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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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March 13th,
2007 - Tables Turn Quickly in Baghdad Raids |
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Tables Turn Quickly in
Baghdad Raids U.S.-Iraqi forces seize suspects and weapons, only to come under fire
as their mission wraps up in an insurgent stronghold. By Christian Berthelsen Los Angeles Times March 13, 2007 Baghdad - The U.S.-led
convoy had been idling for at least an hour, waiting for a bomb squad to
detonate a sizable haul of explosives uncovered in raids on the Iskan
neighborhood of south Baghdad, a dense warren of narrow streets teeming with
Sunni insurgents and roadside bombs. It had been a successful
morning: The U.S. forces, working alongside Iraqi national police, had
detained 10 men in raids on the homes of suspected insurgents and had
uncovered a homemade rocket launcher, two rifles and a cache of mortar
rounds. Then there was an explosion,
but not the one they were waiting for: The convoy was under attack. Snipers had thrown a
grenade, which was followed by the loud, rapid hammer of automatic weapons
fire from a rooftop and from behind a fuel tank. American and Iraqi soldiers
took and returned fire. No one was hit, and the snipers melted back into the
neighborhood. So went another typical day
in the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown against an unseen enemy. As the forces try to restore
calm to the Iraqi capital, they have moved largely without incident into
neighborhoods dominated by Shiite Muslim extremists whose leaders are allies
of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government. But in districts dominated
by Sunni Arab insurgents and their foreign compatriots, the U.S.-led forces
are facing a much larger and bloody challenge. The Iskan neighborhood and
the larger Dora district may be the biggest stronghold of the Al Qaeda in
Iraq network in Baghdad, and U.S.-led forces seeking to bring order are
regularly coming under attack here. The troops of the Army's 2nd Brigade,
12th Infantry Regiment, from Ft. Carson, Colo., search for insurgents and
weapons with information provided to the Iraqi national police by detainees
and informants. The Shiite-dominated police
are a fledgling, and some might say ragtag, force. They wear mismatched
uniforms, and not all have boots. Still, U.S. soldiers give them high marks
for obtaining quality intelligence. Off to an early start For the more than 30
American soldiers assigned to enter Iskan on Sunday, the day began when they
rolled out of Forward Operating Base Falcon, a few miles south, at 3 a.m.
Their goal was to capture a highly sought sniper who had been wounded in a
previous gun battle with U.S.-led forces and to search for hidden caches of
weapons. The plan was to meet their
Iraqi counterparts at their base and begin the raids by 4 a.m., while still
under the cover of darkness. Once at the Iraqi national police outpost,
however, there were other priorities. The Iraqi officers invited
the Americans to join them for a breakfast of tea, flatbread and hard-boiled
eggs. The informants, who were brought in to review maps and confirm targets,
disagreed on locations. The original plan was mostly scrapped, in favor of
fewer targets. As a result, the U.S. asked the Iraqis to reduce the size of
their force, but they demurred. By then it was nearly 5 a.m. After a slow crawl into the
crowded neighborhood, the convoy stopped and the soldiers jumped down from
their Humvees, running low and fast through the street. They raided two
homes, separating the wailing women and girls from the frightened and silent
men and boys. No weapons were found in
either household and the occupants insisted they had done nothing wrong. In
one of the houses, a soldier found a portrait of former Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein, which he threw on the floor. They also found multiple fake
identification cards for one man. A witness identified two men
in one of the houses as insurgents; they were blindfolded, zip-cuffed and
placed in the back of an Iraqi national police truck. Through an interpreter,
a soldier asked a young boy what his older brother did for a living. "He
digs in the road," was the reply. Two men were taken from the
home across the road as well. When the sun came up, it was
on to the sniper's house. He wasn't there, but he seemed to have known they
were coming. About 10 minutes before the soldiers arrived, he called a friend
who was staying there and told him to run. Now the man was hopping fences and
scrambling through yards trying to escape. Soldiers caught him outside
a house around the block. He claimed he lived there, but the occupants denied
it. He was taken back to the
other house, in the hopes he could lure the sniper back by calling him on his
cellphone and telling him it was safe to return. The man vomited at the
thought and refused to cooperate. The U.S. and Iraqi forces
then tried to force the information from him. ‘Good cop, bad cop’ time "He needs to tell me
something, or I will walk up and down the street with him until someone
shoots him," the leader of the squad, Capt. Joseph Schwankhaus, said
through the interpreter. "I can't help,"
the man replied. "They will kill me." Schwankhaus tried to get the
Iraqi officers to help. "We gotta explain
something to you, 'Good cop, bad cop,'" he said to his Iraqi
counterpart. "You should be standing here, saying you're going to beat
him to death and cut off his fingers." Still no dice. The man was
blindfolded and put in the truck. Meanwhile, Iraqi police
officers dug up more than two dozen mortars rounds they found buried in the
flowerbed of the abandoned house next door. Not long after, a U.S.
soldier found the rocket launcher on the sniper's roof, and still another
found two rifles, wrapped in cloth and plastic, hidden under a pile of
bricks. ‘Fire in the hole!’ Now it was fully daylight,
and time to move on to other targets. But soldiers found another cache of
homemade explosive powder, propane tanks and a detonator, and decided to call
the bomb squad to detonate the materiel on-site. Thus began the interminable
wait, with the convoy idling on an access road. Some of the soldiers were
nodding off when the grenade exploded; suddenly, it seemed, there was gunfire
everywhere. Pfc. Vincent Rabago, a 21-year-old Humvee gunner from Long Beach,
wheeled in his turret to fire, but his mounted machine gun jammed. He picked
up his M-4 rifle and began shooting. Just as suddenly as it began, the attack
was over. Helicopters were called in but saw nothing. First Sgt. Jim Naughton, the
second in command of the group, issued an order. "Anybody on a rooftop
is [going] down," he said. "I'll bet you anything" that's the
sniper. More time passed. Finally
the bomb squad arrived. They packed the explosives into an abandoned house
and told the convoy and the helicopters above to move away. "Fire in the
hole!" came the call over the radio. The deafening explosion demolished
the house. It was finally time to go.
But one of the Humvees had a flat tire. Time seemed to slow to a crawl again,
as the soldiers changed the tire, fully exposed to the neighborhood. As the troops finally drove
off, automatic gunfire cracked through the air again. No one could see where
it was coming from. Back at the Iraqi police
station, soldiers focused on the solid haul of evidence and the lack of
casualties. Some said they were impressed with the Iraqi officers' efforts. "They found more stuff
than we did," said Staff Sgt. Joseph Staver of Grayslake, Ill.
"Those dudes can sniff out anything that's out there. If there is a
cache out there they can find it." For others, thoughts turned
to memories of home. Spc. Peter Medina, 21, of San Pedro thought of his wife
and 1-year-old child, and good Mexican food and In-N-Out burgers. "I'm just counting the
days till I get back," he said. External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-sunni13mar13,1,2798856.story |