Daring Abu Ghraib Attack Impressed U.S.
Sophisticated operation in April demonstrated
insurgents' skills
but revealed their methods.
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Times Staff Writer
June 19, 2005
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq — U.S. troops
were checking e-mail, lounging in their bunks, doing laundry and
contemplating a game of air hockey when the first volley of rockets and
mortar rounds struck. Before long, ordnance rained down on the
notorious U.S.-run detention camp here. Squads of guerrillas were soon
advancing to the walls from several directions in what appeared to be a
highly scripted assault.
Prisoners rioted as if on cue, eyeing the opportunity for a mass
escape. A thunderous suicide truck bomb struck near the southeast guard
tower, knocking it out of action and sending a roiling, black cloud
into the dusky sky. Some GIs contemplated the unthinkable: The place
could be overrun.
"I thought it was, like, we were going to
start defending the Alamo," recalled Sgt. Maj. Chris Rodriguez, a
military policeman. "I thought they had busted down the walls."
The audacious attack in early April was ultimately thwarted, and its
clear aim — a sensational escape of some of the 3,400 detainees — was
not achieved. But the guerrillas did score a public relations coup by
striking a facility that had become synonymous worldwide with prisoner
abuse.
Moreover, for U.S. authorities, the lessons learned from
what may have been the largest insurgent operation in Iraq to date
still resonate. For example, closer attention to unusual insurgent
movements in the area that afternoon could have signaled that something
big was coming, said a senior military official in Baghdad who had
studied the strike.
Since the attack, guerrillas have mounted
other sophisticated operations, although none on the same scale. In
recent weeks, they have organized two or more synchronized suicide car
bombings and set up multilayered roadside ambushes. Nine days after the
incident at Abu Ghraib, guerrillas about 200 miles to the west
attempted to overrun a Marine base near the Syrian border, deploying
dozens of foot soldiers and two suicide-attack vehicles, including an
explosives-laden firetruck.
U.S. authorities are concerned that
a similar-sized strike may be in the planning stages, aimed at targets
in or near Baghdad that include a military base, a government
installation, the fortified Green Zone or Abu Ghraib again. "We believe
the enemy is ... looking for the opportunity to have large-scale,
coordinated attacks," the U.S. military official said.
The
military estimates that on April 2, insurgents marshaled a
company-sized assault, using as many as 200 fighters and launching
related strikes in the area that evening. At least three vehicles
driven by suicide bombers were deployed.
The event underscored
the fact that Iraq's insurgents retain the ability to surprise the U.S.
high command, which has enlisted a multitude of experts to help
overcome its spotty intelligence — without great success.
"We've had the Northern Ireland guys … we've had every expert from
Vietnam come out of the woodwork to be talking heads," a senior U.S.
military intelligence official told reporters in Baghdad. "But I've got
to tell you, it's all, `Blah, blah, blah,' and I'm not sure any of it
fits right now. They're scratching their heads and trying to figure
this out too."
The assault made clear again the folly of underestimating an enemy once
dismissed by Pentagon officials as "dead enders."
Iraqi guerrillas have used weapons that range from World War II-era
rockets arrayed in donkey carts to sophisticated antiaircraft missiles.
They've regrouped after massive U.S. assaults on Fallouja and other
towns and the arrests and killings of thousands of fighters;
circumvented high-tech jamming devices designed to cripple
electronically detonated roadside bombs; infiltrated military bases and
the Green Zone; and generally displayed a level of resolve and skill —
however brutally applied — far beyond anything that U.S.-trained Iraqi
forces have shown.
"We're operating against a thinking enemy,
clearly," Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, said last week in Washington. "The enemy has changed their
tactics, techniques and procedures in response to what we've been
doing."
The attack at Abu Ghraib spotlighted insurgents'
chilling ability to mount synchronized operations that involve heavy
shelling, diversionary tactics and infantry thrusts in coordination
with suicide vehicles. Highly trained former officers in Saddam
Hussein's military probably designed the Abu Ghraib attack over a
period of weeks, U.S. military officials say, and conducted close
surveillance of Abu Ghraib. The detention center sits just west of the
capital in the heartland of Iraq's Sunni Muslim Arab population, the
insurgency's driving force.
"These guys were pretty educated in
basic infantry tactics that are taught in war colleges nationwide,"
said Army Maj. Paul Melanson, the base operations officer at the camp,
one of several soldiers who recently provided new details of the
attack. "These weren't your run-of-the-mill, 'let's go out and shoot a
few bullets at Abu Ghraib' types. It was a coordinated attack."
Those behind what authorities say remains a decentralized guerrilla
movement clearly understood the emotional and public relations
significance of the strike.
Not a single U.S. soldier was
killed in the April raid, nor a single prisoner freed. "But they did
get some publicity, and Abu Ghraib is, of course, a very special place
for the propaganda war," a senior U.S. official here conceded.
"There's no doubt in our mind that they are very, very focused on
seizing the media attention and the popular attention back from the
political process," he said.
Although it wasn't clear at the
time, the attack also signaled the dramatic end of a period of relative
calm and the opening of a bloody offensive that dashed hopes that the
insurgency would subside after the Jan. 30 national election.
"We just had a sense that the elections went well, and we were seeing
less and less activity," recalled Capt. William Puopolo, who was hoping
to organize an air hockey tournament the night the insurgents struck.
He has since ditched the air hockey board, calling it bad luck. "We
thought we'd snapped their backs, and we were looking for a calmer
period when we weren't going to face something like that."
The
first sign that something was amiss, officials said, was observed about
6:45 p.m. on the main military route between Baghdad and Abu Ghraib.
Insurgents placed mines and burning tires on the road in an apparent
effort to block reinforcements who would head to the base, said Col.
James B. Brown, commander of the 118th Military Police Brigade.
Responding MPs found mortar positions and snipers and engaged in a
fight four miles east of the prison.
"They were trying to cut off access to the highway," Brown said.
About 7:10, as the sun was setting, a Marine company on patrol in the
town of Khan Dari, which is near the prison, encountered a group of
armed men wearing masks. Another fight ensued. Rockets and mortar
shelling — known as "indirect fire" — began blasting the camp almost
simultaneously. That barrage was soon followed by "direct fire" from
rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
"They
pretty much used doctrinal military tactics," Melanson said. "You use
indirect fire to pin everybody down, then you start direct fire."
Guerrilla forces were soon pushing in from three directions in a
"feint" move designed to force U.S. troops to commit to one line of
defense. Outside the base, gunmen appeared to launch diversionary
strikes meant to tie down possible relief units. Inside, stunned
soldiers in shorts and T-shirts left their bunks and computer screens
and threw on flak jackets, helmets and boots.
"All of a sudden
… there were live rounds coming down the alleyway where we lived,"
recalled Master Sgt. Joe Young, who, like many here, came from the
1-102 Field Artillery, a Massachusetts Army National Guard unit out of
Quincy.
Marines posted in guard towers returned ferocious fire.
About half an hour after the attack began, a large truck normally used
to empty septic tanks made its way east on an adjacent road from a
nearby hamlet U.S. authorities call Village 131, a largely Sunni Arab
community.
The truck crossed a median and was pointed toward
the southeast guard tower, called T4, the one nearest the largest
concentration of prisoners. The tanker detonated 60 to 70 yards from
the wall, possibly as a result of Marine fire, and ultimately failed in
its probable mission — to blow a hole in the wall, like a ramrod
breaching the gates of a medieval fort.
That would have allowed
insurgents to enter the camp. Some did make it close enough to toss
grenades over the walls. One even managed to get his rifle inside an
iron grating at the base of a guard tower and fire before he was killed.
An insurgent video of the attack, posted on a website used by militant
groups and later authenticated by the U.S. military, showed masked
fighters launching rockets from about 200 yards away as columns of
smoke rose from the truck attack and a direct hit on a vehicle inside
the compound. They set up their launching pad in a ditch alongside a
public road, displaying little concern that U.S. or Iraqi authorities
would discover them.
Inside the prison, rioting inmates were
shouting "God is great!" as they torched canvas tents and cut holes in
the wire fencing holding them in.
"It sounded like they had
breached the wall," recalled Cpl. Angus McClellan, who was guarding
prisoners at the facility here known as Camp Redemption. "I was pretty
much just thinking about keeping the guys inside the wire."
McClellan, who was nominated for a Bronze Star for his actions,
positioned himself at a hole in the fence and waved his pistol, fending
off the rioting inmates who were thinking escape.
Amid the
bewildering tableau of explosions, automatic weapon fire and red
tracers streaking across the sky, National Guardsmen with little combat
experience hustled to bring fresh guns and ammunition to besieged
Marines in the watch towers.
But it all ended as quickly as it had begun.
Apache
helicopters and artillery fire targeted retreating insurgents as night
fell. By 9, it was quiet. "It was almost as if everybody blew a
whistle," Melanson recalled. "Almost everybody stopped firing, and they
disappeared."
Many fighters melted back into a sympathetic
population. Afterward, troops estimated that 50 to 60 insurgents had
been killed, although only two bodies were found in the vicinity of the
prison. The insurgents make great efforts not to abandon their dead and
wounded, U.S. officers say.
One body was found next to a
booby-trapped tractor discovered outside the prison. Officials theorize
that the tractor, which had 55-gallon drums of explosives concealed
under loads of hay, was meant to intercept U.S. reinforcements. But the
driver was killed before he could deliver his payload. The truck
exploded two days later, when it was approached by Iraqi forces. Two
policemen were killed.
A third truck bomb was found nearby, unexploded.
Seven U.S. troops were seriously wounded and 16 suffered shrapnel
injuries. Thirteen inmates were wounded.
Whatever its publicity value, the attack failed to spring any
prisoners, but U.S. commanders say the operation's scope, complexity
and boldness show how determined their enemy is.
"They did give
us a blow," Puopolo acknowledged. "But the next day when the sun rose,
the bottom line was that there were 50 less bad guys in the world."
