barbec ue - chicago reader

The H

oyle Brothers go to N

ashville, Steppenwolf and the G

oodman

go to war, car culture creeps into the South L

oop, and more.

PL U

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How

I Learned toH

ate the War

An army interrogator’s

eight demoralizing

mon ths in Ir aq

By

Tori Marlan

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CHIC A

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’S FREE W

EEKL Y

|THIS ISSU

E IN F O

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SE CTION

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FRID

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E 35, NU

MBER 1

Neil Young 1,

Trib 0p 4

Can a cellphonechangethem

usicbiz?p 12

September 30, 2005

Section One Letters 3ColumnsHot Type 4Getting the facts on Farm Aid

The Straight Dope 5Jump-starting demystified

The Works 8The city sure has a funny way of encouragingalternative transportation.

Chicago Antisocial 10At Reversible Eye gallery in Humboldt Park

Product 12A new occasional column on the music biz

The Sports Section 14One for the true believers

Our Town 15The Hoyle Brothers tone down their anti-Nashville shtick. Guess why?

ReviewsMusic 28The return of Earth

Movies 29A History of Violence

Theater 30Last of the Boys at Steppenwolf, BeyondGlory at the Goodman, Greasy Joan’s TheHouse of Bernarda Alba

Books 33Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich

PlusInk WellThis week’s crossword: Auntie Em

Two months after he got home from Iraq, Jake pulled his green dress uniform out of the basement closet and prepared it for the

Memorial Day parade. He sewed his new combatand service stripes onto the jacket’s sleeves, andabove the left breast pocket he pinned his 12th and13th ribbons, which represented his new army com-mendation and global war on terrorism medals.

On the morning of the parade he put the uniformon for what he expected would be the last time. Backin 1990 Jake’s decision to join the army had madeperfect sense. His father died when he was nine;his mother, a clerical worker, never remarried. Themacho warriors in 80s Hollywood movies were theclosest things Jake ever had to male role models. Andhe revered them—especially Rambo, whom he saw asa “lone-wolf type of guy who kicks ass, rescues people,and becomes a hero.” Jake felt like a lone wolf too. Hehad no siblings. And since he wasn’t popular or ath-letic or the kind of kid who had hobbies, he neverbelonged to any of the clubs or teams his northwest-side high school offered. He was often lonely andbored, and the army filled the emptiness in his life,giving him something to do, providing him withfriends and father figures, and conferring upon himinstant membership in a group—a group that couldget him as close as possible to his ass-kicking Rambofantasy. He enjoyed being in the army, and for thenext 14 years he felt proud to be associated with it.

Now, standing in front of the mirror, with deco-rations that traced his career in the military, Jakelooked the part of a dedicated soldier. At 32, thestaff sergeant was boyishly trim and fit, with a narrow face, soft blue eyes, American troops in Sadr City after attacks by followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, April 2004

ON THE COVER: STEPHANIE SINCLAIR (IRAQ), RICK DIAMOND/WIREIMAGE.COM (YOUNG)

How ILearnedto Hatethe WarJake’s job was tointerrogate the enemy.But it was the U.S.Army he began toquestion.

By Tori Marlan

Photographs by Stephanie Sinclair

continued on page 20

CITING SAFETY CONCERNS, JAKE ASKED THAT HIS NAME AND HIS WIFE’S BE CHANGED.

18 CHICAGO READER | SEPTEMBER 30, 2005 | SECTION ONE

CHICAGO READER | SEPTEMBER 30, 2005 | SECTION ONE 19


and sandy brown hair that he’dcut in anticipation of the parade.The uniform fit him well, but hefelt ill at ease in it.

Later that morning, whilewaiting for the festivities tobegin downtown, he stopped fora cup of coffee. He sat on a benchon Wacker Drive and noticed amiddle-aged man sizing him up.“What are you?” the man asked.

Jake was taken aback. Hethought the question seemedbetter suited to Halloween. Itwas absurd—stupid even. A yearago, it might’ve made him laugh.Now it infuriated him. “I’m ahuman being,” he snapped.“What are you?”

He walked away and joined ahodgepodge of veterans on a float.As it made its way down StateStreet, he scanned the crowd, spot-ting his wife and toddler son, whocalled out to him. It was the onlymoment of the parade he enjoyed.The other spectators upset him.Their waving, their hollering, theirclapping, their gratitude—it allstruck him as foolish. Lookingat them he couldn’t help butthink, “They have no idea whatthey’re cheering.”

Jake had arrived in Kuwaitalmost a year earlier, ready to

serve his country. The pale bluesky, powdery white sand, anddusty smell of the air remindedhim of his last trip to the MiddleEast, during the first gulf war,when he was a skinny 18-year-old assistant antitank gunner.He’d come back from that warwithout a scratch, without asingle dead friend, and enrolledat the University of Illinois atChicago, where he majored inEnglish and minored in French.In 1996, when he was a senior,he signed up with the IllinoisArmy National Guard. The fol-lowing year he started gradschool in English literature atUIC. He wanted to be a writerand believed he had some talentfor it, but the ideas just weren’tcoming. He applied to theChicago Police Department andworked for a public relationsfirm until the city called.

In December 2003 he was 31, aChicago police officer with a wifeand a three-month-old son. Hisnational guard unit was com-posed of linguists. Since his spe-cialty—French—hardly seemed indemand in Iraq, it came as a sur-prise when he got called up forduty. He learned that he and ahandful of other linguists wouldspend six months at FortHuachuca in Arizona beingretrained as intelligence agentsand then be deployed overseas.

Neither he nor his wife, Beth,had supported sending troops toIraq in the first place, but theyfigured there must be somethingonly the Bush administrationknew—something that justifiedthe use of force. A definitive linkto Al Qaeda, perhaps, or animminent threat from weaponsof mass destruction.

They prepared for Jake’s

absence. They drew up wills andsecured power of attorney forBeth. Jake made arrangementsfor his leave from the policedepartment. Beth got a militaryID that would enable her toreceive medical benefits throughthe army. They also took a familyportrait. Jake secretly believed itwould be their last.

He prepared as best he couldfor the job ahead, reading bookson Islam, terrorism, and Arab cul-ture. At one point Beth asked ifthere was any way he could avoidgoing to war. Though he had apossible out—an old back injury, aruptured disk that had neverproperly healed—he said no. Hewasn’t going to weasel out of hiscommitment. And besides, hetold her, if he didn’t go, someonewould have to go in his place.

If he had the same decision tomake today, Jake says, “I’d breakboth my legs if I had to.”

The linguists spent a month atCamp Doha in Kuwait getting

acclimated to the Middle Eastand taking convoy and weaponstraining. They were attached tothe Tenth Mountain Division,Second Brigade, and in July thebrigade drove to Camp Victory, anenormous base near the Baghdadairport that was under the com-mand of the First CavalryDivision. Camp Victory housed12,000 soldiers behind a brickwall that was secured with barbedwire and perimeter towers. It wasan intensely hot, dusty place withgravelly roads, relentless noisefrom vehicle traffic and genera-tors, and perfectly lined rows ofprefabricated aluminum trailers.

Those who lived there came tothink of life in Baghdad in simpleterms: there was inside the wireand outside the wire. Jake was

assigned to a three-room trailerwith five other soldiers. Eachroom contained two small bedsand wall lockers. He spent thefirst few weeks getting orientedand tagging along for “right-seatrides” with soldiers charged withshowing him around.

Jake hated being there. Hehadn’t liked Iraq the first timearound, and he blamed Arabsand “their nonsense” for makinghim come back.

In his downtime he got to knowhis roommate, read more onIslam and Arab culture, listenedto music, watched movies, wrotein his journal, and visited CampVictory’s PX, the biggest postexchange in Iraq, where mer-chants sold everything from babywipes to big-screen TVs and boot-legged DVDs under tents the sizeof aircraft hangars. There waseven a Pizza Hut, a Burger King,and Internet “cafes”—drinklessones, to protect the computers—where soldiers e-mailed friendsand family, surfed the Web, andtrolled online dating sites. Friendsand family back home sent sol-diers basic items like toothpasteand deodorant, but nearly any-thing could be bought at the PXor was only a click away.Deliveries from Victoria’s Secret,Amazon, and eBay regularlyarrived at Camp Victory. Jakeeven contemplated buying asatellite TV with 900 channelsfor a onetime fee of $200.

“Satellite TV in a war zone,” hemarveled in his journal.

But Camp Victory was still afar cry from home. Every dayinsurgents fired rockets andmortar rounds inside the wire.Jake quickly learned to distin-guish them from each other bythe sounds they made on impact.Though the explosions from

these attacks made soldiersscatter or hit the ground, Jaketried to ignore them. He’d simplyturn up the music or try to goback to sleep or continue reading.He’d decided there was nothinghe could do to protect himself.

He wondered what it would belike if a rocket or mortar roundsliced through his trailer whilehe was in it. “Would I even knowit?” he wrote to himself. “Wouldit be a white flash, a heat wave,concussion? Or would the worldjust end? Just think, in somefarm field five or ten kilometersaway, some rag bag insurgent issetting up a rocket . . . against apile of rocks or dirt . . . setting thefuse and running away. And thatsame rocket could be in the airright now, climbing in a burningstreak up into the sky, then thefire goes out and the rocket justcoasts up and settles into the tra-jectory that it will follow. Andthat same rocket is just coastingdown to earth, destined to eitherhit me or miss me, or hitsomeone else or miss someoneelse. How the hell am I going togo back to a normal life afterhaving come to terms with themadness of this place?”

It was far more dangerous, heknew, outside the wire. As acounterintelligence specialist,Jake was expected to cultivateinformants and gather informa-tion about the insurgency. Thejob required venturing out intothe streets of Baghdad a fewtimes a week to accompany GIson missions and patrols. Theseusually took place in a farm areaon the southwest side of the city,where amid the gunfire andexplosions Jake could hear frogsand crickets and howling dogs.

He decided that nothing—notdemocracy in the Middle East,

not political gain, not cheap oil—was worth the feeling he experi-enced before each trip outside thewire, the near-crippling fear thathe’d never see his wife or sonagain. “If everybody back homecould feel like this there wouldnever be wars again,” he wrote.

He felt alone in his fear. TheGIs, most of them barely out ofhigh school, seemed eager foraction. Jake noticed that someeven seemed to look forward tobeing shot at—because then theycould shoot back.

On missions they sometimescordoned off whole villages, bar-ring anyone from coming orgoing, and then raided people’shomes. The common practice,Jake says, was to break in doorswith battering rams and pointguns in everybody’s faces. They’dsearch everybody, including chil-dren, and then “tear up thehouse and detain all the males.”

With interpreters, or “terps,” intow, Jake tried to form connec-tions with the locals, giving themhis phone number and encour-aging them to turn in anybodythey suspected of having ties toinsurgent groups. It was a toughsell, he knew. He was askingpeople to put themselves andtheir families at great risk.

The other linguists from Jake’snational guard unit turned tohim for advice because he wasolder and could draw on hisexperience as a police officer, andalso because their training hadleft them feeling ill prepared. “Itwas outdated and geared towardBosnia and Korea,” says NhuTran, a Vietnamese linguist fromCarol Stream. They’d beentrained to question people on abattlefield, where innocence wasn’t a factor, rather than civil-ians, who got rounded up every

How I Learned to Hate the War

continued from page 1

Car search in Fallujah, November 2003


time an improvised explosivedevice (IED) or car bomb wentoff. The intelligence agents, saysTran, were mostly people in their20s like her who’d been yankedout of their regular lives, trainedfor six months, and then “throwninto Iraq and expected to pro-duce high-level intelligence.”

If any of the training was rele-vant, Sergeant Mike Komorowski,a 24-year-old Polish linguistfrom Schaumburg, says hemissed it. “It was an acceleratedprogram—we rushed through it.”

While the linguists were still inArizona, photos of hooded pris-oners at Abu Ghraib beingabused and humiliated madetheir way around the globe.When Jake saw them, he thoughtit was crucial for the U.S. to “winthe hearts and minds” of Iraqis.On trips outside the wire he tookoff his helmet, shook hands, satat Iraqi tables, and ate the foodthey offered him—even thoughdiarrhea would often follow.Beth sent him toys and treats togive to Iraqi children. Beforehanding out boxes of animalcrackers, he dug through them tocheck for dogs or pigs—animalsthat Muslims consider unclean.

Jake says that on patrols and

raids he often found himselftrying to persuade his fellow sol-diers not to do unnecessaryharm—not to derogatorily referto Iraqis as hajis, or bring a doginto someone’s home withoutreason, or confiscate an antiquerifle that was a family heirloom,or detain people solely for havingunlicensed AK-47s—“an offenseas common as double-parking inChicago,” he wrote in his journal.

When U.S. troops descendedon someone’s home “SWAT-teamstyle,” or when the soldiers over-looked the oldest male in a houseand addressed his sons instead,Jake got the feeling thatAmericans were making ene-mies—that the soldiers wereeither blind to or disrespectful ofcultural differences. He worriedthat such missteps would damagethe overall mission in Iraq. Heworried that they created a morehostile environment, making thesoldiers’ jobs even more dan-gerous. And he worried that theywould ultimately create new ter-rorists whose handiwork wouldsomeday be seen on U.S. streets.

The hostility brewing in thelocal population was palpable,Jake says. Sometimes when hecaught Iraqis glowering at him,

he was reminded of the four-year-old girl in Chicago who hadtaken one look at him in hispolice uniform and declared,“You’re bad.” He rememberedstepping out of his squad car onwest-side streets, only to see theyoung males on the corner sud-denly start spitting. The police inChicago had a bad name in cer-tain circles, but he was starting tothink it was nothing compared tohow Iraqis felt about Americans.

Jake figured his chances of get-ting injured or killed increased

with every trip outside the wire,that it was simply a game of odds.After an IED hit a Humvee hewas waiting for, a month after hearrived in Baghdad, he requestedand received a transfer.

He began working inside thewire at the Second Brigade’sinterrogation facility, leading afour-person team of interroga-tors who questioned suspectsand then recommended theyeither be released or sent to AbuGhraib for further questioning.

While their fates were in limbo,suspects stayed four or five men toa cell in a prison near the facility.They were given a blanket, amattress, the Koran, and one

meal a day, along with fruit and abottle of water, Jake says.

The interrogations took placein a former government building.Each interrogation room had onedesk and three chairs—for thesuspect, the interrogator, and theinterpreter. After the Abu Ghraibrevelations, the army had imple-mented strict rules of conduct,says Jake, including a ban on tac-tics requiring physical contact,stressful positions, and sleepdeprivation. “Our team followedthat by the book,” he says. Still,one of the interrogators on histeam had an approach that hefelt left much to be desired. Shewould shout and swear and tryto humiliate suspects, callingthem pieces of shit, calling theirmothers and sisters whores.There was no nuance to her style,no psychological insight. Sheyelled so loudly the other inter-rogators could often hear herthrough the walls. The terpscomplained to Jake about herand one even threatened to quit,he says, so he sat her down andtalked to her about herapproach. “Giving her criticismwas extremely unproductive,” hesays. “She threw a fit and had totake three weeks off.”

Jake worked 16 to 18 hours aday to process the suspectsbeing rounded up. In a way, hesays, it was good. It kept hismind off home.

Before questioning a suspect,he liked to read reports from thefield and examine the evidence.Interrogations ranged from onehour “for a blatantly innocentperson” to eight hours for themost difficult cases.

He says he usually began bygreeting the prisoner anduncuffing him. Then he’d offerhim something to drink and theopportunity to use the Porta-John. “He would make theperson comfortable to talk andgive him an opportunity to talk,”says an Egyptian-born Americaninterpreter who worked closelywith Jake (and doesn’t want thearmy to know he talked to areporter). “He was not arrogant,and he didn’t come across as aweak person. He was firm.” Healso describes Jake as intelligent,fair, and open-minded—someonewho “wouldn’t rush to judgment.”

Jake often told the suspects alittle bit about himself, andsometimes he even showed thema photo of his son. He figuredcontinued on page 22


that the more open he was withthem the more they’d trust him,and the more they trusted himthe more they’d be willing totalk. “Torture does not work,” hesays. “It shuts people downinside.” What did work, hefound, was “sweetness and alittle bit of trickery.”

Sergeant Stacey Chapman, areservist who worked for a fewmonths as an interrogator at theSecond Brigade facility, looked upto Jake. “He was quick-witted andsmart,” she says. “He could pickup discrepancies and flusterpeople so quickly. He’d keep bom-barding them with questions.” Hewas also good at assessingpeople’s motivation, she says, “andthen using it as a tool to get theperson to give up what they had.”

Mike Komorowski, the Polishlinguist from Jake’s nationalguard unit, observed Jake inter-rogating suspects half a dozentimes. He says Jake was calm inevery instance but one. In thatcase, Jake jumped out of his chairand started screaming at the sus-pect, who’d been caught settingup an ambush. The suspect hadconfessed to the soldiers in thefield, but he told Jake he was

delirious when he gave his state-ment. “That pissed me off,” Jakesays. “He deserved probably a lotmore than what I gave him.”

Jake liked to ask suspects fortheir backgrounds and histories.One family that was brought in,four sons and a father, made aparticularly strong impressionon him. They seemed to have alot of pride and were cooperativeand friendly. Each of the sonsexpressed concern about thewomen in their house who’dbeen left behind. They also wor-ried about their father and askedJake to bring him an extrablanket. The more contact Jakehad with the Iraqis—and withthe Arabic-speaking Americansand Canadians working undercontract as interpreters—themore his impression of Arabschanged. He began to under-stand some of their customs andtaboos. He began to think ofthem as kind, respectful, decentpeople—people with valuesmuch like his own.

He began to believe that maybehe could do some good in Iraqafter all—unearth information thatwould protect American soldiersand ultimately help the people hewas starting to care about to have

better lives. Maybe the war wasnot a waste of time. Maybe allwould end well. Maybe he wouldreturn to his wife and son.

Cultural differences and thelanguage barrier often made

it difficult to tell if someone wasbeing evasive. The interpreterswere trained not to offer asides,to translate only what was said.Jake, however, encouraged themto give him any context neces-sary to make sense of the sus-pects’ answers. If a suspect’svocabulary belied his claim to beuneducated, or his dialect indi-cated he was from a region hesaid he’d never been to, or heclaimed to be Sunni but was inthe habit of saying, “I swear byAli”—a very Shia thing to say—Jake wanted to know.

In Chicago, if suspects hesitateor clam up when Jake asks theirdate of birth, he assumes theyhave something to hide. In Iraq,he learned, he could make nosuch assumption: people theretypically don’t know when theywere born. They don’t alwaysknow their address either, he says.“They just know, ‘I live acrossfrom the market.’” Jake says themore he learned about Iraqi and

Arab cultural norms—fromreading, from long talks with theinterpreters, and from hearingabout the suspects’ lives—thebetter he was able to think on hisfeet and to modify his questioning.

One rural farmer Jake ques-tioned not only didn’t know hisaddress, he didn’t know how toestimate miles or kilometers. Thefarmer claimed to know the loca-tion of an IED stockpile, but hewas unable to describe how to getthere. He smoked, so Jake askedhim how many cigarettes he couldhave while walking between a cer-tain point and the stockpile. Fromthe answer—three—Jake figuredit took the man about ten min-utes, and from that he estimatedthat the distance in question wasabout a kilometer.

Among the prisoners, miscon-ceptions about U.S. motives andcapabilities abounded. Manypeople Jake questioned thoughtAbu Musab al-Zarqawi, whoclaimed responsibility for deadlyinsurgent attacks and behead-ings, was a fiction created by theAmericans to justify linking thewar on terror to Iraq. Many,protesting their innocence,implored Jake to “check with thesatellites”—as if U.S. satellites

kept tabs on everyone. Suspects often flattered Jake,

and they offered preposterousanswers—that they’d never set footin a mosque or that they didn’tknow what an AK-47 looked like.Telling the interrogator what theythought he wanted to hear was asurvival tactic during SaddamHussein’s regime, Jake says.

Despite the difficulties of thejob, Jake was buoyed by earlyvictories. The biggest came onenight at the tactical operationscenter. While he was turning inhis team’s reports, he learnedthat a couple of suspected insur-gents had just been caught witha truckful of artillery roundsweighing about 25 pounds each.The men sat in the back of aHumvee, blindfolded, waiting tobe processed. Jake says he wastold the interrogation could waituntil morning, but he decided heand his roommate should getstarted on the spot. At first thesuspects tried to pass off theartillery rounds as scrap metal,but upon further questioningthey provided the name andlocation of the person who’dhired them. This led to the cap-ture of a “big arms dealer.”

He says, “That was potentially




1,500 IEDs that we stopped fromgoing out on the streets—thatwas like the best thing that I’veever done.”

Jake felt “on top of the worldthat night.” Such moments, helearned, were rare.

of anything. You can always say,well, maybe he is in a sleeper cell.But you look for what’s likely andwhat’s not likely.” And when hedeclared someone to be of “nointel value,” he says, “I was as sureas I could possibly be.”

Many suspects were brought infor possessing electrical wires orlight switches. While such mate-rials could be used to makeIEDs, Jake acknowledges, some-times “there’s no dubious expla-nation for this stuff.” Wires andlight switches are commonhousehold items owned bypeople who use generators.

“You have to look at the totalityof the circumstances,” he says. Ifsomeone caught with a coil ofwire is “90 years old, decrepit,and he’s got one leg,” chances arehe’s not a danger. “If he’s a 20-year-old guy with a Wahhabibeard and a bunch of jihad liter-ature, that’s a different story.”

Sometimes the evidencebrought in with a suspect contra-dicted the written reports. Jakeinterrogated a man who was sus-pected of funding the insurgencybecause he allegedly was foundwith a bar of gold. But Jake saysthat when he examined the evi-dence the “gold” turned out to belead. Another man was broughtin for possession of artilleryshells, but photos from the sceneconfirmed the man’s story: he’dbeen using them as flowerpots.

Jake grew frustrated by what hesaw as the GIs’ inability to con-

sider benign explanations. “Theywere never trained to think,” hesays. “They were trained to followorders. They were trained to gointo a building and shoot peopleand blow the building up or what-ever. That’s combat.”

In his journal he describesinterrogating a man who was“completely overwhelmed withshock and grief.” The man toldhim he’d seen a soldier shoot hisbrother to death. According to thereport from the field, the brothershad been preparing an ambushand one was killed while resistingarrest. But the suspect, a potatofarmer, said he and his brotherhad been irrigating a field when ahelicopter swooped down onthem. He said that they ranbecause they were terrified andthat his brother had been cuffedwhen he was shot. If the suspect’sstory was true, the killing wouldconstitute a war crime. Jake askedto see the dead body—he wantedto check its wrists for cuff marks.He was told no.

What was needed in Iraq, herealized, was good law enforce-ment—people with investigativeskills and common sense, peoplewho were adept at judgingcontinued on page 24

Member of the 159th Medical Company, October 2003

In the overwhelming majority ofcases, Jake determined that the

army had no good reason to con-tinue holding the suspect. He sayshe wound up recommending therelease of 90 percent of the peoplehe questioned. “You’re never sure


human behavior. He began tothink that the soldiers, despitetheir bravado, were terrified—and that their fear made themoverzealous. Because they had noidea who the enemy was orwhere he was going to comefrom, they’d begun to see every-body as the enemy.

One interrogator on Jake’s teamquestioned a political scienceprofessor who’d criticized theAmerican invasion in class.During a raid of his home, Jakesays, soldiers turned up a paperarguing that the coalition hadinvaded Iraq for its oil. The inter-rogator had recommended thatthe professor be released, but hersuperiors were troubled by thepaper on the war and they sentthe case back for reinterrogation.It was assigned to the interrogatorwho screamed at her charges.

Jake says, the paper “wasnothing you probably wouldn’tfind in like the Utne Reader, butthis guy actually went to jail forthat. And that really frustratedme, because I was like, ‘How canwe call this Operation IraqiFreedom if we’re arrestingpeople based on what theywrite?’ Maybe the guy’s wrong,

maybe he believes in the Baathparty. So what? Does that meanhe’s an insurgent? Did he haveany weapons in his house? Didhe have any bombs? No? Thenwhy are you arresting him?”

Soldiers, he says, were kickingdown doors on the basis of theflimsiest of accusations. For anIraqi, having someone arrestedwas as easy as telling a U.S. soldierthat that person was a terrorist.“Nobody ever asks these inform-ants ‘be more specific’ or ‘how doyou know that?’” says Jake.

Jake believed that Americansoldiers were regularly beingmanipulated by informants. Iraqis a country with immensepoverty, and Americans paid forinformation, which created anincentive to lie. It is also a countrywith bitter tribal divisions, andJake thinks Americans werebeing used to settle scores. “Wedon’t realize how big the differ-ences are over there between theShia, the Kurd, and the Sunni,”he says. “We’ve got Shias rattingout Sunni people as insurgents,so we go out and we arrest all theSunnis in the neighborhood, thenthe Shias take over their nicehouses.” He says people who werearrested often weren’t surprised

by accusations against them eventhough they were false. “They’relike, ‘This happened underSaddam all the time. You guysare doing the same thing.’ So thatwas frustrating. I didn’t like to becompared to Saddam’s intelli-gence service, but there was avalid comparison there. We’d goout in the middle of the nightand take people away from theirhomes. We didn’t execute themlike they did, but still.”

He noticed that informationprovided by an informant withthe code name Bonsai neverchecked out. Even so, soldierskept using Bonsai as a sourceuntil they intercepted his callsone day and learned he was actu-ally working for the insurgents.

Jake says he got the distinctimpression that the commandersthought the fewer Iraqi males onthe streets the better. After anIED injured six marines, Jakesays he overheard a captain tellhis men to go to the village whereit happened and “burn the wholeplace to the ground.” Jake knewthe captain was exaggerating, buthe wasn’t sure by how much.

When bombs went off soldiersrounded up everyone in thevicinity. The interrogators under-

stood that running from anexplosion wasn’t a responseexclusive to terrorists, and theirtask was to single out those whowere responsible for the attack.“Most of the time it’s none ofthem,” says Stacey Chapman.“But commanders would say,‘You gotta pick one.’ What westarted noticing was that the evi-dence didn’t matter. If there wasan attack, if an American soldierdied, someone was going to jail.”

But worse to Jake than awrongful arrest was the pressurehe felt to overlook it. He says oneof the officers who escorted pris-oners to interrogations informedhim that the commanders wereshooting for a quota. “Our com-mander wanted 60 percent ofour detainees to go to AbuGhraib prison, regardless ofinnocence or guilt,” says Jake. Hebegan to wonder if the reason hewas constantly being asked toreinterrogate people was that hisrecommendations for releasemade it difficult—at least onpaper—for his superiors totransfer prisoners to Abu Ghraib.(The army declined my requests tospeak with three of his superiors.)

Eventually, Jake says, itbecame clear to him that his rec-

ommendations were being disre-garded. He knew that it couldtake two months to interrogatesomeone sent to Abu Ghraib. Ifthey were innocent, it wouldprobably take two or three moreinterrogations to finally clearthem. A wrongful arrest wouldhave turned into a four- or five-month ordeal.

Apart from the psychologicaldamage, false imprisonment foreven a few days in a country aspoor as Iraq could have a devas-tating impact on a person’s liveli-hood: “People over there livehand to mouth,” Jake says.“Detain someone for a weekend,they might lose so much moneythat they lose their home.”

Jake came to believe the warwas radicalizing people. Thepeople he recommended be sentto Abu Ghraib were nationalists,he says, not religious fanatics.Though the Pentagon had initiallyblamed the resistance on SaddamHussein and on Al-Qaeda’srecruiting of foreign fighters, afew weeks before Jake arrivedUSA Today reported that only 2percent of those in U.S. custody inIraq were foreign. “I never inter-rogated a foreign fighter thewhole time I was there,” Jake says.




Jake’s disillusionment peakedin the months leading up to

last January’s Iraqi elections. InNovember the battle becamepersonal. A terp Jake sometimesworked with, someone he con-sidered a friend, was killed by anIED during the crackdown oninsurgents in Fallujah. InDecember he came home on twoweeks’ leave to find the tsunamiin Southeast Asia saturating themedia while the war was nearlyignored. His wife and son hadestablished a routine withouthim, and watching them goabout it he felt like an outsider inhis own family. On the first leg ofhis trip back to Iraq, a flight toDallas, Jake sat down next to abusinessman in first class andbegan to sob. In January, back inBaghdad, he was constantly onedge and couldn’t sleep. Hewrote in his journal that he felt“jaded, cynical, apathetic, lazy,sarcastic, uncaring, and grumpy.”

He’d lost whatever will to bethere he’d conjured. He no longerwanted to help Iraqis, no longercould maintain the feeling that hewas doing some good. He hopedthat people back home would riseup and demand an end to the U.S.occupation, but he knew it wasn’tgoing to happen. He asked a mili-tary doctor about antidepressants.“The doctor doesn’t even raise aneyebrow, doesn’t even hesitate . . .”Jake wrote in his journal. “Hedoesn’t even need to ask you what’swrong because he already knows—you’re in Baghdad, of course youneed antidepressants, son.”

U.S. and Iraqi officials antici-pated increased efforts by sui-cide bombers, kidnappers, andassassins bent on disrupting theelections, which were scheduledfor the 30th. The Bush adminis-tration needed the elections tobe a success, and at the begin-ning of the month the armylaunched Operation CleanSweep. “They just went out andgrabbed any 18-year-old-or-above male they could find andbrought them in,” Jake says.

The brigade’s prison populationswelled to more than four timescapacity. There were old men,sick men, men who were missingarms and legs. “People accused ofridiculous stuff,” he says. “Mostlyaccused by other Iraqis who hadsome vendetta.” An officer toldJake there was a new rule: “Wewouldn’t release anybody untilthe elections were over.”

Jake worked grueling hours,doing ten or more interrogationsa day with no days off. Thoughhe recommended that many ofthe prisoners be freed, he saysthey weren’t. “I was basically toldby several commanders if we getten and nine are innocent andone is guilty, then it’s worthtaking nine innocent people andputting them in jail just to getthat one guilty one.” Jake dis-agreed. He thought this mightturn the nine innocents—andtheir families—into enemies.

Jake vented his frustration toother interrogators and his inter-preters. “Sometimes I thought he

would take things too much toheart,” says his roommate, whonoticed that it deeply botheredJake to see prisoners he’d alreadyrecommended for release. “He’dsay, ‘Why’s he still here?’ and getworked up.”

“He understood that noteveryone was a criminal or aterrorist,” says Chapman, thatmany of the detainees “werevictims of circumstance”—people, for example, whohappened to be standing near abomb when it exploded.

At nightly meetings, Jake’sideas for changes—even smallchanges, like giving suspectsmore time in the Porta-Johnsbecause they needed to removetheir jumpsuits—fell on deaf

ears. Jake says that one day amajor asked him why of the lasthundred interrogations he’ddone he’d recommended onlyfive suspects go to Abu Ghraib.He says he told the major hebelieved the men were innocent,yet the major insisted they wereguilty. Jake says he explainedthat the informants and the evi-dence were bogus, but “he justgave me this lecture about beingtoo sympathetic.” He says themajor accused him of not under-standing how high the stakeswere and said, “These guys arekilling us, they’re our boys.” Andthen, Jake says, the major sug-gested he “go to the morgue andview the dead American bodiesto realize how bad the situation

was.” To someone who’d just losta friend in battle, the remark cutdeep.

Jake’s morale, already in precip-itous decline, sank even lower. Itwas one thing to have ill-prepared18-year-olds wrongfully detainingpeople; it was another to havecommanders away from the bat-tlefield making decisions thatcould devastate people’s lives.

Jake wasn’t the only inter-rogator to voice concerns aboutthe army’s methods. His room-mate says that he complained tooand ran into a “don’t-rock-the-boat mentality,” and that people’sconcern for their own careerssometimes trumped “doing theright thing—professionally,morally, ethically.” Jake and his

roommate both say theyrequested transfers to no avail. “Ifelt something was totally wrongand I did not want to be part ofit,” says his roommate, whowants to remain anonymous toprotect himself and because he’sup for a promotion. MikeKomorowski, the Polish linguistfrom Jake’s national guard unit,overheard his superiors refer toJake as a “bad soldier.”Komorowski respected him,though. “He always thoughtthings could be improved.”

As the elections neared, attackson Iraqi police mounted. A weekbefore the elections Jake, withonly a couple of months of hisdeployment left, was sent to livecontinued on page 26


at an Iraqi police station on thewest side of Baghdad. He says heobjected to the assignment andasked to remain inside the wire,but his lieutenant insisted heneeded a “new perspective.”Fortunately the police stationremained quiet until the day ofthe elections, when he could hearexplosions and firefights.

Nhu Tran, the Vietnamese lin-guist from Jake’s national guardunit, spent her deployment in anoffice doing administrative tasks.She says the two highest-rankingofficers in her midst didn’t hidetheir feelings about Jake: “Theyweren’t very fond of him.” Transays they made a bar graph com-paring the number of releases herecommended to the number rec-ommended by the woman whoshouted at her charges. “Theyknew she would give them thenumbers they wanted,” says Tran.“They knew he wasn’t going tochange his values and morals justto please a few officers.” She saysthey decided to replace him.

In his last month in Iraq, Jakewas transferred to the officewhere Tran worked. Heanswered phones and editedsummaries of intelligencereports. Fifteen days before he

left, he summed up his thoughtsabout the war in his journal: “Weare not fighting for freedom,ours or the Iraqis. We are notprotecting America. We are notavenging September 11th. I don’treally know what we aredoing. . . . Whatever we are doing,we are doing it so clumsily andstupidly and unprofessionallythat it has no possibility of suc-cess. The elections, yes, theywere beautiful to see and feel,but that was one day in two yearsof small scale atrocities.”

His last day there, he sat downand wrote a four-page letter tothe brigade’s executive officer. Hesays he made suggestions forimproving conditions at theprison and explained why hethought an “incentive basedinterrogation approach” wasmore effective than a confronta-tional one. He says he also wroteabout why he thought treatingIraqis better and giving them amore positive view of Americanswould deter future attacks.

He gave the letter to a friendwith instructions to not deliver ituntil he was gone.

Back in the States, Jake got toread the glowing evaluations hiscommanders had given him forleading a team of interrogators

that questioned over 900detainees. On form after formthey praised him. They called hisintegrity “unreproachable.” Theysaid he “ensured that detaineeswere treated fairly” and that hewas “clearly a strong intelligencecollector” who “displayed greatprowess in determining deceptionin detainees of intelligence value.”

He received an ArmyCommendation Medal, which,according to an army publicaffairs specialist, is meant toconvey that “you’ve done yourjob and done it well.”

Jake got home on April 5 andtook stock of all he’d missed.

While he was gone his son, now18 months old, had taken his firststeps and spoken his first words.Jake, while forging his own rela-tionship with the boy, unwit-tingly undermined child-rearingroutines that his wife hadworked hard to establish. Hismarriage had been easy when heleft. Now it was full of tension.

Jake found himself easily agi-tated. Things that never used tobother him—other drivers on theroad, a mop that didn’t workproperly, fireworks—nowenraged him. His irritabilitystunned Beth. She told him he

seemed like a different person.They began couples counseling,hoping to head off a divorce.

At work Jake got sucked intofrustrating conversations withfellow cops who asked about Iraqbut seemed unable to hear whathe had to say. They suggestednuking the whole country; theyspoke to him with authorityabout a place they’d never been.After a while he felt so bitter thattalking about the war at all waslike scratching a scab off awound. Every time he turned onthe news Jake learned of moredeaths in Iraq. One day an e-mailfrom Tran informed him that aninterrogator and border patrolagent he’d worked with had beenkilled in an explosion a daybefore he was scheduled to returnto his wife and son in Texas.

Jake began spending an inordi-nate amount of time in the back-yard tearing out weeds andclearing brush. He disappearedinside the house too. “He went alittle nuts rearranging and rear-ranging and continuing torearrange the basement,” saysBeth, who understood his newobsessions as attempts to regaincontrol of his life. In Iraq he’dhad none. Even the smallestdecisions—what to wear, what to

eat, when to go to sleep—hadbeen made for him by the army.

For the first time since 1999,the army will fall short of itsrecruiting goals this fiscal year.With a month to go in the year,which ends September 30, it wasoff by about 7,000—and byabout another 3,000 in the armyreserves. A spokesman for thearmy’s recruiting commandattributes the disappointingnumbers in part to “the ongoingwar on terrorism and the impactthat the fear of bodily injury anddeath is having on people.”

But the war on terrorism is notthe reason the army is losing askilled and experienced soldierlike Jake, someone who’d lookedforward to being a lifelongreservist. The reason is Iraq. “Ibelieve in what America standsfor,” he says, “and that’s exactlywhat we’re violating over there.”

The sacrifices made by his andother soldiers’ families are toogreat, Jake believes, because theywere ultimately pointless. He’sdecided to sever his ties with thearmy when his national guardcontract expires on October 31.“I feel really betrayed by the mili-tary,” he says. “I don’t want to bepart of this organization any-more.” v



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