Incredible Salon Article on the Fighting in Sadr City

[markses]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/07/12/patrol/index.html

In his room at the base in Sadr City, as Butler began telling me the story of what happened on April 4 he was calm and even. But once he got going, he talked without pausing for two hours. His account of April 4 reminded me of torture victims curing themselves though speech, a deliberate purging of events from his mind. Stories poured out of him. The most wrenching part of Butler's experience was the death of his close friend, Spc. Ahmed Cason, who was shot as he stood in the Humvee gunner's well a few inches away. Butler, along with the other members of the platoon, had taken several turns, heading deeper into the city where the fighting intensified, driving into what would quickly become a citywide ambush. When he described how much shooting was coming down from the rooftops, Butler pantomimed rain.

"Some guys were frozen, scared, they were gone, they were just lost. That's when Cason was hit. After he got hit, he dropped down, then he got back up and started shooting. I didn't think he was hurt that bad. Then he dropped down and he was bleeding all over the Humvee. Crabbe, the medic, started pulling off his clothes, doing first aid. I asked how he was doing and Crabbe told me, 'We need to get him out right now.'" The entire city was firing from the buildings on the broad avenues. One Alpha Company gunner told me, "You could see the battlefield just opening out in front of your eyes. It was amazing," and he shook his head in disbelief.

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After the ICDC soldier with the wounded sense of honor fired his rifle into the light and heat of Sadr City, we piled quickly back into the Bradleys and drove a few blocks until the vehicle in front of us threw a wheel and broke down. It was intensely depressing. No vehicle in the convoy could leave until the damaged machine could roll under its own power. To pass the time I talked to the kids who darted out to the median when they saw the U.S. soldiers. "Write 'Moqtada is good,'" a 9-year-old said. "Write it." I made a show of taking notes, then asked him his name. "Moqtada!" the thin kid with a shock of brown hair shouted. "My name is Moqtada!" The other boys laughed, elbowed one another and stared. I asked another young boy standing next to the first kid for his name. "Moqtada!" And you? "Moqtada!" Seven boys said their names were Moqtada, and thought it was most serious joke in the world. The seven Moqtadas vanished back into the alleys.

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An al-Mahdi Army fighter I know named Muhanned, a young man I met two months ago in a Sadr City safe house, had told me how he was fighting the Americans in the area around the Hekma mosque, the central meeting place for the Mahdi Army leaders. Muhanned is the leader of a cell of young men in his neighborhood who move around, mostly at night, waiting for U.S. patrols and then ambushing them. Muhanned's technique is to attack and then disappear into the alleyways. When I learned about Butler's routes through Sadr City, it was clear that there was a connection -- Muhanned and his cell were attacking Butler's company. Butler patrols the area around the mosque, as he has done for months, and Muhanned lives inside Alpha Company's area of operations, planning and executing ambushes. The two men are joined by the invisible current of the war but they do not know each other. In coming to know both men I cannot shake the feeling that the conflict in Sadr City is nothing more than an unnecessary machine for mass-producing grief.

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D'oh. I am Spartacus?

[tomreedtoon]

1. A dreadful feeling about those soldiers.

In the article, they mention that someone sprayed the words "Vietnam Street" on a wall. This war is turning into something worse than Vietnam. At least there was occasional material support in Vietnam, and regular troops cycling in and out. The grunts could see a light at the end of the tunnel. Not the guys in Sadr City.

People I know have claimed the second half of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is slow, and doesn't insult Bush enough. I don't think it had to. It needed to show what our soldiers were going through there.