodwin and asked him what he wanted to do with the old man. He was seventy-two, he was hard of hearing, and he was scared out of his mind. He shouldnat have had a pistol, granted, but Fenlason seriously doubted he was an insurgent. He suggested they confiscate his pistol and just let him go. Goodwin agreed.

Yribe did not like that one bit, and he stewed in the Humvee all the way back to TCP1. By the time they arrived, he was fuming. It was cut-and-dried in his mind: This dude tried to kill a U.S. soldier. He is an enemy and should be treated that way. In the central area of TCP1, he began spouting a nonstop tirade about how this whole mission was f.u.c.ked if they just kept letting go people who tried to do U.S. soldiers harm. Fenlason was a p.u.s.s.y. The whole chain of command was filled with gutless wonders.

This was all well within Fenlasonas earshot, so Fenlason came to the central area of the TCP and said, aYou need to cool it, Tony.a Yribe, however, would not let it rest, and since he commanded a lot of sway among the younger men, Fenlason noticed he had a lot of disgruntled soldiers on his hands.

aShut the f.u.c.k up!a Yribe yelled. aDonat even talk to me!a aWho do you think youare talking to here, pal?a Fenlason responded.

af.u.c.k you. You are a piece of s.h.i.+t. If you come one more inch closer, itas going to be the worst f.u.c.king day youave ever had. I want out of your platoon. There is no way I can work for a piece of s.h.i.+t like you.a One of the other sergeants started pus.h.i.+ng Yribe out the door, telling him to go get his head together somewhere else.

Their scuffle almost reignited several times, because every time Yribe started to leave, Fenlason would say something like, aYou better walk away,a which would only cause Yribe to come scrambling back with: aNo. Now I am staying. You have to make me leave, but youare too much of a p.u.s.s.y.a This went on for several rounds before some other sergeants finally dragged Yribe away for good.

aYou are done, Tony,a Fenlason said as they finally hauled him out of there. Staff Sergeant Allen tried to calm Yribe down.

aHey man, you canat be blowing up like this,a he cautioned.

aSergeant Allen, I donat know you,a Yribe answered. aI havenat worked with you very long. But I respect you right now. But Iam not going to respect this guy. This guy will get everyone killed.a aWell, thatas not for you to decide, is it? Youare an E-5, heas an E-7. We work for him.a aIam not going to work for him. I canat work for you either. If youare going to work for him, I canat work for you.a aRoger that, then,a Allen fired back. aThen I donat need you.a Fenlason was already moving against Yribe. He could not tolerate that kind of insubordination. He had Allen and Staff Sergeant Payne write up statements that night, and he forwarded them to Goodwin. He thought for certain Yribe would be in for some sort of disciplinary action, or even a psychological evaluation, but after a brief double check of what had happened, Goodwin decided not to take any punitive action against Yribe. Yet after a rupture like that, there was no way Goodwin could leave Yribe in 1st Platoon.

Third Platoonas Phil Blaisdell said that head be willing to take Yribe. He sat Yribe down and told him he had no idea what had just happened between Fenlason and him. Frankly, he didnat want to know and he didnat care. aWith me,a Blaisdell said, ayou start with a fresh slate. Follow orders, do a good job, get along with the rest of the platoon, and I am sure everything will be fine.a Goodwinas decision not to punish Yribe rankled Fenlason, but he saw the overall outcomea"Yribe left, Fenlason stayeda"as a turning point in the dynamic of the platoon. Fenlason had proved that he was not going anywhere, and that his authority could survive a full-scale coup attempt by the most powerful representative of the old 1st Platoon mentality. aThat was when people began to realize that the immovable object was in fact immovable,a he said. aThat was the day there was no doubt that it was my platoon. We were done negotiating.a Fenlasonas platoon was still very much in trouble, however, and he remained willfully ignorant of the extent of its problems. In order to take Yribe, for example, Blaisdell had to give someone up: Sergeant Daniel Carrick, who was considered one of the best young NCOs in the company, if not the battalion. He was Ranger qualified and had been to all the right schools and had gotten all the right skill badges very quickly. His culture shock upon arriving at 1st Platoon was extreme. Showing up more than six months into their deployment, Carrick never had much chance of being taken seriously by his fire team. Dealing with the aura left by Yribe was his first big challenge. Again and again, he would hear, aSergeant Yribe wouldnat do it that way,a or aSergeant Yribe didnat care about stuff like that.a He had to tell them that he didnat give a f.u.c.k about how Sergeant Yribe would do it because he was not Yribe, Yribe was not here any longer, and this was how they were going to do it now. But more than that, he was alarmed at how angry they werea"at Hadj, at the chain of command, at life. aThere were a lot of guys at 1st Platoon who would love to go on patrol, but only because they wanted to f.u.c.k something up,a he said. aThey wanted to punch somebody in the head or they wanted to shoot up somebodyas car.a In his eyes, a lot of the lower-enlisted were clearly thugs and degenerates back home and they had never been properly instilled with Army discipline in the first place. Here, they were out of control. aAfter being with them for a month, I was just like, aThese guys are the biggest group of b.i.t.c.hes and psychopaths that I ever could have fallen into,aa as he put it. aThey would get booze, and how do you stop this when Joes just do whatever they want? As a leader, what do you do? I didnat know. I knew about it, and I would tell them to knock that s.h.i.+t off, but I could never find the stuff. So what am I going to do?a Other team leaders likewise acknowledged that they knew drinking or drug use was going on but that it was difficult to prevent. During the three-week TCP rotation in March, Sergeant John Diem had two soldiers melt down on him on two consecutive days. One day, the first suddenly became uncontrollable and inconsolable. aIt was like a hysteria, left and right emotions, for hours,a Diem said. aI told him to lie on his bunk and wead take care of guard. I didnat understand it. I had known him for six months, Iad always been able to depend on him. Then, one day, he just went off the bend. I thought it was an extreme combat stress injury. So we got him out of there, somewhere where he could be closely watched. The very next day, we were doing a route clearance, and somebody tells me that one of my guys is asleep in a Humvee. So I go down there, and I f.u.c.king get on top of the Humvee, and Iam yelling, aHey d.i.c.khead!a And Iam yelling at him and heas not moving. Heas breathing, but thatas it. Heas not aware of whatas going on at all. So I give him a couple shots upside the K-pot [helmet] to check for responsiveness. And heas like, aStop hitting me. Stop hitting me.a Like almost completely unresponsive, like a catatonia, like a alike a adrug overdose. So I put him to bed. I get another guy out there on guard. I toss these two guysa s.h.i.+t and we find pill packs of some s.h.i.+t that Iave never seen before. And those two guys lived with me. I had thought they couldnat make a move without me knowing. But I came to learn that it was pretty free game. It was something that you could get if you even half-a.s.s wanted it.a Many soldiers a.s.sert that substance abuse was pervasive. aIt was fairly common,a said one. aThatas how they began to deal and cope with certain things: All the soldiers who had been killed, the long hours they were pulling. Some of the soldiers used painkillers or drank because it was their only escape. That is what they had to do in their own mind to keep themselves from freaking out. Still, I was extremely upset and mortified by the idea that people would do thata"all the times you thought your life was safe while you slept and they were on guard, it wasnat.a In Iraq, stray dogs are rampant and a constant nuisance. Most are mangy, disease-ridden, and nasty, and they run in large, wild packs. But some, every once in a while, manage to have good looks, clean coats, and friendly natures. These strays were frequently s.n.a.t.c.hed up by soldiers and turned into pets. Although keeping dogs was always against the rules, many of the on-the-ground commanders recognized the undeniable positive impact they had on moralea"several platoon-level leaders had stories of stumbling upon a soldier who had just lost a comrade in battle tucked away in some lonely corner of a base, cradling a dog in his arms, just petting it and sobbing into its fura"so they frequently just looked the other way. There were two dogs that hung around TCP1a"an adult and a puppy. But the puppy got sick and started to lose its fur. Fenlason sent the word out: The puppy needs to be put down, and the faster you put it out of its misery, the easier it will be on canine and human alike.

It was the third week of March, 1st Squad was still at TCP1, and Fenlason could hear some guys tromp up the stairs. A few minutes later they came back down. He could hear them talking in excited but hushed tones, catching snippets of some guys giggling and saying, aThat was cool,a and others saying, aThat s.h.i.+t was f.u.c.ked up.a Fenlason recognized it as the murmur of soldiers who were up to no good. He came out of his office and demanded, aWhat the h.e.l.l is going on here?a aNothing, Sergeant,a somebody replied.

aDonat bulls.h.i.+t me,a Fenlason pushed. aWhat the h.e.l.l is going on?a aGreen threw the puppy off the roof,a somebody answered.

aHe did what?a Fenlason asked, incredulous, to a wide round of more murmurs and shuffling.

aCamere, you jacka.s.s,a he said to Green.

aWhat, Sergeant?a Green responded, giggling. aYou said to get rid of it.a aAnd do you think seeing if it could fly is what I had in mind?a Green found this line funny, but Fenlason wasnat laughing. Fenlason was so dismayed by Greenas cavalier att.i.tude to his own cruelty, he told Combat Stress about the incident. Green, meanwhile, was trying to comply with Yribeas order to get out of the Army. Between the puppy incident and Sergeant Yribe pus.h.i.+ng him to find a way to get discharged, Green headed back to the Combat Stress tent the next time he was at FOB Mahmudiyah. aI got my duffel bags, all my stuff, and took it with me to Mahmudiyah. I was telling everybody Iam not coming back,a Green said. aAnd they were like, aYouall be back.a And I was like, aJust watch.aa Green had not seen Combat Stress since December 21, and a new team had taken over in January, headed by Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Bowler, a forensic psychiatrist and reservist who ordinarily worked in the California prison system, and Staff Sergeant Bob Davis, also a reservist. On March 20, Green showed up at the Mahmudiyah Combat Stress office. In the block marked Reason for Visit on his intake form, he wrote: aAnger, dreams, emotions over dead friends.a And in the block marked Who Referred You and Why, he wrote: aBoth team leaders Sgt. Diaz and Sgt. Yribe. Donat know exactly but they just said I needed to go.a In his initial interview, however, he told Davis, aI was told to see you because I killed a puppy.a Through the course of the session, Green said he didnat understand what the big deal was. Everybody was killing dogs down there, he just happened to kill his in ten minutes rather than a couple of seconds. It all ends the same way, so what difference did it make? Seeing a red flag, Davis tried to explain why it made a world of difference. In his intake questionnaire, Green described his mood as agood a lot and then it flips to where I donat care and I want to kill all the Hadj.a Bowler gave Green some Ambien to help him sleep and a course of antidepressant medicationa"Lexaproa"and she kept him on the FOB for more evaluation.

Over the next few days, the Combat Stress team met with Green several more times and concluded that he wasnat registering the moral implications of the incident. aIf he had ever said, aLook, I was just trying to impress my buddies by showing my capacity for cruelty,a we would have let him go back to work,a recounted Davis, abecause it would have shown understanding of what the fuss was about.a But the conversations progressed into more-troubling territory. Green said that the puppy could have just as easily been an Iraqi and it still wouldnat have made a bit of difference.

Bowler told Kunk of her diagnosis of Green: a preexisting antisocial personality disorder, a condition marked by indifference to the suffering of others, habitual lying, and disregard for the safety of self or others. People with this diagnosis are colloquially referred to as sociopaths or psychopaths. The diagnosis of personality disorder carries an immediate expulsion from the Army, and they began the process of removing Green from the service. In fiscal 2005, 1,038 soldiersa"or 0.21 percent of those on active dutya"were discharged with this cla.s.sification. Even though Green had committed rape and quadruple homicide just eleven days earlier, Bowleras mental-health-status evaluation sheet that initiated the personality disorder discharge stated that his current potential for harm to others was alow.a Greenas separation from the Army had begun. He would never return to Bravo Company.

Green disputed the diagnosis. aI donat have antisocial personality disorder,a he said. aThatas like a sociopath. In regular day-to-day life, Iam not remotely like that. I donat even want to hurt peopleas feelings. If I say my opinion and someone gets offended, thatas one thing, but intentionally to hurt someone? No, thatas ridiculous. I didnat agree with the diagnosis, but I didnat care. It was getting me out of the Army.a He remained at Mahmudiyah for a few more weeks for observation and processing. By April 14, he was headed out of Iraq and back to the States, and at Fort Campbell on May 16 he was honorably discharged from the Army and sent back into society.

As Green was undergoing his psychological evaluations at Mahmudiyah, the rest of 1st Platoon had rotated back from the TCPs to Yusufiyah on March 21. Goodwin couldnat have been more pleased, but he thought three weeks was the maximum that men could stay out there without a break.

aI thought it was a great success,a Goodwin said. aAfter they came back, I talked to the platoon that evening and told them that they did an outstanding job.a Justin Cross had just returned from a week of Freedom Rest and psychological evaluation in Baghdad, but he was there for the pep talk, which he said was the first time most of the platoon had heard why they had all been out there so long. aFinally, after it was over, we finally found out what Sergeant Fenas master plan was out there. It just p.i.s.sed everybody off that he didnat tell us when we were out there what we were doing.a Fenlason was p.i.s.sed too. He wanted 1st Platoon to stay out at the TCPs longer. He was, he felt, just weeks away from making a real breakthrough in Mullah Fayyad. aA third meeting and we could have d.a.m.n near formed a city government,a he believed.

When Goodwin told him to move off of the TCPs, his response was aThatas bulls.h.i.+t, weare close.a When Goodwin said his mind was made up, Fenlason replied, aWell, then, youall give back Mullah Fayyad.a For the remaining five months of the deployment, TCP rotations never lasted longer than a week, and Bravo Company never organized another community leadersa meeting in Mullah Fayyad.

APRILa"JUNE 2006.

22.

aWe Had Turned a Cornera

THE HUNT FOR Zarqawi had begun shortly after the invasion of Iraq, in the summer of 2003, when the U.S. military joined two special operations forces units into what was then called Task Force 6-26. Over the years, the Task Force had gone through several name changes, becoming Task Force 145, then Task Force 121, and then Task Force 77. As the war ground on, and with Zarqawi still on the loose, the unit grew in size and mandate. By early 2006, Task Force 77 had expanded into four subordinate groups with rough geographic areas of responsibility. The Task Forceas members, known as aoperators,a averaged at least a mission a day, usually conducted in the small hours of the morning. Task Force Central, which covered the Triangle of Death, was organized around a Delta Force squadron with Army Rangers in support.

Because of Zarqawias feuds with the Anbar sheikhs and other Sunnis revolted by his hyperviolence, his areas of safe operation were narrowing, and the Triangle of Death was one of the last locales where he could find refuge. With information that he was spending more time there, the Task Force picked up its rate of operations in the area accordingly. The Task Forceas methodology of pursuit was simple yet relentless: capture an enemy safe house, detain suspects, and exploit the resulting intelligence to set up a new hit as soon as possible, preferably in just a few hours. The Task Force described this combination of intelligence and action as athe unblinking eye.a Task Force 77as cooperation with the regular Army units holding a particular area was cordial but fairly one-way. The operators did not ask the local commandersa permission to come in; they usually just notified them that they were doing so. If a mission went poorly and men or machines were damaged, the local commander would be expected to have a QRF on standby, but beyond that, the commanders were expected to stay out of the way.

For the men of Bravo, athe cool guys,a as they called the operators, were an ever-present but mysterious backdrop to their war. In the spring of 2006, the cool guys started zipping in and out of 1st Battalionas AO with increasing regularity. Unless they were a.s.signed to a rescue mission, most of the men had only a dim awareness of when or even if TF-77 was in the area, but the operators always seemed to be popping up.

Zarqawi, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations did not go dormant in the face of increased pursuit, however. In fact, they stepped up their activities in the Yusufiyah area and started taking out some very big American targets. Just before 5:00 p.m. on April 1, a rocket or RPG fired from a white Bongo truck shot down an Apache attack helicopter about one mile northwest of Rushdi Mullah. A video posted on Al Qaedaa"related Web sites on April 5, complete with jihadi music and the Mujahideen Shura Council logo, depicted a gruesome scene. The helicopter was a mound of twisted rubble, flaming like a lava flow. Several black-clad fighters, with bandoliers, AKs, and covered faces, swarmed upon the wreckage. Some yelled aAllahu Akbar!a as they pulled out the body of one of the pilots and dragged him across the ground. It was the first time a U.S. helicopter had been shot down since January, but for the next few months, Al Qaedaas Aeisha Brigade, which was headquartered in the Yusufiyah area and specialized in antiaircraft operations, would become particularly successful at bringing down helicopters in the area.

aThere were helicopters falling out of the sky a lot, which isnat supposed to happen,a said Goodwin. The Aeisha Brigade was well organized, had outstanding concealment tactics, and possessed more sophisticated weaponry than average for an insurgent cell. Their presence was an indication of just how badly Al Qaeda wanted to hold this piece of land. aThey started putting antiaircraft guns out there,a remarked First Strikeas intelligence officer, Leo Barron. aRarely did you see many aircraft getting shot down anywhere else. This was pivotal terrain, and they were willing to expend those kinds of a.s.sets.a Numerous units from across the division were dispatched to the Apache crash scene, including Bravo Companyas 2nd Platoon. The recovery effort would stretch for two days, hampered by muddy conditions, numerous IEDs, and frequent fire from insurgents. Both pilots would be p.r.o.nounced dead, the body of one recovered on the scene and the other never found. With roads impa.s.sable, and helicopter delays interminable, the salvage effort had all but ground to a halt until 2nd Platoon, desperate not to spend a second night in the bush, carried helicopter wreckage on stretchers across muddy fields to the removal trucks for four hours.

On April 13, against great odds, contrary to the advice of many doctors, and despite all the unit commandersa a.s.surances that no one expected him to return or would think less of him if he didnat, Rick Skidis returned to Iraq and resumed his role as Bravoas first sergeant. After getting blown up in November, he had battled through numerous surgeries to his leg and went through months of therapy to get back and finish the deployment with his beloved Bravo. Upon returning, Skidis noticed a definite change in his men. They were battle hardened and battle weary. aI saw a lot of stress,a he recalled. aI saw a lot of tired guys, a lot of guys that had done a lot of fighting. They had been honed, they had matured, they had been working their a.s.ses off.a And, he noticed, their work had made noticeable gains. aYou could drive down Fat Boy. It was okay. You could drive down Sportster and it was pretty much okay.a As one first sergeant was returning, however, another was departing. Throughout the winter and into the spring, Kunkas battles with Charlie Company commander Captain Bill Dougherty and First Sergeant Dennis Largent were frequent and heated. They argued about tactics, priorities, IED sweeps, manning rosters, anything. While both men refused to be intimidated by the Kunk Gun, Largent was particularly emphatic about going back on the attack against Kunk, accusing him of a bull-headedness that was tantamount to incompetence because he insisted on policies that Charlieas leaders believed were misguided, if not needlessly dangerous. Through it all, however, Dougherty and Largent were concerned that their conflicts with the boss were having an adverse effect on the company, bringing more scrutiny and ultimately more pain down on their guys.

Others saw this happening as well. aKunk was starting to have an impact on that companyas performance and morale, because of the way he would treat the CO and the first sergeant,a commented HHC commander Shawn Umbrell. Word had gotten out among Charlie that Kunk had it in for them, that he thought they were jacked up. Like Bravo, they were detaching themselves from the battalion, but unlike Bravo, they had more esprit de corps to carry them through, even if it was borderline mutiny sometimes. Occasionally Charlie soldiers flew a Cobra flag from their crowas nests and guard towers instead of the American flag. aHe just hates us because weare the Peopleas Armya became a battle cry among the Cobras. Those gestures of defiance drove a further wedge between the company and the battalion. Both Edwards and Kunk could frequently be heard screaming, aI am sick of this Peopleas Army bulls.h.i.+t!a Largent was in a dilemma. He believed that Kunk was a bad commander and a danger to the soldiers. He had tried reasoning with him, he had tried arguing with him, he had tried ignoring him, and he had tried defying him. As his disillusionment grew, so did his bitterness and hatred of Kunk. And that, he realized, was clouding his judgment and his ability to work in Charlieas best interests.

By spring, Charlieas relations.h.i.+p with the battalion had crumbled to the point that issues such as Internet access, which on the modern battlefield has real morale implications for soldiers, still got blown out of all proportion. Earlier in the year, during a visit from some general down in Lutufiyah, Largent mentioned that FOB Lutufiyah did not have good communications connections. And, as generals do, the general said to his aide, get this unitas info and get them one of those Internet trailers down here as soon as possible. E-mail addresses were exchanged, promises were made. Largent and the men of Charlie were pumped. Largent, dying to bring anything the men could be excited about into their lives, followed up with the generalas aide like a demon. He inquired frequently: Whenas it coming? Whenas it coming? During this period of intense antic.i.p.ation, a Charlie convoy that had been up to Mahmudiyah came back to report: Hey, the battalion has a s.h.i.+ny new Internet trailer that they are using up at their FOB. The outpouring of negative emotions from Charlie was intense, and the backlash back from the battalion was worse.

aNow, is that my Internet?a said Dougherty. aI donat know. There are theories that say it was ours because we were tracking the s.h.i.+pment of it, with air bill numbers or whatever. And guys got p.i.s.sed. There was a tidal wave of aTheyave got our Internet.a Maybe. Maybe not. I donat know. But I had a hard time convincing them of that, and I canat legislate how my men think. So they got it in their heads that Battalion stole their Internet. Then Colonel Kunk picked up on it and he got mad at me because he thought I was spouting all these terrible, terrible things about Battalion because of it. It just spun out of control.a Kunk vehemently denied the accusation that Battalion took first pick of anything. aWe always pushed all resources down to Bravo Company or Charlie Company firsta"be it Internet, big-screen TVs, no matter what it was,a Kunk said. aThe Internet and all that had been provided down there and they were not taking advantage of it, and still saying that they didnat have what everyone had at Mahmudiyah.a HHC commander Umbrell watched the fiasco escalate, powerless to stop it because the relations.h.i.+p between Kunk and Edwards and Dougherty and Largent had degraded so badly. aThe relations.h.i.+p had deteriorated to the point where it wouldnat be improved unless both parties agreed it was going to be improved,a he noted. aAnd neither one of them was backing down.a Largent was desperate for ideas to remedy the situation. He appealed, he thought in confidence, to an officer from the brigade whom he had always trusted. He approached him and asked, aSir, weave got these problems. What can I do about it? Can you give me some insight here?a Largent believed he was betrayed: not long after, Kunk confronted him about going behind his back. They had a relations.h.i.+p-ending argument, during which Largent told Kunk he couldnat work for him anymore. He contacted Brigade Sergeant Major Brian Stall, who came down to see Largent in Lutufiyah the next day.

aI canat work for this f.u.c.king guy anymore,a Largent told Stall. aWe are headed down a road to where something bad is going to happen, because he is not listening to anybody. Heas not understanding the tactical situation out here. Iave done everything I can. This is going to end badly, and thereas nothing more I can do to fix it.a Largent was gone from Lutufiyah and moved to new duties within a week. About Largentas departure, Kunk said, aHe wasnat getting the job done. The environment was tough. And thereas a thing about enforcing standards and discipline and doing the right things. And it wasnat getting done. It was time for a change.a The Rushdi Mullah missions had become so frequent that First Strike decided in mid-April to seize a house permanently and make it a patrol base. Instead of having different units running through there at irregular intervals, they now had a fixed location that Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie would occupy on an alternating basis. The battalion never really had enough men to hold on to that patrol base and control of the town completely, but almost everybody viewed the initiative favorably because the battalionas activities were obviously disruptive to a very large insurgent population. Soldiers even liked the Rushdi Mullah missions. They were dangerous and scary, but they were more like the kind of war they had trained for. It was real enemy territory where soldiers could maneuver and fight against enemies who were recognizable yet defeatable. Give me a gun battle over an IED any day, was every soldieras preference.

First Platoon became a regular and reliable part of those rotations. For Goodwin, April seemed to be a crucial turning point. He felt that 1st Platoon was, after much pain and resistance, adapting to Fenlasonas way of doing business and coming back on line as a well-performing unit. aWe had three platoons at that point,a he said. aIt felt good. We were not just sitting there getting punched in the face. Weare actually going out, looking for him, punching him back.a Around the same time, Task Force 77 was making more dramatic strikes into the area looking for Zarqawi. In February, they had identified certain houses in the Yusufiyah area that insurgent leaders were using. At 2:15 a.m. on April 16, TF-77 operators raided one such safe house. They got into a firefight, during which several suspected insurgents were killed and several more were taken into custody, though Zarqawi was not among them. He was, the Americans later learned, less than half a mile away at the time. Nine days after that, TF-77 mounted another raid on a house several miles from where the Apache had crashed on April 1. They were fired upon as they arrived and killed five men outside the house. With persistent fire coming from within the house, they called in an air strike, which reduced the house to rubble and killed seven more men and one woman. A press release issued by the military said every male found in the rubble was carrying an AK-47 and wearing a weapons vest.

With uncanny timing, a video starring Zarqawi appeared on Islamist Web sites the same day. It was his most public communiqu ever and the first to show his uncovered face. During the thirty-four-minute video, Zarqawi speaks directly into the camera for long stretches, meets with some masked lieutenants, pores over maps, and squeezes off machine gun bursts in the empty desert. He has a mustache and a beard and wears black fatigues, an ammunition harness, and a black skullcap. He is serious but robust looking. Healthy, even plump. The message is a condemnation of the United States and George W. Bush and an exhortation to the Iraqi insurgency. There are elements of bitternessa"he is very harsh with Sunnis who have begun partic.i.p.ating in the political process. They have, he says, aput a rope around the necks of the Sunnis,a and he vows to target anyone who cooperates with the s.h.i.+aite-dominated, U.S.-backed government. A debate raged within military and intelligence circles about whether Zarqawias dramatic step into the spotlight connoted desperation or bravado.

In mid-April, some Charlie Company soldiers were busted for possession of Valium. The AR 15-6 investigation revealed that they had gotten it when they spent a short time at the TCPs filling in for Bravo. According to the soldiersa statements, the IAs offered them drugs within their first few hours of arrival. HHC commander Shawn Umbrell, who conducted the investigation, said he mentioned to Goodwin that if it happened to Charlie Company so quickly out there, then it was likely that Bravoas guys were being exposed to that temptation on a regular basis. Many IAs were known users and abusers of both drugs and alcohol. Fenlason, for his part, said he never entertained the notion that 1st Platoon might be abusing substances at the TCPs. aDo I know I have an alcohol problem or a drug problem?a he asked. aNo, I donat. Did I conceive of it? No, I didnat. Did the IA have drugs? Yeah. They had all kinds of stupid s.h.i.+t down there. But, no, it never occurred to me.a That changed in mid-May when a 1st Platoon Bravo soldier, high on Valium, left his guard station at TCP3 in the middle of the night without his weapon and wandered two hundred yards down the road until he got caught in a strand of concertina wire. Sergeant Carrick found him snared out in the street, babbling gibberish, thinking he was still on a patrol that had happened days ago. Carrick sent him up to the medic at TCP1 because he thought he had had a mental breakdown. Doc Sharpness checked him out and concluded, no, he was not having a breakdown. He was high. Fenlason and Goodwin ordered urinalysis tests for the whole platoon and three soldiers failed.