by Bing West
The reports filed by Western journalists embedded with the Marines did not support the allegations of widespread, indiscriminate carnage. Senior U.S. government officials, though, didn’t have the time to peruse tactical reporting. Instead, in their offices they turned on cable news, where video clips from Fallujah were shown over and over again. The images, obtained from a pool that included the Jazeera cameramen inside the city, affected viewers in Iraq, in Washington, and in Crawford, Texas.
In January 1968 overly optimistic reports about progress in the Vietnam War had been shattered by a wave of countrywide attacks called the Tet Offensive. The press reported in vivid detail the fighting and the destruction in dozens of towns and cities. The Vietcong gained an unexpected strategic victory in the States, where support for the war plummeted. Years later, analysts concluded that Tet had been an operational disaster for the guerrillas, resulting in devastating losses.
Peter Braestrup, in his award-winning book on how the 1968 Tet Offensive was miscast as a Vietcong victory, wrote that “most space and play went to the Tet story early, when the least solid information was available. There was no institutional system within the media for keeping track of what the public had been told, no internal priority on updating initial impressions.”
Similarly, the initial impression, created by Al Jazeera, of massive civilian casualties became the accepted storyline about Fallujah. Because entering the city meant capture and beheading, the Western TV networks pooled video shot in Fallujah by Arab cameramen who were approved for entry by the insurgents. Predictably, the pictures stressed destruction and death, although the Western networks could not corroborate the scale of the damage. Lacking any other source, most major U.S. newspaper and television outlets worldwide repeated the estimates cited in the Arab press based on the allegations of Iraqi and Jordanian doctors in Fallujah, arriving at an unsubstantiated consensus figure of more than six hundred dead and a thousand wounded.
“Al Jazeera is lying,” said Brigadier General John Kelly, the assistant division commander.
Nothing was done about his complaint. In the face of this press onslaught, the White House, the Pentagon, the CPA, and CentCom were passive. Partially this was a military reflex to avoid any comparison to the “body count” debacle of Vietnam. None of those at the top of the chains of command, though, requested from the Marine units in daily contact any systematic estimates that distinguished between civilian and enemy casualties. Given the video recorded by the unmanned aerial vehicles and the imagery required of every air strike and AC-130 gun run, records of the damage would have been easy enough to collect and verify had anyone thought of doing so.
In the absence of countervailing visual evidence presented by authoritative sources, Al Jazeera shaped the world’s understanding of Fallujah without having to counter the scrutiny of informed skeptics. The resulting political pressures constrained military actions both against Fallujah and against Sadr.
10
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FARMERS OR SHOOTERS?
ON APRIL 6, THE PRESS WAS FOCUSED on the fighting in Fallujah, while the real battle was raging in Ramadi. By noon, Bronzi and Gulf Company had the situation under control downtown. In the afternoon, the fighting shifted from downtown to the suburbs to the east, where Echo Company had the mission all infantrymen hate—sweeping for IEDs.
Every day an IED exploded somewhere along the thirty kilometers of roads that Echo Company tried to sweep. The IED attacks were wearing on the company, but they didn’t complain. They knew that a sister battalion at Qaim on the Syrian border was sweeping 170 kilometers of roads—a staggering responsibility.
The Marine Humvees weren’t properly armored to withstand the increasing power of the IED explosives. The insurgents were adapting more quickly than the American procurement system could improve the soldiers’ equipment. The men and their commanders shared the risks equally. MajGen Mattis was hit on three occasions, and both his regimental commanders were wounded by IEDs. In the States, the secretary of the navy was demanding a daily tally of new armor shipped to Anbar. But until production stateside caught up with the needs of the battlefield, the Marines would continue sweeping and varying their techniques. Snipers were one means of keeping the insurgents with IEDs off balance.
The night before, a sniper team called Head Hunter 2 drew the duty. Head Hunter 2 was an unlikely-looking team of snipers. Sergeant Romeo Santiago, originally from the Philippines, had been a Marine for six years and had received his citizenship papers only six months before now. A sniper for four years, he smiled constantly, not at all the cold-eyed type. Corporals Ted Stanton and Cameron Ferguson, like Santiago, were easygoing and quick to joke. Not one of the three weighed over 150 pounds, and all looked ludicrously small when burdened down with their sniper gear.
The fourth team member, Corporal Richard Staysal, was big and muscular. “Staysal’s our California surfer dude,” Stanton said with a smile. “He’s our token minority, so we’d give him all the shit details, except he’s so frigging big, he’d pound us.”
Echo Company covered the Sofia District to the east of Ramadi; thirty-five square kilometers of farmland, expensive houses, palm trees, and irrigation ditches. There were few main roads. Sofia’s longtime residents included smugglers, wealthy Baathists, and former army officers. The snipers knew the terrain and had good communications, so Captain Kelly Royer sent them out for an overnight stakeout on Route Nova, a main road into Sofia that looped along the bank of the Euphrates north of Echo Company’s base.
The four-man sniper team slipped out of the Combat Outpost after dark, walking north through the noisy suburbs. It was after curfew and no cars were moving, but the dogs were yapping and every so often the cows would join in, mooing at the strange-smelling Marines. The snipers crossed Nova at the Tank Graveyard, a field littered with the hulks of shattered Iraqi tanks. On the north side of Nova a few pumping stations sucked water from the Euphrates and emptied it into a maze of ditches. The team sat on top of a cement station, out of the dirt, and took turns watching an empty road through their night-vision goggles. During the night they saw no Iraqis sneaking up to set in IEDs.
On the morning of April 6, they walked a hundred meters north to the edge of the river and sat in the shade of some scrub growth. The radio transmissions and the steady rumble of distant gunfire made it sound as if every squad in Golf and Weapons Companies were in a battle. Everyone seemed to be in action except them: no traffic was moving on Nova.
“Maybe someone will call us to send our ammo,” Staysal muttered.
Not wanting to listen to constant complaints about being left out of the fight, Santiago walked across the field to take a closer look down Nova, which was built up about two feet above the paddies to avoid flooding. When he climbed up onto the road, he surprised a dozen men crouching on the other side, most of them dressed in green Iraqi Army uniforms. Not hesitating a second, Santiago sprinted for his life back across the field, yelling, “Hajis! Hajis!”
Behind him, an Iraqi in a red-and-black-checked kaffiyeh poked his head up, looked quizzically at the startled Marines, ducked down, and popped his head up a few minutes later for a second look. The Marines responded by firing their grenade launchers, lobbing two shells to fall among the insurgents, who were now shooting furiously. As RPGs burst in the trees, two Iraqis hopped over the road, spraying AK fire from the hip, and ran toward the river north of the team. Once they were above the Marines, they intended to push in from the flank, using the shrubs as concealment. The Marines had only two M16s with M203 grenade launchers attached, and two M40 bolt-action sniper rifles with telescopic sights—not much good against enemy crawling forward in hip-high grass and ducking behind scrub trees. The Marines were carrying only nine magazines each and had already ripped through half of them.
“Keep dusting off the road,” Santiago said. “If they rush us, we’ll have to swim for it.”
“You’re crazy,” Staysal said.
Santiago was calling for a Qui
ck Reaction Force, but with the sounds of the firing, his message at first was garbled at the company ops center.
“No, I’m not asking for permission to fire!” he yelled. “You can hear us firing. We need help.”
Another garble.
“No, I’m not dead!” he yelled. “How could I be screaming at you for the QRF if I’m dead?”
It was shortly after noon, and north of Head Hunter, Echo’s 1st Platoon was conducting a road sweep. They had found an artillery shell with wires leading into the shrubbery, where they came across a small clearing marked by cigarette butts and flies buzzing over a pile of human feces. They cut the wires, called for engineers to detonate the shell, and walked on. A few hundred meters farther on they came across two more shells wired to a remote control device. They withdrew a safe distance to wait for the engineers and were sitting under some palm trees when their platoon commander, First Lieutenant Vincent Valdez, heard Santiago’s call for help over the radio. Valdez loaded ten Marines into an open-backed Humvee and sped down the road. Five minutes later Santiago saw the Humvee approaching at high speed. Staysal popped a white smoke to mark their location and warn them that they were driving into a firefight.
It was too late. The Humvee drove smack into the insurgents, who had gathered to rush across the road and were lying in the weeds among the tank hulks. The unarmored Humvee, with eight Marines sitting in back, was riddled. Rounds ricocheted off the barrel-release latch of the 240 Golf machine gun, putting the gun temporarily out of action. Private First Class Brandon Lund had a round go through his hand, and as he wrapped it with a pressure bandage, he thought, I don’t believe it. I’m shot and I don’t see anybody.
Private First Class Benjamin Carmen pitched forward, blood spurting from his right arm. Lieutenant Valdez grabbed the machine gun, slammed down the release latch, and sprayed the area to the left side of the Humvee, while the corpsman, Hospitalman 3rd Class Tyronne Dennis, worked on Carmen. Dennis saw that a high-velocity bullet had gone through a gap in the plates of Carmen’s armored vest, plowed through his arm and chest, and exited his back. There was nothing Dennis could do. Carmen turned white, then pale blue, blood coming from his nose.
“We’ve lost him,” Valdez said. “This Hummer’s a magnet. Get out! Get out!”
If caught in an ambush, the immediate action drill was to counter-attack, not to remain inside the kill zone. Even as Valdez was arranging his men in a skirmish line to push toward the Tank Graveyard, mortar shells were landing around them. With the first explosion, the squad leader, Corporal Hurtado Barron, felt he had been punched in the stomach. He leaned over, gasping for breath and patting the front of his armored vest. None of the hot slivers had sliced through the front plate. He grabbed his rifle and ran to catch up with his squad.
Seeing Valdez pushing east into the Graveyard, Santiago and his sniper team crossed the road to protect the southern flank, firing as they dog-trotted along. Staysal was snapping off shots, and to his delight an Iraqi dodging around a tree a few hundred meters away went down and didn’t get back up. Staysal started shouting like a madman.
“I got that mother! I nailed him! Oorah!”
I wish Staysal would shut up, Santiago thought. His four-man team was moving forward two hundred meters south of the Marines with Valdez. The two groups could plainly see each other and communicate by yelling and hand signals. Santiago didn’t want to get out in front and have his team attract all the fire. When the sniper team reached the tank hulks, Staysal yelled that some insurgents were running up behind them.
Corporal Stanton felt a hammer had hit him in the back, knocking him to his knees. He lay down and yelled for help. Ferguson trotted over, tugged at the back plate of Stanton’s armored vest, and saw a hole about the size of a dime, oozing blood. He didn’t know what to do about it, unsure whether a compression bandage could stop the bleeding.
“Piece of shrapnel. No blood,” Ferguson said. “Forget it. Get up and fight.”
No blood? Bullshit no blood, Stanton thought, feeling the sticky wetness. He got to his feet and started forward. Rounds were snapping around them, closer now, making that distinct crack! that means someone is aiming at you, not shooting wildly.
“The fucker’s hiding behind there!” Staysal was yelling, pointing at a tank. “He’s over there, I tell you, over there!”
Then a bullet hit Staysal in his shoulder, and he screamed and went down. Santiago froze, standing erect, rifle in the classic offhand position, sweeping back and forth with both eyes wide open, waiting for a movement. He saw a man leaning over the engine compartment of a tank to steady his rifle, less than a hundred meters to their rear. Santiago put a round into his left chest. The man slid sideways and fell clear of the tank. Santiago shot him twice more in the chest and moved forward to make sure he was dead. He reached the body—a clean-shaven man with no mustache, dressed in a dark gray dress and sandals—and picked up a Russian Dragunov SVD sniper rifle with a scope.
Staysal lay on the ground screaming for Stanton, who was still concerned about his own wound. As Stanton cut away Staysal’s armored vest, he forgot about his own worries. The Iraqi sniper’s bullet had broken Staysal’s collarbone, plunged downward into his chest, and exited his back, leaving a large hole pouring blood.
“How bad is it?” Staysal asked. “Don’t lie to me. It’s bad, isn’t it? My mom’s going to be pissed.”
Time and again wounded Marines mention their wives or mothers, concerned that someone is going to be upset or sad because somehow they’ve screwed up. Stanton felt he was going to throw up. He clumsily wrapped a pressure bandage around Staysal’s chest, waited for a lull in the firing, and yelled across the open field to Corporal Pedro Contreras, the nearest Marine in Valdez’s skirmish line: “Corpsman up! Corpsman up!”
Hearing the call, HM3 Dennis dropped out of the line and trotted toward Stanton.
“Take the grenade out of my pocket. It hurts lying on it,” Staysal said to Stanton. “Hey, pull the pin and throw it. Let’s see what it looks like.”
“Fuck you and your stupid-ass ideas.”
Stanton rummaged through Staysal’s daypack for more bandages, finding only a crumpled-up poncho liner.
“Son of a bitch!” Stanton shouted. You should’ve carried extra ammo.”
One field over, the squad with Valdez continued to engage. Lance Corporal Marcos Cherry eagerly shouted to Cpl Barron, his squad leader.
“I got one!” Cherry yelled.
Then a machine gun opened up, killing Cherry instantly. Barron took Cherry’s wallet and ID and hurried to rejoin the skirmish line. Valdez was pushing east in the tall grass, following drag marks, intent on finishing off any insurgents lurking around. Santiago and Ferguson, too, headed on.
Dennis and Stanton stayed behind to tend to Staysal, as mortar shells dropped randomly in the fields. They were two hundred meters in from Route Nova, wondering about their next move, when two army Bradleys pulled up on the road. The Marines waved wildly, and the soldiers gestured back, signaling that the trac vehicles couldn’t cut across the ditches. The Marines would have to make it to the road.
“Can you walk?” Stanton asked Staysal.
“No, goddammit.”
Staysal would have been a load to carry, and Stanton and Dennis, both small men, were already exhausted.
“Well, that’s too fucking bad for you, because you’re too heavy to carry,” Stanton said. “We’ll leave you a vest to keep off the mortars.”
“Fuck you, stand me up.”
With Stanton and Dennis propping him up, Staysal limped and hobbled across the lumpy fields, breathing hoarsely through a punctured lung, blood pouring from his shoulder and back.
Colonel Connor was standing beside the Bradleys. He had monitored the fight on the radio, and as he had done with Joker 3-1, had brought forward a doctor and an armored ambulance. Staysal was properly bandaged and the medics moved on to tend to two other wounded.
With Staysal attended to, Stanton was ea
ger to rejoin the fight. It was approaching two in the afternoon. In the past two hours, the sniper team had seen more than a dozen insurgents ducking and dodging over the course of the four-hour engagement. They had shot perhaps three or four. The Iraqi fighters weren’t bent on suicide; they were employing sound hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.
Seeing the two about to strike out on their own to find the other Marines, Connor offered help. “You’re a little short-handed,” he said. “Want a few more shooters?”
“I’d appreciate it, sir,” Stanton said.
Connor walked to his command vehicle, radioed the 1st Battalion of the 34th Infantry to block the roads leading out of Sofia, and told the three soldiers in the back of the Bradley to join Stanton.
His command sergeant major, Riling, shook his head. “They’re raw green, sir,” he said.
“So?”
“We should go along.”
The sergeant major and the colonel told the recruits to follow them and got on line next to Stanton. They advanced cautiously, killing one Iraqi before coming under sniper fire from some distant houses. They moved by bounds to close on the houses, and by then the firing had ceased. Stanton led the stack into the first house and found nothing. It was the soldiers’ turn at the next house.
“Go in as a three-stack,” Connor said.
The three soldiers looked blankly at him. Fresh out of infantry school, it was their first day in country.
“You want me to show you how?”
“Yes, sir. If you would.”
Connor guessed the young private would quickly make corporal. The colonel went in first, followed by the sergeant major. As usual, no armed insurgent was in the house and the occupants knew nothing. When Stanton pointed to blood in the dirt of the courtyard behind the house, the occupants repeated that they had seen nothing.
