“Who gave them the weapons?” asked Jahelka. He was sitting on the COC’s couch with Shearburn.
“The Iraqi army,” I responded.
“Sir, yesterday we would have shot these twenty-five armed Iraqis if we happened to cross paths. Now the fuckers are in our COP, scoping out our positions, our troop strength, and the layout of our perimeter,” said Shearburn. His thoughts led to Captain Smith and the other platoon commanders drawing up boundaries the Iraqis must follow: no scouts on the roof, no scouts outside.
While they discussed what the scouts could and couldn’t do, I flipped through the document Captain Smith had previously been looking at. It was an order from the commander of Iraqi Ground Forces, Lieutenant General Majeed, directing the formation of an Anbar Support Committee. On the second page, it listed nine tasks approved by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to be executed by General Faris. The tasks outlined the basis of a relationship between the Iraqi government and what I knew as the TAA; they called it the Anbar Salvation Council.
I continued to flip through the pages, amazed that I was looking at something that showed the Shia government’s willingness to work with Ba’athist insurgents. I breezed through the rest of the pages: a list of names approving appointments of Sunnis within TAA to official military posts, another list containing fifty targets in Julayba, and a series of maps detailing how the targets should be attacked. I went back to the beginning, unsure whether I was reading it correctly.
Then the platoon commanders and Captain Smith decided to disarm the scouts. I was perplexed that they would consider such an action.
“We don’t need to take away their weapons,” I said. This was immediately followed by comments from the platoon commanders, each sung to the tune of, “Yes, we do!”
“If you take them, whatever trust that exists between our groups will vanish,” I said.
“And you trust these guys?” replied Shearburn. “How could you ask us to trust them? None of us know their agenda.”
Shearburn was capitalizing on my poor command of the English language. Trust was the wrong word. I meant common ground. I had blown the opportunity to change opinions. Captain Smith had made up his mind.
“We will wait until morning to take away the weapons. Shearburn, ensure that the sergeant of the guard posts a watch on the scouts’ door,” said Captain Smith.
I was struck by the amount of fear in the room and what it was causing us to do. In my hands was a document that portrayed the scouts as an opportunity. But Rage 6 and the platoon commanders didn’t pay much attention to it, due to the source. It was an example of our bias against everything Iraqi, commonly referred to as “hajji.” In a sense, it was a continuation of our predeployment perspective—a perspective that envisioned our unit fighting Saddamists, not working alongside them.
I thought about trying to remake my point. The last thing I wanted to do, though, was isolate my voice. Plus, Captain Smith had already considered the options and drawn a conclusion. I accepted that the discussion of how we would treat the scouts was over.
“Daly, go get the general. I want to see his plan,” said Rage 6.
“So, what was Uday like, Faris?” asked Captain Smith. The general didn’t understand. He wasn’t Faris and probably didn’t know Uday very well. Captain Smith didn’t care. He continued to press the subject saying that he knew the general was Faris, that he was Fedayeen, and so on.
I saw it as a dangerous line of questioning. We were supposed to be discussing the raid that would be executed in less than twenty-four hours. Instead, the last hour was spent asking the general questions about the Fedayeen, Saddam, Uday, and Qusay. Rather than discussing our common purpose in the mission, the conversation focused on the differences of the past.
Eventually, Captain Smith asked the general about his plan.
“They did not show it to you?” replied the general, continuing with, “I was told they translated it into English.”
From Captain Smith’s expressions, I could tell he and I were thinking the same thing: that’s your plan—a list of fifty targets and a map of where they are? Captain Smith explained to the general that we needed more detail. He described the coordination that was required for helicopters, tanks, and other assets to be used properly.
The general was caught off guard. “There is no time for that now. We have to leave in one hour,” he said.
Captain Smith laughed. “The mission is tomorrow night,” he said. Our two groups were clearly not on the same page.
The general turned to our interpreter, Jack, and let fly a few short bursts of Arabic that were accompanied by a successive chopping motion with his hands. The interpreter spoke English about as well as the general did, so we didn’t even bother to let him translate.
“General.” It was the first time Captain Smith referred to the senior Iraqi’s status. “I do not have all of my men and equipment. The mission must be tomorrow.” Two out of the three squads for Rage 1 and Rage 3 were occupying platoon patrol bases roughly 1,000 meters from the COP. Their lieutenants took the other as an escort to the COP to execute mission planning. Rage 4 was due to arrive that night after a few days’ rest.
“Smith, understand my men live here. They have been gone three days. Wives and neighbors expect them to be home yesterday. How would they explain their absence? If we wait to do the mission, everyone will know it was them that helped the Americans.”
Captain Smith leaned back in his chair. He went to stretch his long arms into the air, but his right forearm knocked his spit bottle off the desk. It flew a few inches past Albin’s resting head. The crashing of the plastic bottle was followed by the proverbial “Fuck!” as a saliva-and-tobacco mix seeped onto the floor. A quick-acting Albin grabbed some paper towels out of the desk and began to wipe it up. Captain Smith leaned over and tried to clean what he had created, but Albin insisted. Accepting the rebuke, Rage 6 returned to the conversation.
“The timing of the mission is nonnegotiable. It will be tomorrow night,” said Captain Smith, who paused and looked around the room. There was no response from the general. After making eye contact with each of the platoon commanders, Rage 6 asked, “How do we want to do this? . . . Daly, what’s the total number of scouts?”
“Twenty-five, including the general, sir,” I said.
“And we are going to have two squads from Rage 2, 3, and 4. So that would be six four-man teams, one for each squad, and the general will go with headquarters. Will your squads be comfortable with that?” said Captain Smith. He directed the question at Lieutenants Thomas, Jahelka, and Grubb. Each of them nodded in agreement but did not comment.
“Shearburn, operating from your patrol base, you will be the company’s reserve,” continued Captain Smith.
Shearburn looked annoyed. He wasn’t used to being a reserve. Rage 1 was always the main effort. He didn’t question the order; instead, he recommended that his patrol base, recently named OP Jack Bauer in honor of the 24 character, be made into a permanent fighting position. Captain Smith said he would think about it and returned his attention to the near fight.
“Now, each of these teams of scouts needs a leader. General, do you have six men you can depend on?” asked Captain Smith.
The general was confused by the question. “I am the leader, and I have more than six men,” he said. It literally took a notepad and a few sketches of the structure Captain Smith was proposing to get him to understand—although once he did, he informed us of some crucial facts. The general already had cells of fighters in each of the neighborhoods who not only knew everything about the local subtribe but were actually members of the tribe. The leaders of these cells were already here.
With this information, Captain Smith took out his map, which had the fifty targets labeled on it, and identified six objective areas—one for each squad. He showed the areas to the general and asked him to marry up each of his leaders with one of the objective areas. At the same time, we assigned one of our squads to the same objective. Then th
e general went and got his chosen men.
The six scouts came into the room and sat at a few empty chairs or stood around the map. The general did not introduce them, and Captain Smith had to ask who was for which objective. As the scout for each objective was revealed, he was introduced to the platoon commander he would work with. The two men shook hands, but the scouts did not speak. After the first three behaved in such a manner, Captain Smith was becoming agitated.
“Well, what are their names?” he asked the general.
“They do not want to tell you; your men may say it in front of the people,” the general responded.
“Not their real names. I want to know their aliases, their fake names.”
As the general translated what Captain Smith wanted, the tension eased out of the room. The scouts began to smile and joke with one another. Two even argued over who was going to be “Abu Ali.” The general resolved the dispute. There was another round of introductions, followed by the details of the plan.
Unlike on previous missions, where we left as soon as it was dark, the scouts advised that we wait until midnight. They said at that point, the terrorists would have decided nothing was happening and would have gone to bed. Once under their blankets, they would be too lazy to run when we showed up. We took their advice.
At midnight, Lieutenant Jahelka would take two squads from Rage 3 and hit the two western objective areas in Julayba. The majority of his targets were along Orchard Way in the vicinity of the Al Risala mosque. Rage 4, Lieutenant Grubb, took the central objective areas that followed along Route Nova to the north. Captain Smith and I would move with Lieutenant Thomas and Rage 2 to the northeast. Their targets rested near the Albu Musa mosque. In another striking contrast to our previous missions, it took Captain Smith only thirty minutes to come up with and brief the plan. The abbreviated process was a result of the meshing of our planning style with the scouts’. They knew where the targets were and would have simply walked to them. We usually took a day to coordinate aerial and tank assets, as well as brief our superior and adjacent units. The result was the banditry I had envisioned outside the headquarters of 1-37 Armor two months earlier. There weren’t going to be any tanks, helicopters, or Pathfinders on this mission, just the scouts and our infantrymen.
An hour of conversation between the scouts and their Marine counterparts solidified the working relationship. The general left with his leaders to discuss the mission with the rest of the scouts. Soon after their departure, the COC began to empty. With only a few lance corporals in the room, I took the opportunity to indirectly revisit the issue of taking away the scouts’ weapons with Captain Smith. “What if they say no?” I asked him.
“They probably will. But come on, FO, I read the same packet of information as you. We will do whatever it takes to execute this mission,” he replied. I realized that Captain Smith saw the scouts as the same opportunity that I did. Though how he was going to handle taking away their weapons the next morning was still uncertain in my mind.
The general came back into the room and proceeded to engage in an hour of small talk with Captain Smith. I was surprised to hear his stories of recent travels to Amman, Kuwait, and Dubai. How such traveling was possible in Iraq was beyond my comprehension. After some banter by both sides, I continued to follow the advice I had received earlier from the adviser and provided the general with a cot in the senior enlisted and officer quarters. The few individuals who were awake in the room were not too happy but didn’t offer any more discord than muttering, “Is that a fucking Iraqi?”
After I told a few individuals that the general could sleep in the room, everyone returned his attention to the small pillow on his cot. The hand-sewn camouflage cushions had been provided by Craig Trotter’s mother at Christmastime. They were greatly appreciated by every Marine in the company. Uncle Sam didn’t issue pillows. On that particular evening, the anticipation of what was going to happen the next day occupied the remaining thoughts I had. Thanks to my pillow, they were short thoughts. Within minutes, I was asleep.
“What the fuck!” shouted the XO. I rolled over in my cot and stared at his shadowy frame in the doorway. The high-intensity light from fluorescent bulbs entering the room forced me to squint and raise a hand to my eyes.
The XO took a few steps into the room and pointed at the general, who was awkwardly sitting up in his cot, unsure of what was happening. “What makes you think you are sleeping in here, motherfucker?! Get out! You hear me? Get out! That’s the company gunny’s cot!” shouted Lieutenant Trotter.
I sat in shock that Trotter would scream at the general. I looked over at our Iraqi ally. “Mister, what you say? Me? Go?” said the general. He inserted a few Arabic sentences to add to the confusion. I finally awoke from my slumber and stopped the XO.
“Trotter, I brought him in here and gave him the cot,” I said. “He’s a general, man; we don’t need to make him sleep with the other Iraqis.”
The XO turned and focused his attention toward me. “So you would make Gunny Bishop sleep with the Iraqis instead? Besides, he isn’t a general; he is an ex-general, a Ba’athist,” said an angry Trotter, who made a relevant point regarding the gunnery sergeant’s sleeping arrangements.
“It’s my fault, “I said. “I didn’t realize Gunny Bishop was staying here tonight, instead of at Camp Corregidor like usual. He can have my cot; I have a shift as watch officer in a few minutes anyways,” I was willing to give up my cot if it got the XO out of the room.
It worked; the disgruntled XO replied, “Whatever,” and left. I was aghast at the scenario. My first thought was that Trotter had destroyed any chance of a working relationship between us and Thawar Al Anbar. Then I realized that Trotter had provided me with a unique opportunity.
I hopped out of my cot and pulled out my laptop case, which had been underneath me.
“Why you let him speak to you and me that way, Daly?” asked the general. I sat down next to him on his cot and turned on the laptop.
“General, he is number two in command after Captain Smith,” I replied. The general understood rank structure and nodded.
“So what are you, Daly, number three?” he asked.
I looked at the general and smiled. “I am the intelligence officer.” Then I seized on one of Captain Smith’s mistakes from earlier. “I know you are not General Faris,” I said.
His usual broad smile that didn’t reveal teeth overcame his face, and I knew I had his attention. I returned to the laptop and opened a folder of pictures from Hawaii and San Diego. I double-clicked on the first one, and the skyline of San Diego appeared on the screen. The general stared at the picture, as I explained that I had taken the photo while leaving San Diego’s harbor back in September. After a moment, I continued on to the next image. It was a view of Honolulu from a few miles offshore. The city’s towering skyscrapers were silhouetted by a combination of the lush green hills of Oahu’s interior and a clear blue Pacific horizon.
As the general focused on the screen, I gauged his reaction to each photo. His eyes were glued to the computer, but a sense of confusion occupied his facial expressions. I went to the next picture. A series of images of my wife and me at the Turtle Bay resort on Oahu’s North Shore took over the screen. The general agreed with me that Aimee was in fact beautiful. It was at that point that he stopped the procession of pictures.
“Why do you show me this, Daly?” he asked. I was waiting for this question and almost out of pictures.
“Because you and I want the same thing,” I responded. “We both have families, and our dreams of their future do not include war and destruction but hope and success.” I knew I was being cliché or overly serious, but I wasn’t speaking to an ordinary Iraqi. The general was a significant member of the Ba’ath Party, a man of influence in the Saddam regime. The events of the last three years, during which he saw the destruction of everything he and his predecessors had built, were undoubtedly in his mind. After listening to him describe the more modern Arab cities of Dubai
and Kuwait, I wanted to evoke his thoughts that together we could lay the groundwork for such a transformation in Iraq. I knew it was a shot in the dark, but I figured why not try?
The general was silent for a few moments, probably searching for how to express himself in English. “Two years ago, my brother killed an al Qaeda man in Sofia,” he said. “Daly, he was one of the most powerful men in my tribe, but the strength of al Qaeda forced him into exile in Jordan. Now, for the safety of my wife, my daughters, we will remove the terrorists. Then I will signal the return of my brother, the sheikh of the Fahadawi tribe.” He glanced toward the ceiling and muttered something in Arabic. Then he went on to tell me how much I would like Dubai, and he swore that one day Julayba would be a tourist attraction with its own amusement park.
I didn’t respond to his comments, but instead I closed the laptop, returning the room to the near-pitch-black status that had been interrupted by Trotter.
“General, you should go back to sleep. Tomorrow will be a long night,” I said, thinking it was a good point to end the conversation on.
“Yes, yes, Daly,” he said.
I stood up from his cot and headed toward the door. The plywood creaked when I pulled on the handle, and the bright light of the COP’s foyer illuminated the windowless room.
“I like you, Daly,” said the general as I went through the door frame.
I was unsure of how to respond. Somehow I forced out, “I like you, too,” with a straight face and walked into the blinding light. Of course, one of the Marines sleeping on the rotunda overlooking the foyer heard my comment and called me out on it.
“Sir, that’s probably the gayest thing I’ve heard in Iraq,” he said.
Rage Company Page 25
