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E
VIL
I
had never known that much about Islam. Raised as a Christian,
obviously I knew there had been religious conflicts for centuries. I
knew about the Crusades, and I knew that there had been fighting
and atrocities forever.
But I also knew that Christianity had evolved from the Middle
Ages. We don’t kill people because they’re a different religion.
The people we were fighting in Iraq, after Saddam’s army fled
or was defeated, were fanatics. They hated us because we weren’t
Muslim. They wanted to kill us, even though we’d just booted out
their dictator, because we practiced a different religion than they
did.
Isn’t religion supposed to teach tolerance?
P
eople say you have to distance yourself from your enemy to kill
him. If that’s true, in Iraq, the insurgents made it really easy.
The fanatics we fought valued nothing but their twisted
interpretation of religion. And half the time they just
claimed
they
valued their religion—most didn’t even pray. Quite a number were
drugged up so they could fight us.
Many of the insurgents were cowards. They routinely used drugs
to stoke their courage. Without them, alone, they were nothing. I
have a tape somewhere showing a father and a girl in a house that
was being searched. They were downstairs; for some reason, a
flash-bang went off upstairs.
On the video, the father hides behind the girl, afraid that he’s
going to be killed and ready to sacrifice his daughter.
H
IDDEN
B
ODIES
T
hey may have been cowards, but they could certainly kill people.
The insurgents didn’t worry about ROEs or court-martials. If they
had the advantage, they would kill any Westerner they could find,
whether they were soldiers or not.
One day we were sent to a house where we had heard there
might be U.S. prisoners. We didn’t find anyone in the building. But
in the basement, there were obvious signs that the dirt had been
disturbed. So we set up lights and started digging.
It wasn’t long before I saw a pants leg, then a body, freshly
buried.
An American soldier. Army.
Next to him was another. Then another man, this one wearing
Marine camis.
My brother had joined the Marines a little before 9/11. I hadn’t
heard from him, and I thought that he had deployed to Iraq.
For some reason, as I helped pull the dead body up, I was sure
it was my brother.
It wasn’t. I said a silent prayer and we kept digging.
Another body, another Marine. I bent over and forced myself to
look.
Not him.
But now, with each man we pulled out of that grave—and there
were a bunch—I was more and more convinced I was going to see
my brother. My stomach tightened. I kept digging. I wanted to
puke.
Finally, we were done. He wasn’t there.
I felt a moment of relief, even elation—none of them were my
brother. Then I felt tremendous sadness for the murdered young
men whose bodies we had pulled out.
W
hen I finally heard from my brother, I found out that even though
he was in Iraq, he hadn’t been anywhere near where I’d seen those
bodies. He’d had his own scares and hard times, I’m sure, but
hearing his voice just made me feel a lot better.
I was still big brother, hoping to protect him. Hell, he didn’t need
me to watch over him; he was a Marine, and a tough one. But
somehow those old instincts never go away.
A
t another location, we found barrels of chemical material that was
intended for use as biochemical weapons. Everyone talks about
there being no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but they seem
to be referring to completed nuclear bombs, not the many deadly
chemical weapons or precursors that Saddam had stockpiled.
Maybe the reason is that the writing on the barrels showed that
the chemicals came from France and Germany, our supposed
Western allies.
The thing I always wonder about is how much Saddam was able
to hide before we actually invaded. We’d given so much warning
before we came in, that he surely had time to move and bury tons of
material. Where it went, where it will turn up, what it will poison—I
think those are pretty good questions that have never been
answered.
O
ne day we saw some things in the desert and thought they were
buried IEDs. We called the bomb-disposal people and they came
out. Lo and behold, what they found wasn’t a bomb—it was an
airplane.
Saddam had buried a bunch of his fighters in the desert. He had
them covered with plastic and then tried to hide them. Probably he
figured we’d come through like we did in Desert Storm, hit quick
and then leave.
He was wrong about that.
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