By SAMEER N. YACOUB Associated Press Writer Thursday November 9, 2006 10:46 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqis on Thursday cheered the resignation of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, blaming him for policy failures and scandals they say helped spawn the daily sectarian carnage wracking their nation.
``Rumsfeld's resignation shows the scale of the mess the U.S. has made in Iraq,'' said Ibrahim Ali, 44, who works at the Oil Ministry. ``The efforts by American politicians to hide their failure are no longer working.''
Iraq's government has yet to comment on Rumsfeld's resignation, announced Wednesday after the Democratic Party won a sweeping victory in midterm elections in which voter discontent over the war in Iraq played a major role.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has in recent weeks grown increasingly critical of U.S. policies and pushed for his government to assume more responsibility for security from U.S.-led coalition forces.
Many in Baghdad said they expect changes in the U.S. approach under Rumsfeld's expected replacement, former CIA director Robert Gates.
``I think that there will a shift in the U.S. policy in Iraq after his resignation,'' said Osama Ahmed, 50, a civil servant.
What changes could be in store aren't yet clear, although ideas for a new strategy are being studied by an independent U.S. commission led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana. The White House says it is opposed to two prominent options - the partitioning of Iraq or a phased withdrawal of troops.
Whatever suggestions are put forward, however, Iraqis said Rumsfeld's departure was a positive move.
``Rumsfeld's resignation is a good step because he failed to keep security in Iraq,'' said Saad Jawad, 45, a former army officer who also works at the Oil Ministry.
Many Iraqis blamed Rumsfeld for spurring the emergence of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias by disbanding the former Iraqi army following the April 2003 toppling of the former government of Saddam Hussein.
Although that order was actually issued by former top U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, such sentiments show how widely Rumsfeld is identified with failed policies in Iraq.
``I am happy with Rumsfeld's resignation because he played a major role in disbanding the former Iraqi army. He participated in building the new army on a sectarian basis,'' said Louai Abdel-Hussein, 48, a Shiite who owns a small grocery in Baghdad.
Ahmed, the civil servant, said Rumsfeld should also be held responsible for crimes by American forces in Iraq, particularly the abuse of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison that became known in 2004.
``Rumsfeld's resignation is not enough,'' Ahmed said. ``He should be put under investigation for his responsibility in the crimes committed in Abu Ghraib and the killings and rapes carried out by U.S. soldiers against Iraqi citizens, he said.
Rumsfeld had twice previously offered his resignation to Bush - once during the Abu Ghraib scandal and again shortly after that. Both times the president refused to let him leave.
Sentiments toward the resignation among the roughly 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq weren't widely known, although Col. Al Kelly, commander of 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, said he didn't see it as ``either positive or negative at this point.''
``There are a lot of decisions that he's made that people aren't happy with,'' Kelly told Associated Press Television News in Taji, just north of Baghdad.
``But he made some hard decisions and when you're in that kind of position, you're not always going to be ... liked by everybody,'' Kelly said.
The bullet passed through Lance Cpl. Juan Valdez-Castillo as his Marine patrol moved down a muddy urban lane. It was a single shot. The lance corporal fell against a wall, tried to stand and fell again.
His squad leader, Sgt. Jesse E. Leach, faced where the shot had come from, raised his rifle and grenade launcher and quickly stepped between the sniper and the bloodied marine. He walked backward, scanning, ready to fire.
Shielding the marine with his own thick body, he grabbed the corporal by a strap and dragged him across a muddy road to a line of tall reeds, where they were concealed. He put down his weapon, shouted orders and cut open the lance corporal's uniform, exposing a bubbling wound.
Lance Corporal Valdez-Castillo, shot through the right arm and torso, was saved. But the patrol was temporarily stuck. The marines were engaged in the task of calling for a casualty evacuation while staring down their barrels at dozens of windows that faced them, as if waiting for a ghost's next move.
This sequence on Tuesday here in Anbar Province captured in a matter of seconds an expanding threat in the war in Iraq. In recent months, military officers and enlisted marines say, the insurgents have been using snipers more frequently and with greater effect, disrupting the military's operations and fueling a climate of frustration and quiet rage.
Across Iraq, the threat has become serious enough that in late October the military held an internal conference about it, sharing the experiences of combat troops and discussing tactics to counter it. There has been no ready fix.
The battalion commander of Sergeant Leach's unit -- the Second Battalion, Eighth Marines -- recalled eight sniper hits on his marines in three months and said there had been other possible incidents as well. Two of the battalion's five fatalities have come from snipers, he said, and one marine is in a coma. Another marine gravely wounded by a sniper has suffered a stroke.
A sniper team was captured in the area a few weeks ago, he said, but more have taken its place. ''The enemy has the ability to regenerate, and after we put a dent in his activity, we see sniper activity again,'' said the commander, Lt. Col. Kenneth M. DeTreux.
Marines in two infantry companies recounted more cases, telling of lone shots that zipped in as if from nowhere, striking turrets and walls within inches of marines. They typically occur when the marines are not engaged in combat. It is as if, they say, they are being watched.
By many measures, the Iraqi snipers have showed unexceptional marksmanship, usually shooting from within 300 yards, far less than ranges preferred by the elite snipers in Western military units.
But as the insurgent sniper teams have become more active, the marines here say, they have displayed greater skill, selecting their targets and their firing positions with care. They have also developed cunning methods of mobility and concealment, including firing from shooting platforms and hidden ports within cars.
They often use variants of the long-barreled Dragunov rifle, which shoots higher-powered ammunition than the much more common Kalashnikov assault rifles. Their marksmanship has improved to the point of being good enough.
''In the beginning of the war, sniping wasn't something that the Iraqis did,'' said Capt. Glen Taylor, the executive officer of the battalion's Company G, who is on his third combat tour. ''It was like, 'If Allah wants that bullet to hit its target, it will.' But they are starting to realize how effective it is.''
The insurgents are recruiting snipers and centralizing their instruction, the captain said, meaning that the phenomenon is likely to grow.
''They have training camps -- they go around and advertise,'' he said. ''We heard from some of our sources that the insurgents were going around with loudspeakers, saying that if you want to be a sniper we will pay you three times whatever your salary is now.''
The marines also express their belief that the sniper teams have a network of spotters, and that each time the marines leave their outpost, spotters hidden among the Iraqi population call the snipers and tell them where the marines are and what they are doing. The snipers then arrive.
For the infantry, Iraq's improved snipers have created confounding new dangers, as an unseen enemy plucks members from their ranks. Most of the time, the marines said, the snipers aim for their heads, necks and armpits, displaying knowledge of gaps in their protective gear. They typically shoot once and disappear. And they often fire on the opposite side of obstacles like canals, which limits a unit's ability to capture the sniper or respond with fire.
''That's the biggest thing that tears marines apart,'' said Cpl. Curtis S. Cota-Robles of Company G, who was standing beside a marine who was shot through the collarbone in late September. ''They hit us when we are vulnerable, and then they are gone.''
As part of their counterinsurgency operations, the marines working in Anbar are under orders to show restraint, a policy rooted in hopes of winning the trust of the civilian population.
Iraqi snipers seem to know these rules and use them for their own protection. They often fire from among civilians, the marines say, having observed that unless the marines have a clear target, they will not shoot. In two sniper shootings witnessed by two journalists for The New York Times, on Oct. 30 and 31, the snipers fired from among civilians. The marines did not fire back.
In conditions where killing the snipers has proved difficult, the marines have tried to find ways to limit their effectiveness. Signs inside Marine positions display an often-spoken rule: ''Make yourself hard to kill.''
Many marines, on operations, do an understated dance they call ''cutting squares.'' It is not really a square at all.
They zig and zag as they walk, and when they stop they shift weight from foot to foot, bobbing their heads. They change the rhythm often, so that when a sniper who might be watching them thinks they are about to zig, they have zagged.
Now and then they squat, shift weight to one leg and stand up beside the place where they had just been. Maj. Sean Riordan, the battalion executive officer, described his own unpredictable jigs as ''my little salsa dance.''
As they move, the marines often peer down their own scopes, looking at windows, rooftops, lines of brush. Then they might step backward, or forward, or duck, as if saying: try to shoot that.
But as operations drag on, some marines begin to stop cutting squares. And sometimes even those that are moving are still shot. And there are special dangers.
Lance Cpl. Colin Smith, who was shot on Monday, was behind a machine gun in a vehicle turret, a position that placed him higher in the air than a walking marine. Turret gunners are protected by armor shields, but their heads are often exposed. He was struck in the skull. He survived but fell into a coma and was placed on life support.
Lance Corporal Valdez-Castillo, who was shot on Tuesday, was a radio operator -- a preferred sniper's target since radios and rifles first mixed on the battlefield many decades ago. A tactical radio can provide a link to mortars, artillery, air support and other infantry units.
Ten marines, several soldiers from the nascent Iraqi Army and two journalists were walking exposed in a column when the shot was fired and he went down; his antenna probably made him the sniper's pick. Lance Corporal Valdez-Castillo has been flown to a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. He is in good condition and has spoken to his unit.
In both cases the sniper fired from the other side of a canal, among civilians and a group of buildings. The advantages were his.
Seeing the risks, the commanders have been shifting tactics to reduce the marines' vulnerability while still trying to keep them out on the streets, interacting with Iraqis and searching for insurgents and arms caches.
Some units have limited their foot patrols by day, finding them to be too dangerous. They still enter neighborhoods in armored vehicles and dismount, but often quickly step into buildings to interview people inside.
They continue to patrol on foot at night, because the Iraqi snipers have not yet shown the sophistication to fire with precision in the dark, and the marines' night vision equipment and weapons sights give them the upper hand.
They also cover most of their vital organs with protective armor plates, which have saved several of them when the Iraqi snipers have fired.
One marine, Gunnery Sgt. Shawn M. Dempsey of Weapons Company, was shot in the back as he helped a small girl across a street. The plate saved him. He remains on duty as a platoon commander.
Another, Lance Cpl. Edward Knuth of Company G, was hit as his squad searched a watermelon market beside a main road. No one in his squad heard the shot, which he said was probably made from a vehicle parked on the highway. All they heard was the impact of the bullet on his plate.
''It was like a smacking sound,'' he said.
The force of the impact, like being struck with a baseball bat, knocked him to his knees. A marine swiftly dragged him to cover. Then his squad rushed the line of cars. They found nothing. The sniper had escaped.
''They're good,'' Lance Corporal Knuth said, showing a crumbling, coin-sized hole in his armor where the bullet stopped. ''They take their time. They're patient. They only take one shot most of the time, and they are hard to find.''
After Lance Corporal Valdez-Castillo was shot and evacuated, a sweat-soaked, bloodied Sergeant Leach led his team through the rest of his patrol. When the marines re-entered the wire, an angry debriefing began.
Move quickly through the open areas, the noncommissioned officers told the troops. Don't stand high on the berms. Camouflage the radios. Keep your eyes out and rifles ready.
Little was said about how to kill the sniper; the marines did not know where he was. They passed cigarettes and smoked them in the sun, and fumed.
''I'll carry the radio next time,'' said Lance Cpl. Peter Sprague. ''I don't have any kids.''
American and Iraqi soldiers on Haifa Street in Baghdad. There, a sergeant was shot last week, and one bullet changed everything. Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images, for The New York Times
After Staff Sgt. Hector Leija was shot in the kitchen of a Baghdad apartment last Wednesday, Pfc. Aaron Barnum retrieved the sergeant’s helmet. Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images for The New York Times
Army soldiers and medics carried Sergeant Leija to an armored vehicle after he was shot in the head. Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images, for The New York Times
Sunni and Shiite insurgents are battling for control of Haifa Street. The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE Published: January 29, 2007
BAGHDAD, Jan. 28 — Staff Sgt. Hector Leija scanned the kitchen, searching for illegal weapons. One wall away, in an apartment next door, a scared Shiite family huddled around a space heater, cradling an infant.
It was after 9 a.m. on Wednesday, on Haifa Street in central Baghdad, and the crack-crack of machine-gun fire had been rattling since dawn. More than a thousand American and Iraqi troops had come to this warren of high rises and hovels to disrupt the growing nest of Sunni and Shiite fighters battling for control of the area.
The joint military effort has been billed as the first step toward an Iraqi takeover of security. But this morning, in the two dark, third-floor apartments on Haifa Street, that promise seemed distant. What was close, and painfully real, was the cost of an escalating street fight that had trapped American soldiers and Iraqi bystanders between warring sects.
And as with so many days here, a bullet changed everything.
It started at 9:15 a.m.
“Help!” came the shout. “Man down.”
“Sergeant Leija got hit in the head,” yelled Specialist Evan Woollis, 25, his voice carrying into the apartment with the Iraqi family. The soldiers from the sergeant’s platoon, part of the Third Stryker Brigade Combat Team, rushed from one apartment to the other.
In the narrow kitchen, a single bullet hole could be seen in a tinted glass window facing north.
The platoon’s leader, Sgt. First Class Marc Biletski, ordered his men to get down, away from every window, and to pull Sergeant Leija out of the kitchen and into the living room.
“O.K., everybody, let’s relax,” Sergeant Biletski said. But he was shaking from his shoulder to his hand.
Relaxing was just not possible. Fifteen feet of floor and a three-inch-high metal doorjamb stood between where Sergeant Leija fell and the living room, out of the line of fire. Gunshots popped in bursts, their source obscured by echoes off the concrete buildings.
“Don’t freak out on me, Doc,” Sergeant Biletski shouted to the platoon medic, Pfc. Aaron Barnum, who was frantically yanking at Sergeant Leija’s flak jacket to take the weight off his chest. “Don’t freak out.”
Two minutes later, three soldiers rushed to help, dragging the sergeant from the kitchen. A medevac team then rushed in and carried him to a Stryker armored vehicle outside, around 9:20. He moaned as they carried him down the stairs on a stretcher.
The men of the platoon remained in the living room, frozen in shock. They had a problem. Sergeant Leija’s helmet, flak jacket, gear and weapon, along with that of at least one other soldier, were still in the exposed area of the kitchen. They needed to be recovered. But how?
“We don’t know if there’s friendlies in that building,” said Sgt. Richard Coleman, referring to the concrete complex a few feet away from where Sergeant Leija had been shot. Sergeant Biletski, 39, decided to wait. He called for another unit to search and clear the building next door.
The additional unit needed time, and got lost. The men sat still. Sergeant B, as his soldiers called him, was near the wall farthest from the kitchen, out of sight from the room’s wide, shaded window. Sergeant Woollis, Private Barnum, Sergeant Coleman and Specialist Terry Wilson sat around him.
Together, alone, trapped in a dark room with the blood of their comrade on the floor, they tried to piece together what had happened. Maybe the sniper saw Sergeant Leija’s silhouette in the window and fired. Or maybe the shot was accidental, they said, fired from below by Iraqi Army soldiers who had been moving between the buildings.
Sergeant Woollis cited the available evidence — an entrance wound just below the helmet with an exit wound above. He said the shot must have been fired from the ground.
The Iraqis were not supposed to even be there yet. The plan had been for Sergeant Leija’s squad to work alongside an Iraqi Army unit all day. But after arriving late at the first building, the Iraqis jumped ahead, leaving the Americans and pushing north without searching dozens of apartments in the area.
The Iraqi soldiers below the kitchen window had once again skipped forward. An American officer later said the Iraqis were brave to push ahead toward the most intense gunfire.
But Sergeant Leija’s squad had no communication links with their Iraqi counterparts, and because it was an Iraqi operation — as senior officers repeatedly emphasized — the Americans could not order the Iraqis to get back in line. There was nothing they could do.
9:40 a.m.
An Iraqi soldier rushed in and then stopped, seemingly surprised by the Americans sitting around him. He stood in the middle of the darkened living room, inches away from bloody bandages on the carpet.
“Get away from the window!”
The soldiers yelled at their interpreter, a masked Iraqi whom they called Santana. Between their shouts and his urgent Arabic, the Iraqi soldier got the message. He slowly walked away.
A few minutes later it happened again. This time, the Iraqi lingered.
“What part of ‘sniper’ don’t you understand?” Sergeant Biletski yelled. The other soldiers cursed and called the Iraqis idiots. They were still not sure whether an Iraqi soldier was responsible for Sergeant Leija’s wound, but they said the last thing they wanted was another casualty. In a moment of emotion, Private Barnum said, “I won’t treat him if he’s hit.”
When the second Iraqi left, an airless silence returned. The dark left people alone to grieve. “You O.K.? ” Sergeant B asked each soldier. A few nods. A few yeses.
Private Barnum stood up, facing the kitchen, eager to bring back the gear left. One foot back, the other forward, he stood like a sprinter. “I can get that stuff, Sergeant,” he said. “I can get it.”
The building next door had still not been cleared by Americans. The answer was no.
“I can’t lose another man,” Sergeant B said. “If I did, I failed. I already failed once. I’m not going to fail again.”
The room went quiet. Faces turned away. “You didn’t fail, sir,” said one of the men, his voice disguised by the sound of fighting back tears. “You didn’t fail.”
9:55 a.m.
The piercing cry of an infant was easily identifiable, even as the gunfire outside intensified. It came from the apartment next door. The Iraqi Army had been there, too. In an interview before Sergeant Leija was shot, the three young Iraqis there said that their father had been taken by the soldiers.
“Someone from over there” — they pointed back away from Haifa Street, toward the rows of mud-brick slums — “told them we had weapons,” said a young man, who seemed to be about 18.
He was sitting on a couch. To his right, his older sister clutched an infant in a blanket; his younger sister, about 16, sat on the other side.
The young man said the family was Shiite. He said the supposed informants were Sunni Arabs who wanted their apartment.
The truth of his claim was impossible to verify, but it was far from the day’s only confounding tip. Earlier that morning, an Iraqi boy of about 8 ran up to Sergeant Leija. He wanted to tell the Americans about terrorists hiding in the slums behind the apartment buildings on Haifa Street’s eastern side.
Sergeant Leija, an easygoing 27-year-old from Raymondville, Tex., ignored him. He and some of his soldiers said it was impossible to know whether the boy had legitimate information or would lead them to an ambush.
That summed up intelligence in Iraq, they said: there is always the threat of being set up, for an attack or an Iraqi’s own agenda.
The Iraqi Army did not seem worried about such concerns, according to the family. The three young Iraqis said they were glad that the Americans had come. Maybe they could help find their father.
10:50 a.m.
Sergeant. Coleman tried using a mop to get the gear, and failed. It was too far away. With more than an hour elapsed since the attack, and after no signs of another shot through the kitchen window, Sergeant B agreed to let Private Barnum make a mad dash for the equipment.
Private Barnum waited for several minutes in the doorway, peeking around the corner, stalling. Then he dove forward, pushing himself up against the wall near the window to cut down the angle, pausing, then darting back to the camouflaged kit.
Crack — a single gunshot. Private Barnum looked back at the kitchen window, his eyes squeezed with fear. His pace quickened. He cleared the weapons’ chambers and tossed them to the living room. Then he threw the flak jackets and bolt cutters.
He picked up Sergeant Leija’s helmet, cradled it in his arms, then made the final dangerous move back to the living room, his fatigues indelibly stained with his friend’s blood. There were no cheers to greet him. It was a brave act borne of horror, and the men seemed eager to go.
As Private Barnum gingerly wrapped the helmet in a towel, it tipped and blood spilled out.
11:15 a.m.
Sergeant B sat down on a chair outside the two apartments and used the radio to find out if they would be heading back to base or moving forward. He was told to stay put until after an airstrike on a building 500 yards away.
The platoon, looking for cover, returned to the Iraqis’ apartment, where they found the family as they were before — on the couch, in the dark, around the heater.
Specialist Wilson continued the conversation he started before the gunshot two hours earlier. The young Iraqi man said again that the Iraqi Army had taken his father. “Will you come back to help?” he asked.
“We didn’t take him,” Specialist Wilson said. “The I.A. took him. If he didn’t do anything wrong, he should be back.”
The Iraqi family nodded, as if they had heard this before.
Speaking together — none of them gave their names — they said they had lived in the apartment for 16 years. Ten days ago, before the Americans arrived, Sunnis told them they would kill every Shiite in the building if they did not leave immediately. So they fled to a neighborhood in southern Baghdad where some Shiites had started to gather in abandoned homes. But again, a threat came: leave or die. So less than a week ago, the family returned to Haifa Street.
And now the airstrike was coming.
Sergeant B told the family that they should go into a back room for safety. He asked if they wanted to take the heater with them (they did not), and he reminded everyone to keep their mouths open to protect their inner ears against the airstrike’s shockwave.
A boom, then another even louder explosion hit, shaking dust from the walls. One of blasts came from a mortar shell that hit the building, the soldier said. The family stayed, but for the Americans, it was time to go.
12:30 p.m.
Over the next few hours, the platoon combined sprints across open alleyways with bouts of rest in empty makeshift homes. Under what sounded like constant gunfire, the soldiers moved behind the Iraqi soldiers, staying close.
At one point, the Iraqis detained a man who they said had videos of himself shooting American soldiers. The Iraqi soldiers slapped him in the head as they walked him past.
About an hour later, a sniper wounded two Iraqi soldiers who were mingling outside a squat apartment like teenagers at a 7-11. Private Barnum wrapped their wounds with American bandages. He and the rest of the platoon had been inside, taking cover.
“Stay away from the windows,” Sergeant B kept repeating. The point was clear: don’t let it happen again. Don’t fail.
4 p.m.
Downstairs in the lobby of a mostly abandoned high rise on Haifa Street, the sergeant and his men sat on the floor, exhausted. They were waiting for their Stryker to return so they could head back to base. In 14 hours, they had moved through a stretch of eight buildings on Haifa Street. They had been scheduled to clear 18.
Upstairs, Iraqi soldiers searched rooms and made themselves at home in empty apartments. Many were spacious, even luxurious, with elevators opening into wide hallways and grand living rooms splashed with afternoon sun.
Under Saddam Hussein, Haifa Street had been favored by Baath Party officials and wealthy foreigners. The current residents seemed to have fled in an instant; in one apartment, a full container of shaving cream was left in the bathroom. In that apartment’s living room, a band of Iraqi soldiers settled in, relaxing on blue upholstered couches and listening to a soccer game on a radio they found in a closet.
They looked comfortable, like they were waiting to be called to dinner.
Sergeant B and Specialist Woollis, meanwhile, talked about what they would eat when they got back to their homes in California. The consensus was chili dogs and burgers.
Sergeant B also said he missed his 13-year-old son, who was growing up without him, playing football, learning to become a man with an absentee father. After 17 years in the Army, he said, he was thinking that maybe his family had put up with enough.
“I don’t see how you can do this,” he said, “and not be damaged.”
A few hours later, the word came in: Sergeant Leija had died.
update: a YouTube ("Juba The Baghdad Sniper") of the video originally at the source link provided in the post to which this is a reply for the moment at least at
[with comments] -- graphic; my note, adapted for this post, from that original posting:
[F6 note, and warning -- very graphic, shows the shots including the hits, one after another after another -- this significant bit of agitprop gives a view from the other side of a part of what was happening to our folks over there that we generally just not only do not see back here, but for that matter even hear about -- but this vid really is not for everyone -- if you're unsure, then please just don't watch -- thanks]
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