Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

^{CHAPTER EIGHT} “WE WILL PACIFY FALLUJAH”

THE CHARRED bodies of the Blackwater contractors were still hanging from the Fallujah bridge when news of the ambush began to spread across the globe. “They can’t do that to Americans,” said Capt. Douglas Zembiac as he watched the scene on TV in a mess hall at a military base outside Fallujah. ¹ But there would be no immediate response from the thousands of nearby U.S. Marines. Perhaps that was because that same morning, five Marines were killed near Fallujah after hitting a roadside bomb. Maybe it was because the Blackwater men were not “official” U.S. forces. In any case, the contractors’ bodies hung over the Euphrates for hours as a grim reminder that one year after the fall of Baghdad, eleven months after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations, and ninety days before the official “handover of sovereignty” to the Iraqis, the war was just beginning. U.S. military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt initially tried to downplay the significance of the ambush, calling it an “isolated” and “small, localized”² case, part of a “slight uptick in localized engagements.”³ Fallujah, Kimmitt said, “remains one of those cities in Iraq that just don’t get it.”⁴ “While this one incident was happening in Fallujah, throughout the rest of the country, we are opening schools. We’re opening health clinics. We are increasing the amount of electrical output. We are increasing the amount of oil output,”⁵ Kimmitt declared at a press briefing the day of the ambush. “So is this tragic? Absolutely it’s tragic. There are four families in this world today that are going to get knocks on the doors. And you don’t want to be on either side of that door when it happens, either hearing the news or delivering the news…. But that isn’t going to stop us from doing our mission. In fact, it would be disgracing the deaths of these people if we were to stop our missions.” ⁶ Paul Bremer’s spokesperson, Dan Senor, told reporters that “the people who pulled those bodies out and engaged in this attack against the contractors are not people we are here to help,” saying, “Those are people we have to capture or kill so this country can move forward.”⁷ Senor said the people who carried out the ambush and supported it represented “a tiny, tiny minority” of Iraqis. “The overwhelming majority of Iraqis are grateful for the liberation—95, 98 percent are the numbers that come up,” he said.⁸

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Washington, D.C., President Bush was on the campaign trail, speaking at the posh Marriott Wardman Park Hotel at a Bush-Cheney dinner. “We still face thugs and terrorists in Iraq who would rather go on killing the innocent than accept the advance of liberty,” the President told his supporters. “This collection of killers is trying to shake our will. America will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins. We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq. We will defeat them there so we do not have to face them in our own country.”⁹ The next morning Americans woke up to news of the gruesome killings in Fallujah. “Iraqi Mob Mutilates 4 American Civilians,” screamed the banner headline in the Chicago Tribune. “U.S. Civilians Mutilated in Iraq Attack,” announced the Washington Post. “Americans Desecrated,” proclaimed the Miami Herald. Somalia was being mentioned frequently.

After Kimmitt’s initial downplaying of the ambush, the White House—and Paul Bremer—recognized the prolonged, public mutilation of the Blackwater men as a major blow in the propaganda war against the fast-emerging anti-U.S. resistance in Iraq. Some went so far as to believe the ambush was a direct attempt to re-create Somalia in 1993, when rebels shot down a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter, killing eighteen U.S. soldiers and dragging some of their bodies through the streets of Mogadishu, prompting the Clinton administration to pull out of the country. With less than three months before the much-hyped “handover,” the Bush administration faced the undeniable reality of an emboldened resistance to an occupation that was increasingly unpopular, both at home and inside Iraq. “The images immediately became icons of the brutal reality of the insurgency,” wrote Bremer, saying they “underscored the fact that the coalition military did not control Fallujah.”¹⁰ Bremer says he told Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, “We’ve got to react to this outrage or the enemy will conclude we’re irresolute.”¹¹ Sanchez, according to Bremer, responded, “We’re dusting off the operation we planned last fall… the one to clean out Fallujah.” ¹² Almost immediately, plans for crushing the “city of mosques” were put on the fast track. “We will not be intimidated,” declared White House spokesperson Scott McClellan. “Democracy is taking root and there’s no turning back.”¹³ Senator John Kerry—then the Democratic candidate for President—concurred, saying, “These horrific attacks remind us of the viciousness of the enemies of Iraq’s future. United in sadness, we are also united in our resolve that these enemies will not prevail.”¹⁴ Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, said, “We’re not going to run out of town because some people were lawless in Fallujah.”¹⁵ Meanwhile, political pundits on the cable networks called for blood. Bill O’Reilly of Fox News spoke of a “final solution,”¹⁶ saying, “I don’t care about the people of Fallujah. You’re not going to win their hearts and minds. They’re going to kill you to the very end. They’ve proven that. So let’s knock this place down.”¹⁷ Later, in calling for the United States “to use maximum force in punishing the Fallujah terrorists,”¹⁸ O’Reilly declared, “Fear can be a good thing. Homicidal terrorists and their enablers must be killed or incarcerated. And their punishment must be an example to others. How do you think Saddam controlled Iraq all these decades? He did it by fear.”¹⁹ Meanwhile on MSNBC, former Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark said, “The resistance is not declining in Fallujah, so far as I can determine. It’s building and mounting. And we can’t have that challenge to our authority.”²⁰

Many questioned why—with four thousand Marines positioned around Fallujah—such a prolonged mutilation of the bodies of the Blackwater contractors was possible and why their charred corpses were left for hours to hang from the bridge. “[E]ven while the two vehicles burned, sending plumes of thick, black smoke over the shuttered shops of the city, there were no ambulances, fire engines or security dispatched to try and rescue the victims,” UPI reported. “This time, there were no Blackhawks to fly to the rescue. Instead, Fallujah’s streets were abandoned to the jubilant, chaotic, and violent crowds who rejoiced amid battered human remains.”²¹ Col. Michael Walker, a Marine spokesman, said: “Should we have sent in a tank so we could have gotten, with all due respect, four dead bodies back? What good would that have done? A mob is a mob. We would have just provoked them. The smart play was to let this thing fade out.”²²

Responding to a reporter’s question about whether the Marines did not go into Fallujah right after the ambush to confront the mob attacking the Blackwater men because it was “too dangerous,” Kimmitt shot back, “I don’t think that there is any place in this country that the coalition forces feel is too dangerous to go into.”²³ That day on CNN, Crossfire host Tucker Carlson said, “I think we ought to kill every person who’s responsible for the deaths of those Americans. This is a sign of weakness. This is how we got 9/11. It’s because we allowed things like that to go unresponded to. This is a big deal.”²⁴

Within twenty-four hours, Kimmitt’s tone had changed. “We will respond. We are not going to do a pell-mell rush into the city. It’s going to be deliberate, it will be precise and it will be overwhelming,” he declared at a press briefing in Baghdad.²⁵ “We will be back in Fallujah. It will be at the time and the place of our choosing. We will hunt down the criminals. We will kill them or we will capture them. And we will pacify Fallujah.”²⁶

Paul Bremer made his first public remarks on the killings during an address in front of nearly five hundred new graduates from the Iraqi police academy in Baghdad. “Yesterday’s events in Fallujah are a dramatic example of the ongoing struggle between human dignity and barbarism,” he declared, warning that the killing of the Blackwater men “will not go unpunished.” The dead contractors, he said, “came to help Iraq recover from decades of dictatorship, to help the people of Iraq gain the elections, democracy, and freedom desired by the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people. These murders are a painful outrage for us in the coalition. But they will not derail the march to stability and democracy in Iraq. The cowards and ghouls who acted yesterday represent the worst of society.”²⁷

In most U.S. news reports on the ambush, Fallujah was described as a Sunni resistance stronghold filled with foreign fighters and Saddam loyalists. The dominant narrative became that the Blackwater men were innocent “civilian contractors” delivering food who were slaughtered by butchers in Fallujah. At one point after the incident, Kimmitt told reporters that the Blackwater men were “there to provide assistance, to provide food to that local area,”²⁸ as though the men were humanitarians working for the Red Cross. But inside Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq, the ambush was viewed differently. The news that the men were technically not active U.S. forces did not change the fact that they were fully armed Americans who had traveled into the center of Fallujah at a time when U.S. forces were killing Iraqi civilians and attempting to take the city by force. The New York Times reported, “Many people in Falluja said they believed that they had won an important victory on Wednesday. They insisted that the four security guards, who were driving in unmarked sport utility vehicles, were working for the Central Intelligence Agency. ‘This is what these spies deserve,’ said Salam Aldulayme, a 28-year-old Falluja resident.”²⁹

On CNN’s Larry King Live, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, who had just returned from Iraq a few days before the Blackwater killings, said, “There is a sort of second army of Americans out there now in the form of security personnel, who can be seen almost anywhere in the country there is a member of the coalition doing something. And they struck me as being very high-profile targets. They’re armed to the teeth. A lot of them look like they come out of a Sylvester Stallone movie. And so, and they move around the country. And I think that the insurgents, whomever they are, have picked up on them and may be tracking them. So when it happened in Fallujah, as bad as it was, I must say I wasn’t deeply surprised.”³⁰

Others described the ambush as a response to the recent U.S. killing of civilians in Fallujah, particularly the gun battle the previous week that left more than a dozen Iraqis dead. “Children and women were killed. They were innocent,” said Ibrahim Abdullah al-Dulaimi. “People in Fallujah are very angry with the American soldiers.”³¹ Leaflets began circulating in Fallujah claiming that the killings were carried out as revenge for the Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin.³² A Fallujah shop assistant named Amir said, “The Americans may think it is unusual, but this is what they should expect. They show up in places and shoot civilians, so why can’t they be killed?”³³ These sentiments were even echoed among the ranks of the U.S.-created Iraqi police force. “The violence is increasing against the Americans,” said Maj. Abdelaziz Faisal Hamid Mehamdy, a Fallujan who joined the police force in 2003 after Baghdad fell. “They took over the country and they didn’t give us anything. They came for democracy and to help the people, but we haven’t seen any of this, just killing and violence.”³⁴

A local Fallujan official, Sami Farhood al-Mafraji, who had been supportive of the occupation, said, “Americans are not meeting their promises here to help build up this country…. I used to support the military. But they have put me in a very difficult situation with my people. Now, they tell us to hand these people over?”³⁵ He said the dire humanitarian situation and the violence of the occupation had “made people depressed and angry.” “Hungry people will eat you,” he said. “And people here are very hungry.”³⁶ This context even seemed clear to some U.S. troops as well. “The people who did this heinous crime were looking for revenge,” said Marine Lt. Eric Thorliefson, positioned on the outskirts of Fallujah. He added, “We shall respond with force.”³⁷

While U.S. officials condemned the public mutilation of the bodies, they refused to answer questions about the U.S. policy of distributing gruesome photos of the mangled corpses of “high value” Iraqis killed by U.S. forces, like Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay in July 2003, as proof of death. Similar to the outrage expressed by Washington over the mauling of the Blackwater contractors, Iraqis were furious over this U.S. propaganda technique. At the White House the day of the Blackwater killings, McClellan was asked if the administration did “not see hypocrisy [when showing] embalmed bodies as proof of death is condemned but the dragging of American bodies through a street goes on without a comment?”

“It is offensive. It is despicable the way that these individuals have been treated,” McClellan responded, ignoring the question. “And we hope everybody acts responsibly in their coverage of it.”³⁸ Indeed, most of the images of the ambush and its aftermath that were broadcast on U.S. networks and in newspapers were edited or blurred. Even so, the message was clear. With the Somalia comparisons increasing in the international media, the administration shot back. “We are not going to withdraw. We are not going to be run out,” Secretary of State Colin Powell, the first senior Bush administration official to comment directly on the Blackwater killings, told German television. “America has the ability to stay and fight an enemy and defeat an enemy. We will not run away.”³⁹

Meanwhile, reporters began questioning who these four contractors were and what they were doing in the middle of Fallujah. “I will let individual contractors speak for themselves on the clients they have inside Iraq. My understanding is Blackwater has more than one. But again, I would have you contact them to get that information. I certainly do not have it,” said Dan Senor, the occupation spokesperson in Baghdad. “They—we do have a contract with Blackwater, with—relating to Ambassador Bremer’s security. They are involved with protecting Ambassador Bremer,” Senor said.⁴⁰ On CNN, Senor was asked, “So with all due respect to the men who lost their lives, any concern that this security company is up to the task?”

“Absolutely,” Senor shot back. “We have the utmost confidence in Blackwater and the other security institutions that protect Mr. Bremer and provide security throughout the country.”⁴¹

In North Carolina, meanwhile, Blackwater’s phones were ringing off the hook as the identities of the four “civilian contractors” became public. The company refused to officially confirm the names of the dead, a Blackwater policy. “The enemy may have contacts in the U.S.,” said former Blackwater vice president Jamie Smith. “If you start putting names out there—any names—and they start finding out who your friends are and asking questions, it could become a security problem.”⁴²

The day after the ambush, Blackwater hired the powerful, well-connected Republican lobbying firm the Alexander Strategy Group (founded and staffed by former senior staffers of then-House majority leader Tom DeLay) to help the company handle its newfound fame.⁴³ Blackwater released a brief statement to the press. “The graphic images of the unprovoked attack and subsequent heinous mistreatment of our friends exhibits the extraordinary conditions under which we voluntarily work to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people,” the Blackwater statement said.⁴⁴ “Coalition forces and civilian contractors and administrators work side by side every day with the Iraqi people to provide essential goods and services like food, water, electricity and vital security to the Iraqi citizens and coalition members. Our tasks are dangerous and while we feel sadness for our fallen colleagues, we also feel pride and satisfaction that we are making a difference for the people of Iraq.”⁴⁵ Republican Congressman Walter Jones Jr., who represents Currituck County, North Carolina (where Blackwater has its headquarters), said the contractors had “died in the name of freedom.”⁴⁶ Republican Senator John Warner, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, praised the Blackwater men at a hearing, saying, “Those individuals are essential to the work that we’re performing in Iraq, primarily the rebuilding of the infrastructure.”⁴⁷

In the “Chaplain’s Corner” section of Blackwater’s newsletter, Blackwater Tactical Weekly, right after the ambush, Chaplain D. R. Staton continued the misleading characterization of the men as “humanitarian” workers who came to Iraq “to save a people,” writing, “Those four Americans were there because they were hired to provide security to food caravans delivering life giving substances to native Iraqis…. This one incident points up the hatred of Islamic militants for anyone not Islamic militant and especially those who are called by them the white devils or the ‘great Satan’ or simply ‘infidels. ’ Did you study those individuals in the mob as they were displayed to us via television? Did you note their attitudes and their ages? They are brainwashed from birth to hate all who are not with them…. And especially us!!!… And the Israelis!” The attackers’ message, Staton wrote, “is to discourage our forces from entering Fallujah and the special claimed area around that city!!! The message will backfire!!!” Staton ended his sermon with a plea to his readers: “Make the enemy pay dearly for every action brought against us as we stand for liberty and justice!!!”⁴⁸

But not everyone working for Blackwater was on the same page. “I think they’re dying for no reason,” said Marty Huffstickler, a part-time electrician for the company in Moyock. “I don’t agree with what’s going on over there. The people over there don’t want us there.”⁴⁹

To the Marines, which had just taken over command of Fallujah, the Blackwater ambush could not have come at a worse moment because it dramatically changed the course of Maj. Gen. James Mattis’s strategy. The local commanders wanted to treat the killings as a law enforcement issue, go into the city, and arrest or kill the perpetrators.⁵⁰ But at the White House, the killings were viewed as a serious challenge to the U.S. resolve in Iraq—one that could jeopardize the whole project in the country. President Bush immediately summoned Rumsfeld and the top U.S. commander in the region, Gen. John Abizaid, to ask for a plan of action.

According to the L.A. Times:

In Fallujah, word of the President’s go-ahead for an attack reached the Marine base positioned on the city’s outskirts. “The president knows this is going to be bloody,” Sanchez told the commanders there. “He accepts that.”⁵² One officer characterized the orders as, “Go in and clobber people.”⁵³ By April 2, 2004, forty-eight hours after the ambush, “Operation Vigilant Resolve” was put on the fast track. Marine Sgt. Maj. Randall Carter began to pump his men up for their mission. “Marines are only really motivated two times,” he declared. “One is when we’re going on liberty. One is when we’re going to kill somebody. We’re not going on liberty…. We’re here for one thing: to tame Fallujah. That’s what we’re going to do.”⁵⁴ Inside the city, meanwhile, Fallujans, too, were preparing for a battle many believed was inevitable.

Before the U.S. troops launched the full assault on the city, Bremer deputy Jim Steele, the senior adviser on Iraqi security forces, was sent covertly into Fallujah with a small team of U.S.-trained Iraqi forces and people Steele referred to as “U.S. advisors.”⁵⁵ Steele had most recently been an Enron executive before being tapped for the Iraq job by Paul Wolfowitz.⁵⁶ Perhaps most appealing to the administration, Steele had a very deep history with U.S. “dirty wars” in Central America. As a colonel in the Marines in the mid-1980s, Steele had been a key “counterinsurgency” official in the bloody U.S.-fueled war in El Salvador, where he coordinated the U.S. Military Group there,⁵⁷ supervising Washington’s military assistance and training of Salvadoran Army death squads battling the leftist FMLN guerrillas.⁵⁸ In the late 1980s, Steele was called to testify during the Iran-Contra investigation about his role in Oliver North’s covert weapons pipeline to the Nicaraguan Contra death squads, running through the Salvadoran Air Force base at Ilopango.⁵⁹ He also worked with the Panamanian police after the United States overthrew Manuel Noriega in 1990.⁶⁰

Steele played a similar role with U.S.-trained Iraqi forces in the early days of the occupation and was central to a program some refer to as the “Salvadorization of Iraq.”⁶¹ Under this strategy, “U.S. soldiers are increasingly moving to a Salvador-style advisory role,” wrote Peter Maass in The New York Times Magazine. “In the process, they are backing up local forces that, like the military in El Salvador, do not shy away from violence. It is no coincidence that this new strategy is most visible in a paramilitary unit that has Steele as its main adviser; having been a central participant in the Salvador conflict, Steele knows how to organize a counterinsurgency campaign that is led by local forces.”⁶²

After the Blackwater ambush, Steele claimed his “undercover” mission in Fallujah in April 2004 was to recover the corpses of the Blackwater men and to “assess the enemy situation.”⁶³ Shortly after that mission, he laid out what he thought should happen. “In Fallujah, a heavy hand makes sense,” he said. “That’s the only thing some of those guys will understand. Down south, too [where the United States faced a mounting Shiite rebellion]. We can’t be seen as weak. Otherwise, this kind of thing can happen everywhere.”⁶⁴ The “city of mosques” would soon find itself under siege as Bremer’s dreams of “cleaning out” Fallujah found their justification. While U.S. commanders readied their troops to attack, Blackwater’s stock was rising in Washington, and Erik Prince’s men would soon find themselves in the middle of the second major resistance front exploding against the occupation—this time in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.