Questioning daily: Friend or foe?

March 30, 2003|By Evan Osnos, Tribune staff reporter.

IN CENTRAL IRAQ — Without weapons or vehicles, four men in bluejeans and button-down shirts walking in the desert did not seem to pose much of a threat.

But to several Marines on a routine security patrol Thursday along a road north of Nasiriyah, the group appeared suspicious enough to hand over to U.S. interrogators.

The four seemingly unremarkable detainees, American commanders say, turned out to be agents of the Fedayeen Saddam guerrilla force that is intent on fomenting local resistance to U.S. forces, and their capture was one of the best intelligence coups the 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines had scored in days.

The incident underscores what U.S. commanders are calling an emerging daily struggle: differentiating civilians from combatants.

In the 1991 Persian Gulf war, divisions of regular troops squared off in sprawling desert battles. But in this new Iraq war, a man driving a taxi can set off a suicide bomb that kills four U.S. soldiers.

"The whole construct has changed in this war," said Maj. Gen. James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division. "The key difference this time and last time is the number of innocent people on the battlefield. Last time it was fairly easy to discriminate between friend and foe."

In the words of Marine commanders, the intense pressures demand that Marines in the lower enlisted ranks become "strategic corporals"--trigger pullers prepared to make critical decisions.

Every time a U.S. soldier picks up his weapon to fire, he faces a series of weighty decisions not faced by American troops in 1991 about who is an appropriate target and who is a bystander. Adding to the challenge is the U.S. commitment to provide humanitarian assistance, putting each individual soldier in the position of having to determine whether he is acting at that moment as a warrior or a humanitarian envoy. It often is a choice between whether to fire a weapon or deliver a ration.

The idea of training military personnel to make such crucial decisions is born of such dark chapters as Vietnam's My Lai massacre, in which one officer's ill-fated actions had deadly and far-reaching consequences. Forged in the dense residential areas of Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, the concept of the strategic corporal is gaining its first definitive test here in Iraq, as coalition forces penetrate deeper into residential and urban areas.

"It's really tough now when you get 18- or 19-year-olds that are full of fire," said Lt. Adam Macaluso, an infantry platoon commander responsible for 42 Marines. "And it's difficult to teach him that he's got to kill the guy on the right and save the guy on the left."

Those are exactly the decisions faced every day by men such as Cpl. Paul Ortiz, 21, a squad leader from Charley Company of the 1st Battalion. Leading a group of a dozen or so Marines, Ortiz often is left with the tough calls: which building to target with machine-gun rounds, which group of bystanders to stop and search.

After a week of war in central Iraq, the pressures seem greater than ever.

"These are the questions I have to live with everyday," said Ortiz of San Antonio. "At the end of it, the question is basically the same: Is that person posing a threat to me?"

In an age of real-time news, in which reporters are embedded with the troops, traveling with units into battle, Ortiz is aware that failures to discern legitimate targets could have an immediate impact on the perception of the war at home and abroad.

Ortiz and his men endlessly review the rules of engagement--the confidential rules under which U.S. forces are advised when to shoot. While the answers are kept secret to keep enemy forces from adjusting their behavior, the questions are clear: Is it permitted to fire on an enemy who is using a human shield? Does a person in civilian clothes constitute a threat if he is carrying a weapon? What if he is not attempting to fire it?

Practicing to make those decisions became a full-time job in the days just before the invasion. On one afternoon, Ortiz led his men through a mock-up building to test their reflexes in clearing rooms and picking targets. As he watched them practice bursting into rooms outlined by lumber laid on the sand, Ortiz cautioned them against being too hasty.

"Slow down your thought process," Ortiz shouted. "You're going into rooms left and right, but you've got to be thinking every step, `What am I going to find in there?'"

As the war progresses, commanders are preparing for what they call the "three-block war." That is the volatile scenario in which a city may split into concurrent military and humanitarian operations.

"You could have one [city] block with a humanitarian operation going on, peacekeeping going on another block, and then on a third block you might have a full-blown urban combat situation. And these young Marines need to be able to discern all three," said Lt. Col. Christopher Conlin, commander of the 1st Battalion.