Fort Apache, Iraq

Posing for a prank photo.
(photo: Matt Taibbi; plus: See his video.)

In this case Gharib asked Currier for money to build more police stations, at a cost of just a half-million bucks or so per station. Then he sat smoking a cigarette, leaving the rest of the meeting to Bob and Ray.

"We only received 1,000 rounds of ammo in the last shipment," said Bob. "You yourself know what 1,000 rounds is good for."

"Every time we ask supply for new cars," said Ray. "And every time it's the same refusal. Look at us. We have old, beat-up cars!"

The memory of having just paid a monstrous tax bill burned in my skull as the sound of Ray complaining about having to drive an old car in Iraq bounced around in my ear. It dawned on me that this was how the appropriation process works in Iraq -- your Bob and your Ray just have to ask for the money, and it arrives!

I would later be told that this particular training academy had been funded out of a nonmilitary appropriation called the International Narcotics League. More than a month after that, I would visit Congress and learn from several congressional aides that there was no way for even a U.S. congressman to find a budget where these programs exist -- they're simply not in the public record. Unless you fall onto the info by parachute, there is no way to find out what is being built in Iraq, and for how much.

When the meeting ended, Gharib suddenly decided to take his important guest on a long, winding tour of the natural wonders of Sulimaniyah, which included a twisting skyline roadway that climbed beehive-style up a small mountain overlooking the city. The trip involved a large convoy of vehicles, and I was wedged into an SUV with an eclectic group that included Ray (who was driving) and a few other soldiers.

The talk in the car turned to the local population. The general theme of the conversation was that the Kurds were great folks, just like us, except when they weren't and were still a backward bunch of primitives.

"They're so advanced here," said Ray. "They're always looking to the future. All schooling here is free, even the university. They even pay the students, so that..."

"So that they can concentrate on their studies," said one passenger, Sgt. Arne Eastlund, approvingly. He laughed. "That's great. I wonder where they got that idea?"

"They dress more in the Western fashion here," noted Ray.

"That's good," said Eastlund.

Suddenly, a sergeant named Pistone chimed in. "You don't see many joggers or Rollerbladers here," Pistone said, looking out the window at the flow of Kurdish pedestrians trudging through their markets. "Or mountain bikers. Weird."

"Yeah, you're right," said Eastlund.

At the top of the hill, we drove through a recreation area full of picnickers. The Kurds sat on the hillside on carpets and sheets, drinking, smoking and eating homemade meals.

"You don't see many concession stands or salesmen here," said Pistone. "In America, in a place like this, there would be salesmen and concession stands everywhere." There was a tinge of empathetic regret in his voice.

"Hmm," said Eastlund.

Just then we drove past a young Kurd who, upon seeing the convoy of Americans, stood up from his picnic and very deliberately pulled out his middle finger to show to each and every one of us.

"Jesus Christ," said Pistone. "Did he just flip us off?"

"We should tell the Peshmerga," said Ray. "They'll take care of him. They'll send us his fingers in the mail."

"Yeah, we should," said Eastlund.

"Motherfucker," snarled Pistone.

We drove higher and came across a bunch of Kurdish children playing on a swing set that had been constructed high up on the mountainside.

"Oh, that's good," chuckled Pistone. "Just let your kids fall off the mountain. I mean, who's gonna herd the sheep tomorrow?"

"I wonder if they even have DUI laws in this country," mused Eastlund, watching the traffic come down the hill.

"Yeah, I doubt it," said Pistone. We drove further and he looked over at a bunch of teenagers dancing and snorted, "Yeah. Drinking and dancing on the side of a mountain -- a real good idea." Near the top of the hill Pistone raised an eyebrow as he looked out the car window. "They got trash baskets up here. Surprising."

For those of us who still wonder why it is that we actually invaded this country in the first place -- and this is a question that even the most creative conspiracy theorist will still have trouble answering convincingly -- all it takes is a few scenes like this to understand that this isn't just about oil.

There is a certain psychologically inevitable quality to our blundering overseas, a kind of burning, insane desire to fuck with people we don't like or respect in the slightest, to cure the disease of their cultures, as it were, by drying them out in the sun of our creepy suburban enlightenment. What kind of madmen come to the ancient territory of mountainous Kurdistan and search expectantly for Rollerbladers out the window of an armored vehicle? This kind of weirdness comes far too naturally to us for this to be an accidental consequence of the invasion; it has to be part of the reason we're here, too.

It was a long twenty minutes down the hill and back into the city downtown, where we arrived just in time to see a small crowd of bubbly college-age girls walking home from one of the local institutes.

"Hey, how about that?" said Eastlund.

"Yup," said Ray cheerfully. "They dress almost like American girls here!"

III. LOST IN BAGHDAD
A Bet on the Wrong Horse
Back to Baghdad, which they say is one of the largest cities in the world. I wouldn't know. For most Americans in the capital, life in Baghdad just means a bigger FOB -- one with walls twice as high, twice the number of guards, bigger cafeterias with twice as many varieties of pie. Beyond the barricades is a complex city of ten million, in whose streets a subterranean civil war is played out in daily assassinations between religious sects; one soldier, whose responsibilities included visiting a city morgue, told me that there were dozens of bodies to pick up every morning, many missing heads or kneecaps. But all of this is theoretical to most Americans, for whom the biggest difference life in the capital offers is the much higher number of nitpicking officers who never leave the FOB -- called "fobbits" in Army parlance. In the rougher regions, you will not find many officers who patrol the grounds looking for soldiers who forget to salute or commit the crime of bringing a book into the cafeterias (there might be an IED inside).

Upon returning to Baghdad from my trip north, I had a vision. The vision coincided with my transfer out of the unit of charmed Okies in the vast Camp Liberty suburb and into a far more miserable and serious situation in a smaller FOB across town.

The whole vibe of my embed changed the moment that transfer went through. It was almost as if some spell had been cast around me. With the fun-loving Oklahoma crew, I never felt in danger for a second; even driving through some of the more notorious stretches of Iraqi highway, I felt as safe as a pixie in the Rose Bowl parade. But when my transfer came through, the skies darkened and I found myself standing in a carport in the marbled luxury of Camp Victory (with its absurd artificial lake and Saddam's ornate pink Alexandrian palaces, now commandeered by no-nonsense officers of the Middle American managerial type), and suddenly I could hear a tense and serious-sounding Bostonian lieutenant colonel named Alfred Bazzinotti yelling questions over the Humvee engines about my blood type, asking if I had signed the proper release forms indemnifying the Army in case of whatever, and then finally telling me to get the hell in the truck because we were moving out.

Before long, though, our convoy got lost. In an attempt to stay one step ahead of the insurgents, soldiers took strange roads and byways, trying as often as possible to take advantage of the Humvee's off-road capabilities, and in this case the convoy tried to sneak across southern Baghdad at night by crossing what appeared to be an old dried-up lake bed, along a "road" that looked to me like the top edge of an ancient dam that rose steeply twenty feet off the ground on both sides. It was slow, dangerous going along this semi-cliff without streetlights, and it was no surprise to anyone when the "road" suddenly came to an end and the convoy was left looking at a precipice that stared back at us in the darkness like a bad joke. We doubled back and made it to the Baghdad city streets, where we moved through an abandoned marketplace full of cats and other feral animals that were feeding on garbage and whose eyes glowed yellow in the headlights as we drove past. Packs of wild dogs chased us, barking at every turn.

It was just then that I saw it, off in the distance, far in front of the trucks. It was a horse -- a bright white horse, so horribly emaciated that you could see all of its ribs sticking out. It was wobbling, as though using every ounce of energy in its bones to stay standing. Sick as it looked, its white coat shone through the night, arrestingly pure, like the belly of a fish. It was also blocking the road, which pissed off the soldiers. American soldiers understandably do not like to stop their trucks for any reason, much less some raggedy-ass old horse. Our driver reached down and blasted the Humvee siren -- WOOO-EEEEEEEE! -- which startled the animal, causing it to lope off to the left shoulder of the road.

"Watch out for the...what the fuck is that?" shouted a sergeant named Vasquez.

"It's a horse," said the driver.

"Jesus. Somebody call the ASPCA," Vasquez said, looking at the miserable creature with pity.

"Or the glue factory," cracked the driver.

I looked out the Humvee window. For the first time I noticed that the horse's hind legs were blood-streaked. It appeared to be bleeding out of its ass. As we drove past it, it lumbered to the edge of the median strip, stopped and fell over.

"Hey," I said. "That horse just fucking died."

Nobody up front in the truck heard me. We drove on.