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T
WOFER
O
ne day we were out on an op near Sunset and another street,
which came off on a T intersection. Dauber and I were up on a
roof, watching to see what the locals were up to. Dauber had just
gone off the gun for a break. As I pulled up my scope, I spotted
two guys coming down the street toward me on a moped.
The guy on the back had a backpack. As I was watching, he
dropped the backpack into a pothole.
He wasn’t dropping the mail; he was setting an IED.
“Y’all gotta watch this,” I told Dauber, who picked up his
binoculars.
I let them get to about 150 yards away before I fired my .300
Win Mag. Dauber, watching through the binos, said it was like a
scene from
Dumb and Dumber
. The bullet went through the first
guy and into the second. The moped wobbled, then veered into a
wall.
Two guys with one shot. The taxpayer got good bang for his
buck on that one.
T
he shot ended up being controversial. Because of the IED, the
Army sent some people over to the scene. But it took them
something like six hours to get there. Traffic backed up, and it was
impossible for me, or anyone else, to watch the pothole for the
entire time. Further complicating things, the Marines took down a
dump truck suspected of being a mobile IED on the same road.
Traffic backed up all over the place, and naturally the IED
disappeared.
Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have been a problem. But a few days
earlier we had noticed a pattern: mopeds would ride past a COP a
few minutes before and after an attack, obviously scouting the place
and then getting intel on the attack. We requested to be cleared hot
to shoot anyone on a moped. The request was denied.
The lawyers or someone in the chain of command probably
thought I was blowing them off when they heard about my double
shot. The JAG—Judge Advocate General, kind of like a military
version of a prosecuting attorney—came out and investigated.
Fortunately, there were plenty of witnesses to what had
happened. But I still had to answer all the JAG’s questions.
Meanwhile, the insurgents kept using mopeds and gathering
intelligence. We watched them closely, and destroyed every parked
moped we came across in houses and yards, but that was the most
we could do.
Maybe legal expected us to wave and smile for the cameras.
I
t would have been tough to go and just blatantly shoot people in
Iraq. For one thing, there were always plenty of witnesses around.
For another, every time I killed someone in Ramadi I had to write a
shooter’s statement on it.
No joke.
This was a report, separate from after-action reports, related
only to the shots I took and kills I recorded. The information had to
be very specific.
I had a little notebook with me, and I’d record the day, the time,
details about the person, what he was doing, the round I used, how
many shots I took, how far away the target was, and who
witnessed the shot. All that went into the report, along with any
other special circumstances.
The head shed claimed it was to protect me in case there was
ever an investigation for an unjustified kill, but what I think I was
really doing was covering the butts of people much further up the
chain of command.
We kept a running tally of how many insurgents we shot, even
during the worst firefights. One of our officers was always tasked
with getting his own details on the shooting; he, in turn, would relay
it back by radio. There were plenty of times when I was still
engaging insurgents and giving details to LT or another officer at the
same time. It got to be such a pain in the ass that one time when the
officer came to ask the details on my shot, I told him it was a kid
waving at me. It was just a sick joke I made. It was my way
of
saying, “
....
off.”
The red tape of war.
I
’m not sure how widespread the shooter statements were. For me,
the process began during my second deployment when I was
working on Haifa Street. In that case, someone else filled them out
for me.
I’m pretty sure it was all CYA—cover your ass, or, in this case,
cover the top guy’s ass.
We were slaughtering the enemy. In Ramadi, with our kill total
becoming astronomical, the statements became mandatory and
elaborate. I’d guess that the CO or someone on his staff saw the
numbers and said that the lawyers might question what was going
on, so let’s protect ourselves.
Great way to fight a war—be prepared to defend yourself for
winning.
What a pain in the ass. I’d joke that it wasn’t worth shooting
someone. (On the other hand, that’s one way I know exactly how
many people I “officially” killed.)
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