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By spring, it appeared elections would do little to bring unity to Iraq—and were in fact energizing the causes of violence. It took until May for the new government to be seated, under Ibrahim al-Jafari, a Shiite. The Ministry of Defense went to a Sunni, but the Ministry of the Interior went to a Shiite believed to be a leader of the Badr Brigade, a revenge-minded militia linked to Iraq’s largest Islamist Shia party. Before long, the Ministry of the Interior—whose police and commando units, unlike the Iraqi army, functioned independently of the Coalition’s control—began expunging Sunnis from its roster and putting uniforms on Badr militiamen, who used their badges and guns against Sunnis and ex-Baathists. Surely to Zarqawi’s delight, the government’s sectarian direction confirmed Sunnis’ worst fears. He and his insurgents appeared an ever more necessary buffer.
Throughout it all, General Casey was a disciplined, methodical thinker. His was not a mind that turned like a weather vane based on the last briefing he had received, only to turn back the other way. TF 714’s intelligence conclusions and reasoning suited his temperament, as our industrial grind gathered information from ground actions, detainees, documents, cyber operations, liaisons, our JIATFs, and other nations’ police and intelligence. Although never perfect, there was a special value to the volume of intelligence, as it fostered a more well-rounded view that a single source or a biased samples were less likely to corrupt.
By May 2005, which alone saw more than sixty suicide bombings, Casey was increasingly convinced that the foreign-fighter flow was a strategic vulnerability. He had decided the Coalition needed to conduct major operations along Iraq’s western border, in an attempt to shut down the ratlines of foreign fighters. The biggest of those ran down the western Euphrates River valley, connecting Syria to Baghdad. Al Qaeda had rooted itself throughout the valley, setting up way stations and safe houses in rural desert compounds and riverside cities, from Al Qaim down through Rawa, Haditha, Hit, Ramadi, and Fallujah. I believed that as part of a larger MNF-I effort, our task force could play an effective role. The smaller size and greater agility of TF 16 enabled us to swiftly shift our focus to this contested waterway, pressuring parts of the enemy network conventional forces could not. I offered to Casey that our strike teams and the focus of our targeting apparatus shift to be part of the effort out west.
But I worried our efforts would only be decisive if the Coalition went full tilt. “Conventional forces have got to do their part,” I told Casey. “We can only be part of the solution.”
He agreed and said we would contribute to a significant effort to reinforce the conventional forces that, through no fault of their own, were hopelessly overstretched along Iraq’s western border. The Marines who owned much of the terrain were forced to rely on the Iraqi Department of Border Enforcement to manage the “forts” that dotted the border in Anbar and Najaf provinces. That spring, the Coalition was building new forts in these provinces, planning to have thirty-two installations facing Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Jordan. But many of the posts were deserted. A handful of chronically underequipped Iraqis—with little ability to check the flow of men, trucks, and cars—manned others. Many of the abandoned posts that pocked the desert border got most use from nomadic shepherds, who commandeered the buildings as temporary mangers for their sheep.
Soon after meeting with Casey, I sent General Abizaid a message, explaining my decision to support this push out west. These operations will be riskier, I explained, because our teams will be a greater distance from our bases. Although I worded my message in terser military-speak, I knew my old friend would understand the stakes. Fewer conventional forces exist to act as quick reaction forces if operations go sour. I’m going to send us out there in greater numbers, and I think it is going to be very dangerous. I think it is going to be bloody. And so I am steeling everybody for greater casualties. Abizaid called me when he got the message. We skipped the usual joking back and forth that started most of our conversations. John thanked me for the forewarning and said he concurred with the decision.
As we considered how to unseat Al Qaeda from the western Euphrates and dampen its ratlines, I became convinced that we would need more TF 714 forces in Iraq. To supplement what we then had—a Green squadron and smaller detachments of Rangers and SEALs—I decided to deploy a second squadron of Green to Iraq and bring some of our SEALs and aviation from Afghanistan. I did not make the decision lightly. In the year and a half since I’d taken command, I had already increased our forces, as well as expanded our liaisons across the region. We were nearing the highest deployment pace we could sustain. In a year, an individual TF 714 operator spent four months in combat, doing near-nightly operations; four months on the short tether of alert, on call the entire time; and four months recovering from or preparing for deployment, sometimes overseas if he was pulled out to serve as a liaison. By 2005, the men had been at this for four straight years. That cadence was sustainable but couldn’t be taken for granted; now, for a number of months as we surged, our pace would become an unsustainable sprint. I knew that sprint was the only way we could help arrest the deteriorating situation in Iraq.