THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Soldiers Detail a Mission Gone Wrong
The Army concluded insurgents killed two guardsmen. But papers released later
confirmed they died at the hands of their Iraqi trainees.
By Scott Gold, Times Staff Writer
July 30, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-attack30jul30,1,2398661.story?coll=la-headlines-world
The sun rose over central Iraq as the soldiers, searching for weapon stashes,
trudged past a bombed-out police station and through shoulder-high fields of
wheat, lugging M-16s, mine detectors and grenades. Sometimes they fell,
stumbling over large clumps of dirt turned up by farmers. Sometimes they talked
about dying; they had been sent, in the detached vernacular of the military, to
a place that was "not friendly."
Most often, though, they cursed and complained; their mission had begun at 3
a.m., on little sleep, with no breakfast. Before long, it was already 100
degrees. They had been paired with trainees from the Iraqi national guard, who
were falling behind. A lieutenant was learning how to say "keep up" in Arabic
when the gunfire began.
It has been two years since that morning, since two California Army National
Guard soldiers — Spc. Patrick R. McCaffrey Sr., 34, of Tracy and 1st Lt. Andre
D. Tyson, 33, of Riverside — were killed.
Late last month, military officials gave the families of the soldiers more than
200 pages of documents outlining their investigation of the killings. The
documents confirmed what the soldiers' families had long suspected — that
McCaffrey and Tyson were killed not by insurgents, as the military initially had
reported, but by their purported allies, the very Iraqis whom they had trained
to fight.
Tyson's family has decided not to speak publicly. But McCaffrey's parents have
become outspoken critics of the White House and continue to raise questions —
about the killings, and about whether the military attempted to suppress the
truth because it could have further soured public opinion about the war. The
military has said there was nothing improper about its handling of the case.
On June 22, 2004, McCaffrey and Tyson, who had arrived in Iraq two months
earlier, were conducting a patrol near the town of Balad, about 50 miles north
of Baghdad.
The summer had already turned tense and traumatic. According to a witness
account written by an American soldier the day of the attack and included in the
documents, six rockets had struck the soldiers' base, called Camp Anaconda, a
week earlier. One rocket had landed on the PX, the general store common to many
military installations, and killed two soldiers.
At 11 p.m. on June 21, commanders announced that soldiers from the base would be
participating in a mission to check eight dangerous areas for weapons stashed by
insurgents. The mission would begin four hours later.
"No one had gotten much sleep," wrote one soldier, whose identity, like almost
all in the documents, was kept private by the military. "The areas we walked
through were dense jungle. The ground isn't flat and there are small canals
every 25 ft…. We're walking through brush neck high, trying to keep our footing,
and hoping our next step doesn't land us … in a canal. 'It's like being in
Vietnam' is the running joke."
By late morning, they were "tired and starving," another soldier wrote. They had
marched for more than five hours without food. Their feet were in agony, their
nerves raw from fear of snipers and drive-by shootings, the documents say.
Medics had given intravenous fluids to at least two soldiers who were
experiencing heat exhaustion. In one witness account, one officer said he was
careful not to reveal his extreme fatigue "so my group won't lose their
motivation to carry on the mission."
Soon, the Americans met up, as planned, with 12 members of the Iraqi national
guard whom they had recently trained. (The guard was known at the time as the
Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, or ICDC.)
This was not a welcome addition to the patrol, the documents suggest. It wasn't
long, the documents say, before the Iraqi soldiers were complaining too: that
the American soldiers were looking for weapons caches in the wrong areas, that
the water they had been given to drink was too warm.
"I've heard on the news that they're more than ready to take over after we've
left," the first soldier wrote. "But from what I've seen, they couldn't be more
wrong. For the last two weeks, our 'off' days have been spent baby-sitting."
The patrol was soon split into two, a decision that mystified some soldiers, who
felt it left them dangerously exposed, according to the documents.
"They're not going to stop pushing us until someone gets hurt or killed,"
McCaffrey told fellow soldiers, according to witness accounts in the documents.
"Then maybe they'll let up."
"That was the last thing I remember him saying," a soldier wrote in his account.
It is unclear how many Americans and how many Iraqis were in each group: One
investigative document says Tyson and McCaffrey's group included three U.S.
soldiers and four or five ICDC soldiers; another account says 12 Iraqi soldiers
were present.
McCaffrey and Tyson's group wound up on a narrow road near Bakr village. The
attack began when they stopped briefly, next to a mud wall, so that Tyson could
use the radio that McCaffrey had begun carrying after another American soldier
faltered in the heat. The bullets started flying.
Tyson was shot in the head, just above the left eye, with an AK-47, according to
the documents. McCaffrey was shot in the torso. When soldiers from nearby
patrols, including some members of the group that had splintered from the one
Tyson and McCaffrey were in, swept to the scene minutes later, Tyson was trying
to breathe, the documents say, but he would not live long. An American soldier
approached McCaffrey's body.
"They said not to worry about him," one soldier reported in a witness account.
"He's dead."
The military initially told the soldiers' families that the men had been
ambushed by insurgents. But in late June, the military informed the families
that McCaffrey and Tyson were actually killed by members of the Iraqi national
guard who were on patrol with them.
It remains unclear how many people participated in the attack. One Iraqi trainee
is in custody awaiting prosecution, said Army officials, who have not identified
the suspect. The Army has not discussed the alleged motives of the suspect or
others who may have taken part in the attack.
The military, acknowledging a nine-month lapse between the conclusion of the
criminal investigation and the family briefings, attributed that delay to the
"complexity of the case."
The incorrect explanation for the attack, the Army said, was "based on the
preliminary casualty report."
But according to one witness account in the documents, a soldier who survived
the attack told his rescuers — even before he had been moved from the ditch
where he landed after the attack — that "the ICDC shot him."
Another document shows that an Iraqi soldier who witnessed the attack quickly
identified one of his colleagues as a shooter. Within a day, military
investigators were developing a detailed profile of that suspect's life;
interviews indicated that he was "temperamental" and "regards himself as a
hero," the documents show.
A third document shows that American soldiers who rushed to the scene after the
attack learned within hours that the assailants were wearing Iraqi uniforms. The
U.S. soldiers also had a list of missing Iraqi soldiers written in English and
Arabic and were talking to a local sheik to try to find them.
Those details have fueled suspicions among the California soldiers' relatives
that the military shaded the truth to keep the public from learning that Iraqi
soldiers had turned on their American trainers. That knowledge, the critics have
said, could have damped public support for the war.
"You'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt. But it really makes one
incredulous. It's just one continuous lie," said Bob McCaffrey of Redding,
Calif., the father of Patrick McCaffrey.
"They took a head count within an hour. They knew exactly who was responsible,
who these damn guys were. Why would they then release a false report — and
that's what it was, a false report — other than to save face and not put their
public relations campaign in danger?"
A military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the documents were
released only last month because it had "not come to the attention of the Family
Notification Unit until recently that the family had not been given a formal
briefing."
Army spokesman Paul Boyce agreed that U.S. soldiers "did have a suspicion
immediately" that Iraqi soldiers were behind the attack. But, he said, "it had
to be investigated."
In the first hours and days after the attack, Boyce said, "there was some
confusion as to who was shooting at the soldiers and from what vantage point."
According to the documents, there were conflicting accounts among American
soldiers, for example, of the number of attackers and the number of ICDC
soldiers who had joined with the Americans in the first place. While those
discrepancies were being investigated, Boyce said, the Army concluded that the
attack was an ambush by insurgents.
"That was what was passed on to the family," Boyce said. "The suspicion was that
it was some kind of enemy attack."