It was the Mogadishu moment of the Iraq War, but with two key differences: the murdered men were not U.S. military, they were mercenaries; and unlike Somalia in 1993, the United States would not withdraw. Instead, the deaths of these four Blackwater soldiers would spark a violent U.S. siege, ushering in a period of unprecedented resistance to the occupation almost a year to the day after the fall of Baghdad.
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