The spectre of an American Army officer ordering soldiers to kill civilians in Iraq has once again reared its ugly head--but this time, author Ralph Lopez, writing in Truthout on Sunday, finally put a name to the man who, according to a number of published interviews with several veterans over the past six months, ordered his battalion to shoot any and all civilians on the street in response to IED attacks. The officer, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, will be familiar to anyone who has read David Finkel's acclaimed account of Bravo Company 2-16, The Good Soldiers. But if the accusations against Kauzlarich are true, it raises disturbing questions not only about the conduct of the U.S. Army in Iraq, but also of the veracity and intent of Finkel's much-heralded book.
First, however, I must confess that the attribution of the "shoot civilians" order to Lt. Col. Kauzlarich did not surprise me. Back in May I interviewed Ethan McCord myself, and with the camera rolling he related the whole incident--referring repeatedly to Kauzlarich by name...
Last April, when Wikileaks released the infamous (and as it turns out, soon-to-be-forgotten when the Deepwater Horizon debacle took center stage) "Collateral Murder" video, like much of the world I was stunned and sickened by what I saw and heard. The footage, recorded from a U.S. Apache helicopter gunsight, depicts the violent deaths of two Iraqi journalists working for Reuters, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, along with about a dozen other mostly unarmed men on the streets of Baghdad in 2007. The video revealed in excruciating detail the calculated ruthlessness of modern warfare; for me, it wasn't only the erroneous targeting of the journalists that was disturbing, it was the matter-of-fact slaughter of anyone and everyone even standing next to or talking to someone with a weapon. The much-discussed Rules of Engagement at the time were apparently so broad as to sanction the ensuing destruction of a van that drove up, because the men attempting to help the dying Chmagh were of military age and were "possibly picking up weapons." In short, the video revealed quite clearly that, regardless of who you were or what you were actually doing, to merely be over the age of 14 and male in Baghdad in 2007 was to be a legitimate target to our trigger-happy airmen.
Within hours of the video's release, however, it was clear how the mainstream media was going to treat this story--no one would bother to find out what actually happened and why, no one would track down actual witnesses and participants in this event. Instead, the coverage from FoxNews to MSNBC was pretty much identical: find two talking-head "experts" with absolutely no first-hand knowledge and whose opinions we know in advance, and let them yell at each other. After two or three days of vapid sensationalism, the story by and large went away. All of the follow-up reporting was about the video's source, Wikileaks, and then the arrest of Bradley Manning.
But the original story, the real story, did not go away for me--I couldn't stop thinking about it. As a filmmaker, I could see that all the elements were there for an important and compelling documentary. The film I envisioned would be the antithesis of the MSM approach. It would be the story of one event in the Iraq war, told by those who were actually there, both American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. If done right, the film could open up a rare window into the nature of the entire war, laying bare the confusion, brutality and wrenching loss that is the real legacy of every so-called "engagement" in this bloody conflict.
Ethan McCord, who was one of the first soldiers on the scene of the attack and who helped rescue two children who were wounded in the van, is by now fairly well known on websites like this one, but at the time he was just starting to wade into the spotlight to give interviews. With a few phone calls, I was able to find him at his home in Wichita, and in mid-May I flew out to Kansas to conduct the first interview for my film. Over two days, I was able to get to know Ethan quite well, and I was very happy with the resulting interview, not only for the details Ethan offered about the Wikileaks incident, but for his quiet and thoughtful honesty about his whole experience in the war.
Now, I'm a filmmaker, not a journalist, and putting together a feature-length documentary is a process that takes months and very commonly years. So when Ethan and I had an exchange during the interview about his commanding officer, I really wasn't quite sure what I would do with it, or even if it would end up in the final film, as it is really outside of the parameters of the story that I have set for myself. However, I now feel that it is too important to wait, and if this passage will help to encourage further examination of this issue from journalists (or elected officials--could you imagine!) than it is worth putting out there.
Below is a transcript of the portion of the interview where Ethan McCord and I discussed the shooting of civilians. (The actual unedited video excerpt is at the bottom of this post.) At the time, while I knew that Ethan had mentioned the shooting orders to another interviewer, I had no idea that the order came from Lt. Col. Kauzlarich. As I had already read The Good Soldiers, you will see that I was somewhat taken aback by this information, as Finkel's book makes no mention of it. This was also well before the current release of The Tillman Story, but when Kauzlarich's name comes up McCord immediately mentions Kauzlarich's infamous handling of the Tillman incident. (Emphasis is mine.)
INTERVIEWER: And you said that at some point, your commanding officer started giving you orders, like, in response to, if an IED went off...
ETHAN MCCORD: Right. My battalion commander came out, 'cause we were getting hit, not just my company but all the companies were getting hit on a regular basis with IEDs. He came out to the COP--which is the Combat Outpost--and told us one day, "Fuck it. From now on, if you get hit by an IED, I want 360-degree rotational fire, you kill every motherfucker on the street." And, me and a lot of other guys were sitting there like, "You're, you're kidding. There's no way you're being serious right now." And, it came down. And that's what we were supposed to do, we were supposed to do 360 degree rotational fire and kill everybody.
INT: And did that happen??
EM: It happened more than not. A lot of us who didn't agree with that would fire our weapons high, into the tops of buildings, instead of on the civilians in the street.
INT: So if anyone was there they would run away instead of...
EM: Right, yeah, there was... Some of the soldiers were okay with it, you know? Some of these 18, 19 year old kids who had no idea other than, well if it's a general order, you know, if this is coming from, you know, a battalion commander then it's obviously legal and right. And... by that time I think a lot of people were also just very angry about being over there to begin with, and got to the point where we had lost some people and they wanted to get revenge and... and sure, yeah, I'm gonna kill everybody on the street.
INT: So... but this, I'm trying to figure this out, because it must be hard to figure out sometimes. You have, the battalion commander, so he's a couple of notches up the chain from where you're... [was it the] battalion commander, or platoon commander?
EM: Well, I had a platoon leader, the battalion commander was in charge of all of 2-16.
INT: And he came, he was the one who came down?
EM: Yeah.
INT: So it was really an order from...
EM: As high up as we know.
INT: ...as high up in the actual fighting unit?
EM: Yeah. As far as we knew his word was God. So, whatever he said went.
INT: And he said, when he said like, "Oh, fuck it," it wasn't just in a moment of like, you know,"Well, if that's the way they're gonna be..." It was like actually he came out to tell you that, in other words?
EM: Yeah, he, he came out and he told us that at the COP. And you know, like I said originally, we thought he was kidding.
INT: What level of command would this be? What was his rank?
EM: He is a Lieutenant Comm-- Lieutenant Colonel.
INT: Is this Kauzlarich from the--?
EM: Yes.
INT: 'Cause you know, it's interesting. I mean, I don't know how much of this will be in the video [that we are shooting now], but he's very much painted very nobly by, in the Finkel book.
EM: David Finkel, yeah.
INT: I mean... alright, he shades him out, and he says, you know, well this happens and stuff, but there's always this portrait of him [that] I think is very flattering in the end, because it's very much "I wanna do the right thing," and... so what you're telling me now really--
EM: Of course, this is a bio of Kauzlarich. This is nothing about the soldiers of 2-16, this is a bio of Kauzlarich.
INT: Yeah, he's the main character.
EM: Kauzlarich called this journalist out there to do it. It's not like the journalist just decided to do it. Kauzlarich called him out there and had him follow him around. This was Kauzlarich's idea.
INT: So...
EM: Kauzlarich also, if you're unaware, was Pat Tillman's XO, who got on ESPN and told Pat Tillman's family that they need to get over their son being dead 'cause he's "worm dirt." And the reason they can't get over it is because they're atheists. This guy is very gruff and doesn't have any PC whatsoever.
INT: No, I know that. And in fact, to Finkel's credit he includes that in the book. But definitely, what you're telling me is completely new information as far as I know, that, that there was an order... and again, I'm trying to wrap my head around it. Because there's the stated mission, which is to help the Iraqi people and you know to stabilize it and everything else, but you're telling me the Lieutenant Colonel of the whole fuckin' (sorry) battalion, 800-something guys, literally gave an order to, in response to, if that happens again, shoot civilians?
EM: Right... Everything's not black and white, whether it's in a book or anything else. And you know, that's what I'm trying to let everybody know is like, this video ["Collateral Murder"] is not the only thing that's not black and white, it's the entire war.
Following the interview, after I had returned to New York, I called Ethan several times over the next month or so to follow up on a few things that we talked about on camera. Ethan told me that earlier on the same day of Kauzlarich's order, the 2-16 had taken four casualties. He also said that when the Lt. Col. came into the COP to give the order, present were members of both the 3rd and 1st Platoons. And he told me, further, that Kauzlarich's order was enforced by the NCO's in the company, who would scream at soldiers who refused to shoot at civilians.
Is Ethan McCord telling the truth? On the surface, it all makes a certain sense: one can imagine a man like Kauzlarich, an officer already known for a certain harshness, who, under immense pressure during the most violent and chaotic point in the Iraq conflict, might just have decided to try desperate measures in an attempt to stem the tide of violence directed at his troops. And more to the point, there are two other vets who have publicly corroborated McCord's account--Ray Corcoles and Josh Steiber. When will the media--and our elected representatives--start to pay attention to this?
Finally, one thing that I must admit has frustrated me with the veterans' telling of this story is the lack of specific dates and times to most of the events they recount--totally understandable, of course, because who is taking notes in combat? But in one of my telephone conversations with Ethan, he did recount what he called a "huge, huge massacre" in the street in response to the death of one Sgt. James D. Doster, who was killed in Baghdad on September 29, 2007 when an IED exploded under his vehicle on Route Pluto. McCord said that a large number of Iraqi men, women and children were killed in the incident. How David Finkel, who was embedded with the 2-16, who wrote extensively about this time period and even covered Doster's death in his book, could somehow have missed this event, and the ensuing Army investigation, is a bit baffling.
McCord recalled that Lt. Col. Kauzlarich visited the COP with his plan to engage civilians after IED attacks sometime in July, at least two months prior to the civilian deaths McCord claims happened on September 29th.