How The U.S. Struggled To Establish Law And Order In Post-Invasion Iraq, An Interview With Ret. Col. Ted Spain, Fmr. Cmdr. 18th Mil Police Brigade

Col. Ted Spain deployed in Iraq from 2003-2004 (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Retired Colonel Ted Spain is the former commander of the 18^th Military Police Brigade. In early 2003, he was deployed to Kuwait from Germany for the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, and spent a year in the country. I first became aware of him through Tom Ricks’ book Fiasco. I’m currently re-reading it for the first time since it came out in 2006, and that prompted me to get in contact with Colonel Spain. During his time in Iraq, he went through not only the invasion, but the post-war chaos as well. Spain was deployed in Baghdad, which became the center of the looting, insurgency, and general lawlessness that beset the country. While Spain attempted to create a sense of law and order for Iraqis, he ran into a civilian and military leadership that suffered from constant personnel changes, lacked a unified plan, and was caught up in thinking about Iraq in terms of a war, which led them to neglect his work to rebuild the Iraqi police. Below is an interview with Colonel Spain about his experiences in Iraq from 2003-2004, and his general impression of how the U.S. did during that crucial first year.

1. Could you briefly tell me your background, and how you became involved with Iraq?

I assumed command of the 18^th Military Police (MP) Brigade in August 2002, headquartered in Mannheim, Germany, with military police units all across Germany. I deployed to Kuwait on February 21, 2003, and we entered Iraq as part of the initial invasion. My Brigade was part of V Corps, headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany. The V Corps Commander, Lieutenant General William Wallace was the senior Army commander during the ground war.

2. What years did you serve in the country, and where were you posted there?

We were there from the initial invasion, and handed over our responsibilities on February 1, 2004. We were mainly in Baghdad, but I had some forces south of Baghdad. My headquarters was at Camp Victory in Baghdad, but my subordinate battalions and their companies were all across Baghdad and south of Baghdad.

3. According to Tom Ricks' book Fiasco, you were originally going to have 20 companies of military police under your command before the invasion, but when March 2003 rolled around you had far fewer units. Do you know why they decided to make that cut in forces?

I was given a mission that if performed doctrinally would have required 50 MP companies, but was allotted 20 companies on my task organization as part of the war plan. That is not unusual, commanders never have enough assets, what you do is prioritize your assets to accomplish the most critical missions. The problem was that when we were told to invade, 19 March, I only had about 3 ½ companies that had all their equipment. I had probably close to another 1000 MPs in Kuwait that had not received their equipment yet, so I left them in Kuwait until their equipment arrived, and then they joined us in Iraq. Meanwhile, I had additional MPs that had not yet left the states, and others that were preparing to ship their equipment. I did not receive my final unit in Iraq until 30 June, about 14 weeks after entering Iraq. I believe the decisions to delay my units, along with some other units, was to get as much fire power in as possible, yet maintain an invasion time before the end of March, because of the upcoming heat, strategic surprise, politics back at home, etc.

4. What was the role of your units during the actual invasion?

During the ground war we were pretty much tied up handling enemy prisoners of war, since that was our top priority, given our limited resources. As we picked up more units, then we started performing more missions.

5. What problems did you run into during the invasion with a smaller force then you originally thought you were going to have?

Mainly, I wasn’t able to perform my other missions, such as route security, which I will always believe led to the capture of members of the 507 Maintenance Company, Jessica Lynch’s unit - I was only about twenty miles away from where they were holding her, escorting more critical convoys, performing area security missions, operating more checkpoints.

6. You arrived in Baghdad in April 2003. What did the city look like, and did you witness any of the looting that went on?

When I personally first entered Baghdad, the 3^rd Infantry Division was controlling the airport. When I first saw the airport it was still called Saddam International Airport, but was soon changed to say Baghdad International Airport. There were several commercial airlines, like Iraqi Air on the tarmac, as well as some commercial and other planes, none military however, that had been destroyed by our air/ground campaign. I saw numerous checkpoints around the city being controlled by the 3^rd Infantry Division with their Abrams Tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

Baghdad was a beautiful city, and one image that will always stay in my mind was seeing the amazing accuracy of our “smart bombs,” in that on many occasions I would see one large building standing like normal, while the building right beside it was totally destroyed by one of our various types of missiles.

I should note that my first visit was to see the city for myself, and to assist in planning our follow on mission when we moved there permanently. During my first visit it was just my Command Sergeant Major, our security details, and me. At that time my Headquarters was still at Talil Air Base in Dhi Qar, along with the HQ of one of my subordinate Battalions. This was on or about April 11, my first day in my HQ at Camp Victory, when I permanently stayed was on April 25, the same day I lost my first soldier. My other subordinate battalion, I only had two at the time, because I still had two waiting in Kuwait for their equipment and additional soldiers, was HQ’d just south of Baghdad. I put them there to posture our quick movement into Baghdad, when the situation warranted it. They were running an Enemy Prisoner of War Holding area, and conducting route security; the best they could with their extremely limited assets. My other battalion was doing the same thing in the Talil vicinity.

I did personally witness looting, but during my first visit I had nothing to stop it, and there probably wasn’t enough MPs in the Army to stop it, unless you were going to kill people. There were six million people in that city, and there are only about 17 states in the US that even have six million people in the entire state, it was huge.

The looting in Iraq went on for weeks after the fall of Saddam in April 2003 (AFP)

7. Were you given any orders to do anything about the looting?

Much has been written about Ambassador Bremer’s alleged order to shoot the looters.  He said in his book that he asked his staff if he should put out an order to shoot the looters, but it went out as an order. He says he never issued it. Tom Ricks said on one of the PBS specials that he was with me in Baghdad (one day he spent about 10 hours with me and went with me on patrols, my meetings with the Iraqis, etc.) when he heard that Bremer had issued an order to shoot the looters. He said he asked me what I knew about it, and he said that I said I had not heard anything about it, and it may have happened like that. I do remember my staff telling me one night, and it could have been the same day that Ricks was with me that we had been told to shoot the looters. I asked them where they got that from, and they said General Ricardo Sanchez’ staff. I said we are not going to shoot looters until I heard that from Sanchez personally. It was later clarified there never was an intent to shoot the looters.

As a military policeman, it was absurd to me to shoot looters, and I was not going to allow it, unless I was ordered by someone that had the authority to order me. On a similar note, to my knowledge, I was the only Brigade commander that did not allow warning shots. I know all the combat arms units were using them. Again, in the law enforcement business, warning shots are bad. When someone is shooting behind you, you have no way of knowing whether they are firing warning shots, or are shooting at you, so you are likely to return fire, thus creating dead bodies over a miss understanding. That was allegedly one of the issues when some Iraqis were shot in Fallujah in May 2003. Supposedly some members of the 82^nd Airborne fired warning shots, and other members of the 82^nd thought the Iraqis were firing on them, and returned fire, and I think about 17 Iraqis were killed. I was tasked by General Wallace to send in a task force, headed by one of my MP Battalion commanders to try to restore calm. This was way before anyone knew what would later happen in Fallujah

8. How long do you think the stealing and plundering went on?

Several weeks, until basically there wasn’t anything else to steal, they were stealing everything. I personally saw Iraqis dismantle guardrails by the roadway (the same type of guardrails we have by some of our roadways) to sell the steel I assume. I saw hundreds of hand carts being pushed around with stuff stacked as high as possible, stuff like plumbing materials, sinks, toilets, etc. They dismantled some buildings, brick by brick, all window air conditioners were stolen, etc. There was a lot of damage done to police stations. All the police stations that we had to rebuild were burned in the inside. Every police station I walked in was covered with the remains of burnt files. Iraqis had obviously gone in each police station, took all the files out of all the filing cabinets, threw them on the floor, and set them on fire. I would walk at least ankle deep, and sometimes more, in ashes as I assessed each police station; there were about 90 before the war. After we assessed them, and given our number of MPs I was only able to repair and re-open about 32 of them, across the city, that was about a 4-5 month process.

Col. Spain's main mission after the invasion was standing up the Iraqi police (Michael Totten)

9. What mission were you eventually given for the post-war period?

My main mission after the ground war was to help stand up the Iraqi Police. I believe the senior civilian leadership and military leadership failed to place enough emphasis on the police during the first year. I was unable to convince them how important the police would be to the security of the country, and how important they would be to the individual security of the average Iraqi, just like it is in our country. I suspect you count on the local police for your immediate security, more than you do our Army. As I watched the closing ceremonies in Baghdad this week, and listened to the pundits, some of what they talked about was the Iraqi police and how they are not ready to protect the country. I was saying on day one, and every other day I was in Iraq that the Iraqi police would be an important part of the future of Iraq, but the senior military leadership was so focused on standing up an Army, and going after the terrorists that they didn’t have much interest in the police. They learned a couple of years after I left that the police would be an important part of the future security of Iraq

10. Why do you think the leadership failed to appreciate the role the Iraqi police could play? Were they still thinking about the war/invasion, and not making the transition to the post-war/reconstruction phase?

I addressed some of this above, but you are right. In my opinion, they just didn’t see the police with a lot of firepower. We all operate in our comfort zone, obviously I was more comfortable with understanding the police, and they were comfortable trying to stand up an Army with all the tanks, artillery, aircraft, etc. My point then, and now, was that it didn’t have to be an either/or; we had to have both, simultaneously. I tried to explain to the Army generals that when I talked to the Iraqis on the streets, and the Iraqis in the businesses, which I did almost everyday, they talked to me about their “local security” and the Iraqi police, not the Iraqi Army. If someone tries to break in my house tonight I am going to call the local police, not the Army. I tried to use this analogy with the Army generals, and had more success with some, than others.

During this time, I was quoted in one paper as saying, “We have won the war, now we have to win the peace.” I used to always hear about the “hearts and minds” from the Vietnam era, and didn’t really understand it, but it is true. You don’t win the hearts and minds by busting into Iraqi houses, throwing them in the floor, damaging their very few personal belongings while you are searching for something. How long are you going to trust your local police if they do that at your house, especially when they may not have had probable cause to be in your house to start with, but the Army generals just didn’t get it because they said we were at war. In my personal opinion, I wasn’t sure what we were in, but I believed we were in something other than war, because we now were occupying the country, we were their government. Using General Colin Powell’s words “we broke it, now we own it.” We broke Iraq, and now we had to put it together again, and I felt then, and I feel now, that the Iraqi police have to have a key role in putting it back together again.

11. What was your initial impression of the Iraqi police? What did you think of their abilities? Did you think they were going to be a help or hindrance?

My initial impression was that they did whatever they were told to do by Saddam’s people. They were not part of his inner circle. They told me numerous times that they would receive a call, usually from Saddam’s intel folks, and told to pick someone up, and deliver them somewhere, and they did. They were very corrupt. They ran checkpoint operations across the city, and shook people down. They were making about $12.00 dollars a month, and felt they had to be corrupt to survive. They were not very well trained, and human rights were not in their vocabulary. As to the question as to help or hindrance, I didn’t have a choice. I had to play the hand I was dealt. I tried to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.  I felt they had to help at some point in the future if Iraq was ever going to have a chance to secure itself.

12. Before the invasion, and immediately afterward there were several analysts and reports that said the U.S. should have moved in with a large force of advisors for the Iraqi police, but that never really materialized. Do you think those original plans would have helped the police, and the security situation in Baghdad?

Yes, it would have helped with the training of the police, which would have helped the security situation. There were supposed to be about 1,500 police advisors (many of which had been in Kosovo and Bosnia) coming in, but my personal opinion as to why it didn’t happen was because of a pissing contest between the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice. There were only around 10 that I worked with during my time, and they did the best they could, but they didn’t have the numbers or the clout to make much difference. Their biggest contribution during my time was helping us stand up the Police Academy, they had lots of experience there and were invaluable.

13. When did you feel that the U.S. was facing an insurgency in Iraq?

I never heard the word insurgent used during my entire time in Iraq. We had three types of detainees: 1. Enemy- former members of Saddam’s Army, 2. Terrorist – outsiders coming into Iraq to kill Americans, and try to prevent us establishing security, 3. Criminals – people robbing banks, kidnapping for ransoms, murdering people, raping women, etc. Since I’ve retired, I’ve read a lot about the insurgency starting about six months after I arrived in Baghdad, but I was never part of any conversation that called that an insurgency, at the time.

14. Did you have any run-ins with any of the Shiite militias like the Mahdi Army or Badr Brigade?

I didn’t personally, but we did have to deal with the attacks from Al Sadr’s folks. There was a shootout in early October between some of Al Sadr’s folks and Sistani’s folks, in Karbala. I wasn’t in the meeting, but I was told during one of the briefings to General Sanchez about this situation that he asked whom the senior American was in Karbala. When he was told it was one of my MP company commanders he said, “Get Spain on the phone.” I was in my office when I got a call, which I did from time to time that said, “Please hold for General Sanchez.” Sanchez got on the phone, and told me he wanted me to keep an MP field grade officer, either a Major or Lieutenant Colonel in Karbala until he told me otherwise. I only had two Majors and one Lieutenant Colonel in that entire area. I asked him if I could move a Battalion HQ to Karbala, because that’s where we wanted them anyway, but couldn’t, because of the Polish Division commander. Sanchez said he was going to fight the Polish commander over this. He just kept a field grade officer up there until he told me otherwise, over my objections. I did as he ordered, and on October 16 the Battalion Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Kim Orlando, a Staff Sergeant, and a Corporal were all killed in a shootout with some of Al Sadr’s gang.

15. I’ve heard there were a lot of criminal gangs taking advantage of the post-war chaos as well. Was that true, and did you have any experiences with them?

There absolutely were, and we had a tremendous amount of experiences with them, including:  conducting raids and freeing kidnapped people that were being held for ransom; killing and capturing bank robbers; killing and capturing murderers; raiding and capturing counterfeiters that were making counterfeit Iraqi dinars, because we were changing the currency, and even in one case they were making US $100 bills; running hundreds of checkpoint operations recovering stolen vehicles, weapons, etc.

16. Can you expand upon what was happening with these criminals, because I think this is an element of the Iraq story that very few people know about.  Were they mostly gangs that had been operating under Saddam, or were they opportunists that were taking advantage of the post-war chaos or a mixture of both? Did they eventually merge with the insurgents and militias? It seems like for an average citizen of Baghdad, the lawlessness that was released after the fall of the regime might have had the biggest effect upon their every day life.

I can only speculate and give an opinion on most of what you are asking, but let me set the stage a bit to a lot of what you have asked, which is similar to what a lot of what I’ve been asked since I’ve retired. You have probably heard the saying “when you are asshole deep in alligators, it is hard to remember that your original mission was to drain the swamp.” Well, we were asshole deep in alligators everyday during our time in Iraq. 

Since I’ve retired, a lot has been written about what was going on around me that first year, and much more will be written in the coming years (including my book that is being written by Terry Turchie in California). I’m not a very smart person, and certainly not a deep thinker. At the time I was an operator, a war fighter, a leader, someone that daily was trying to “drain the swamp.” I was trying to make Iraq a better place, one day at a time. In hindsight, which is always 20/20, perhaps I should have spent more time trying to understand those things you have been asking me, but I didn’t. 

Back to your original questions. I don’t know if they were gangs that had been operating under Saddam or not. I think many of them were the thugs he had released from his prisons just a few months before we invaded. Six months before we entered Iraq he emptied the now infamous Abu Ghraib Prison. I think we were fighting some of those bad guys.  I think we were fighting many from his former Army that Bremer disbanded. As you suggested, I think many were opportunists that were taking advantage of the chaos just like Americans do here in the U.S. during disasters such as hurricanes, tornados, major power outages, etc. Look what happened in New Orleans. I suspect some were, what were later called insurgents that were trying to fund their operations. I have no idea if some eventually merged with the insurgents and militias.

I think you hit a home run when you said, “It seems like for an average citizen of Baghdad, the lawlessness that was released after the fall of the regime might have had the biggest effect upon their every day life.” Ironically, I’ve never been asked that in the way you asked it, in the countless questions I’ve been asked since I’ve retired, and I couldn’t agree with your assessment more. That was exactly my point at the time. I tried to make that point every week with the senior military leadership and the senior civilian leadership at the time. My assessment then, and now, is that the average Iraqi citizen was concerned about their personal safety. Many of them were scared to go outside, many of them would not allow their children to go to school once they were re-opened, many of them were scared to shop in the businesses that were re-opened. I was on the streets of Baghdad daily, and I personally judged our success by talking to the Iraqi people and seeing how they moved about on the streets what they were saying about their personal safety.

Bottom line: we broke Iraq, so therefore we owned it. We had a great plan to take the country, just not a great plan on what we were going to do with it after we owned it. Had we placed more emphasis on the Iraqi police, perhaps the average citizen would have felt safer, thereby providing us more intel on the bad guys, thereby ending the chaos. We will have to let history tell us how this ended. I just watched the final soldiers roll into Camp Virginia in Kuwait, as the last vehicles left Iraq. In March 2003, I rolled out of Camp Virginia, to enter Iraq, and try to accomplish the mission I was given. There are a lot of things I would have done differently if I had known then, what I know now. Tomorrow morning we can talk about the results of the NFL football games, and I can probably give you an example of where if one of the quarterbacks had passed the ball instead of running it, they would have won the game. I just saw the winning numbers from last night’s drawing of Powerball, if I would have known those numbers yesterday at this time, I would be a multi-millionaire right now. 

17. After the fall of the Iraqi government in April 03 when was the first time one of your units came under attack?

They came under attack from when we first entered Iraq as part of the invasion until the day we left. I lost my first soldier on 25 April, but that was not a result of an enemy attack.  I lost soldiers to IEDs, ambushes, traffic accidents, and drownings.

18. In August 2003 insurgents began high-profile attacks in the capital such as the bombing of the Jordanian Embassy, and U.N. headquarters, and then in Sep. they tried to kill the Baghdad police chief, and hit the U.N. again. What were your impressions of those operations, and did they change your views about what the U.S. was facing in Iraq?

We were involved in everything you mentioned. They didn’t really change my views, because it was chaos the entire time I was there. I learned that the best a commander can do in combat is to manage the chaos, and that is what I tried to do everyday. Some days were better than others. We were more successful in some areas than others. The attacks you mentioned above, and many more you didn’t played well to the media back in the States, and in many cases were carried out to try to show the Iraqi people we couldn’t protect them. Secretary Rumsfeld asked me about the murder rate in Baghdad. I told him we were having about 45 a month, and he said that was less than Washington, DC. I sat on a board in DC about three years ago that was trying to deal with how to handle the next situation like Iraq, as it relates to standing up a host nation police. Some guy from the Department of Justice asked me why I couldn’t control the looting in Iraq. I didn’t like the way he asked me so I answered, “Why couldn’t you control the looting in New Orleans.” I then went on to explain to him that my point was we were doing the best we could given the situation we found ourselves in, just as I’m sure they were doing in New Orleans.

19. In Oct. 03 the insurgents launched their first Ramadan offensive with many attacks being focused in Baghdad. What was it like to be caught in the middle of that?

Similar to my comments above, an attack is an attack, whether the people trying to kill you are criminals, terrorists, enemy soldiers or whoever. We were attacked many times. I survived a plot to assassinate me, and a vehicle bomb attack (two of them simultaneously) because the second bomb malfunctioned, and I was running about 15 minutes late to where I was going to meet with an Iraqi Major Crime Unit and some of my MPs.  I’ve had people in front of me attacked, and people behind me attacked. There was a device placed on the front of my vehicle shortly after my arrival in Baghdad that was supposed to jam any device that would remotely set off an IED attack on me. I will never know if it worked, but I am here today.

20. In May 03 Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority took over control of Iraq. What were your impressions of their work?

As you know, Bremer took over from Retired General Jay Gardner. We had already coordinated our plan with Gardner’s folks, then Bremer, and Bernie Kerik (former New York City police chief) showed up, so we started over. I talked to Bremer several times, and think he was a well intended, and good person. He had a mess on his hands, plus he was a politician and a diplomat.  I was a soldier, and therefore had different opinions from time to time. One of Bremer’s biggest challenges, from what I was personally involved in, was his revolving staff. It would drive me nuts to coordinate something with his people, then they would leave, and someone else would take over. He couldn’t make them stay. Bernie Kerik was there just for the face time, and to build up his resume. He left at the 90 day mark. 

21. Bremer and General Ricardo Sanchez were the two highest ranking Americans in Iraq, but from all accounts they disliked each other bitterly. How did that affect operations in the country?

The main impact on me was trying to determine who was in charge. I was talking one on one, one day with then Major General Martin Dempsey, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I asked General Dempsey, “If Bremer tells me one thing and Sanchez tells me something different what do I do.” Dempsey told me that the military was kind of like in direct support (DS – something all military people understand) to Bremer and the CPA. I sarcastically said, “OK I will do what Bremer said, and blow off Sanchez.” Dempsey smiled, and told me not to forget the uniform I was wearing. I understood the overall situation. It was just frustrating as hell to get conflicting guidance through the civilian channels (CPA) and the military channels.

22. When you left Iraq in early 2004, what did you think you had accomplished, and what challenges did you see ahead for those Americans who were remaining in the country?

When we cased the colors on January 31, 2004, during my speech I told my soldiers and the Iraqi police that we had been part of something historic. I told them that history would sort out whether this was a good idea or not. I told my soldiers not to worry if the future said things didn’t work out, because they should spend the rest of their lives knowing they provided the Iraqi people an opportunity for a better life, but what they did with that opportunity was up to them. I told my soldiers I had just given up my ability to influence the future of Iraq, it was now someone else’s turn. I saw lots of challenges ahead. At the time I thought they could only progress so far until they stopped killing each other. I think they finally got tired around 2006 and started going after the outsiders that were coming in to kill them. Now that we are pulling out, it will be interesting to see what happens now. I told the units that were replacing us that they had to pick up where we left off and continue to move the ball down the field.

23. Overall, what kind of grade would you give the U.S. in those first few months after the invasion was over? 

I would give the individual soldier an A+.  I would give the senior military leadership and the CPA a C, and I would give the politicians in DC a D-.  Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, from Texas, asked me in Baghdad if I agreed with the President’s decision to invade Iraq. I knew with the wrong answer I would be quoted by her on Meet the Press. I said to her, “Ma’am, what kind of question is that to ask a soldier?” I then pulled a cell phone out of my pocket and showed her. I told her that if any general in Iraq wanted to talk to me that they would call me on that phone, and that I was sure if President Bush wanted my opinion he would know how to get in touch with me. (I spent part of Thanksgiving with President Bush, and he personally thanked me for my service.)  I told her if the President asked me my opinion I would give it to him, but I would not give it to her. I said, “Ma’am I know I’ve been here almost a year, but unless you’ve changed the rules since I’ve been here, politicians tell soldiers when to go to war and politicians tell soldiers when to come home, you are a politician, I am just a soldier.”

24. What kind of lessons should the U.S. take away from its time in Iraq?

Some of the same lessons we’ve learned from previous wars, which meant we really didn’t learn them. The military sucks at nation building. It is difficult to take the same soldiers that are killing the enemy, and have trained their entire life to do that, one day, and then have them “win the hearts and minds” the next day. Hindsight is always 20/20 but here goes:

1.  If you break it you own it, and you better have a plan to put it back together again (like Humpty Dumpty.)

2.  We shouldn’t have disbanded the Iraqi Army – they took their weapons with them, took off their uniform, and came after us.

3.  We shouldn’t have stripped all of the top levels of the Ba’ath party out – all of the very senior Iraqi police leadership that I needed to work with were taken away.

4.  We should have placed a lot of emphasis on the police from the beginning, not nearly three years later.

5.  We should have gone in with more soldiers, but in all fairness, Rumsfeld had to balance the movement of equipment, with upcoming heat, with the threat of a chemical attack, with strategic surprise, with protecting the oil fields. As a side note, we were treated as liberators during the ground war. I think we wasted that opportunity because of the way we treated the Iraqi people – we didn’t understand their culture.

6. The military leaders at my level didn’t know what the post hostility operations plan was (assuming there was one.) I am to blame for that also. The original plan called for an encirclement of Baghdad, and a likely 3-4 four month battle. I made the mistake of thinking that would give me enough time to figure out the Iraqi police piece, based on how they reacted to the occupation. I was dead wrong.

SOURCES

Badkhen, Anna and Walt, Vivienne, “U.S.-trained Iraqi guards lack guns,” San Francisco Chronicle, 9/23/03

Bennett, Brian, “Who Are The Insurgents?” Time, 11/24/03

Collier, Robert, “Blast highlights U.S. failure to end chaos in Iraq,” San Francisco Chronicle, 8/20/03

Epstein, Edward, “U.S. says increased Iraqi resistance shows desperation,” San Francisco Chronicle, 10/28/03

McGeary, Johanna, “Danger Around Every Corner,” Time, 10/27/03

Ricks, Thomas, Fiasco, New York: Penguin Press, 2006

Ricks, Thomas and Chandrasekaran, Rajiv, “Attacks raise fears of guerrilla war in Iraq,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/7/03

Schlesinger, Robert, “General in Iraq says U.S. faces a guerrilla war,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/17/03

Schlesinger, Robert and Walt, Vivienne, “As attacks escalate, US troops no longer sole target,” Boston Globe, 8/20/03

Walt, Vivienne, “Bombing at Baghdad police compound,” San Francisco Chronicle, 9/3/03

- “Hellish start to holy month in Iraq,” San Francisco Chronicle, 10/28/03