SUBJECT: Are the Iraqi People Better Off than a Year Ago

Firepower fans, I have seen this question debated to death by news correspondents for the past few months. Some are in country, some aren’t. Most of those in Baghdad try not to leave their relatively snug and secure quarters within the Green Zone any more often than absolutely necessary (if ever), so how they see enough “news” to offer an educated observation on the subject is too hard for this tanker to figure out. They take the news scraps handed to them and expound (pontificate?) on what they think the U.S. is doing right and wrong, how the poor Iraqis are being subjugated.

All right, I returned from my second trip to Baghdad in mid-January. One experience struck me enough to write a friend. I think it answers the mail on the issue…

Tuesday, 13 January 2004:

We met this morning with the Military Intelligence unit we were convoying with to Al Gharib prison. Before rolling out, we received a brief on what we already knew. The route we were taking has been the site of numerous explosive devices detonating on American convoys. The Iraqis used to hide them under piles of rocks next to the road, detonating them when the convoys rolled by. But they've gotten smarter. Now they're putting them in dead animal carcasses. Do you know how many dead animals litter Middle Eastern roads? Primarily sheep as they migrate from one field to another. Top that off with three overpasses and numerous berms that have been the scene of ambushes. The company we were with is about to redeploy next month. I don't know how many injuries they've sustained, but ten of their people have been killed thus far. You have to understand I used to be a company commander. I'm sitting there talking about this with one of the unit NCOs. The man had tears in his eyes. I couldn't help but think back to my own unit; I can still remember every face, over 80 guys. We don't want war, but we trained for it every day. You try to prepare yourself. But I can't imagine coming home from some God forsaken corner of the world missing 10 of those faces.

Anyway, we made it to the prison without any real incidents. Under the second bridge I got a little nervous. Some "Bedouins" were moving a large herd of sheep. Remember this is one of the locations units had been ambushed from. I'm watching them when one of the shepherds reaches down and pulls up a long tubular object. The next thing I know I've got a 9mm extending out the window -- and realize the guy is HOLDING a staff. He never saw what almost happened. I did. Shit. So did the guy I spoke to riding the .50 caliber machine gun on top of the vehicle in front of us. Spoke to him afterwards and he confirmed there nearly WAS a lot of mutton tar-tar under that bridge. That was a very fortunate (and stupid) shepherd.

At the prison we did the job we needed to and had about an hour left before the convoy was scheduled to head back. We had to be out of there by 3 p.m. because intel indicated there might be a mortar attack. Sure, there are a lot of Iraqi detainees living in tents in the courtyard and in the prison itself, but these guys don't care. So long as they kill Americans. A month ago the colonel's driver was sitting in a tent ten feet from where we waited this afternoon in our vehicles. The tent's not there any longer. A mortar went through the top and landed right in the kid’s lap. And the guy lived for about ten minutes afterwards.

We got a history of the prison from the major running the intel branch -- the guys doing the interrogations. I know a lot of people think these kinds of guys wield rubber pipes, are cold as ice, etc. They're normal people. They're like the guy or girl next door, the parents of the kid on your child's soccer team. He told us about some senior Iraqi generals captured early in the war. We'd taken over the prison already as Saddam had released all of the prisoners onto the population in Oct, five months before the war started. Those generals were literally shaking even though they knew we now manned the prison. That's the stigma attached to the place. It was where Saddam and his sons sent not the worst criminals, well, maybe those too, but the people who disagreed in any manner with their policies.

Story. And I put faith in this because no press will ever hear about it and it didn't come through official chains. It came from one of the MPs assigned to the prison. One of those soccer dads. And there are a lot of stories just like it.

Many of the people supporting the prison...laundry, vegetable gardens, etc...live outside the gates. A 27-year old woman approached the MP looking very sad. She was one of the ladies who had worked there in some capacity. She told him about life during Saddam. Every house had a picture of Saddam in a prominent place. The children were taught to say "Good morning, Saddam," and kiss the picture. To tell Saddam goodnight before going to bed and kiss the picture. A little girl went to school one day. The teacher was talking about Saddam. She told her teacher that her parents had broken the picture of Saddam and thrown it away. The teacher told the police. The father was taken to Abu Gharib, questioned, tortured, and killed. The mother was also arrested and went to prison, tortured -- I don't know details -- and released 90 days later. The little girl was the 27-year old woman. As it turns out her mother was moving palm fronds that were hanging above the photo. The picture accidentally fell, the glass broke, the picture got all scratched up. So the mother threw it away. And now the woman is still living with mentioning an innocent incident to her teacher.

The rooms in the prison, almost all of them, had hooks mounted to the ceiling. That's what they hung the prisoners from (by the wrists, manacled). There were drains in most of the floors to clean up after "interrogations". Then we went into the separate compound adjacent to the prison known simply as the Death House. Saddam and his sons were regular visitors. I'd heard of mass shootings in the courtyard, so commented on the lack of pockmarks in the walls where the bullets should have hit. Apparently they just laid the condemned face down on the bricks and shot them in the back of the head. Then we went inside. The cells would have been small for one man, the toilet just a hole in the floor. They would put up to 20 people in each cell. The walls had lots of messages in Arabic. The major told me he had one of his interpreters come in and translate them. Not one anti-Saddam slogan as you might think, a final flipping of the bird since you knew you were dead once you landed in the Death House. They were messages and prayers for the prisoners' families. Why nothing against Saddam? Because they were afraid (1) what would happen to their families (2) there's no good way to die, but some are more painful than others. The final room contained two gallows, side by side. The prisoners walked up a flight of steps and stood on trapdoors, each made of two heavy pieces of steel that separated and fell to the sides on throwing a lever between them. They said the noise was so loud when those doors opened that you could hear it all over the prison, no matter where you were. I lifted one (heavy) and let it fall -- I believe it. From the ground you could look up at the condemned. Once they fell through the trapdoor they hung directly in front of the "viewing platform" -- sick. As if hanging wasn't bad enough, there were electrical wires that could be connected to the men as well during the process. I didn't really get that, but I mention it nonetheless. Off of the gallows room was a small closet (about 8' x 3') with a gas relief valve and an outlet. They would open the valve and leave the chained prisoner in the room, walking out and shutting the door; really made max use of the space available.

That was it for the prison. The colonel riding with us was running late but we finally made it out of there. We found out that ten minutes after leaving mortars started landing. Thanks for the prayers, someone heard you.

I'll end with addressing the personal doubts I had about this war. In the past few months, despite everything we’d heard to the contrary, we’d found no WMD. A bit disheartening as a soldier. But if it was there, it was a war that needed to be fought. Because Saddam would not have hesitated to pass on these munitions to those who could (and would) best use them against us -- Al Quaida, etc. But I started having doubts when nothing turned up after so long. Maybe we were wrong? So were all the deaths we’ve suffered worth it? After seeing up close and personal what Saddam was doing to his own people...he needed to go. Fuck WMDs. The man was a monster. I'm going to sleep better, yet worse, at night from here out.

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