Read No True Glory for Free Online Page B

was riddled with bullets and rolled to a halt. The police car and the other pickup skidded to a stop.
    A driver hopped out, yelling “Police! Police!” But now the American soldiers were under fire from the roof of the two-story building to the west. Not knowing it was a hospital, they pounded the building with .50 caliber machine-gun fire. Seven policemen and hospital guards died. It was the deadliest friendly-fire incident in the six-month-old American occupation, and it left tremendous bitterness on both sides.
    Drinkwine expressed his regret and asked why the police hadn’t contacted him by radio or turned on their flashing lights. Because, the police shouted back, you Americans promised us equipment but never delivered. Never. You’re all talk. Now you’re killing us.
    Drinkwine had little to offer the police in the way of equipment. He set up notification procedures to avoid a repeat of the tragedy and purchased some flashing lights. He understood why the police stayed away from his battalion. They lived in the city and surrounding villages; they knew the ex-officers lounging on the street corners, each with an AK at home and a skein of like-minded colleagues. Four American battalions, each offering protection in exchange for information, had come and had gone. But the insurgents were not leaving.
    Drinkwine had his hands full. Patrols were finding an average of three IEDs a day. In early October Drinkwine was arriving for a meeting at the Government Center when a man stepped out of a side street, shouted “God is great!” and started firing an AK-47 automatic rifle. The soldiers cut him down, but four bystanders were wounded.
    Local residents called the assailant a freedom fighter, and a policeman promised that more would emerge.
    “Saddam Hussein is gone. But now we have the same kind of regime,” he said. “Whenever they [the Americans] come inside Fallujah, they will be attacked.”
    Rather than backing off, Drinkwine increased the pressure. In mid-October, to get to a meeting with the sheikhs at the town hall, Drinkwine walked the two kilometers west down Highway 10 with a platoon from Charlie Company, instead of driving in Bradley fighting vehicles. When they reached the mayor’s office, a man in a blue shirt and jeans, hiding behind a silver Oldsmobile, fired point-blank at Specialist John Fox, striking him in the center of his armored vest. The bullet hit a gray smoke grenade strapped to his vest and bounced off. The soldiers shot the man. As he lay dying, he quietly repeated in Arabic, “God is great.”
    Drinkwine routinely met with the clerics and sheikhs, listening to their complaints and requests for aid and asking in return that they tone down the virulent anti-American sermons. American officials estimated that 43,000 former Baathists and army and intelligence corps veterans lived in and around Fallujah. In every 82nd ops center there were lists, photos, and an organizational skeleton laying out the former regime elements (FREs) suspected of running the resistance. Next to the FRE diagram was a layout of the overt power elite in the city—the sheikhs, imams, and administrators with whom Drinkwine frequently met.
    CIA and military intelligence specialists worked together to update the lists. It had taken the CIA six months to persuade the CPA that an Iraqi intelligence service had to be reconstituted, despite the horrors of its predecessor. The formation of a new intelligence service, however, was a year away. In the meantime the U.S. military was developing its own net of suspects, personality profiles, known associates, addresses, informers, and grounds for arrest.
    Drinkwine was especially impressed by the skills of special operations Task Forces 6-26 and 1-21. The Special Operations Command could operate in just about any area. Its officers and NCOs were older, more experienced, and low-key. When they showed up, they had a mission and hard intelligence. Drinkwine appreciated how they passed