"The Liberal Media"

It was late in the tour, late summer or early fall; it was difficult to gauge the seasons. All I know is that it was still hot. By this time, I had such a routine that I felt like I worked an ordinary nine to five job, but, under the surface, I knew my job was anything but ordinary. It had been a relatively quiet tour; only one guy had been killed, but he wasn't "one of ours". I felt guilty every time I said that no one had been killed yet and always corrected myself . . . "but he wasn't 'one of ours'." I think it made me feel better to pretend that SFC Laughlin hadn't been killed, that we really weren't in a war zone. I tried to forget that the very policemen we were training weren't running death squads, weren't members of al Sadr's Mahdi Militia. I put the IED blast that went off just in front of me that day in the mosque standoff in the back of my mind. I ignored the tracer round I saw fly my head. I was in denial, and I hated to hear about what was going behind the scenes.

We reported to the motor pool that morning expecting to hear the same old shit: yesterday there were six IED's; two car bombs; three kidnappings; one EFP; and four tortured bodies had been found in our AO. Whatever; I was numb to it and didn't get alarmed anymore. CPT Ray and SSG Bruesch instead told us that we would have to search every nook and cranny in the IHP compound today. We weren't going to be liked, and we might not like what we find, they said. The day prior, a squad had accidentally found a secret torture chamber and prison at the MOI building. Iraq's Ministry of the Interior had housed a secret prison; tortured prisoners had been found. Oddly, I wasn't surprised, but I wasn't really letting in sink in either. We made our way towards IHP and I still expected the same mundane day I had conditioned myself to experience.

We arrived and told Major Muhammad and General Ali of our intentions. We put guards at the different buildings and, to the protest and anger of the IHPs, searched every building room by room. The police who we had tried to build a rapport of trust and cooperation with for the past several months looked on in anger and disbelief as we looked for torture victims in their compound. I looked at them from my overwatch position in the gunner's hatch and saw the rage in their eyes. Either they were hurt and angry that we didn't trust them after all this time, or they were just angry that we were looking places they never thought we'd look. It didn't help that our guys walked from building to building and room to room like members of a renegade swat team in some b-rated action flick. I found myself angry and frustrated, but I didn't know why. I thought this was a waste of time. I was afraid we'd find nothing and have to explain why we hadn't trusted them. I was afraid we'd find something and have to try to detain and question fifty or more armed torturers. Either way, I didn't like our options. I just wanted to sit in my fantasy world and pretend it had never happened.

I didn't want to think about the tortured men at MOI or possible torture victims right under my nose. I didn't want to feel like a fool. I didn't want to acknowledge that the Samarra mosque bombing had changed everything; I didn't want to think of our guys as members of death squads. Most of all, I didn't to come to grips with the possibility that I had been doing nothing but training murderers; I didn't want to think that my house raid training had made them a better death squad. Ignorance is bliss.

All that had happened, however, and it was about time I faced reality before it snuck up and killed me. I started to think about how profound a find the MOI prison was . . . this was like finding a secret torture chamber in the State Department building in DC. This was huge; this was going to be all over the news and serve as just another example of how corrupt the Iraqi government was. Viewed in that light, I started to think about everything else that had happened: the IHPs being caught running a death squad; the time Mahdi Militia took over the fuel station by force and the IHPs refused to do anything; the missing IHPs; the missing weapons; the lackadaisical attitude of the force; the intel reports detailing what all had occurred in that area under their watch. It was sobering; all these months and nothing had changed.

I made mental notes and waited to see the story in the news. I was curious to see what CNN could say about it and curious to see how it affected the political environment back home. Days went by, and then weeks. Nothing was ever reported. The media never even knew. I had been told that all the liberal media did was report the negative news, the things that portrayed the mission in a hopeless fashion, the liberal media was nowhere to be found. I was a little frustrated and a tad hopeless. I wanted to track down every person who had told me about the big, bad, liberal media and shake them. YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT! HOW CAN THEY ONLY REPORT THE NEGATIVE NEWS WHEN THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW HALF THE NEGATIVE NEWS?

When I realized that there wasn't a big, bad, liberal media skewing the news into an Iraqi quagmire, I realized we had all lost a scapegoat. We couldn't blame the media. We couldn't blame the liberal politicians. We could only blame the Iraqi government and security forces and our own government's mistakes. It was cold, difficult, and depressing, but I finally came to grips with reality.

Over the next few months, we found two cars involved in drive-by shootings and a man on the most wanted list in their parking lot, found out the Iraqi general in charge had been skimming $40,000 a month from the government, were set up at least twice by the IHPs to be blown to bits, and had almost gotten caught up in a confused, angry all out gunfight after two IHPs accidentally shot each other and we were thought to be the culprits. Every day closer to us leaving was a little more hostile than the last; every day was more and more eerie, more and more uncomfortable. We spoke to the IHPs less and less; fewer and fewer smiles were exchanged. We knew and they knew that we weren't exactly on the same side. Some remained friendly and I continue to believe that they were legitimate, but I'll never know. I no longer thought of them as contemporaries I needed to train to fight the good fight. They were simply friendly faces to acknowledge until I could jump on that plane and fly home.

I left that place with mixed emotions, but grateful that I no longer had to frequent the place where I constantly looked over my shoulder. I was disappointed that, in my mind, there was no longer a group of dedicated, ambivalent Iraqi policemen manning that building and there was no longer a big, bad, liberal media to blame it on.