Midnight in Samarra: The True Story of WMD, Greed, and High Crimes in Iraq

CHAPTER 1

WILD BLUE

June 26, 2003: the Wright brothers could never in their most delirious dreams have imagined the roaring, hulking leviathan—descendant of their first flimsy little wood-and-cloth flying machine, mighty engines turning, ready to take to the sky—that sat on the runway in Balad, Iraq that day. And anyone who’s never seen a military Medevac plane can hardly imagine it, either. It’s literally a flying intensive care hospital, bigger than a 747, bristling with the most advanced medical equipment in the world and designed to airlift a couple of hundred wounded warriors at a time out of the battle zone.

You’d think a species that could invent all of that—the plane, the mind-­boggling trauma medicine, the computers, technology, training and communications supporting it all—could invent a way to stop war in the first place so there’d be no need for any of this. Problem is, we’d have to want to stop war. I’m sorry to have to report the bad news: our overlords, those Masters of War Bob Dylan sang about a few decades ago, have no wish to stop it. Why would they want to stop something so profitable and exciting? Stop it? Hell, no. They love it.

This was a truth I’d learned hard and well in my three months in Iraq, about to come to an abrupt end as I stood on the broiling tarmac, under guard, my weapons forcibly and illegally taken away from me, waiting to board the Medevac flight. The Delta Force commando assigned to me to make sure I didn’t make a break for it or lunge for someone’s throat or maybe try to grab a weapon or pull some other B-movie-type stunt muttered just loud enough for me to hear him over the whine of the engines:

This is pure bullshit.

You got that right, I muttered back.

The sight of me standing there, intact and uninjured, on my own two legs under my own power, duffel bags in hand, brought an irate Airman down the rear ramp. The plane was loaded, ready to take off, but had been delayed so it could take on one more patient: me.

What’s this? the Airman demanded. This guy looks perfectly healthy. He’s walking, carrying his own bags. What the hell’s going on here?

Captain Pia Navarro, MD (not her real name), who’d been watching for my arrival like a bride at the altar who thinks maybe the groom might bail, stepped forward and put her ninety-seven-pound self between me and the Airman.

I can’t tell you, she said, trying to put as much authority into her voice as she could muster. By now, I knew exactly what her authority was worth. It’s classified, she added importantly. I can’t talk about it.

"This is a Medevac flight. It’s for sick and wounded only. The Airman glared, looking me up and down. This guy’s not getting on this plane!" Navarro winced at the force of his words. She’d already done a lot of wincing that day.

I have to talk to the pilot. She hurried up the ramp and disappeared into the plane while we all stood there—me, the commando, the Airman, the driver who’d brought me there—at a stalemate. I said nothing, though I tried to convey to the Airman with my expression that none of this was my idea.

I don’t know what she said to the pilot, but it didn’t take more than a couple of minutes for a Jeep to come speeding along the runway to where we were standing, four fully locked-and-loaded MPs (military police) leaping out before the driver had even screeched to a full stop.

They surrounded me. One of the MPs carried a stretcher and plunked it down on the runway.

Get on it! he barked.

No fucking way, I said, my blood rising. I was feeling less and less like obeying orders from anybody, much less this high school dropout.

Please, Navarro flat out pleaded now, her eyes oozing tears. Please, please, just lie down on the stretcher. That’s all you have to do. You can’t get on the plane if you’re not on the stretcher. I’m begging you. Please don’t make me force you.

"Force me? I gave a bitter laugh. I guess you know something about force, huh? Then I leaned in. Not too much, not enough to make the MPs jump me, but enough to let her know I meant business. I saw her flinch, draw back, and I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. The MPs stiffened, eager as trained Dobermans, just barely restraining themselves. You, I said, pointing a finger but not touching her. You’ve been cowed. Duped. You let Segura totally bulldoze you. And the worst part of it is that you know it."

Please, she begged again. I’ll explain it all to you later. Just lie down on the stretcher. Just for a couple of minutes. That’s all.

You realize, I said, drilling a look right into her eyes, "that you, a psychiatrist, an MD, have rank over anybody, even a General, when it comes to any medical decision. In fact, you’re required to overrule anyone who oversteps. You’re letting a Captain, a non-MD, a non-shrink, a guy barely qualified to change a tire, make a diagnosis that you know is hogwash and then bully you into going with it! You could be court-martialed for any part of this. For letting him shout you down, for caving in, for lying on medical forms. Can you spell malpractice? Where do your crimes start? Where do they finish?"

I guess I convinced her I wasn’t just making idle chitchat, because next thing I knew she gave a small but definite sign to the MPs, who rushed forward and grabbed me. When they did, something inside of me kind of deflated. What the hell, I thought; it’s not like I want to stay in this garden spot even another ten seconds.

Okay, guys, I said, lifting my hands like the Pope in mid-benediction. Okay, okay, okay. Disappointed, they relaxed their grip. I got onto the stretcher and lay there as they strapped me down and jerked the buckles into place with a little more force than necessary. Who could blame them? I’d deprived them of the fun of knocking my legs out from under me and doing a Rodney King beatdown right there on the runway, maybe even putting a bullet or two in me. Then I was lifted, carried up the ramp and into the plane, Navarro hurrying along next to us.

I felt pretty foolish, being carried perfectly able-bodied on a stretcher into the company of actual wounded soldiers, some in grave condition, others less so, but all of them hurt, who themselves lay on stretchers in tiers, a sort of bunk-bed arrangement along the two sides of the plane’s huge interior. There were IV lines and oxygen tanks, banks of blinking and flashing monitoring devices, and busy attentive medical personnel, everyone crisp and organized and professional under the fluorescent lights. That was the Air Force for you—always several cuts above. Certainly light-years above the band of criminals, clowns, and incompetents whose company I’d been keeping these last few months.

I was put in one of the tiers. The MPs exited, the rear hatch was closed, orders were relayed, personnel got into place. The engines revved and the plane started its pre-takeoff maneuvers. We’d barely begun taxiing when Navarro came and stood over me, both hands gripping the bunk rail above. She heaved a big sigh, no doubt meant to make me feel pity for her plight and make me think she was worried about me at the same time. I just looked back at her stonily. I was a trained intelligence agent; I knew how to read the minute involuntary twitches of facial muscles and fleeting shadows of expressions, all beyond our conscious control. What I saw on her face behind the mask of concern was a mix of guilt, terror, and vexed self-pity. And I thought, but didn’t say: You got yourself into this, baby. If you think I’m going to help you get out of it, think again.

She undid the straps. The mere fact that she did this was further proof that she knew perfectly well I wasn’t crazy. What psychiatrist would let a delusional loon loose on a Medevac flight? I could run amok, attack her, tear out IV lines. I wouldn’t, though, and she knew it.

Come sit with me, she said, looking around to make sure no one could hear. I have something to tell you. Something I’ll deny if I’m ever asked about it.

Well, this was certainly intriguing. We went and sat out of earshot of others. Not that anyone was trying to eavesdrop; they were too busy tending to their vital duties, though I detected interested glances in our direction as I rose from my stretcher.

Navarro sighed again. She was good at those big sighs. Probably used them all her life, I thought. But I was ready to hear whatever it was she was about to say.

This had better be good, I said with measured calm, buckling my seatbelt for takeoff.

It was Col. Maloney who arranged all of this. Gosh, what a surprise, I almost said. He had to get you out of the country as fast as he could, by any means he could. She paused. I waited. He’s scared to death of everything you’re saying.

CHAPTER 2

THE DOGS OF WAR

CAMP VIRGINIA, KUWAIT, MARCH 14, 2003

Nothing reveals the size and scope of the war machine like the night. These were my thoughts as I gazed into the vast darkness from high atop a guard tower near the Iraq border. I watched the steady river of lights of thousands of supply trucks moving north bumper-to-bumper along the highway, starting at the Port of Kuwait and stretching thirty-five or forty miles beyond the border into Iraq. I saw the lights of plane after plane taking off from Kuwait, also heading north, and the occasional eerie flare of cruise missiles fired over Iraq. The distances were so great, and the night so clear, that this infinite 3-D light show took place in surreal silence. If I didn’t know what I was looking at, the panorama of flaring, arcing, winking, shimmering, flowing lights on the ground, in the air and in the sky as far as I could see, the almost-full moon presiding over it all, would have seemed beautiful, almost festive. The official beginning of the war would not happen for another week or so, but the invasion was already well underway, had been for months, a gargantuan game board carefully laid out, long before George W. Bush ceremonially whipped the starter flag down.

Have you ever seen the pyramids at Giza by moonlight? I have, from the window of the C5-A military transport plane that brought us to Kuwait just a couple of days earlier. The cool light of the waxing moon cast the pyramids’ ancient geometry in sharp relief. In their thousands of years of existence, how many other armies had they seen come and go? How many more would they see long after we were gone? As we flew steadily eastward, I was aware of entering a part of the world with more than its share of the old Seven Wonders. We were headed directly into the heart of what’s called the cradle of civilization: Mesopotamia, where math, astronomy, medicine, engineering, agriculture, art, and law had been thriving while Europeans were running around in skins and reading animal entrails. The sight of the pyramids in the moonlight would become a permanent image in the gallery of my memory.

Some memories, like the pyramids, I’ll be telling my grandchildren about. Others not so much. Here’s a different image I’ll always be stuck with, almost as vivid: the trash and chaos left behind in the C5-A after the eighteen-hour flight landed and emptied out. An astonished Airman asked me who was responsible for cleaning up the mess; I, in the interest of good public relations, volunteered. It took me a couple of hours and I filled four big trash bags with cans, bottles, pizza crusts, chicken bones, food and candy wrappers, milk cartons, and mustard and ketchup packets, all heedlessly scattered on the floor—everywhere, including up in the officers’ section. I mopped up spilt Coke and milk. I was pretty disgusted. Where was the order, judgment, and sense of duty the military was supposedly famous for? The squared-away discipline, the esprit de corps that should set soldiers apart from the regular citizens they used to be? This was like a frat house after a keg party. Not an auspicious start for our exalted mission, I thought while I bent over to sweep litter out from under the seats. That had not been my first inkling of unease.

On this night, I’d been ordered up into the guard tower by my commanding officer, Lt. Col. Craig Maloney (not his real name). He seemed to get a particular kick out of assigning me—a noncommissioned officer, intelligence agent, medic, and combat engineer, older than he was by almost ten years—to lowly or menial tasks, just because he could. KP duty (kitchen police or kitchen patrol) was one of his favorites. He’d also ordered me to burn barrels of sewage. The lowlier the task, the happier he was. And he didn’t mind putting a valuable agent in unnecessary danger. A lot of money had been invested in my training; putting me up in the guard tower, where I could have been picked off by a sniper, would have wiped out that investment in a split second. He liked, way too much, the power of being able to bark a few words and be obeyed. Did I feel singled out? Not necessarily. Picture this: zero hour on the tarmac at Ft. Bragg, NC. Several hundred troops, fully loaded with gear and weapons, lined up, ready to board the C5-A that’ll carry us to the other side of the world, some of us quite possibly to our deaths.

Along comes Col. Maloney, looking pissy. And he gives an order: a search through the officers’ duffel bags to find his own, while everyone stands at attention. The bags have already been loaded; now they are unloaded, one by one, until his bag is found. When it is, he rifles through it like a peeved toddler, right there in front of all of us.

And what, you might ask, was so vitally important to the war effort that he made us stand, watch, and wait before loading and departure could proceed? Why, his own personal bar of soap-on-a-rope. No, I’m not making this up. There were a hundred witnesses to this performance. When he’d found it and flounced away, not at all embarrassed, without a word of explanation, apology, or even a joke, like a princeling in a snit, and sure as hell without helping to reload the bags, people just shook their heads. And we asked each other: What’s in that soap? Cocaine? Diamonds? Cyanide? And then we asked: What if it was really only the soap he was after? Contraband would have made some sort of sense. But what if he’d made us all stand there like that simply because he couldn’t be separated for the length of the flight from his little luxury personal grooming item? And this guy’s an officer, someone whose judgment and savvy we’re supposed to entrust our lives and safety to?

Some of the enlisted personnel I’d met in the muster area in Kuwait had not exactly filled me with confidence, either. I recall looking into the eyes of a young woman named Lynddie England. I saw a sort of dazed look that told me she didn’t really know where she was or why. If I’d handed her a map and asked her to point to what part of the world we were in at that moment, I believe she would have been helpless. That was the where; never mind the why. She could hardly be blamed for any of it, though, especially that last part. That why was a slippery question for everybody, from the lowliest grunts to the four-star generals, and, as it would turn out, for me.

I would come to know Col. Maloney well in the months to follow. Thinking about the soap-on-a-rope business now, I tend to think there was nothing hidden inside it. Sometimes a bar of soap is just a bar of soap, and what we saw that day was merely a display of petty, self-serving vanity. It would not be the last such display.

Speaking of displays, my superior officer was not the only person I’d be working with who didn’t mind making other people’s lives a little bit harder than they had to be, just for self-entertainment. One of the members of my team, May Ling (not her real name), was a pretty, petite young Chinese-American intelligence officer. On one of our first nights in camp in Kuwait, she demanded equal treatment by insisting on sleeping in the bunk tent among the male soldiers. She raised a big ruckus, with threats to cite people for gender discrimination if she didn’t get her way.

She got her way and bedded down among at least twenty men; then, during the night, she pleasured herself with audible sighs and moans. Keep in mind that the average age of the men around her was maybe twenty-two. Think anybody got any sleep? The poor SOBs were driven practically insane. Tempers were short the next day, guys imagining rivalries, giving each other dirty looks while many hungry eyes followed May as she went blithely about with demure little dimples on her face as if she were Snow White. Talk about bad for morale. I got the feeling her main reason for joining the military was to put herself in the midst of hundreds of horny young men and toy with them. And she was going to be one of my colleagues in the gathering of vital intelligence? Between her and Maloney, things were off to a splendid start.

If the night reveals the war machine, the day reveals the alien planet that is the desert. When I first arrived, I noticed myself feeling lousy in a non-specific sort of way, as if someone had turned up the gravity knob and thickened my blood. Sleep was heavy and sodden, my dreams murky. It wasn’t until I saw a thermometer reading 118 degrees in the late morning that I understood why. Most of us have experienced extreme heat, but when you get into the upper teens and are pushing 120, it’s a whole different realm. You don’t feel it as hotter so much as weightier, duller, a free-floating malaise permeating mind and body. And this was only March. How would it be in June? July?

Of course, you adapt, as had the people and animals who’ve lived there for generations. I’d made a friend; a lean and hungry feral dog had started appearing on the outskirts of camp, scouting for scraps. Dogs are not exactly pampered in the Muslim world. They’re seen as dirty, impure, disease-carrying vermin. This wasn’t always so. It’s said that the Prophet himself kept dogs, and that for centuries before and after the Prophet they were part of everyday life, put to work doing what dogs do for humans—guarding, herding, protecting, assisting with the hunt, and no doubt providing companionship, too. As cities grew and human populations got denser, dogs came to serve as garbage-eaters.

Sometime a couple of hundred years ago, major contagions swept through the crowded cities, and people thought they saw a correlation between dogs, garbage, and disease, and dogs became the outcasts in many Muslim societies that they are today. You see them everywhere in Iraq and Kuwait—skinny, foraging, wild, sick, mangy, and ignored. It’s sad for a bleeding-heart dog-lover like me, but for a while I was able to make life a little more pleasant for my friend who came sniffing around Camp Virginia. I even named him: Rudi the Desert Dog. He found my MREs (ready-to-eat meals) to be quite to his liking. He was particularly fond of the tuna casserole. I figured he liked it so much because the US military version of it reminded Rudi of the roadkill he surely dined upon regularly.

One day, I thought I’d offer him a real treat: a pan of fresh water. I set it out, then sat back to watch what would surely be a joyous moment for Rudi, who looked thirsty all the time. He approached, sniffed, looked at me, plainly saying: You’re kidding, right? And he put his nose under the pan and flipped it.

At first, I thought: My God, this desert dog has never experienced water as water. He’s so thoroughly adapted to this Mars-like environment that whatever moisture he needs to sustain life he gets from food. But another thought occurred to me: the water Rudi had so eloquently disdained was the purified stuff provided to the US military by a private contracting company. Private contractors, a polite term for mercenaries, were enjoying a veritable feeding frenzy with this invasion, swarming in ahead of and alongside the military, raking in huge bucks providing everything from food to security to construction to entertainment to transportation. And, of course, drinking water.

I’d noticed the aroma of chlorine myself in the water; imagine what that would have smelled like to Rudi’s nose, a thousand times more sensitive than mine. I might as well have offered him a bowl of Clorox. We all drank this water, because it was that or go thirsty. A little chlorine is tolerated by the human body; too much can have a nasty effect on the kidneys, liver, nervous system, and more. And what else, I wondered, was in that water that I couldn’t smell, but Rudi could? Did the company providing the purified water give a damn? I doubted it.

Where did Rudi go when nature got ferocious? I don’t know, but he was a wily survivor. Springtime in Kuwait and Iraq is not exactly April showers and May flowers. Picture instead occasional tempests of howling winds, maybe sixty or seventy miles per hour. Gritty sand blowing horizontally; pelting you without mercy; getting in your eyes, nose, and mouth; coating faces so that you don’t recognize your best buddy; turning the world a weird orange color if it’s daytime;