Like always, the din from the rotors of the Black Hawk was overwhelming. As though the whole picture were on mute, the rotorwash drowning out all other noise, I watched as Colonel Mike Meese GS '00, my professor for a Wilson School course last spring, climbed silently into the helicopter and buckled up across from me, followed by three more soldiers in bulky armor.
Then Col. Meese's voice crackled loudly over the intercom: "Sir! This is Wes Morgan!" I couldn't see who the colonel was talking to since the cabin was so cramped, but I knew a moment before I heard the reply, "Good to have you with us, Wesley. Glad to finally meet you."
As the officer next to me pushed back to make way, another gray-clad, armored soldier leaned across the crowded space of the cabin to shake my hand. It was definitely him: four stars on his hat, four more on his armor, the face you see on the news and a nametag that read "Petraeus."
Change of plans
I'd gotten up Saturday morning at the end of an amazing week embedded with the 1-14 Stryker Cavalry, expecting a long morning before heading over to the embassy landing zone to get going for the day. I'd learned the previous afternoon that I was going to spend Saturday on a "battlefield circulation" with Gen. David Petraeus GS '85 — a tour of a unit's area of operations (AO) with the general, some of his staff and four or five members of the media. The plan was for me to get a ride over to the International Zone landing zone around noon, where Petraeus' two helicopters would stop on the way up to the day's battlefield to pick up me and the other reporters.
At 9 a.m., though, as I sat in the 1-14's hajji cafe having my breakfast (they make a very good white chocolate mocha) and reading "Stars and Stripes," two public affairs officers rushed up in a huff and told me to grab my armor and bags right away — there had been a change of plans, and I had to be at the landing zone right away for transport to Camp Victory, where Petraeus and his command, Multi-National Force Iraq (MNF-I) are headquartered.
I hurriedly armored up and grabbed my gear, filling up my CamelBak on the ride to the landing zone, where Lt. Col. Joe Yoswa from MNF-I public affairs was waiting for me with a bit more of an explanation: "The [general] is meeting with the attorney general this morning before the battlefield circ, and he wants to introduce you, so let's go!" I climbed into the lead bird, buckled up and we were off.
After the quick ride from the IZ to Camp Victory, the pair of Black Hawks touched down at the landing zone next to al-Faw Palace, the headquarters of MNF-I. A few minutes on the tarmac, and then all of a sudden there they were — Col. Meese, the other soldiers and then Petraeus himself, leaning over for a handshake.
I got out a dazed "Honored to meet you, sir," or something like that as the bird lifted off, then touched down again a minute later. After peeling off our armor, the whole party jumped out of the helicopter and filed toward a nondescript military building, Petraeus leading the group while asking me about my fall course lineup (he seemed to approve, and said he knew the professor for my history course on Vietnam, retired Col. Paul Miles. This was actually not surprising, since the general seems to know pretty much everyone affiliated with West Point, Princeton or unconventional warfare, and Miles is all three).
After Petraeus and his colonels and majors had all put some thought into how to arrange the chairs and tables, the door from the tarmac opened, and a gaggle of people came in, guarded by non-uniformed security types with M4s. At the center of the pack was then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Petraeus brought him up to the front table, then called me over and introduced me before having everyone take their seats and beginning the briefing.
From Phantom Thunder to Phantom Strike
The briefing was classified, but I can give the gist of it for background.
In a detailed set of maps and charts of enemy and coalition activity, Petraeus briefed Gonzales and his staff with a picture of operations and conditions. The primary effect of June and July's Operation Phantom Thunder, as intended, was to push al-Qaeda and its affiliates out of Baquba and Arab Jabour, while preventing them from moving west again into Anbar. The offensive had apparently accomplished its goal — Baquba and Arab Jabour remained very difficult areas, but nobody's planning on pulling out of them, while Anbar, and particularly Ramadi, remain phenomenally secure as a result of the Army and Marines' cooperation with the tribes.
At the time of this briefing, MNF-I was about to launch a second offensive to follow up the successes in Baquba and Arab Jabour, called Operation Phantom Strike. The goal of this operation was to pursue al-Qaeda and other Sunni elements that had been disrupted in June and July as they shifted to new areas. To shape the offensive, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's special operations forces (SOF) had been aggressively hunting enemy leadership, both Sunni and Shiite, for weeks; I learned a lot about how SOF operations complemented MNF-I's Phantom Thunder and Phantom Strike offensives, but obviously I can't write about that.
As a result, al-Qaeda had been displaced into rural areas in the Baghdad belts, particularly the villages south of Arab Jabour, north of Baquba and between Baquba and Tarmiya — in the latter case, a Sunni-Shiite fault line. The new offensive, combined with the SOF operations, was really the second of two stages in clearing the belts: Phantom Thunder aimed to displace al-Qaeda from its fortified urban strongholds in Baquba and Arab Jabour, while Phantom Strike was designed to both prevent the organization from settling into the rural areas of the belts and target any Mahdi Army activity in neighboring rural areas. The offensive was mainly aimed at Sunni groups, but by no means neglected the Mahdi Army and other Shiite groups: As Petraeus put it, using an Army phrase, "We are not letting the Shiite militias take a knee."
Camp Taji
After the presentation, Gonzales asked Petraeus how the Justice Department could help the war effort, and then the general, his staff and I armored up, went back to the Black Hawks and took off. On the helicopter, I sat across from Sadi Othman, Petraeus' towering interpreter and "cultural adviser," a friend of Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, who's been very helpful to me.
The birds flew north across the villages and farmland northwest of Baghdad and touched down on the tarmac of Camp Taji, a huge base that is the headquarters for three of the 20 brigades in Iraq.
Inside a building next to the landing zone, the general's first order of business was lunch with a group of soldiers from 4-9 Stryker Infantry, one of the brigade's battalions, which I was allowed to join. The battalion leadership, including some company commanders — one of whom had been wounded and was about to go home for surgery — and first sergeants were all there, and after giving them a brief rundown of the situation in Iraq from his perspective, Petraeus went around the table and asked each of them for the most important lesson they'd learned since arriving in Iraq and their what plans were for their next assignment.
As they answered, the general listened and then gave feedback. When one captain said that he had learned that "the counterinsurgency tactics everyone talks about really do work," Petraeus seemed gratified and talked for a while about the mix of kinetic and non-kinetic tactics. ("A lot of people think of me as Mr. Non-Kinetic," he said, "and that's not true ... We are not going to kill our way out of this thing, but, that said, there are irreconcilables who need to be killed or taken in.")
As for their post-deployment plans, all three first-sergeants said they were waiting on the upcoming sergeant majors list for possible promotions, while the captains had a variety of different answers: One hoped to go straight to another combat unit, but others, with a little trepidation, said that they were hoping to go to grad school or to teach ROTC at their alma maters.
Petraeus didn't try to talk them out of the non-combat assignments, as they were clearly expecting he would. Instead, he talked about how critical he'd found his time at Princeton, had me pipe up about the value of experienced leaders as ROTC instructors and reassured them: "It's okay to take a knee for a couple years after you've done two deployments. Which isn't to say that grad school or ROTC aren't hard assignments — you'll be working, and I'll tell you, there were times at Princeton when I thought, 'Why on Earth am I putting myself through this when I could have gone to the Ranger Regiment?' " That got a couple of laughs.
Next up was a briefing on the area of operations by Col. Jon Lehr, the commander of the 4th Stryker Brigade, and his staff officers. Again, it was for background only.
The brigade's sector, Col. Lehr explained, is split into three parts for three battalions: the west bank of the Tigris around Tarmiya, under 4-9 Infantry, the east bank out to Bani Saad, under 2-1 Cavalry and the southern part around Husseiniya, under 2-12 Field Artillery (2-1 and 4-9 are Stryker units, but 2-12 is not). Since 4th Stryker Brigade is one the "surge" brigades, its sector was never patrolled in any kind of strength before, allowing al-Qaeda to settle in pretty thoroughly in some villages.
In oversimplified form, the situation in the sector is this: 2-1 deals with the southern edges of the Baquba problem, including both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias; 4-9 is in a Sunni area that has been infested by al-Qaeda since winter, and where many al-Qaeda fighters fled from Baquba; and 2-12 has a mostly Shiite area, particularly on the east bank and in the town of Husseiniya, a summer flashpoint of Mahdi Army resistance.
The entire brigade sector, but particularly 4-9's area, is pretty rough, with tons of roadside bombs and even firefights between U.S. and enemy forces. There are Iranian-made anti-vehicle explosive devices in the area as well, in both Sunni and Shiite hands; the brigade intelligence officer brought a defused one out to be passed around.
Petraeus then gave out "commander's coins" to a group of soldiers, which are symbols of his appreciation of soldiers who have excelled in their duties. I met the other journalists coming on the battlefield circulation: a network news guy and his cameraman, an Arabic-speaking print reporter and a Washington Post reporter named Megan Greenwell. She was another of the fascinating journalists I met in Iraq, though in a different way from the hardcore war correspondents: She barely looked older than me, and it turned out that she graduated from Barnard in 2006.
2-12 Field Artillery
As soon as the ceremony was over, the party moved back to the tarmac and onto the helicopters for the ride to the first of two field outposts Petraeus would be visiting. This one belonged to the 2-12 Field Artillery, which is effectively serving as a provisional Humvee-borne infantry unit.
Before actually landing at the first outpost, which was not far from the Shiite town of Husseiniya, we viewed the surrounding area from above, with Col. Lehr and 2-12's commander, Lt. Col. John Drago, acting as aerial tour guides, answering Petraeus' questions about demographics, patrol frequency and everything else. From the air, with a flight of Apache attack helicopters providing overwatch, we could see wide open terrain, with villages here and there, a large power station, two respectably sized towns and roads crisscrossing the countryside with Humvees and local traffic moving along them. The tour complete, the Black Hawk dropped down to land on the stretch of road outside the outpost. In a huge dust cloud, we piled out of the bird on both sides and ran to the gate of the outpost.
In the courtyard, where a platoon's worth of soldiers were milling about, Petraeus stopped me and said, "When you write about what you've seen here, do not try to paint a rosy picture, and when you write about me, you need to convey that I have an extremely cautious outlook about the situation. I am cautious about it, not just optimistic or pessimistic."
Inside, Drago and the Iraqi commander gave Petraeus a tour of the compound and a rundown of their current and upcoming operations; Sadi Othman was on hand to translate. While the general moved through the station, asking questions of different officers, a crowd of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers gathered in the hallway, fascinated by the four-star visit. Meanwhile, I talked with Megan Greenwell and tried to scrape off the "I heart Yale" that a 1-14 trooper had helpfully written on my boot in permanent marker.
4-9 Infantry
With the Apaches circling overhead like big black wasps, the Black Hawks pushed north into 4-9 Infantry's sector, with Col. Lehr still playing the role of tour guide. Eventually the bird banked around toward a wide, semi-paved road where two Strykers were parked, turret guns out — Route Tampa, our rough landing zone.
As the helicopter touched down, the crew chief pushed the side doors open and everyone piled out and, as soon as the bird had lifted off again, alleviating fears of decapitation, ran over to the two Strykers in the road. It was a quick ride, and a few minutes later the ramp lowered, and we jumped out.
This station at Mushada, near Tarmiya, which housed an infantry platoon from 4-9 and some number of Iraqi police, was much more rugged than the last. Inside, soldiers and policemen crowded around, all in full armor and gear, as we climbed the staircase to the roof. My first thought up there was that it looked like a movie set from "Saving Private Ryan" or "Apocalypse Now" — the parapet and corner bunkers, stacked high with sandbags, bristled with weaponry, from automatic grenade launchers and gigantic .50 caliber machine guns to carbines and sniper rifles. The roof itself was littered with shell casings. At all four watch posts, infantrymen manned the machine guns. I asked one soldier if they'd actually had to use all this weaponry to fend off enemy attacks; he said yes.
Back to the IZ
On the flight back from Col. Lehr's AO, Petraeus invited me to come back to the command group's office at the embassy. The general and his command group have a suite of offices adjoining Ambassador Ryan Crocker's to facilitate cooperation between the military and State Department sides of the operation. The whole "brain trust," as the Washington Post calls the upper tier of the command group — "designated thinkers," as Petraeus calls them — have desks in the military portion of the office suite. Since the whole embassy is a former Baathist palace, the offices are luxurious in a slightly tacky way, and since I was completely drenched in sweat from the body armor, I was a little hesitant to sit down on the leather couches.
After I'd rehydrated, Petraeus popped out of his own office and invited me in, to my surprise, demanding a progress report of my time at Princeton and offering academic advice. Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, MNF-I's main spokesman, came in to get Petraeus' feedback on how to respond publicly to the day's assassination of an Iraqi leader, and eventually Adm. Fallon, commander of Centcom, and then Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the joint chiefs, each called up to consult with him. That was another surreal moment — cutting off a meeting with a four-star Army general because a four-star Marine general and a four-star Navy admiral wanted to chat with him.
My final event of the day before leaving the embassy was also unexpected — Petraeus and Crocker were briefing a delegation of three congressmen, and they permitted me, along with a few journalists (including Brian Bennett '00 of Time magazine) and aides, to sit in. As part of the preparation for his September report, Petraeus gave congressmen detailed operational briefings, similar to the one he'd given to Gonzales earlier in the day. One, Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), quizzed the general and ambassador endlessly, mostly with thoughtful, pointed questions about the mission and the course ahead; both men answered carefully but candidly.
When another representative, the ancient Ralph Hill (D-Tex.), piped up to declaim on how critical the mission and the upcoming report were both to Iraq and to the American people, Petraeus had the perfect response: "It's a heavy rucksack, but I've got 160,000 troops to help me carry it." This is the second in a series of articles by 'Prince' staff writer Wesley Morgan describing his experiences over the summer in Iraq. Morgan did a five-week stint as an embedded journalist in Iraq that was sponsored by conservative blogger Bill Roggio and Public Multimedia Co. Morgan is a sophomore from Watertown, Mass., and can be reached at wmorgan@princeton.edu.
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