corrente

Summarizing another day in hell, the Pakistan Times bloodlessly reports, midstory,

Three attacks on U.S. convoys in and around Baghdad killed two American soldiers and wounded five others Sunday, the military said.
(via Juan Cole)

As it happens, a friend of mine was in one of those convoys. Here's what earns you a bullet point in a wire service report from Iraq:

I can't remember which was first. A blinding flash. A thick cloud of dust. A percussion sound that absorbed all other noise for a second and the ringing sound that followed. A concussion wave that felt like a hot slap on my face.

"Sir, what do I do?" Says my driver. The clear Baghdad sky has been instantly clouded with brown dirt. We had been going 55. There was one of our vehicles in front of us. Nothing else on the road.

"Pull over." I order as the smoke clears. I see Zulu 823 spinning. All of the tires blown out. The gunner on the roof fallen over into the HUMMWV. "Pull past them." I change my order as I realize that they won't be able to defend to their front.

"I can't get out, Sir! I have to get out." Says the medic in the seat behind me. She's right. She has to get out there are wounded.

"Sir, what do I do?" Repeats my driver. I don't have an answer. My vehicle has come to a stop. I help the medic out. I have to check on Zulu 823.

By the time I get to 823 there are four other people working with the wounded gunner. The medic tells me she needs a helicopter if the gunner is going to have a chance. The nearest U.S. Hospital is about three miles away. Through downtown Baghdad. Three miles is so close that a HUMMWV will usually beat a helicopter. Unless you have to worry about people blowing themselves up next to you. Which, apparently, we do.

I run to the radio to call for an aero-medical evacuation. "Dustoff this is Razor 44. We've been hit. We're on route Warszaw. Over."

The radio responds in a broken crackle that reminds me of a cheap drive through restaurant, "Razor ... Dustoff... location... over." I can't understand them.

I need a helicopter. I need to get this kid out of here. Now. I saw him. A strong pulse was pushing blood out his neck.

I hear a rattling sound and think, "what now?" I see a Bradley fighting vehicle pulling up. I run to the Bradley as Dustoff is trying to get me back on the radio. "I have two wounded. We need to get them to the CASH." I yell at the Bradley commander.

"What unit are you?" Says the commander.

Answer his question but I think "Who cares?"

"Put your wounded and your medic on the track." Says the commander. The back door of the Bradley opens like a U.F.O. unfolding and laying down as a ramp from the road to the Bradley.

Bang. Another, smaller explosion.

Another bomb detonated. We gotta get out of here. Now. I can't see who's detonating these things but two more go off. Bang. Bang.

We gotta go. "Put him on the track. You Chief. You gotta get on the track too."

Chief was wounded. Couldn't tell how bad. He'd been in the front passenger seat of Zulu 823.

"I know! Where's the medic?" Chief always knew. He was always right. The medic.

Bang.

There she is. "Medic. Get on the track." And she joins them.

How about the vehicle. Mechanics had already removed the .50 cal. There's a SAW. There's a Shotgun. Got them too. Can I get the radios? No. They're locked.

Bang.

"Let's go. We gotta go." Everybody's back on their vehicles.

It's been four minutes since the first explosion and off we go. Toward the base.

I start to think. Was that a VBIED? It was definitely an IED. Improvised Explosive Device. Definitely. Just an IED. Not a vehicle born IED. There was no other vehicle. None. Just us and some Bradleys. That was all I saw. There was a kid... Did he know? Were there signs? There are usually signs. How did we miss them?

The gravity of everything hits me. I've been on a dozen convoys. Nothing ever happens. What just happened? Why now? This is my first time as convoy commander. Where are we going now?

There's a base about 1 mile ahead. Get on the base. We have a sister unit there. We can use their office.

At the base I am able to call my unit 50 miles North. I let them know what's happened. I contact the hospital five miles East. The Chief will be fine. A few pieces of shrapnel that he'd have rather extracted with his Gerber multi-tool. The gunner is pronounced dead on arrival. KIA. I call my unit back to start family notification.

The commander of the sister battalion corners me. "Captain, why did you have mortars on that HUMMWV?"

"Sir, I didn't have any mortars."

"Currently the traffic control point is reporting that mortar rounds are cooking off around the vehicle you left there." Zulu 823. Yes. I left it. Lopez was the driver. Did I see Lopez? She's about 100 pounds and an outstanding driver. Damn where's Lopez? S2 tells us that Haji wants to behead an American female soldier. Where's Lopez?

"Sir, I didn't have mortar rounds in that truck." I gotta find Sepulveda. Who else was on that truck? Needleman. He got on another truck. I gotta find Lopez.

We find Lopez and Needleman at the rally point. They both got in other trucks.

Within about an hour it becomes clear that the investigators all believe we were hit by a vehicle IED (VBIED) and not just a roadside IED. Nobody in the first vehicles saw another vehicle. But some people in my convoy say they saw body parts lying around. Unidentified and miscellaneous body parts. A leg below the knee seemed fairly complete to somebody. And the random explosions afterwards…. Yep that was a VBIED. Haji packs the trunk with explosives, like mortars, and he knows some will detonate initially and some later. So that explains the mortars.

A suicide VBIED on the last few days of Ramadan. "Nights of Power" they call them. But this was in the morning.

So that's how my Sunday at 1053 was.

When my friend, a Bush voter in 2000, was called up in March, he was one of the most "up" people I'd ever known, devout yet intellectually omnivorous, funny and gregarious, inclined towards studying law when he got back, with a young wife and newborn child that he doted on with abandon. As recently as a few months back he was writing witty letters about the tedium of administering the base network. Last week, he voted Kerry. Yesterday, he watched the life of a comrade drain into the Iraqi desert. A fraction of a second difference, and ....

I fear something else died yesterday too.

According to his former party and co-religionists, of course, he didn't even suffer a scratch, so Baghdad 11/07/04 1035, should it inform a future decision to try to save other kids from watching their friends die, will be fair game for mockery and slander at the hands of people with "other priorities" than being foolish enough to place their trust in their feckless leaders' cynical call to patriotic duty.