TIME: Exclusive: Iraqi
Commander Says, "We Didn't Find a Mosque" (&
reaction)
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
After a bloody raid against anti-U.S. militias in
Baghdad, the war of words rages on
By
MICHAEL WARE / BAGHDAD
When is a mosque not a mosque? Under US military
rules of engagement it's when it's used to house
weapons, hostages and gunmen firing on
American-backed Iraqi special forces. So it was in
Sunday's explosive raid in a Baghdad quarter
controlled by a Shi'ite, anti-American militia.
Primed to bust up a vicious kidnapping cell linked to
an insurgent group, Iraqi commandos and elite
counterterrorism force members, with their US
counterparts in a supporting role, swooped on a
target building they insist was bristling with armed
fighters. By the time they'd left a hostage had been
rescued, 16 men were dead, three wounded, and 18
taken prisoner. But what followed took everyone by
surprise.
In the 30 minutes it took the soldiers to drive back
to their heavily-fortified compound their raid was in
the spotlight, splashing across television with
claims that the 16 men had been butchered as they
gathered prayerfully in a mosque. Soon pictures
showed bloodied bodies broken and prone over prayer
mats, without a weapon in sight (US army photos
showed the exact opposite; dead men, weapons draped,
not a prayer mat to be seen). Any military success
the men of the 1st and 2nd Battalions, 1st Iraqi
Special Operations Forces Brigade had was quickly
swamped by a political and propaganda firestorm.
While Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a line of US
generals hit the airwaves to deny the allegations and
counter that the images had been staged, no-one had
heard from the men on the ground who'd stormed the
complex, nor from the man the world was being told
had been freed. That is until today. In a palace
complex deep within a US base the Iraqi commander who
led the raid and the liberated hostage both spoke to
TIME, giving their first public accounts of that
day's fateful events and largely confirming the U.S.
claims.
"We didn't find a mosque," says the Iraqi special
forces commander, striking deep at the heart of the
allegations against his men. "We only killed men who
were armed and firing at us." Though the building has
been through several incarnations in past years --
from political party branch under Saddam, to an
office space to what is said to have been a school --
local leaders claim it is now a hussaniyah, a Shi'ite
mosque, and should have had protected status.
The young officer says his men didn't find prayer
mats or books or any of the usual elements of an
Islamic house of worship. Instead, he says, they
found the instruments of torture; drills, electrical
wires, and other 'tools.' "It is a place used by a
political party," he says, having sustained intense,
unrelenting fire from houses facing the building on
three sides as his men entered. "Other rooms were
offices." Based on the evidence his men retrieved --
including weapons caches and bombmaking materials --
it's clear the site was used by an armed militia, he
maintains, with some of its members linked to
security forces, and others to a notorious kidnapping
ring.
For the still-shaken hostage, a mouse of a man unable
to look a western female television interviewer in
the eyes nor shake her hand, there was no sense of a
holy place. Grabbed at a Baghdad hospital while
visiting a brother being treated for gunshot wounds,
he said his captors initially told him they were
intelligence officers from the Ministry of Interior,
a department western officials privately claim is
stacked with Iranian-backed militia forces.
They beat him in the car as they barreled off. When
they arrived he was blindfolded and beaten some more,
his pockets emptied, and a picture of his young
daughter rifled from his wallet. "Who is this?" a
captor quizzed. "This is my daughter," he says he
replied, "Can I ask you a favour? Can I kiss that
picture before you kill me?" The price for his
release, he was warned, was $20,000 by morning -- or
he would never see his daughter again. To drive home
the point they lifted his blindfold just enough to
let him see bare electrical wires, with a promise
that's what awaited him come nightfall. "They said
they would take drugs and begin torturing me, that
they'd go crazy," he told TIME.
Twelve hours into his ordeal the attack on the
hideout began. The man is currently hard of hearing,
thanks to a gunman he could never see because of the
blindfold who opened fire next to his head with a PKC
machine gun. Once the firing close to him stopped he
could tell the special forces had breached the
perimeter. "I'm the guy kidnapped, I'm the guy
kidnapped," he hollered. He was urged to come out,
and a soldier put his hand on his shoulder. "We've
come to rescue you," he was told.
The freed man, the marks of his bondage still on his
wrists, tells the same story as his rescuers. "It's
not a prayer place," he says. Well, who controlled it
then, was it a militia? "I can't answer because I'm
scared. It's not just me, all Iraqis are scared [of
the militia]," he timidly replies.
If nothing else this incident, which has seized the
public and political focus in Iraq, shows that in a
war of perception reality is not always the clincher.
Both sides continue to contradict each other; and
though a number of investigations have been launched,
evincing the truth may no longer matter quite so much
as it should. As an American officer conceded,
echoing many before over the past three years, in the
propaganda game "the enemy information operations
machine is very sophisticated, they're constantly
beating us to the punch." An American soldier who
advised on the scene during the raid pressed the same
point. "We could have come out with our side straight
away too, but first it has to go up the chain and
then come back down," he says. Such a careful,
drawn-out process, it seems, may be a luxury the
military can ill afford.
* * * * *
* * * * * * *
[This
is a blog entry posted in response to the above
article. I'm including it here because the writer --
whose bio reads "I've been an enlisted airborne
infantryman, infantry platoon leader, cavalry scout
platoon leader, infantry company commander, and
mobile public affairs detachment commander. I served
in Iraq in 2004..." -- has seen Mick in action and
describes his respect for his work.
--Cyn]
SUNDAY,
APRIL 02, 2006
Fratricide - Why PAO's are taking friendly
fire
An article on Time.com, Iraqi
Commander Says, 'We Didn't Find a Mosque'
by Mick
Ware provides good insight on why the U.S. is losing
the war against insurgent and terrorist propaganda in
Iraq. The last paragraph says it all:
"We
could have come out with our side straight away too,
but first it has to go up the chain and then come
back down," he says. Such a careful, drawn out
process, it seems, may be a luxury the military can
ill afford.
This comes just 45 days or so after Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld raked public affairs officers
(PAO) over the coals for having a "nine to five"
mentality in a 24 hour media cycle. His comments did
not play well with PAOs, who have worked their
behinds off all over the word to stay ahead of their
media-cautious bosses and insurgent/terrorist
propagandists. At a conference in Washington D.C.,
the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the
Army, and Chief of Public Affairs all had to answer
questions from PAOs about why the Secretary was
calling them out. Not one gave a viable answer why.
The reason: they know Rumsfeld says what's on his
mind, and doesn't normally backtrack. And to my
knowledge, he hasn't.
Leave it to Mick Ware to place the blame into proper
perspective - it's with the chain of command, not the
PAOs. Mick is arguably the smartest journalist
operating in Iraq. He knows how the insurgents and
terrorists think. I once watched him make a G2 [an
Army intelligence officer assigned to a General]
squirm with his spot-on analysis of what was going on
in Mosul - before it was overrun by insurgents in
November 04. He writes extraordinary stories about
Soldiers in battle, some of the best, if not the
best, written about U.S. Soldiers in battle. He'll be
the first to ask tough, insightful questions. He's
respectful, but not afraid to press the issue.
But Mick also tells it like it is, and he's right on
in this case. If you are sitting here in America, all
you heard about this "event" was how outraged the
Iraqi government was, how this was slowing down the
political process, and how American Special Forces
Soldiers had shot up of this "mosque" as evidenced by
their 5.6 shell casings. Coming out with an exclusive
from Time 3-4 days AFTER you've already been drawn
and quartered in the international press to get your
side out is not the way to do business in Iraq. But
somehow, somewhere, someone in the chain kept this
story from getting out. No PAO in their right mind
sat on this one, unless the SF community got in the
way and botched this one, as they are apt to do when
it comes to public affairs. It wouldn't take long for
some PAO to put two and two together after the video
started running on network TV and start to fire
counter-battery.
The Information Operations "counter-battery" exercise
is a tried and true method exercised by the 1st
Infantry Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom II.
In MG (ret.) John R.S. Batiste's excellent article
"The Fight for Samarra: Full-Spectrum Operations in
Modern Warfare," Batiste outlines how the 1st ID PAO
and IO officer quickly attacked propaganda and
unsubstantiated media reports. With this kind of
support, the 1st ID PAO could quickly counter
insurgent/terrorist propaganda with truthful
information, without the bureaucracy of the chain of
command. The PAO was "empowered" to do his job, and
had the support of the staff to do so. With this kind
of backing, working within the chain of command is
not burdensome. Rather, it ensures everyone in the
chain is on the same page.
We live in a media age where message deliverance is
key. It must happen immediately and be seamless. The
insurgents/terrorists know that in our flash minute
society, their message of U.S. troops attacking a
mosque was received, and the image burned in the mind
of the viewer. By the time a coherent response was
developed, and backed with the kind of facts that
Mick Ware puts in his article, it's too late.
I recently spoke with a PAO who lamented the fact
that when an prominent news organization wanted to
get an Iraqi general of their program, the chain of
command took so long to come to a decision that the
outlet backed out. In the end, so did the Army. But
the message was clear - it just wasn't important
enough.
It seemed that in OIF III a conscious decision was
made to cut division level PAOs out of the media
business, and to refer all media calls to Iraq's
JCCs. A good move no doubt - it put an Iraqi
face/spokesperson out front. But it took the
information initiative out of the hands of some
outstanding PAOs, pushing them to the sidelines. It's
time to get back out in front, and stay in front. It
took too long to get the message out about the
alleged mosque attack, giving the
insurgents/terrorists ample time to concoct their own
version, and get it out as truth. Let PAOs do their
jobs. A BCT or battalion commander has incredible
latitude on the battlefield. Our PAOs should have the
same latitude to get their job done. They're
qualified professionals, at the pinnacle of the
career in the information fight.
It's great to hear from you Mick. From the "sickest
PAO" in all Iraq, and on behalf of our PAOs on the
front line, we thank you.
http://militarymediapolitics.blogspot.com/2006/04/fratricide-why-paos-are-taking.html