First to die
(UWIRE)-A shallow outline of a building drawn in the sand was our battleground. Sandbags represented elite members of the Iraqi Republican Guard. In early March of 2003 we stood in line. We waited for our chance to train for war. At the lines end, I found myself partnered with Marine Lance Corporal Jose Gutierrez. The afternoon exercise was designed to teach us how to fight as a team in an urban terrain. As our rifles scanned for notional threats, we walked together in the sands of Kuwait. “Clear right,” said Gutierrez, with a heavy Spanish accent. Marines standing in the slow moving line laughed as Gutierrez repeated the tactical phrase.
With the exercise completed, we lowered our empty rifles and got back in line. Gutierrez had been standing in lines for most of his life. At the age of 9 years old, he stood behind other street kids at the Guatemalaís Casa Alianza orphanage. He had been orphaned the previous year and abandoned to the harsh streets of Guatemala.
In 1997, he decided to leave Guatemala for the United States. He completed the 4800-kilometer march only to be detained by INS agents at the border. Gutierrez was 22 years old at the time. He convinced the INS that he was only 16 years old. This street-wise deception guaranteed Gutierrez a green card and the promise of a new life.
At the front of the line, I found myself paired with a different Marine. I would never see Gutierrez again.
On March 21, 2003 Jose Gutierrez was killed in action in Southern Iraq. He was one of the first U.S. servicemen to die in combat in Iraq. An investigation into his death revealed that he was killed by non-hostile fire. Another Marine had fired the fatal bullet.
Cemetery of the Americans
One year later, four charred corpses hung from a bridge that spanned the Euphrates River. On March 31, 2004 a broadcast news program depicted an Iraqi mob as they stoned the suspended remains of Jerko Zovko, Michael Teague, Scott Helvenston, and Wesley Batalona. Several hours earlier, insurgents in Al-Fallujah had killed the private security contractors from Blackwater USA during a violent daylight ambush.
"Fallujah will be the cemetery of the Americans," the crowd chanted while standing on the bridge. The four security contractors would not be the last Americans killed in Al-Fallujah.
By April 4, I was staged with other Marines Northwest of Al-Fallujah in one of the cities sprawling dumps. Our mission was to re-establish security in Al-Fallujah. My platoon had arrived at night and we slept on the open ground. By morning we discovered that we had spent the restless night on a pile of hospital refuse. Anxious about the battle ahead, I wandered to a nearby vehicle checkpoint manned by two Marines from my Battalion.
Lance Corporals Robert Zurheide and Brad Shuder stood together on a long stretch of road near an empty mud-brick house. “This is bullshit,” said Shuder, as he unfastened his helmets chinstrap. “The rest of the Battalion is moving up to the edge of the city and we are stuck in the rear.”
Born in South Korea, Shuder was adopted when he was nearly two years old by an American couple. Standing in the road, Shuder and I spoke of war and about the besieged city. Zurheide said almost nothing. I am sure his thoughts were of his wife Elena. She was pregnant and expected to deliver the couple’s first child within the next week.
Later that afternoon, my platoon was ordered into the battle. Ten hours later, I was mistaken for an insurgent. Marines fired from the street at my position on the second floor of an abandoned schoolhouse. I was shot.
Having traveled only 15 meters, the bullet cleaved through the bones of my left hand. For me, Operation Vigilant Resolve had ended. During my five-hour medevac flight from Iraq to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany I repeatedly stared at the dark fuselage under my feet. Sometimes I would focus on the dried blood on my left boot. Around me, tubes and intravenous lines spilled over the edge of dozens of stacked stretchers. Pulsing red lights illuminated the broken bodies of Marines and Soldiers. Their injuries earned by hostile fire. I wanted to hide my hand.
Nine days after I was shot, the Department of Defense announced that both Brad Shuder and Robert Zurheide were killed from hostile fire on April 12 in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. An investigation into their deaths revealed that they were not killed by enemy fire. A misguided artillery round fired by other Marines killed Shuder and Zurheide while they took cover during a battle. They died at the same abandoned schoolhouse I had bled in only days earlier.
Out of Basra
During the first week in April 2008, I returned to Iraq as a civilian photojournalist. As I landed in Baghdad, the Mahdi Army militia launched mortars into the Green Zone. A few days later, I embedded with a U.S. Marine military transition team (MiTT) headed towards the city of Basra. We shared the road south with scores of Iraqi Army vehicles.
An estimated 1,000 Iraqi forces already in Basra had deserted or refused to fight against the Mehdi militia. The militia was led by the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. U.S. military officials in Basra reported systemic problems with operational planning and execution by the Iraqi forces. Basra was not going well.
After only a few hours on the ground, I was informed by the Marines to pack my equipment. Orders had been issued that prohibited me from photographing the combat operations in Basra. The rationale and authority behind the decision was never completely revealed. It seemed that someone wanted to reduce the exposure of the flawed operation. My cameras were not wanted in Basra.
Multi National Force Iraq requires that all credentialed embedded media sign a list of ground rules. “These ground rules recognize the inherent right of the media to cover combat operations and are in no way intended to prevent the release of embarrassing, negative or derogatory information,” states page one of the guidelines.
Ultimately I found myself on a V-22 Osprey aircraft headed north. Multi National Force West and their Public Affairs Section apologized repeatedly for pulling me out of Basra. In consolation, arrangements were hastily made to allow me to travel with Major General John F. Kelly the Commanding General of Multi National Force West during a two-day tour of his area of operation. During the tour, Major General John F. Kelly did not discuss the media blackout in Basra.
At the end of the first day with Kelly, I grabbed some scrap cardboard and found a spot to sleep next to a parked Humvee. The approaching night began to hide the outlines of the nearby train station located just Northwest of Al-Fallujah. But I did not need daylight to see.
Walk east across the deep wadis and dry fields. There you will find a sprawling dump. Beyond that, a long stretch of road waits alongside an empty mud-brick house. If you run south across the train tracks and into the city you will find a schoolhouse. On the second floor there is a window that faces north. Stand in the window and you can see the street below. I knew these places before I carried a camera.
Words in Washington
One week after I was forced to leave Basra, General David H. Petraeus Commander, Multi-National Force–Iraq testified before a Senate Committee on the state of Iraq. In his opening statement, Petraeus described the fighting in Basra as a “flare-up” and did not mention that more than 1,000 Iraqi Army Soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or abandoned their posts when ordered to fight the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. The events on the streets in Basra remained largely unseen by Western photographers.
The significance of the recent battle in Basra extended far beyond the southern port city itself. Any claims about the “success” of the surge must reference the unquestioned contribution made by the unilateral ceasefire endorsed by Muqtada al-Sadr himself. Millions of marginalized Shiites in Iraq are loyal to the young cleric. He has the ability to shape policy inside Iraq.
Not permitting photography in Basra was a clear contradiction to an internal document authored by Petraeus and circulated to military leaders.
Known as “Petraeus’s Nine Points” the document details the Commanders’ position on a broad range of issues including the media. According to the document, military personnel are instructed to, “Engage the media. Don’t worry about the overexposure... get on TV... Take the media by the hand and lead them. Show them the story.”
Displaced in Diyala
On July 1, 2008 I returned to Iraq on assignment for a daily newspaper in Southern California. Over the next 5 days I will be reporting inside of Diyala province on the lives of displaced Iraqi families and the renewed efforts to bring them home. An estimated 4.2 million Iraqis are displaced around the world. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), this figure includes 2.4 million persons displaced inside Iraq. The IDMC tracks conflict-induced internal displacement worldwide.
Photo Captions: James Lee stands alongside soldiers from the Afghan National Army (ANA) at a combat outpost near the base of the Hindu Kush mountain range, Afghanistan 2008 (top of post). Navy Corpsman treat a gunshot wound to the left hand of James Lee as fighting rages in the city of Al-Fallujah, Iraq 2004 (second photograph). James Lee behind the camera during a humanitarian aid operation for displaced families at Combat Outpost Mukhisa, Iraq 2008 (third photograph). A sandstorm obscures the horizon while a U.S. Marine military transition team (MiTT) en route to Basra is delayed by the mechanical problems of an Iraqi Army vehicle, Iraq 2008 (bottom of post).
