abncougar
04-13-2005, 11:02 AM
In Mosul, a Battle 'Beyond Ruthless'
By Steve Fainaru
MOSUL, Iraq -- From inside a vacant building, Sgt. 1st Class Domingo Ruiz
watched through a rifle scope as three cars stopped on the other side of the
road. A man carrying a machine gun got out and began to transfer weapons into
the trunk of one of the cars.
"Take him down," Ruiz told a sniper.
The sniper fired his powerful M-14 rifle and the man's head exploded, several
American soldiers recalled. As he fell, more soldiers opened fire, killing at
least one other insurgent. After the ambush, the Americans scooped up a piece of
skull and took it back to their base as evidence of the successful mission.
The March 12 attack -- swift and brutally violent -- bore the hallmarks of
operations that have made Ruiz, 39, a former Brooklyn gang member, renowned
among U.S. troops in Mosul and, in many ways, a symbol of the optimism that has
pervaded the military since Iraq's Jan. 30 elections.
Insurgent attacks in this northern Iraqi city, which numbered more than 100 a
week in mid-November, have declined by almost half, according to the military.
Indirect attacks -- generally involving mortars or rockets -- on U.S. bases
fell from more than 200 a month in December to fewer than 10 in March. Although
figures vary from region to region, attacks also have declined precipitously in
other parts of Iraq, creating a growing belief among U.S. commanders that the
insurgency is losing potency.
"We are seeing a more stable environment," said Lt. Col. Michael Gibler,
commander of the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, which operates in
eastern Mosul. "Have we made a turn yet? No, but we're really close to it."
The military attributes the decline to several factors, including Iraqis'
increased willingness to provide information about insurgents and the growing
presence of the new Iraqi security forces throughout the country.
But the main reason, military officials said, is a grinding counterinsurgency
operation -- now in its 20th month -- executed by soldiers like Ruiz, a
platoon sergeant in the 3rd Battalion's C Company. It is a campaign of endless
repetition: platoons of American troops patrolling Iraqi streets on foot or in
armored vehicles. Its inherent monotony is punctuated by moments of extreme
violence.
"Our battles have been beyond ruthless," said Ruiz, adding that he believes
most Americans have little understanding of how the conflict is being fought.
"An urban counterinsurgency is probably the ugliest form of warfare there is,"
said Capt. Rob Born, 30, the C Company commander.
Hardened to Horror
U.S. soldiers said they have been hardened to it by months of fighting
insurgents who often kill or maim civilians or target people marginally
associated with the Americans. In Mosul recently, U.S. forces have come upon
dozens of decapitated bodies with notes attached. One accused a victim of "sin
and corruption" and quoted the Koran: "We have not done injustice unto them, but
they to themselves."
Born, a West Point graduate from Burke, Va., said he was struck by his own
indifference to the violence when it involved the insurgents.
Last week, for example, a suicide car bomber tried to blow himself up next to
one of C Company's platoons. As the car approached, U.S. soldiers opened fire
from Stryker attack vehicles. The bomb went off about 20 yards from the nearest
Stryker, causing only minor injuries to the Americans.
Born arrived to find parts of the bomber's body scattered in all directions.
His initial reaction, he said, was "euphoric" -- relief that none of his men
had been killed or badly injured. Of the bomber, he said, "I felt absolutely
nothing."
The violence "kind of becomes your reality," he said. "If a year ago you would
have told me that seeing that kind of carnage would have little to no impact on
me, it would have surprised me. I don't think I'm any less sensitive or less
compassionate . . . but I have really developed my thoughts on the [insurgents]:
I have no sympathy for them. It's funny how you can detach yourself from normal
human feeling for a group of people but you're able to retain it for everybody
else."
Pvt. Adam McCamant, 19, of New Philadelphia, Ohio, arrived at the scene with
Born. "It kind of made my day better," he said. "It was like, yeah. He killed
himself without accomplishing what he wanted."
Infantrymen with C Company said no soldier is more ruthlessly proficient at
fighting the insurgents than Ruiz, a son of Puerto Rican parents who grew up in
the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. Ruiz's unit, the 4th Platoon, has killed at
least 15 suspected insurgents in the past two months, according to soldiers.
Commanders said the unit encounters more enemy contact than any other platoon in
the battalion.
The platoon calls itself the "Violators." Its patch depicts a leering skull
clad in a green beret, blood dripping from its mouth. Its motto is "Carpe
Noctum," or "Seize the Night," a reference in Latin to the platoon's propensity
to operate after dark.
A self-described "greaser," Ruiz wears a pencil-thin mustache and slicks back
the dark hair on the top of his head with Rebound Activator Gel. The lower half
of his scalp is shaved.
Around the platoon's barracks, he has a friendly, energetic, exuberant presence
and can be almost fatherly with his men, eight of whom are Hispanic and
sometimes speak with him in Spanish. His living space is immaculate, with two
ornate rugs and a stylish clock/lamp shaped like a saxophone -- items he
purchased in Mosul shops while on patrol. On a recent afternoon, he was watching
a DVD of "The Motorcycle Diaries," the chronicle of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's
journey through South America, for what he said was the third time. Ruiz said he
dreams of riding horseback through Latin America when he gets out of the Army.
Overhearing a staff sergeant describe him as "ghetto," Ruiz joked: "I'm urban."
Although Ruiz is not the highest-ranking soldier in the unit, his command over
the 4th Platoon is absolute. Last fall, commanders transferred a platoon leader
just 48 hours after he tangled with Ruiz.
When another young platoon leader, Lt. Colin Keating, 23, of Clinton, Md.,
arrived Feb. 6, Ruiz greeted him warmly and introduced him to every soldier in
the platoon, but told him: "Just let me fight my war."
It is a war that Ruiz said reminds him of his youth as a member of the Coney
Island Cobras, a Brooklyn street gang. He said he applies many of the principles
he learned in the rough neighborhoods where he grew up: Bay Ridge and, later,
the projects in Caguas, Puerto Rico, where he moved with his mother as a
teenager.
"What I see here, I saw a long time ago," he said. "It's the same patterns."
Staff Sgt. John Garrison, 36, of Manhattan, who referred to Ruiz as "ghetto,"
said: "People hear the word 'ghetto' and they think of that as a bad thing. But
it's not a thing, it's a place. And it gives you certain advantages over other
people that don't come up from there."
Ruiz recalled fighting turf battles in New York with "whatever you had in your
pocket." In Mosul, he presides over an infantry unit that Born built from
scratch for maximum lethality.
The platoon is built around four 21-ton Strykers -- two mounted with TOW
missiles, two designed to carry infantrymen.
Keating said Ruiz "pretty much wrote the book on this particular style of unit.
This is the first time it had ever been done, and he basically figured out how
that system works."
Among soldiers in Mosul, Ruiz's aggressiveness is legendary -- both in
attacking the insurgents and gathering intelligence. Keating said Ruiz "plays by
the rules of Iraq, not by the rules that are written by some staff guy who's
never been on the ground. He's never crossed the line, but he'll go right up to
it time and time again."
After recently hearing that a security guard was allowing insurgents to meet at
night at a school, Ruiz said, he confronted the principal by "taking over his
personal space" and threatening to shut down the school down if the meetings
continued. At a store whose owner he believed was aiding insurgents, Ruiz
threatened to park a Stryker out front and post a sign saying that the man was
abetting terrorism.
Ruiz said he "never crosses the line." But he said one reason for the platoon's
success was his willingness to act decisively and ruthlessly. "It's important
for my soldiers to know that we're not going to hesitate to annihilate the
enemy," he said. "A bullet coming toward you means that they want to kill you.
What are you supposed to do, come back with flowers? But believe it or not, you
have people here that want to give them, you know, a little bag of candy."
Acting swiftly, he said, "sends a message to the enemy that we're not playing
games. If you engage us, you are going to die."
Born said Ruiz, like comic book hero Spider-Man, seems to possess "a
spidey-sense that starts tingling when bad stuff is going on."
Laying the Ambush
Before the March 12 ambush, Ruiz set up an observation post in a remote house,
telling his skeptical platoon, "This is where they'll come." The insurgents in
the three cars had attacked a convoy of Iraqi soldiers, then gathered in front
of the house to consolidate their weapons -- all the time unaware they were
being watched by Ruiz and his men.
In the fury of the ambush, the three cars managed to drive off. In addition to
the man who was killed instantly, the Americans concluded that at least one
other insurgent was killed and carried off because an abandoned vehicle
discovered nearby contained "a lot of blood and brain and skull matter," Born
said.
Born said he thought the ambush likely had "a huge impact on [the insurgents']
morale. Getting ambushed like that -- they're usually the guys doing the
ambushing."
Ruiz said the decision to pick up the skull fragment and take it back to the
base was a "sarcastic" gesture to confirm the kill to the battalion. Born, who
was not present during the attack, said the soldiers picked up the fragment not
as a trophy, which is prohibited under military regulations, but to confirm
"that we had the remains of a terrorist."
As March continued, the 4th Platoon's reputation only grew. Four days after the
ambush, on March 16, Ruiz ordered a "flash" checkpoint to search vehicles on a
road in southeastern Mosul.
Soldiers who described the incident afterward said the platoon blocked traffic
with three Strykers and approached the vehicles on foot. As they did, three men
in an Opel sedan opened fire with automatic weapons. One soldier, Spec. Jarrod
Romine, 25, of Branson, Mo., was struck several times and absorbed a bullet
fragment in one of his eyes.
Romine was still advancing when the car accelerated and ran over him. His
armored vest caught on the Opel's bumper, preventing his head from going under a
tire, but the car began to drag him.
Just then, two soldiers from the 4th Platoon closed in from both sides and shot
the three men with automatic weapons at point-blank range.
Romine, who is recovering in the United States, lost parts of two fingers, but
so far his eye has been saved, said Staff Sgt. Jose Cortez, 32, of El Monte,
Calif., one of the two men who killed the vehicle's occupants. Two other
soldiers were also wounded but are recovering.
Ruiz said he once went to a palm reader in Colombia, and "she told me I got a
three-meter angel hanging around me all the time. I believe that crap, too, man.
Everybody shares my angel."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48017-2005Apr12.html
By Steve Fainaru
MOSUL, Iraq -- From inside a vacant building, Sgt. 1st Class Domingo Ruiz
watched through a rifle scope as three cars stopped on the other side of the
road. A man carrying a machine gun got out and began to transfer weapons into
the trunk of one of the cars.
"Take him down," Ruiz told a sniper.
The sniper fired his powerful M-14 rifle and the man's head exploded, several
American soldiers recalled. As he fell, more soldiers opened fire, killing at
least one other insurgent. After the ambush, the Americans scooped up a piece of
skull and took it back to their base as evidence of the successful mission.
The March 12 attack -- swift and brutally violent -- bore the hallmarks of
operations that have made Ruiz, 39, a former Brooklyn gang member, renowned
among U.S. troops in Mosul and, in many ways, a symbol of the optimism that has
pervaded the military since Iraq's Jan. 30 elections.
Insurgent attacks in this northern Iraqi city, which numbered more than 100 a
week in mid-November, have declined by almost half, according to the military.
Indirect attacks -- generally involving mortars or rockets -- on U.S. bases
fell from more than 200 a month in December to fewer than 10 in March. Although
figures vary from region to region, attacks also have declined precipitously in
other parts of Iraq, creating a growing belief among U.S. commanders that the
insurgency is losing potency.
"We are seeing a more stable environment," said Lt. Col. Michael Gibler,
commander of the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, which operates in
eastern Mosul. "Have we made a turn yet? No, but we're really close to it."
The military attributes the decline to several factors, including Iraqis'
increased willingness to provide information about insurgents and the growing
presence of the new Iraqi security forces throughout the country.
But the main reason, military officials said, is a grinding counterinsurgency
operation -- now in its 20th month -- executed by soldiers like Ruiz, a
platoon sergeant in the 3rd Battalion's C Company. It is a campaign of endless
repetition: platoons of American troops patrolling Iraqi streets on foot or in
armored vehicles. Its inherent monotony is punctuated by moments of extreme
violence.
"Our battles have been beyond ruthless," said Ruiz, adding that he believes
most Americans have little understanding of how the conflict is being fought.
"An urban counterinsurgency is probably the ugliest form of warfare there is,"
said Capt. Rob Born, 30, the C Company commander.
Hardened to Horror
U.S. soldiers said they have been hardened to it by months of fighting
insurgents who often kill or maim civilians or target people marginally
associated with the Americans. In Mosul recently, U.S. forces have come upon
dozens of decapitated bodies with notes attached. One accused a victim of "sin
and corruption" and quoted the Koran: "We have not done injustice unto them, but
they to themselves."
Born, a West Point graduate from Burke, Va., said he was struck by his own
indifference to the violence when it involved the insurgents.
Last week, for example, a suicide car bomber tried to blow himself up next to
one of C Company's platoons. As the car approached, U.S. soldiers opened fire
from Stryker attack vehicles. The bomb went off about 20 yards from the nearest
Stryker, causing only minor injuries to the Americans.
Born arrived to find parts of the bomber's body scattered in all directions.
His initial reaction, he said, was "euphoric" -- relief that none of his men
had been killed or badly injured. Of the bomber, he said, "I felt absolutely
nothing."
The violence "kind of becomes your reality," he said. "If a year ago you would
have told me that seeing that kind of carnage would have little to no impact on
me, it would have surprised me. I don't think I'm any less sensitive or less
compassionate . . . but I have really developed my thoughts on the [insurgents]:
I have no sympathy for them. It's funny how you can detach yourself from normal
human feeling for a group of people but you're able to retain it for everybody
else."
Pvt. Adam McCamant, 19, of New Philadelphia, Ohio, arrived at the scene with
Born. "It kind of made my day better," he said. "It was like, yeah. He killed
himself without accomplishing what he wanted."
Infantrymen with C Company said no soldier is more ruthlessly proficient at
fighting the insurgents than Ruiz, a son of Puerto Rican parents who grew up in
the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. Ruiz's unit, the 4th Platoon, has killed at
least 15 suspected insurgents in the past two months, according to soldiers.
Commanders said the unit encounters more enemy contact than any other platoon in
the battalion.
The platoon calls itself the "Violators." Its patch depicts a leering skull
clad in a green beret, blood dripping from its mouth. Its motto is "Carpe
Noctum," or "Seize the Night," a reference in Latin to the platoon's propensity
to operate after dark.
A self-described "greaser," Ruiz wears a pencil-thin mustache and slicks back
the dark hair on the top of his head with Rebound Activator Gel. The lower half
of his scalp is shaved.
Around the platoon's barracks, he has a friendly, energetic, exuberant presence
and can be almost fatherly with his men, eight of whom are Hispanic and
sometimes speak with him in Spanish. His living space is immaculate, with two
ornate rugs and a stylish clock/lamp shaped like a saxophone -- items he
purchased in Mosul shops while on patrol. On a recent afternoon, he was watching
a DVD of "The Motorcycle Diaries," the chronicle of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's
journey through South America, for what he said was the third time. Ruiz said he
dreams of riding horseback through Latin America when he gets out of the Army.
Overhearing a staff sergeant describe him as "ghetto," Ruiz joked: "I'm urban."
Although Ruiz is not the highest-ranking soldier in the unit, his command over
the 4th Platoon is absolute. Last fall, commanders transferred a platoon leader
just 48 hours after he tangled with Ruiz.
When another young platoon leader, Lt. Colin Keating, 23, of Clinton, Md.,
arrived Feb. 6, Ruiz greeted him warmly and introduced him to every soldier in
the platoon, but told him: "Just let me fight my war."
It is a war that Ruiz said reminds him of his youth as a member of the Coney
Island Cobras, a Brooklyn street gang. He said he applies many of the principles
he learned in the rough neighborhoods where he grew up: Bay Ridge and, later,
the projects in Caguas, Puerto Rico, where he moved with his mother as a
teenager.
"What I see here, I saw a long time ago," he said. "It's the same patterns."
Staff Sgt. John Garrison, 36, of Manhattan, who referred to Ruiz as "ghetto,"
said: "People hear the word 'ghetto' and they think of that as a bad thing. But
it's not a thing, it's a place. And it gives you certain advantages over other
people that don't come up from there."
Ruiz recalled fighting turf battles in New York with "whatever you had in your
pocket." In Mosul, he presides over an infantry unit that Born built from
scratch for maximum lethality.
The platoon is built around four 21-ton Strykers -- two mounted with TOW
missiles, two designed to carry infantrymen.
Keating said Ruiz "pretty much wrote the book on this particular style of unit.
This is the first time it had ever been done, and he basically figured out how
that system works."
Among soldiers in Mosul, Ruiz's aggressiveness is legendary -- both in
attacking the insurgents and gathering intelligence. Keating said Ruiz "plays by
the rules of Iraq, not by the rules that are written by some staff guy who's
never been on the ground. He's never crossed the line, but he'll go right up to
it time and time again."
After recently hearing that a security guard was allowing insurgents to meet at
night at a school, Ruiz said, he confronted the principal by "taking over his
personal space" and threatening to shut down the school down if the meetings
continued. At a store whose owner he believed was aiding insurgents, Ruiz
threatened to park a Stryker out front and post a sign saying that the man was
abetting terrorism.
Ruiz said he "never crosses the line." But he said one reason for the platoon's
success was his willingness to act decisively and ruthlessly. "It's important
for my soldiers to know that we're not going to hesitate to annihilate the
enemy," he said. "A bullet coming toward you means that they want to kill you.
What are you supposed to do, come back with flowers? But believe it or not, you
have people here that want to give them, you know, a little bag of candy."
Acting swiftly, he said, "sends a message to the enemy that we're not playing
games. If you engage us, you are going to die."
Born said Ruiz, like comic book hero Spider-Man, seems to possess "a
spidey-sense that starts tingling when bad stuff is going on."
Laying the Ambush
Before the March 12 ambush, Ruiz set up an observation post in a remote house,
telling his skeptical platoon, "This is where they'll come." The insurgents in
the three cars had attacked a convoy of Iraqi soldiers, then gathered in front
of the house to consolidate their weapons -- all the time unaware they were
being watched by Ruiz and his men.
In the fury of the ambush, the three cars managed to drive off. In addition to
the man who was killed instantly, the Americans concluded that at least one
other insurgent was killed and carried off because an abandoned vehicle
discovered nearby contained "a lot of blood and brain and skull matter," Born
said.
Born said he thought the ambush likely had "a huge impact on [the insurgents']
morale. Getting ambushed like that -- they're usually the guys doing the
ambushing."
Ruiz said the decision to pick up the skull fragment and take it back to the
base was a "sarcastic" gesture to confirm the kill to the battalion. Born, who
was not present during the attack, said the soldiers picked up the fragment not
as a trophy, which is prohibited under military regulations, but to confirm
"that we had the remains of a terrorist."
As March continued, the 4th Platoon's reputation only grew. Four days after the
ambush, on March 16, Ruiz ordered a "flash" checkpoint to search vehicles on a
road in southeastern Mosul.
Soldiers who described the incident afterward said the platoon blocked traffic
with three Strykers and approached the vehicles on foot. As they did, three men
in an Opel sedan opened fire with automatic weapons. One soldier, Spec. Jarrod
Romine, 25, of Branson, Mo., was struck several times and absorbed a bullet
fragment in one of his eyes.
Romine was still advancing when the car accelerated and ran over him. His
armored vest caught on the Opel's bumper, preventing his head from going under a
tire, but the car began to drag him.
Just then, two soldiers from the 4th Platoon closed in from both sides and shot
the three men with automatic weapons at point-blank range.
Romine, who is recovering in the United States, lost parts of two fingers, but
so far his eye has been saved, said Staff Sgt. Jose Cortez, 32, of El Monte,
Calif., one of the two men who killed the vehicle's occupants. Two other
soldiers were also wounded but are recovering.
Ruiz said he once went to a palm reader in Colombia, and "she told me I got a
three-meter angel hanging around me all the time. I believe that crap, too, man.
Everybody shares my angel."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48017-2005Apr12.html