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Kuwait w/Reflections on Musayyib - 2/13/05

Camp Virginia, Kuwait - 02/13/05
Camp Virginia is a sprawling and desolate base in the Kuwaiti desert defined by 10-foot high earthen berms, speckled with canvas tents, trailers, and living room-size generators, and peopled by soldiers and civilians contractors. As far as I can tell, Donald Rumsfeld's Coalition of the Willing is better represented here than in Iraq. There are robust contingents of Salvadorans, Poles, Japanese, and Dutch shuffling through the sand, plus a smattering of Koreans and Lithuanians.

Despite the desert bleakness, there are many diversions here: an enormous chow hall that serves four meals a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and "midrats" -- midnight rations); a Morale Welfare and Recreation tent that shows movies and stages events like Thursday's Karaoke Night; a giant gym with cardio stations, weight machines, and free weights; two Internet centers; an AT&T Call Center; a modest PX; and food concessions like Subway, Pizza Inn, and Green Beans Coffee, which always has a line out the door. Most of the work on base, like serving food, cleaning johns, and digging ditches, is done by South Asian men, employees of various subcontractors of KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary formerly known as Kellogg, Brown, and Root. Military folks, who are either headed north or going home after deployment to Iraq, don't have much to do here other than queue for the amenities. Waiting kills huge swaths of time for most everyone here.

It's Sunday, so the new chapel is humming. Roughly 150 souls gathered inside this spiffy corrugated metal building with its faux stained-glass window. (I saw it and immediately thought, this must be The Lord's Tool Shed.) A female US Army soldier led worshipers in a succession of Protestant hymns. Bodies swayed in the front pews; bald heads bobbed. "I love you more than anything," they sang. "Because of you my cloudy days are gone." The more subdued folk and curious hangers-on like me collected in the rear. Except for a contingent of Dutch troops. They stood stock-still at the center of all the praising, rocking, and Amening.

I bunk in a 100-foot long tent at the edge of the base with men from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit's Battalion Landing Team 1/2, the infantry. The commanding officer, his XO (executive officer), and the Sergeant Major share it with the BLT's staff officers and noncommissioned officers. There is room to waste here, unlike in Iskandariyah, where living quarters were cramped. Each man has carved out a little zone of comfort around his cot where he passes the hours. The XO reads a paperback thriller. The commander of the BLT's Weapons Company and his First Sergeant watch a DVD on a Mac laptop. Others nap. I type, relieved to be in Kuwait, but disturbed by fragments of news I get from "up north."

A car bomb exploded Saturday outside Musayyib Hospital, the XO told me last night. More than a dozen people were killed, he said. Stars & Stripes newspaper confirmed it this morning with a thin Associated Press account. "A car bomb killed 17 people Saturday and injured 21 in a mostly Shiite Muslim town south of Baghdad," reporter Robert Reid writes. It "exploded near the main hospital in Musayyib..." No other details.

Around Iraq's Election Day I spent three frigid mornings and several equally cold, cold nights at Musayyib Hospital's gate. Musayyib Hospital happens to sit on a stretch of road leading to Musayyib Police Station, another appealing target for the insurgents. Shortly after daybreak the same old man set up a table immediately to the left of the US military checkpoint there. He'd place an already-hot brazier on the ground and start heating tea in a battered and blackened aluminum pot. Iraqi men -- doctors, orderlies, cops -- gathered around him urging him to hurry up. Some were truly impatient, curt. Others needled him good-naturedly, as I imagined they did every morning. They stirred and sipped their sweet tea, milled and chatted for a few moments, then handed the man their empty glasses. He rinsed each in a basin of water, then filled it with tea for the next customer. A silent little boy, nine or 10-years-old, accompanied him one of the days I was there.

I interviewed and bullshitted with Marines and soldiers at the checkpoint, which was just 10 feet from the hospital's gate. There I met a quiet, thoughtful 19-year-old soldier surnamed Biehl. I walked a foot patrol through Musayyib with Biehl and a handful of US soldiers and Marines. For a mere child, his composure, even after sunset, was remarkable. This is his first deployment, he told me.

As the sun rose on the morning of January 29th, I interviewed a boisterous jarhead, Marine Lance Corporal Roger McNulty at the gate. McNulty has a bit of the schoolyard bully in him. He enjoyed badgering the Iraqis walking to the police station, whom he had to search for weapons, and cadging food from the young man who delivered meals to the cops. McNulty's on his way home. Biehl has another 11 months in Iskandariyah.

Could the bombing have been prevented? I don't know. I wasn't there, and I can't creep into the mind of the people who planted it. But I do know that Musayyib Hospital workers have in the past alerted Iraqi cops to suspected "VBIEDs" -- vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. Often the Iraq police would pass word of a suspicious vehicle parked near the hospital to the Marines, who would investigate. Sometimes, the police would check into it themselves, the Marines told me. There seemed to be a loose cooperation among Iraqis and Americans there, and this may have limited the number of attacks.

Marines up and down the ranks attribute the Musayyib Hospital attack and others in their former area of operation to the Army's inexperience and, fundamentally, their passiveness and minimal training. The Marines whittled away at IED and mortar attacks in north Babil over seven months by constantly patrolling, day and night. They deployed up to 12 patrols at a time, the BLT commander told me. Marine presence in towns and on roads, and the unpredictability of its patrolling routes, kept insurgents guessing, Marines assert. The "bad guys" may have managed a mortar attack on the FOB now and again -- maybe six or seven rounds -- but they launched few long, withering assaults once the BLT settled into Iskandariyah. Insurgents also planted IEDs here and there, but the threat of discovery by a mounted or dismounted Marine patrol, kept them from carefully laying more destructive charges.

How many patrols did the Army's 155th Infantry, the new military power in Iskandariyah, field on one of the last nights the Marines' were on base? Several on paper but only one actually in the street, a senior Marine officer told me. Patrolling wasn't necessary in certain areas, Army commanders felt, because "it was quiet," the officer said with a snort. That's like giving bomb planters a free pass. Marine commanders diverted their last two Kuwait-bound convoys to alternate routes for fear of newly planted IEDs and ambushes along these unpoliced roads.

The Marines built "firm bases" in several towns, no-frills temporary outposts in areas with heavy insurgent activity, from which they launched patrols. These minibases got attacked -- Musayyib's was hit on Election Day -- but they also established presence and disrupted insurgent activity, Marine officers say. The Army has committed to manning these posts, but a senior Marine tells me it started equipping the formerly Spartan settlements with Internet and flat-screen TVs even before they set up their own radio communications with the main base. As one Marine lieutenant put it, the more comfortable you are in your quarters, the less eager you are to leave them. Another ingredient in the recipe for disaster.

Am I biased against the Army? Am I in the tank with the Marines, a victim of a new strain of Stockholm syndrome? I would say no to both. In so many ways the Marines (and the rest of the US military) are a hammer -- a backhoe was how I put it before --where a scalpel is needed. The Marines (and again, the military) are not structured or adequately trained for the nonmartial aspects of this conflict, this mess -- the policing, the diplomacy, the restoration of essential services, and the rebuilding of an atomized civil society. But on the purely military side, I have seen things -- tactics and missions -- that have worked. The Marines didn't complete the "security and stability" in north Babil by a long shot, but they did succeed in cutting down measurable insurgent activity, particularly attacks on Forward Operating Base Iskandariyah. Mostly, this saved American lives, but it probably saved some Iraqi ones, too.

The wisdom of deploying a minimally trained Army National Guard unit to a dangerous and often deceptively quiet region of Iraq escapes me, civilian though I am. I hope for the best -- low loss of life and steady improvement of the Iraqi standard of living -- but I fear for the worst.

ENDS

Iraq Election Response

I wrote this about the 30 January election: "There seems to be an assumption in the US -- and here among US military folk -- that the election was a transparent exercise in organic democracy when in fact it was something far from that. The vote was orchestrated by the United States, from conception to execution. Washington called the elections and dictated the timetable."

Blogger David Holiday responded: "Seems to me you are confusing "security for the elections" with the electoral process itself. The US didn't want elections--Sistani did, and called in the UN. The UN recommended the system they got, and the UN helped train poll watchers, etc."

Nope. I am not confused, and I stand by my statement -- except the part about the timetable. I got that wrong. Ayatollah Sistani accelerated the pace for the elections, insisting it be held before a constitution could be written, but the US plan for Iraq called for elections -- eventually. One of the US's Coalition Provisional Authority's objectives, stated in CPA Order #1 (16 May 2003) was to advance efforts to set up "representative governance."

CPA Adminstrator J. Paul Bremer wanted to hold caucuses first because he didn't think the Iraqis were ready for direct polling. Ayatollah Sistani simply called Bremer's bluff: You say you invaded us to establish democracy, Sistani said, in effect, so bring it. Don't give us some half-assed, half-baked, stage-managed process designed to anoint a successor to your US-backed Governing Council.

Let's get to the very mechanics of the matter. The 30 January election took place according to the Transitional Administrative Law, drafted by the CPA. The CPA dictated that the National Assembly have 275 seats and that women hold 25% of the seats. The CPA decreed that the Independent Election Commission of Iraq (IECI) be established, and it devised its structure. The CPA declared: "The Adminstrator shall appoint the Board's seven voting members," though Iraqis nominated members to the commission's Board of Commissioners. So the IECI, the very group that had "exclusive jurisdiction for the oversight, organization, and conduct of the transitional elections" (from UN website) was set up and appointed by the United States (see CPA Order 92). Smells like conception to me.

The role of the United Nations was significant but not pivotal. The UN advised and provided support, but, as its own site says, the UN is not responsible for "supervising elections or determining key decisions." I'm not sure how many "electoral experts" the UN actually fielded, but the plan was deploy 56. Fifty-six souls in a country of 26 million.

US military officers have tremendous influence of Iraqi leaders at all levels. Chairman Mao was right: political power grows out the barrel of the gun (don't nail me on this one; I know someone like Zhu De said it before Mao). I can't say exactly know how much input US military authorities had in key election decisions, but I do know that in north Babil, where I was located, US military officers effectively run the area every other day of the week. They confer regularly with local Iraqi government and police officials, favoring folks who get with the US program and trying to marginalize those who don't. The US funds the City Councils, the Iraqi Police, and the Iraqi Army (oh yeah, and the central government itself). While the city councils themselves decide which contractors get picked to build local infrastructure projects, the US military pays the bills. It dismisses contractors that don't perform to ITS standards. (The miltary also created the tender process.)

Even if the US stepped back momentarily on the big day, it made key decisions about how the election would happen.

Final Iraq Post - Iskandariyah - 2/6/05

Iskandariyah, Iraq - 2/6/05

At the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit's nightly command briefing at Camp Kalsu, Iraq, earlier this week, an intelligence officer assessed Iraq's post-election environment. Victorious Shia parties and Kurdish groups are talking, he said. Moqtada al-Sadr loyalists are divided between those who want to get involved in the political process and those who want to keep blowing things up. His kicker, though, was chilling, though he delivered it in requisite military deadpan. "This will be primetime for political assassinations." In other words, the election didn't turn the country into the Garden of Eden, regardless of what Fox News says. Even the military acknowledges this.

Corporal Christopher Zimny, a grunt from Alpha Company, made a series of videotapes with a little handicam before the election. In the first clip I saw, he's standing in downtown Iskandariyah near the "Teapot," a traffic roundabout with an Arabesque golden pitcher at its center. He's wearing full combat gear, and he's animated and alert, almost jumpy. His eyes dart from the camera - a fellow Marine is filming - and the streets and rooftops surrounding him. It's two days before the election, he says.

"The showdown is about to begin. We got gunfire, firefights here and there. It's pretty fucked up.... They're beating the fuck out of us right now." He points to a nearby school that's being set up as a polling site. "It took a couple of rounds. No one got hurt." Zimny made another clip the morning of the election from the back of his Humvee. "We're about to enter into the jungle before those guys try and fucking kill us." He points the camera at himself, then out the window. The Humvee casts a jerking, twitching shadow on the road's shoulder. Iraq whizzes by hazily.

The day after the election Zimny's Humvee hit a roadside bomb about three kilometers north of this base. The blast eviscerated the vehicle, an uparmored Humvee. Corporal Zimny, 27, of Glenview, IL, was killed along with Lance Cpl. Jason C. Redifer, 19, of Stuarts Draft, VA, and Lance Cpl. Harry R. Swain IV, 21, of Millville, NJ. The two other men in their vehicle were injured; the Corporal in the gun turret lost a leg below the knee. A lance corporal who was on the patrol and avoided injury told me it was the largest IED he's been through, and he's been hit 11 times. He and the rest of Alpha leave for the States in three days.

Baghdad's gruesome suicide attacks and car bombs and Fallujah's firefights and large-scale assaults grab headlines and lead US TV reports because they are dramatic -- and because American reporters are there to cover them. This area, north Babil, is the improvised explosive device capital of Iraq, according to Marine commanders here. Close to 200 - 196 between July and mid-January - either blew up or were discovered here. IEDs kill less dramatically -- no tracers in the sky or legions of screaming, hooded men waving AKs -- but no less gruesomely.

The US military's very strength, its armored vehicles, firepower, and mobility, has sparked lethal creativity among insurgents. IEDs are low-tech stealth weapons. Bombers build them on the cheap from old munitions, plant them, trigger them from a distance, and then run away. In seven months, IEDs have killed dozens of US Marines and soldiers, Iraqi Police officers, soldiers of the Iraqi Army (called the Iraqi National Guard until last month), and uncounted civilians. The IED that killed the Alpha Marines was jerry-rigged from 8 to ten 122mm artillery shells, according to a Marine major. Artillery shells are built to be fired from huge guns, howitzers, over long distances -- miles and miles. Traditionally, arty, as it's affectionately known, is used to level neighborhoods and obliterate concentrations of people and vehicles. Up close, arty shells are shockingly deadly as well.

Journalist traffic here is low, too. Dan Rather was here for a hot minute. So were Thomas Friedman (one day) and John Burns (he spent real time here, says Marine Public Affairs). There were only four of us in the 24th MEU's area of responsibility, an a hunk of the nation with roughly 900,000 citizens, for the election: a reporter from CBS Radio, one from AP, a freelance filmmaker, and me. (That was also partly by design. A Marine Public Affairs Officer told me they denied several media requests because the burdens of orchestrating elections and handing over to the Army were too great to host additional journos.)

IED and mortar attacks continue, though the MEU has measurably cut the number of violent incidents. The MEU, to its credit, has also racked up some softer successes. We journalists focus on the exceptional and the bloody, Marines keep telling me, so I give credit where it is due.

"There's been a lot of civil-military affairs work that has been done around here in small projects," Lieutenant General John Sattler, senior Marine commander in Iraq, told me at an award ceremony on Friday. "Now as security around starts to become the norm rather than the anomaly, we'll be able to push more of that kind of assistance into north Babil."

24th MEU commander Colonel Ron Johnson gave me an equally upbeat, slightly earthier report. "When you come in -- and this is a little crass -- but if you brought somebody over here right now from the States that came from a nice quality of life, they'd probably think that this place was a dump. But if they'd seen this place seven months ago like you and I have seen it, well, we made some great strides. Things are improving, people are happy." Last August he gave the MEU a D, a 60% grade, for its delivery of services and security to the local population. "If I had to pull a number out, I'd say right now we're at about 83%."

But Iraq's most obdurate problems are on view here every day. Quality of life for the average Iraqi is poor in absolute terms -- very poor. While commanders point to the low base line -- the terrible privation created by Saddam Hussein's brutal regime --they ignore the hardships caused by the war itself and by the sanctions that preceded it. US-funded infrastructure projects advance only in fits and starts. They are disrupted by insurgents and are chronically understaffed, underfunded, and poorly managed.

And as much as commanders rave about the progress of the Iraq security forces, the ISF cannot guarantee the nation's security and stability. They're not even close. From what I saw during my month on the ground (and my month+ in July and August), most units of the IP and the IA don't yet have the tactical and operational capability to protect themselves. Their US-sponsored training is also less than robust, because warfighting takes priority over everything.

"You're doing a compare-and-contrast between a Western standard and not a new force," Colonel Johnson told me. "I mean, imagine this: these guys have been created in less than a year -- from boot camp to actually dealing with combat operations. It'd be appalling to think that I would pull the same service member with the same amount of training from the States and throw him into combat," he told. But that's what happening with the Iraqis, they're getting a few weeks of training, then being put on the front lines of a counter-insurgency operation.

This is my last night at FOB Iskandariyah. I convoy south to Kuwait with Marines in a few hours. I fly to Camp Lejeune a few days later, and then home to NYC. At midnight tonight the Mississippi Army National Guard's 155th Infantry assumes control of north Babil plus several surrounding towns. The soldiers taking over Forward Operating Base Iskandariyah are, on the whole, older, wider, and for now, cleaner than the Marines deployed here since mid-July. They are weekend warriors who have trained for a matter of few weeks before making this deployment. Early reviews from the Marines are not kind. "They don't have a fucking clue," one particularly harsh Marine staff sergeant said, several times. "They think this is a movie," another said

I have met many wonderful soldiers, but I haven't been impressed by their fitness, preparedness, or their skills. I watched a kindly sergeant fumble with his M-16 and a digital camera during a joint patrol with Marines through a former munitions plant known for insurgent activity. He snapped pictures while the Marines surveyed the rubble for potential bombers and snipers. Marines in the artillery platoon have told me their Army counterparts are positively bewildered by the call-for-fire process. These are the procedures by which you rain artillery shells on your enemy -- and avoid killing civilians and your own forces.

This morning soldiers fired on a civilian vehicle. Three officers I talked to, two Marines and one soldier, assured me it was a legitimate shoot: Two vehicles approached a checkpoint; one failed to stop, so soldiers halted it with gunfire, killing two of the four people in the car. "It happens all the time," a marine warrant officer said. But an enlisted man I spoke with briefly who was privy to early reports implied -- but did not state explicitly - that the soldiers overreacted.

The soldiers have time to learn; their deployment will last at least a year. But I hope for their sake, and that of the citizens of this area, that they learn quickly.

Election - Musayyib & Iskandariyah - 1/30-31-05

Musayyib and Iskandariyah, Iraq - 0130-3105

On Election Day groups of people filed through a gap in a line of concrete barriers toward al Yamen School, one of more than a dozen polling sites in and around Musayyib, a predominantly Shia city about 40 km south of Baghdad. Columns of concertina wire defined two pathways: women were funneled left into a makeshift shelter where they were searched (by a woman); men went to the right. An imposing man, bearded and very tall with an Olympic swimmer's triangular torso, stopped each male at the end of the wire. He wore a white armband issued by the Independent Election Commission of Iraq (IECI) over a black dress shirt. His hair and beard were immaculate. He met every man with a direct gaze, a smile, and a warm greeting, a salaam alaikum; then he searched them, patting here, squeezing there, swiftly but thoroughly. He treated each man with dignity despite his intrusive task.

I skirted the line after taking some photos and stepped over a barrier, assuming my Americanness granted me all-access privileges to Iraqi polling sites. The huge sentry immediately stepped toward me. He spoke to me, politely, in Arabic, which I do not understand, except for seven or eight words, none of which he used. "Badge," he said firmly in English. "Badge." The IECI, with technical support from the US, issued IDs for Election Day. As an unescorted embed, a tagalong with the US military without my customary Marine escort, I had nothing -- no badge, no uniform, no gun, no one to vouch for me.

"Sahafi," I responded, press, pointing at myself. He smiled, apologetically, I think. "Badge," he repeated. I rummaged through the traveler's pouch inside my pants and pulled out my passport. "American?" he asked. Yes, I said. He examined the beat up little blue book, handed it back to me, and then waved me through.

Little wooden desks and chairs filled al Yamen's concrete courtyard. Workers had dragged them out of the classrooms to create space for voting. There were no long lines when I visited, but each room was busy with a half dozen to a dozen prospective voters and several poll workers. Across town there was steady foot traffic toward other polling stations.

Election officials, mostly rumpled middle-aged men, directed prospective voters to particular classrooms at al Yamen. Inside, another poll worker checked citizens' names against registration rolls. (I assume that's what he did -- again my Arabic deficit stymied me.) Still another worker, a woman in the first room I visited, handed each voter two ballots, large printed sheets with dozens of entries. Each voter then stepped behind a cardboard "voting booth" to fill in the ballots. For many, this was a collaborative process: pairs, sometimes families, huddled, whispered, and pointed at items on the sheets before marking them. Next, an election worker instructed each person to stick a finger into a white plastic jar. Each withdrew a purple fingertip, proof they voted and, should one be so inclined, a bar to double dipping in the electoral process. Voters then slipped the first completed ballot through a slot in the top of a transparent plastic receptacle; the second ballot into another.

Initially, an election official barred me from entering his polling room. Others invited me in, as he later did, often with caveats delivered in a combination of English, Arabic, and gestures. No stepping behind the voting booth. No shooting the actual stamps voters made on their ballots. As many questions and concerns as I had about this election -- and still have -- this felt right. Seeing Iraqis in command was heartening after weeks of witnessing Marines and soldiers dictating to citizens, sometimes with military professionalism, but often with brusqueness or flat-out rudeness.

There were no other Americans in this polling station during the voting. US commanders had made it clear weeks ago that American presence inside polling sites was verboten. This was an Iraqi show, they told me, an Iraqi day. But the US presence was thick at the periphery of polling. Marines from Battalion Landing Team 1/2 and soldiers from the Mississippi Army National Guard, which will take command of northern Babil province when BLT 1/2 leaves, saturated Musayyib and other towns. The US election security plan called for the Iraqi Police to serve as the first line of defense (they guarded polling stations, inside and out); the Iraqi National Guard, the second line; and US forces, the third. In practice, the Marines ran the security show, directing teams of IP and ING to their positions and responding to reports of violence with teams of grunts in heavy vehicles.

Polls in Hamia and Jurf-as-Sakhar, towns west of the Euphrates River with heavy insurgent activity, didn't open until 4PM and closed at the decreed hour, 5PM. After the vote, some polling stations tallied completed ballots on site. Others followed the instructions of the IECI and brought them to Musayyib Police Station to count. There, the same rumpled men hand sorted ballots in smoky rooms. Some doors remained open, others stayed closed. I know very little about the grand electoral plan and procedures, and, again, I don't speak Arabic, so I don't know whether untoward things happened. I can say, however, that I saw some chaos and plenty of improvisation wherever I went.

There seems to be an assumption in the US -- and here among US military folk -- that the election was a transparent exercise in organic democracy when in fact it was something far from that. The vote was orchestrated by the United States, from conception to execution. Washington called the elections and dictated the timetable. On the ground here in Musayyib and throughout Babil province, US Marines were the logistical backbone for the vote. They liaised with US-backed interim government and IECI officials; planned and coordinated security operations; launched pre-election raids on homes of suspected insurgents; arranged transport for officials and voting materials; acted as polling station inspectors before and after the vote.

On a routine foot patrol the day before the election, an earnest and well-intentioned young Marine sergeant ordered a group of Iraqi men to rip down a Moqtada al Sadr poster adorning a concrete kiosk. "Tell them they'll have that in their streets no more! No more!" he shouted at the startled men. His Iraqi interpreter translated. The men dutifully yanked down the sign. Another Marine stomped it as soon as it hit the ground. "People are scared to take them down," the Sergeant reasoned. "They need to start taking the initiative for themselves." His action seemed impulsive, paternalistic, provocative, and potentially counterproductive. The initiative, after all, was his.

The election, such as it was, clearly meant a lot to Iraqis who participated. It may provide the foundation for a more equitable society. But it may not. We need answers to certain questions from our own government and the Iraqi interim administration before congratulating ourselves for our beneficence and before heading toward the exit strategy. What was the US role, from soup to nuts? Were voters coerced to vote for particular candidates? How were ballots gathered and processed at the grassroots? If proper ballot-handling procedures weren't followed, does anything happen? Will nonvoters across the country, presumed to be largely Sunni, let the election results stand? The subjects and implementers of Washington's Iraq policy -- the living, the wounded, the dead, and the soon-to-be dead, Iraqi and American -- deserve answers.

Iskandariyah, Iraq - 1/27-28/05

A beautiful clear Thursday was ripped apart at 10:18AM. I felt it instantly, as befuddled as I was by the noise and the chaos. A piercing shriek came from no discernible direction and every direction, then thunderous explosions, and then the shouts and boot clomps of Marines and soldiers sprinting to bunkers. Well-targeted mortars were landing on Camp Iskandariyah after weeks of relative calm, and they were hitting people this time.

I stumbled into a concrete and sandbag mortar bunker outside Alpha Company's command post and huddled with two dozen men, some wearing little more than their underwear -- night-shift guys jolted from their racks by the blasts. The mortars were hitting seconds apart and not too far from the bunker. A bootless and shaken young Marine lit a cigarette to calm his nerves. "Whachu doing smoking that cigarette," a First Sergeant yelled. "Put that sum' bitch out!"

The Marines' counter battery radar pinpointed two points of origin, one to the north and one to the south. Three minutes after the first round slammed into the base, Marine mortars and artillery were firing back. The men in the bunker cheered. "Yeah, baby!' "Fuck yeah!" Light 'em up." "No mercy!"

I left the bunker and followed a column of black smoke to its source about 100 meters away. A distraught, bearish lieutenant buttonholed me as I raised my camera. "Don't take any pictures of this!" he bellowed. I told him I knew what was off limits to shoot (faces of the dead) and what wasn't. The lieutenant didn't give a shit. His men had been inside the structure, I was told, and not all of them were accounted for. A senior officer, a captain, stepped in. "He can film what he wants," he told the Lieutenant. Then the captain turned to me. "But I don't want to see any pictures of crying Marines," he said firmly. And there were a couple -- none openly weeping, but a few visibly rocked by the carnage and the probable loss of friends. I didn't photograph them.

Between seven and 10 mortars hit the base. One Marine was killed, a serious and responsible young man I went out on a patrol with seven months ago. (His name will be released by the Department of Defense after his family has been notified.) Four Marines were wounded seriously (all are now stable; three will be evacuated to Germany).

Marine commanders dispatched a patrol from the base to inspect the launch sites they fired on. A roadside bomb detonated in the patrol's path. (No one was hurt.) That's standard operating procedure for the insurgents, said Chief Warrant Officer Shaune Conner. "Bait us in" with a mortar attack on the base, "then they hit us with the IEDs," improvised explosive devices, many of which are triggered with mobile phones from huge distances.

As a Marine was cutting the wire from the explosive charge to the telephone trigger on a second bomb, the ring tone started to play the first notes of a Beethoven composition. He snipped in time to prevent the bomb from detonating. Two other unexploded bombs were found nearby.

Other than the IEDs, the patrols that combed the impact sites found nothing," bupkus," no dead insurgents or live suspects, an officer said, but a grunt told me later that Marine mortars and artillery did in fact hit and kill people on the receiving end. He assumed the dead men were those who fired the mortars.

I went to the chow hall after collecting myself. It was buzzing as usual. Marines and soldiers watched the Lakers-Clippers game on satellite TV as they packed away a meal rich in carbs, salt, and fat - institutional spaghetti and meatballs. There is no time for mourning here, it seems.

I spent the rest of the day and evening with Charlie Company, another unit of grunts with Battalion landing Team 1/2. Charlie raided the apartment of a suspected insurgent, but no one was home. A poster of Moqtada al Sadr hung in the living room beside one of Moqtada's father, a respected religious leader killed under the Saddam regime. In the bedroom, they found a videotape and some Shia religious pamphlets. No weapons.

Outside the apartment building in a dirt courtyard a soldier from US Army psyops (psychological operations) tossed campaign information sheets to a crowd of children as if he were scattering bread crusts to peasants. The kids scrapped fiercely for the colorful broadsheets and slips of paper. Adults stayed away from the fray, but they watched the heavily armed men closely and warily.

Gunshots from somewhere deep in the neighborhood ended the circus. Charlie Company gave chase for a few frantic minutes, then it powered down when it became clear they were chasing phantoms. No one offered clues to the source of the gunfire, and no shooters were found. Charlie continued its patrol into the evening, delivering satellite phones to polling stations and responding to the occasional boom in the night. Then it returned to quasi security of the base.

Iskandariyah, Iraq - 1/21/05

Three Iraqi Police officers rolled out of Iskandariyah station last Friday night on a patrol through their city and into Haswah, a neighboring town. Captain Thamood Hassan Haj al-Janabi drove the cruiser, roof lights flashing. Patrolman Ali Mohamed Hassan rode in the back seat. Patrolman Wessam Mohamed Obeid sat next to the captain.

Sometime after 8PM the car, a Mitsubishi Galant with "Police" stenciled in English and Arabic on its baby-blue doors, triggered a roadside bomb. The US military calls these bombs IEDs, improvised explosive devices. This one was rigged from two 122mm artillery shells and detonated with a hardwired device. The wire apparently stretched across the dirt road, but for some reason, the men didn't see it.

I arrived at about 9PM in a lumbering 28,000-pound Light Armored Vehicle with a US Marine patrol, joining Marines, sailors, and Iraqi National Guardsmen already at the scene. US Navy Corpsmen clustered in the bed of a pickup truck around Patrolman Ali, searching his trunk and limbs for wounds and trying to patch them. Ali was unconscious, his clothes shredded. One Marine held the IV that fed into his arm; others aimed flashlights at the holes. Corporal Abramoske, a strapping young Marine from my vehicle, was put to work searching for leg wounds. His hands were covered with blood instantly.

The blast caved in the left side of the police cruiser. Shrapnel ripped through the car's thin metal skin and into all three men. The attackers then shot at the car with rifles, according to guardsmen and Marines, to finish the butchery. The captain caught the full force of the explosion and was killed immediately. Patrolman Wessam died as well. He was slumped in the backseat as if he were sleeping. The bomb savaged the captain.

A dozen members of the Iraqi National Guard, brethren of the Iraqi Police, struggled in the dark to retrieve pieces of the captain's body. They placed what they collected on a red and white scarf spread in the dirt. Marines watched the ING perform their grisly job. One handed the men black trash bags to place under the scarf, which couldn't contain all of the captain. Some Marines helpfully pointed flashlights at the gore, but only Iraqis collected it. The Iraqi translator accompanying my LAV patrol -- the Marines call him "Hoss" -- stood above what was the captain, held out his hands, palms to the black sky, and prayed for the dead men amidst the shouts, rumbling engines, and distant gunshots. Other guardsmen sprinted into the night chasing shadows or suspects, banging on doors, barking orders. Senior US Marines tried to impose some tactical control, but there were simply too many agitated people hurtling about.

A boyish Marine mimicked the guardsmen's Arabic with eruptions of guttural gibberish. "They're careless," another Marine perched atop an LAV told me. The wire that triggered the bomb was obvious, he said. But I wondered later whether this young man ever considered his vehicle's height advantage, six feet of steel and rubber high above the road, against the cruiser's ground-hugging profile. And I wonder continually whether the American men who prosecute the administration's war have any idea what it is like to live in this devastated and abused society. If most do, they don't show it.

They'd be the first to tell you, though, that's not their job. American forces are here to kill insurgents, not empathize with the "hajis" or heal the land. Problem is, with an elusive enemy that moves effortlessly through noncombatant society, the US military's efforts often seem like heart surgery with a backhoe. Wars may be won with brute force, but hearts and minds are won with understanding, patience, commitment, and, with apologies to John Kerry, sensitivity.

Iraqi forces are often the targets of American ire. They're lazy, they run away, they don't want to fight for their country -- I have heard all of these. And I have listened to Iraqi officers attempt to explain to seething Marine commanders why their men evaporate before the first shot is fired in confrontations with insurgents. My guess is, the average guardsman or cop joined for the cash and, quite simply, wants to live. He doesn't see much of an upside in fighting an enemy who can easily find out where he sleeps, where his children go to school, where his wife shops, an enemy who could be his neighbor. Nationalism and civic responsibility are hard to cultivate when there's no actual nation or civil society. There is death, though, and there are angry powerful men with guns and grievances. They have filled the vacuum for now.

A sergeant spotted two men running down an alley and through the front gate of a private home, potential bombers or shooters, he reasoned. I attached myself to the sergeant, Corporal Abramoske, and a handful of grunts. They formed two columns and strode down the alley, hugging walls and storefronts. The Marines fanned out at the entrance to the house identified by the sergeant, M-16s leveled at the metal front gate. Hoss knocked -- banged, really -- and shouted at the occupants to open the gate. A kid, maybe 16 or 17, undid the latch. He looked frightened (I gathered this from his exaggerated smile) but hardly terrified. Hoss translated for the Marines.

Abramoske pulled out a gunpowder residue kit and told the kid, through Hoss, to hold out his hands. The corporal pressed an adhesive strip into both of the boy's palms, then behind his ears. He slipped the strip into a small plastic sleeve that held a liquid-filled vial, then sealed the sleeve. He cracked the vial, releasing the liquid inside the sleeve. No chemical reaction, so no gunpowder, which means this kid probably didn't shoot at the police officers. An older man, the boy's relieved father I assume, offered the Marines cigarettes. "Why the fuck not," said a young grunt as he reached for the smoke. Then the Marines left. No pleasantries, no apologies.

At the weekly security meeting the next day, a member of the Marine Civil Affairs team offered brief condolences to the Iraqi Police officers, men who have lost many comrades in the past year to assassination and injury. Then business as usual began, with some time at the end devoted to the upcoming election.

"This is the most important time in Iraq's history for many people, in their lifetimes," the senior Marine officer, Lt. Col Robert Durkin, told the Americans and Iraqis gathered for the meeting. "Our job is to provide security so that the Iraqi people can vote in safety." Marine commanders held a separate meeting on Sunday here at Camp Iskandariyah, with no Iraqis, to discuss and refine their security plan. Marines are not to enter polling places unless explicitly directed by higher ups, and they must not have any contact with ballots. Their job is to maintain a security perimeter around polling sites, an additional line of defense behind the Iraqi security forces.

Today, Monday, two explosions rattled windows here at the base. "IED," said the lieutenant I was talking to, rather nonchalantly. No audible boom, just juddering and shuddering of fixtures. The concussive force of a roadside bomb radiates over miles, he told me. I had forgotten that. A third explosion nearly blew open the steel door to the lieutenant's room. I asked around, but no one could tell me what had blown up. "It wasn't Marines, though," said one. We would have heard the whisking rotors of medical evacuation helicopters taking off if that had been the case. I'll keep asking.

These recent incidents may be part of a national pattern of preelection violence that started a few weeks ago. Or not. At any rate, I'll be here for the election, and I will most likely be with the Marines, keeping my head down and my eyes open. I am hoping for calm and order. Nothing more, nothing less.