GI SPECIAL
4G19:
THE NEW LEBANESE FLAG
[Gorillasguides.blogspot.com]
Nation Breaking:
A Soldiers’ Meticulous, Detailed Account Of
A Complete Disaster:
“We Were Fighting A War To Establish
Permanent Bases In Iraq To Better Manipulate The Flow Of Middle East Oil”
[Thanks to D, who sent this in.]
I began to
wonder: if the highest-ranking officers in a battalion did not care to interact
with the Iraqis, how were the generals in the Pentagon to know what was going
on? How would the president know? I realized that they wouldn’t—and
they didn’t care because training the Iraqis was of little real interest.
That’s
not to say that the men who died in Iraq died for nothing. They were doing their jobs. But the Bush administration disgraces their
memories by stating that our only option is to prolong a losing policy. This administration refuses to learn from its
mistakes, level with the soldiers fighting its war, and bring the sad American
chapter called Iraq to a close.
July 3, 2006 By Joe W. Guthrie, The American
Conservative
Joe W. Guthrie served three years in the U.S.
Army as an Infantry officer and was honorably discharged in December 2005. He
now works as a PE teacher and coach at a private school in Florida.
**********************************
I didn’t grow up with dreams of
spreading democracy. I was an
all-American kid from a small southern town who went to college on a baseball
scholarship and joined the National Guard to earn some extra money. During graduate school, recruiters persuaded
me to join the Army through ROTC so that after graduation I would enter as an officer. I bought their pitch and believed our newly
elected president when he promised no more nation building. My dad told me, “It’s a great
time to join the military. It has done an excellent job of repairing itself
after Vietnam.”
I was commissioned as a Second
Lieutenant in December 2002 and, after paratrooper and additional officer
training, was transferred from the 82nd Airborne Infantry to the new Stryker
Brigade units at Ft. Lewis. In October
2004, I deployed to Iraq.
I went with an open mind. By then, the mission was well underway, and
we had heard the negative reports filtering back. But I believed that I could make a difference
and felt honored to serve. The fact that
I had received more Arabic language and culture training than any other soldier
in my battalion made me feel vital to an important mission.
But I was anxious too. I had gotten married just three months before
and wondered whether I would ever see my new wife again. I wondered what I would do in a firefight. My
whole life I had heard that fear of the unknown is the greatest fear, and in
October 2004, it was for me.
Confidence in my training and my government
somewhat quelled these fears. During the
flight to Iraq, I thought of my first jump in airborne school three years
before. No clearer picture of the proverbial leap of faith existed in my
mind—yet I knew greater challenges awaited.
I also flashed back to that
conversation with my dad when I joined the Guard.
Having lived through the
Vietnam era, he had always expressed displeasure with certain government institutions
during that period.
Like many of his generation, he
found himself questioning authorities previously considered worthy of
unflinching support. I always found
these views curious because with the exception of this interlude in American history,
my father always supported the government and raised me to do the same.
“I don’t believe
that our government will ever allow our military to become involved in a war
like Vietnam again,” he told me. “The American people would not
stand for it.”
Those words would haunt me in
the months ahead.
******************************************
Within 48 hours of our boots touching Iraqi
soil, my battalion was on the move to Mosul, which had historically enjoyed a
reputation as a center of Mideast commerce, prized for its oilfields. But by the time we arrived, it teetered on
the edge of collapse. Iraqi police had
nearly all deserted their duties, and lawlessness reigned.
I was designated the Iraqi army
liaison officer, an assignment I took seriously. From the outset of the war, both President
Bush and my superior officers had emphasized that training the Iraqi army was
key to our mission’s success.
But the longer I spent, the
more I came to realize that this was not only a lie but an impossible strategy
for achieving victory.
Army doctrine and training have not accounted
for a unit in combat having both to fight an insurgency and train indigenous
peoples to assist in the fight.
I started out as a one-man
operation that grew into a cell of 60 people who rotated in for a week to a
couple of months at a time. That
infusion of manpower would seem to bolster the notion that Iraqi training was a
priority.
In
reality, our leadership sent soldiers with suicidal tendencies, weight
problems, and disillusionment. In a
year’s time, we received only one visit from the battalion commander,
only one visit from our battalion’s operations officer, and only one
visit from the battalion executive officer.
This isolation set us up for
failure with the Iraqis.
Meetings with the Iraqi colonel
in our partner Iraqi army battalion were conducted by a master sergeant and me,
and almost always a problem arose in these meetings beyond our authority to
control. When asked to meet with our
Iraqi army colonel, our battalion commander refused.
I began to wonder: if the
highest-ranking officers in a battalion did not care to interact with the
Iraqis, how were the generals in the Pentagon to know what was going on? How would the president know? I realized that they wouldn’t—and
they didn’t care because training the Iraqis was of little real interest.
From October 2004 to September 2005, fewer
than 180 fresh-from-the streets recruits were trained by our cell and
incorporated into the Iraqi army battalion in Mosul, though the battalion’s
personnel total was exaggerated by the Iraqis.
These errors, while reported by our cell,
were ignored by our superiors.
Between October 2004 and April
2005, we conducted several headcounts of Iraqi army battalion personnel and
never found more than 350 present at one time. But the Iraqis recorded 1,300,
and the Iraqi figures were taken as accurate.
When we reported this
discrepancy, we were told we must factor in the number supposedly on
vacation. Every month we sent accurate
numbers, and in each case we were ordered to count at least 200 soldiers as
being on leave. No proof that they were actually on authorized leave was ever
provided except for the Iraqi army officers’ word.
During our first month in Mosul, we were
unable to conduct basic training due to Ramadan, so we opted to focus our
efforts on facilities upgrade.
But our requests to
KBR—Kellogg, Brown and Root, Halliburton’s subsidiary
company—failed because the contractor would not service any facility
housing Iraqis, only Americans. Air
conditioning and heat did not exist.
Electricity often did not flow.
These amenities could have been added easily by KBR.
Our cell searched for help with
money from a budget earmarked for Iraqi training but was ultimately
unsuccessful. Iraqi contractors were often crooked and more familiar with the
American system of payments than we were, our battalion chain of command
refused to divert any American supplies or manpower to solve the problem, and
giving money to Iraqis to fix their own infrastructure proved worthless because
the money simply went into the hands of the highest-ranking Iraqi present.
During our struggles, our U.S.
battalion enjoyed much greater success finding contractors for its own
projects. Upgrades for our detainee
facilities were completed in less than a month, but the contractors responsible
for these projects were never allowed to help us.
****************************************
In addition to manpower shortages and
facility failure, training doctrine was never uniformly approved nor
implemented.
An example: when we arrived in
Mosul, we were given a manual by our preceding unit, which falsely described
the procedure for clearing—making sure ammunition was no longer in the
chamber of a weapon. The procedure given
to us, which had been taught to the Iraqis for months, called for an additional
step that did not appear in any manual in the U.S. Army.
Upon discovering this error, our cell’s
master sergeant blacked out all manuals illustrating the errant function and
instituted the correct teaching.
However, old habits die hard. In January
2005, one of our U.S. soldiers was killed by an Iraqi attempting to clear his
weapon inside a Stryker vehicle. He
pulled the trigger, consistent with the mistaken teaching he received, and one
of our heroes was gone forever.
The Army investigators ruled that the faulty
system instilled by the American unit preceding us caused the problem.
However, this practiced
continued. In June 2005, some of the
soldiers within our cell witnessed Special Forces soldiers implementing the
same procedure that cost our soldier his life.
After correcting the Special Forces team, our soldiers were told to
“get your nose out of SF business.”
In June
2005, Special Forces took over some of our training mission. After a quick
tour, they announced that they would initiate driver’s training for our
Iraqi battalion though we had completed it four months prior.
Our master
sergeant complained to both Special Forces and our battalion commander that
this training had already been covered, and he was overruled.
Our
superiors were so uninterested in the training program that they would have
voiced equal approval of Iraqis riding pigs.
In March 2005, we began to push our trainees
out on independent missions. They
planned, briefed their troops, rehearsed, and executed the missions by
themselves. All of these actions were
repeated in June 2005, when Special Forces took over. Similarly, beginning in January 2005, every
soldier in our Iraqi army battalion had participated in basic rifle
marksmanship training. In June 2005, the
same training was repeated by Special Forces.
There was no coherence to the program, nor discernable progress.
In April 2005, a push began across Iraq to
utilize more personnel in Iraqi army training. According to the briefing I was
given, a minimum of 15 soldiers made an adequate cell. Our cell already
surpassed this number, but our battalion decided to upgrade it to nearly 60
soldiers to satisfy the Bush administration’s contention that large
numbers of Iraqis were being trained and large numbers of U.S. soldiers were
doing the training.
But we needed more officers, not soldiers, so
many of the newly acquired men ended up sitting around. No one bothered to ask whether a need
existed.
If anyone had, we would have
said that the Iraqis did not have as many people present as U.S. commanders
contended and that the Iraqi soldiers supposedly coming off vacation never did
so simply because they did not exist.
When these problems were brought to our battalion, our integrity was
questioned.
Moreover, our daily presence became highly
resented by the Iraqis, especially their officers. They felt that the Iraqi army needed to be
the sole authority responsible for training.
Their battalion commander told me that any attempt by American officers
to live in his training compound would be considered spying. And that was just the start of the
conflicts. Most Iraqi officers considered
their knowledge of the city and insurgents far superior to American technology
and training, while Americans considered the Iraqis undisciplined and lazy.
**************************************
Logistical issues compounded these
operational headaches.
For the first five months of our tour, we
received no boots or uniforms for the Iraqis despite numerous searches and
deals gone awry.
We were told to utilize the local economy,
but the only contractor we could find disappeared after we gave him an initial
payment of $20,000. (The vanishing contractor had been recommended by the Iraqi
battalion commander.)
Months later, we discovered that two
buildings, covered in weeds and rust and seemingly empty, were not. The Iraqis had told us that nothing was
housed in these two buildings. One day
we decided to open them and discovered enough equipment to outfit three
battalions. Some of it read “March 2003”—the leadership of
the Iraqi battalion had been hoarding this equipment for years. For all we knew they had been selling the
uniforms to terrorist organizations. In
addition, we also found a large cache of mines, mortar tubes, machine guns, and
ammunition in an adjacent building. The
resident Iraqi company commander was ostensibly fired by the Iraqi battalion
commander, but we saw him return less than two weeks later. When we reported to
our battalion, we were told, “Well, after all, it is their army.”
Our cell’s replacement arrived in June
in combination form. The first part came from two Special Forces teams. The
second was part of the MiTT program (Military Transition Team), consisting of
ten soldiers who were either experienced enlisted personnel or
officers—meaning they had at least six to ten years time in the Army. I
went with other Iraqi Army Liaison Officers from different battalions to Taji
to meet with these men and describe what they would face in Mosul.
To my dismay, I quickly learned
they possessed no knowledge of their final destination. They made the journey
with no radio communication, some with only one pair of boots, no information
on where they would go or what they would be doing when they got there.
I expected to hear questions
like “What sort of operational tempo do your Iraqi counterparts
possess?” In contrast, I was asked, “Lieutenant, do you have e-mail
capability up in Mosul? Nobody has told us anything and I really want to know
how I will communicate with my family.”
I later found out that they were selected
mostly from desk jobs in the Recruiting Command or the Pentagon.
Yet I listened with them at
their initial briefs about how they were performing “a mission that was
the most important key to our success in Iraq.” If this were true then why were they sending
desk jockeys with little or no experience training indigenous soldiers? And why during one of their initial briefings
did their leader, a full colonel, have to plead for more boots for his men?
Once these men arrived in
Mosul, they were given a two-day welcome briefing. Then they were sent to remote combat outposts
in the middle of the worst areas. Their
only radios had been given to them by us.
Running water worked on occasion.
And they received no equipment to outfit their Iraqi counterparts.
To this day, MiTT teams operate
under the same conditions. Future help probably will not come due to our
battalion replacement’s apparent apathy: they refused any data concerning
our experience despite numerous attempts.
Another logistical problem
arose due to the Iraqi army’s masterful deception in accounting for their
equipment.
For the first six months of our
tour, our cell inventoried every piece of military equipment their battalion
possessed. We reported in April 2005
that we had names showing which soldiers signed out AK ammunition and then
returned differing ammunition. (This differing ammo was made during the time of
Saddam and is readily available on the market; most of it does not work.)
We also had six Iraqi witnesses
working in the Iraqi arms room who observed the fraud.
My superior officers
weren’t interested.
In addition, every month the Iraqi army
leadership and our cell agreed to a list of items mutually decided to be
essential.
However, the end of the month’s
expenditures routinely included space heaters for the Iraqi army
leadership’s quarters, satellite television for the officers only, and
new furniture for the officers, to name just a few items.
And trips down to the Iraqi
army compound in the wee hours of the morning resulted in all kinds of
discoveries. Sometimes I saw Iraqi
soldiers sucking gas out of the tanks of the trucks to sell. Another time, I saw two Iraqi soldiers
painting a tan Iraqi military truck white in an attempt to sell it on the open
market. We were told to “tolerate
a certain amount of graft.”
Not surprisingly, I never received an
accurate vehicle count from the Iraqi army.
Each month, I counted the vehicles that the
Iraqi army owned, a number that never matched the figures given to me by the
Iraqi battalion.
To make
matters worse, after I turned in the number that I had counted, I would often
find my figures altered after brigade released their own report.
In April
2005, I documented the fraud in an e-mail.
Two days later, I was confronted by two superior officers and told that
my reports would no longer be needed.
If I doubted that the Iraqis were any more
committed than my own superiors to outfitting and training their army, the
answer came after a long presentation to the Iraqi army battalion’s
executive officer, offering suggestions on his logistics operational plan. I
concluded by asking what he thought.
“My plan is that you should care for
all of our logistical needs,” he said. “Why?” I asked. The
Iraqi executive officer replied, “You broke our country. Now, you fix
it.” The essence of a failed policy did not get any clearer than that.
*******************************************************
From October 2004 to June 2005, the
prevailing attitude of our battalion—including my own at first—was
that the Iraqis were incapable of conducting operations independently.
However, after speaking with locals and Iraqi
army officers, I reached a different conclusion. The locals asked me why Iraqis were not doing
more on missions. Iraqi officers told me
that they conducted company-level operations on their own nearly a year prior
to our arrival.
Did our higher command know and
simply not choose to use this information?
Or was it a ploy to prolong a state of perpetual war?
I decided to test the theory.
In March 2005, I began to send Iraqis out on
missions into Mosul, usually unbeknownst to my battalion, and found them
capable of conducting missions on their own except when they were hampered by
our military values and horrible perception of the local area. When I sent Iraqis out alone, they found
evidence and insurgents that we never were able to, though they were none too
careful about complying with the Geneva Conventions.
Once battalion discovered these missions,
they quickly reeled them, and me, in.
All Iraqi missions would thereafter be dictated by our U.S. battalion,
and I would make sure that the Iraqis performed these missions in the exact
manner in which they were dictated.
During the last week of March, I relayed this
new strategy to the Iraqi battalion commander and his underlings. They asked to speak with my battalion
commander, but he refused and dismissed the matter, reminding me that all
parties would comply with his wishes.
Two days later, I argued with two Iraqi
officers, who up until then had been my friends. One said that the only reason
they would go to an area they knew to be heavily laden with IED ambushes was
that they respected me.
That respect was shattered less than an hour
later when an IED wounded four of their soldiers. Although I rushed them to the
hospital and they lived, the respect I worked for five months to earn
vanished. From that point on, my time
with the Iraqis was much more difficult.
Our relationships with the
locals fared no better. Our line
companies spent nearly every waking minute on patrol.
The
nightly door-kicks on residents’ homes proved excellent recruiting tools
for local terrorists. I recall several
occasions of having to kick in doors to take cover only to hear screaming
locals.
Moreover, due to the high frequency of our
line companies prowling the city, the Iraqi army and our cell working with them
took a very distant backseat in priority.
If we needed to discuss a problem with our battalion commander, he was
in the city on patrol. If our goal was to turn the city over to the Iraqis, so
we could leave, why was he out all the time without the Iraqis?
At the very least, if the Iraqis stirred up a
hornet’s nest among the local people, it’s their own nest.
***********************************
Though force structure was
problematic, training inefficient, logistical support nonexistent, and combat
operations illogical, by far the most personally frustrating factor in
fulfilling my assignment was the ocean of financial corruption.
Our government has tolerated a
systematic culture of “spend to win” that fattens the pockets of
the few and accomplishes little.
Each month, along with our cell’s
master sergeant, I handed a minimum payment of $100,000 to the Iraqi army
battalion.
$50,000 covered their monthly operational
budget—facilities upgrades, maintenance parts, etc. The other $50,000 went toward the
battalion’s subsistence budget, which allowed each soldier $90 a month
for food. The problem was that the
Iraqis said they had 556 soldiers, and we never counted more than 350 at any
given time. Yet we were ordered to pay
on the basis of the numbers they declared, with the remainder going directly
into the Iraqi leadership’s pockets.
The operational budget proved to be an even
worse disaster.
Each month we handed over
$50,000, yet no money was ever spent on tools for the mechanics, no
improvements were made to the buildings, no new vehicles were ever
purchased.
So why did we continue to give
$50,000 each month? The Iraqi army officers would not perform for anything
less. We were bribing them to keep up
the appearance of a workable fighting force.
Our receipts for these transactions were
cleared back through the comptrollers who tracked what U.S. battalions were
spending. When it was learned that we
were spending $100,000 a month, we were told that we were not spending enough and
were accused of not supporting the mission.
The message was clear: the more money we gave
the Iraqis, the greater chance of keeping the Iraqi unit together.
We also had a projects account for spending
money on the Iraqis. After the theft of
the uniform payment of $20,000, we only used this system two more times. Both
resulted in complete failure.
In December 2004, we negotiated a contract
for 15 Toyota 4x4 pick-up trucks. All
were to be no older than 2000, and the price of each was $11,000, making the
total contract value $165,000. We traveled
to Dahuk to make this transaction, but a 1994 model was the newest truck before
us. Many of the others were badly
damaged and barely running. We called off the deal and in turn angered the
Iraqi army battalion’s leadership, which had recommended the vendor.
In February 2005, desperate to initiate some
progress on new barracks on the Iraqi army battalion compound, we again
enlisted the help of the Iraqi army to find a contractor. But the deal fell flat after the he refused
anything less than 40 percent of the total price quote for the buildings up
front. By our rules, we could not
surrender such a sum.
(After the failed sale, we
returned the funds and were asked by the comptroller if we were sure we wanted
to return this money.)
Meanwhile, U.S. Army Civil Affairs began to
compensate Iraqi army soldiers for damages incurred by “terrorist”
attacks. On one occasion, two Iraqi
brothers who were junior officers in our battalion stated that someone burned
down their house and shot up their car. They were paid even after we told Civil
Affairs that several Iraqi soldiers told us that these men inflicted the
destruction themselves. Civil Affairs
did not ride out to the site, they merely took the brothers’ photos of
the damage at face value.
They also rewarded any Iraqi for information
concerning insurgents. One soldier
brought information on compact discs that he explained was terrorist
intelligence. The CDs did show insurgent
propaganda but could be purchased at many different marketplaces in Mosul and
served no purpose other than general propaganda. Yet Civil Affairs paid off this soldier.
We alerted our battalion leadership to all of
this, and some of the information was sent up to brigade, but that was as far
as the inquiry ever went.
The system was set up so that
we could not physically account for the money without breaking the rules.
************************************************
I returned home in September 2005, grateful
and safe, but stripped of the illusions I had taken with me.
My experience proved that
contrary to countless official pronouncements, the Bush administration has no
interest in the Iraqi army training program.
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