No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah

by Bing West

  Having none of that, Carpenter kept tugging at him. “Doc, why are we slowing down? Speed it up, man. I can hear those bullets.”

  Boykin and Liotta were supporting Seielstad, who hobbled along, blood dripping out of the right side of his mouth, his right arm dangling, his right leg bloody, fractured, and wobbling. Rounds were zinging by, and they were almost home.

  “Motherfucker, you’re going to get me shot. Hurry up,” Boykin said to encourage Seielstad, who cursed back at his friend.

  Zembiec, Don, and Larry brought up the rear. Don, the Delta command sergeant major, was the last to leave the field of battle.

  The Jolan battle subsided shortly after noon on April 26. Seventeen of the thirty-nine Marines had been wounded. The company loved the story that trickled back about LCpl Fincannon. Badly wounded in his left arm, LCpl Fincannon was being carried to a plane in Germany when the secretary of defense walked by.

  “Don!” Fincannon had yelled. “Any word on Echo Company?”

  _____

  Though shaken by how the insurgents had sneaked up on them, the Marines had taken care of one another, later laughing at their fears. The man who stood out in their eyes was LCpl Gomez. He was every man’s image of a Marine—tough, stoic, determined, and caring. In the school courtyard Echo Company held a farewell ceremony and painted a sign for Cpl Austin, with a colored flag of his home state and the words “Texas stands proud.”

  For the next few days, Zembiec ran the battle over and over in his mind, looking for a way to get Austin out. “I pray,” Zembiec said. “I mean, for my men, not for something selfish like myself or winning the lottery.”

  At an afternoon mass on the third floor of the apartment building housing the company, Father Devine, the division chaplain, gave a simple sermon.

  “I was out with recon on a river patrol the other day,” he said. “We searched a small boat. Instead of being angry at us, the two fishermen offered us the one fish they had caught. They didn’t do it because they were afraid. They were good, simple men. Not all Iraqis hate us.”

  Before the mass ended, from the roof came the heavy crack! of the .50 caliber sniper rifle.

  _____

  For Echo Company, April 26 was another day during a one-sided cease-fire that had extended for seventeen days. It made no difference if the insurgents lost a hundred men each time they fought. They had overwhelming manpower to send into the meat grinder. A war of attrition against Marines pinned to fixed lines created the ideal battlefield for them. The Jolan battle was the sort of encounter that could happen any day along the lines.

  “The only thing the insurgents understand is violence,” Zembiec said. “I think we need to go on the offensive.”

  20

  ____

  A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

  LTGEN CONWAY HAD MONITORED ZEMBIEC’S fight on April 26. One more Marine killed and seventeen wounded. That afternoon he decided to take Latif up on his offer. The Marines would pull out, and Latif and four or five hundred armed Iraqis—some former soldiers, some insurgents, some both—would take over the city.

  “I didn’t want my Marines sitting in a cordon,” Conway said. “I called General Abizaid first to get some support, because I anticipated Sanchez might balk at the idea. But that didn’t happen. Instead of an argument, I got an okay from both of them to try the alternative.”

  Conway told Latif and his deputy, MajGen Saleh, that the Marines would stay out of Fallujah and support the Fallujah Brigade with money and arms. In return, the brigade would ensure a real cease-fire. “In a very few days our first convoy will move through Fallujah. General Saleh will be expected to provide security,” LtGen Conway said. “He’ll do it, or we’ll find someone who can.”

  The division, from Mattis through the battalion commanders, was quietly informed that Iraqis under Iraqi generals would replace the Marines on the lines. The MEF intended to gain “a strategic victory from a tactical stalemate” by reenergizing the Sunni community, empowering former Baathists, and providing the basis for an Iraqi army.

  The responses from the division were negative. Those opposed argued that “we are turning security over to the same guys we are fighting.” The agreement was called “a deal with the devil.” Because Sheikh Janabi, among others, had endorsed it, that meant the fix was in for the insurgents. With the Marines agreeing to stay out of the city indefinitely, the insurgents would take charge.

  Asked for his judgment, Maj Bellon, Toolan’s intelligence officer, said, “We’re letting the muj off the canvas. They’ll use Fallujah as a base to hit us.”

  Marines, however, adhere to iron discipline. The MEF was informing, not consulting the division. The decision stood as a done deal, and that was that. No leak sprang from the Marine ranks. Latif agreed to a series of meetings to work out the details before a public announcement was made.

  In the meantime the fighting continued. On the night of April 27 the insurgents attacked Zembiec’s lines, and the Marines responded with the AC-130 gunship, tanks, and machine guns. An Australian camera crew on a rooftop captured an hour of spectacular red explosions and streams of orange tracers, fed live to Baghdad. A Sunni cleric featured on Al Jazeera screamed, “They are killing children! They are trying to destroy everything!” Not to be outdone, the president of the Iraqi Governing Council repeated the charge that the Americans had changed from “an army of liberation” to “an army of occupation.”

  The next day the JTF spokesman, BrigGen Kimmitt, cited eleven violations of the cease-fire in the past twenty-four hours, charging that the civic leaders “had not delivered” on their promises. Outside Fallujah, Toolan had driven to the western side of Queens, where LtCol Kyser was pushing up with Battalion 2/2 against steady mortar and machine-gun fire. To straighten out the defensive lines, MajGen Mattis had authorized Kyser to move north and tie in with 1/5 on the right flank. Battalion 2/2 had taken seven wounded the day before, as small gangs in taxis and rumpled old cars drove down from the city, got out, and ran into abandoned houses, fired from several hundred meters away, and darted off. The streets were strewn with rubble, and each time the Marines moved forward, they found sandbags, binoculars, bipods, empty shells, and bloody bandages. Bullets snapped overhead.

  “They’re in that house six hundred meters to our front,” Kyser said.

  “If you have positive ID, take it out,” Toolan said.

  “Each time?” Kyser asked, not sure what a cease-fire meant.

  “If you’re under fire, you’re in a fight,” Toolan said. “Take it out.”

  Toolan and Kyser stood on the rooftop while the air officer, Captain Neil Sanders, picked up the handset of his radio.

  “Ninety-nine Aircraft, this is Swami. Marines in southwest Fallujah in contact. Any aircraft audible?”

  An air force AWACS command and control aircraft answered, giving Swami the frequency to reach Bud 2-1, two F-16s in a holding pattern south of the city.

  “Bud two-one, this is Swami. Target is a house at eight six one two eight nine zero four. Forward friendly troops at eight six zero three eight eight four three. I’ll talk you on.”

  Both Swami and Bud 2-1 were looking at the same 1:8,000 scale photomap with five-meter imagery that showed every one of the more than 24,000 houses in the city.

  “Bud two-one, from the mosque at Donna and Henry, go three blocks south. There’s an open field, right? Okay, go west one block. See the end house facing south? How many windows on the top floor?”

  “Swami, there are two, with arches.”

  Swami turned to Kyser and Toolan. “I’ll bring them in on a twenty mike-mike run east to west, then GBU it.”

  Kyser nodded. A few minutes later a burst of 20mm explosive rounds raised dust along the south wall of the house.

  “Bud two-one, that was dead-on.”

  The Marines stayed under cover while a five-hundred-pound GBU, or guided bomb unit, blew through the roof of the targeted house and collapsed the walls. Toolan drove back to his headquarters, and Batt
alion 2/2 moved steadily forward.

  In the forty-eight hours since Conway had approved the Fallujah Brigade, air force, navy, and Marine warplanes had dropped three dozen laser-guided bombs in Fallujah, destroying ten houses holding snipers or machine guns in 2/2’s area. No civilians were seen in the area. Kyser appeared to be pressing up against the main line of resistance.

  _____

  By April 29 Iraqi circles in Baghdad were buzzing with rumors about Baathists or former generals returning to power. Tony Perry, embedded with Battalion 2/1, decided to stake out the Fallujah Liaison Center and see who was meeting with whom. LtCol Suleiman drove up, accompanied by LtCol Jabar. That was normal and Perry was thinking he had wasted the day when MajGen Saleh strode into the narrow courtyard in his green uniform from Saddam’s era, with the red beret and epaulets showing his rank. Latif, in an old blue suit and tie, walked behind Saleh, benevolently beaming at Suleiman’s excited National Guard troops, who were leaping to their feet, saluting, smiling, and murmuring about “the generals.”

  Saleh swept by Suleiman without acknowledging him and disappeared into the conference room. Lieutenant General Conway and MajGen Mattis arrived a few minutes later and went into the conference room. Suleiman, red with anger, began spouting in English about “insult, insult.” Toolan hurried over to take Suleiman and Jabar into a side office.

  Perry stood against the wall, scribbling into his notebook. “The exotic life of the foreign correspondent,” he said as Toolan walked by, shaking his head.

  Behind the closed door Toolan, with SSgt Qawasimi translating, tried to calm Suleiman down. You have disgraced Jabar and me, Suleiman said. My goals in the city are like yours. First you put Hatim over me and now this. You don’t know Hatim. I don’t know him. I know Saleh. He is your enemy.

  “Your men ran away,” Toolan said.

  “That is no reason to go over to the enemy,” Suleiman replied. “Tell this new brigade to stay outside the city with you, like soldiers. Let me and the police go into the city. If they go into the city, you are finished.”

  “I will continue to support you,” Toolan promised.

  “You are in trouble,” Suleiman said as he left, with Jabar trailing behind.

  Toolan knew the score. A month ago the Marine plan had been to regain control block by block alongside the National Guard. That plan had walked out the door with Suleiman’s tattered pride. The die was cast. The MEF had thrown in with a new team led by Latif, Hatim, and Saleh.

  A few hours later the main meeting broke up. Perry pounced on Saleh as he walked out. “Are you a general?” Perry asked. “How do you spell your name?”

  “Yes, I am in charge of the city,” Saleh proudly answered.

  Conway and Mattis ruefully said a few words, and Perry rushed off to file the story that the Marines had turned the city over to the Fallujah Brigade. That evening in Baghdad, Bremer read the story online, together with a scathing memo from the CPA diplomats in Anbar Province. The memo confirmed Perry’s account that the Fallujah Brigade would replace the Marines immediately. The memo described the arrangement as a “stunning victory for the ACF [anti-Coalition forces] . . . the ‘Brigade’ will not fight the ACF.” The memo ended by urging Bremer and the JTF to overturn the MEF’s decision, adding that many Marines opposed it as well.

  Bremer, who had not been consulted or notified about the brigade, was furious. A year earlier the president had relieved Central Command of authority over the creation of the new Iraq and had given that responsibility to Bremer, who promptly abolished the Iraqi Army. Now CentCom had turned around and appointed Iraqi generals to create a Sunni brigade to take control of a Sunni city-state. Many Shiites would see this as a double-cross. The American military would appear to be rewarding Sunni insurgents with paying jobs inside a sanctuary while gunning down Shiite youths who supported Sadr. Following less than a week after Bremer’s edict authorizing the rehiring of Baathists, it would appear that Bremer had set the Shiites up, heightening political paranoia among Shiites already suspicious that the Americans were working behind the scenes against the emergence of a Shiite democratic majority.

  “This is an absolute disaster,” Bremer said.

  Ambassadors in Baghdad called CPA officials in the province. What are the Marines doing? they asked. Are they retreating? The officials said they didn’t know; they hadn’t been consulted. The last they had heard, the Marines wanted to finish the fight.

  The CPA memo of dissent to CentCom’s decision was read over the phone to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was traveling in Germany. Powell demurred becoming involved in a tangle between the generals and the president’s envoy to Iraq. Abizaid had already called a deeply skeptical Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, advancing the argument that the Sunnis had to be given the chance of showing they could govern themselves responsibly. Rumsfeld agreed to back the decision made in the field, but his senior staff were not happy to be handed a fait accompli without having had a chance to discuss it.

  The Iraqi national security adviser, Mowaffak Rubaie, and the interim defense minister, Ali Alawi, protested strongly to Bremer, calling the agreement “appeasement” and warning that the deal would backfire. The CIA station chief told Bremer that his agency had not been involved, saying he did not know by what channel Gen Shawany, the Iraqi intelligence chief, had communicated with LtGen Conway. Conway had said both Latif and Saleh had been vetted through the proper channels, but Shiite officials immediately accused Saleh of past repression and ongoing insurgent activities.

  In ordinary times a major policy decision like the Fallujah Brigade would have been thoroughly vetted and debated by various staffs and been the subject of several sivits meetings among the principals. Instead Rumsfeld, Abizaid, and Sanchez said little about the Fallujah Brigade; all three knew they faced a much more politically charged crisis. For weeks their staffs had been investigating allegations of Iraqi prisoner abuse. The issue had not yet gone public.

  At the same time that an angry Ambassador Bremer was reading cables from CPA diplomats in Fallujah recommending an overturn of the Fallujah Brigade concept, digital pictures of abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, ten miles east of Fallujah, suddenly ignited a worldwide firestorm of press and political attention. On April 29, CBS showed graphic pictures taken by American guards that depicted American soldiers forcing Iraqi men to lie naked in piles and stand blindfolded on stools with wires attached to their fingers, believing they would be electrocuted if they moved. As U.S. senators profusely apologized to the world, the press was bombarding defense officials for explanations about their roles in the scandal.

  The entire American military effort in Iraq stood on trial for the injustices and criminal acts of a few. The president said the matter deserved the most immediate and thorough attention of the Pentagon. Congress demanded an examination of the policy directives by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Gen Abizaid received queries about the orders he gave to his subordinates, while LtGen Sanchez became the object of several high-level investigations. The political hurricane swept through Washington and Baghdad on April 29, blowing away any senior review of the precipitate decision to turn Fallujah over to the former Iraqi generals.

  With the senior ranks of government preoccupied with a public scandal of the greatest proportions, Bremer could generate no consensus to overturn the Fallujah Brigade. Having urged the cease-fire and emphasized the dire consequences of an attack, he wasn’t in a strong position to insist on an immediate reversal. The senior officials with the authority to do so were fully engaged in defending their own careers. The Marines had heeded Bremer’s warning that to resume the attack jeopardized returning sovereignty to the Iraqis, which would be a severe embarrassment to the president. In any case, all parties—Abizaid, Sanchez, and Bremer—had agreed to the unusual step of assigning the chief negotiating role to the military field commander.

  Conway had properly requested permission of Sanchez and Abizaid to negotiate the agreement. Neither one of them had cho
sen to inform or consult with Bremer on this highly sensitive political matter. American diplomats in Baghdad, knowing nothing about the agreement between Conway and Latif, expressed open distrust of the military, a feeling that was reciprocated. The civil-military relations in Iraq were described as “poisonous.”

  In the Pentagon a senior official called the situation “confusing . . . There’s a disconnect here, and we can’t figure it out.” The chain of command for major decisions was clear. Secretary Rumsfeld issued a directive, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs wrote a formal tasking. The order went to the theater commander as a directive from the secretary of defense. The theater commander then issued a directive to the JTF commander, who sent a directive to the MEF commander, who sent one to the division commander. This formal system ensured a written chain of custody so there would be no verbal misinterpretations. It also enabled each level of command to include amplifying instructions. But when Sanchez and Abizaid had approved the Fallujah Brigade in lieu of an attack on the city, CentCom had not sent a written order down the chain, with a copy up the chain.

  A senior Marine described the situation to a Washington Post reporter: “We had all these different tracks going on. Ad hoc would be a kind [description].”

  Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz asked his staff, “Have we turned Fallujah over to the old regime?” The staff, unable to find any memo or written agreement, replied that was not the case. In responding to a congressional question, Wolfowitz admitted the situation was confusing but insisted that a deal had not been struck. He characterized Conway’s agreement with Latif as “conversations going on,” not a coordinated plan.

  General Conway had a very different perspective. “The plan to employ an Iraqi battalion in Fallujah was closely guarded,” he said. “However, the plan was not conceived in a vacuum. Every step was coordinated with the right individuals from Baghdad to the Beltway.”